Moonset

Well, he did use the magic word. I went upstairs, grabbing one of the hooded sweaters that was fitted on Mal, but loose and roomy on me. I didn’t need a jacket to run across the street, and none of us ever really locked the door, so there was never any fear of getting stuck outside. Until Mal decided on a field trip.

I figured wherever we were going would be near either the gym or the coffee shop, since those were the only two places that Mal went with any regularity. “One of the guys at the gym was talking the other day, telling me about this house,” Mal confided as we got into the car. He was behind the wheel, of course, because he was the only one that the adults trusted to drive, and because I was still barely conscious.

“What house?”

“Well, it’s not a house. It was some kind of city building. Like a rec center or something?

Anyway, there was a fire a few weeks ago.”

Mal started taking side streets at random, first zigging then zagging in a vaguely nauseating manner. I kept getting jostled around the passenger seat, and while it helped wake me up a bit more, it did nothing for my mood.

“And why do we care?”

“You’ll see,” he said, glancing at me from the other side of the car. “It’s hard to explain.”

A few blocks later, Mal pulled over to the side of the road. We weren’t that far from the downtown area—I could see the big clock tower that was Carrow Mill’s pride and joy in the distance. I had no idea where we were other than that, though. There were almost as many side streets as houses in this town, making it a veritable maze of suburbia.

“I was curious, so I went looking for it,” Mal continued as he got out. I did the same. “It’s one more creepy thing to add to this town’s resume, though.”

The building had been gutted by fire, a white finish that in the best spots was now a sooty gray, but the entire second floor had been consumed by flames. It looked like a house, but it was more of a duplex or triplex.

It wasn’t just that there’d been a fire that had basically destroyed the house, though. I saw now why Mal was so interested in it. There was something in the air, a sense of foulness that made the house and everything around it seem a hundred degrees colder.

Mal crossed into the front yard, and I followed, feeling a pressure bearing down on me like we’d crossed an altitude threshold. My ears twinged, threatening to pop at any second.

But there was more. Mal vaulted up the porch steps, stopping at the center unit’s front door.

“I know I’ve seen this before somewhere,” he said. “Do you know what it is?”

There was fire and smoke damage everywhere I looked, but the burns on the door were … different. There was a pattern in the char. It looked like there had been two fires. The one that had swept over the entire building, and caused serious damage to the door, and one even older than that, one that had gouged a pattern into the wood.

At first I couldn’t see it for what it was, but after a moment it snapped together, like eyesight suddenly going from blurry to clear. There was a circle, almost completely shaded in, and waves trailing off of the side, like when Cole was really young and drew his suns with wavy rays instead of straight and all his teachers kept trying to correct him.

It did kind of look like a strange sun, but the rays coming out from the sides were more like tentacles, writhing away from the center. The entire image was scarred deep into the wood, except for the sliver at the center that still hadn’t been touched. Originally, the front door had been painted white, and there was a strip that still gleamed against the darkness next to it—a strip that was shaped like a crescent moon.

I reached out and brushed my fingers against it. The wood was still hot, burning against my fingers. As the feelings of heat and damp registered in my brain, my eyes saw the impossible.

The tentacle moved. It strained forward, shifting clockwise as if it could somehow break free.

The wood was still hot, burning, against my fingers. “What the hell!” I snatched my hand away, backing up several feet. “Did you see that?”

I understood what Mal was talking about now. There was a weird vibe to the building. Almost like deja vu. But this was something else. There was a memory of words in my head, a memory that I was sure hadn’t been there before. A voice, broken and tattered, that was pressed against the side of my mind from the outside. Like a stamp, or a scar.

“We only need one. ”

“You heard it, right?” Mal wasn’t looking at the door at all, in fact he had his back to it entirely.

“I heard … something.”

“What do you think it is?”

I shook my head. More mysteries. “Who’d you say told you about this?”

“Some guy at the gym,” he shrugged. “He looked like a gym teacher or something. You know, sweats and stained T-shirts, hair that tries to convince everyone isn’t thinning, and all that.”

Was the house haunted? Was that what this was? Maybe some kind of psychic imprint or something? I didn’t know much about ghosts or residual energy, but there was definitely something going on here.

Mal interrupted my reverie. “You sure you haven’t seen this before? I know I’ve seen it somewhere.”

I might have seen the symbol somewhere before, but it didn’t ring any bells. “I’m more concerned with the voice. And why did someone tell you about it in the first place?” We only need one? One what? And who needed it?

“I don’t think he was a witch. They always give you that ‘yeah, I know who you are’ creepy look, and then they move as far away as they can,” Mal said darkly.

“Next time you go, see if you can find that guy again. Find out if he knows anything else about the house.”

“And the symbol?” Mal asked, as we walked back to the car. I turned back to the front door, remembering the way the tentacle had shifted like it was alive.

“We’ll have to look for that, too.” Magic was a language, and that meant there was a written component, too. Maybe the symbol on the door was some kind of spell, and it had been carved there by whoever’s voice had been in my head. Written magic could be just as devastating as the verbal kind—it definitely could have burned down the house.

The question was why.

We headed towards Main Street and the coffee shop, just as he’d promised. Mal turned the radio up the moment I got in, and we left the discussion of the fire and the symbol back at the house. Carrow Mill didn’t have a Starbucks or a fancy coffee place, but it had the mom-and-pop equivalent, and that was good enough for me.

“Told you we’d meet again, big guy,” an amused voice called out before I’d even finished climbing out of the SUV.

It was her. Ash. Sitting on a sidewalk bench not twenty feet from us, completely oblivious to the way my heart dropped into my stomach. She had her phone between her hands, thumbs still texting away even though her eyes were on me.

“Who’s this?” Mal said as he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his gray sweatshirt, eyes already crinkling and a smirk on his lips. Ugh. He was going to be a dick about it, I could already tell.

“This,” she said, “is Ash.” She stood up, a Styrofoam cup in hand. Like she was a model on display. And I mean, I didn’t exactly mind. She was wearing a leather jacket over a purple top and jeans tucked into her boots. She looked like she was about to kick someone’s ass. I just hoped she’d let me watch.

“Of course you are,” Mal said slowly, giving me the side eye. “So you’re the girl he met.”

If you swallow me up right now, I promise I won’t mind, I prayed to the earth. Actually, on second thought, take him instead. I waited, hoping that the sudden cave in that swallowed up my brother wouldn’t do too much damage. But nothing happened.