Moonset

house was totally quiet.

As we reached the bottom landing, I tapped Mal on the shoulders and pointed down the hall.

Lights were on in the study, the door closed. But when I’d come into the house just a few minutes before, the door had been open and the room dark.

“Can you tell who it is?” Mal asked, glancing between the study to his right, and the path to the front door, to his left.

“You know all the same spells I do,” I said, trying to figure out if anything I knew would be useful here. Etheric maanu would tell me how many people were in the house. That wouldn’t help. Ethera maan could tell how far away they were. But nothing I could use to identify them.

“Yeah, but I don’t pay attention in class,” Mal responded, sounding aggravated. It probably annoyed him that he even had to ask. Magic was always his last resort. “If it was a wraith, it would have just blown up the house, right? Picked us up out of the debris?”

“Maybe,” I hedged.

He squared his shoulders and chose his direction. The study, then. I followed behind, grabbing the only thing handy that I could find. In a perfect world it would have been a baseball bat or a golf club. I had to settle for one of those blue-fringed Swiffer dusters.

I hefted the weight of it in my hands, already regretting the decision. Mal looked over his shoulder at me, smirked, and then pushed open the doors to the study.

The two of us went rushing into the room, me with feathered blue justice in my hands. Mal didn’t need a weapon of his own—he pretty much was the weapon.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Mal snapped.

I had to step around him to realize who he was talking to. Jenna, half crouched behind the study’s desk, stacks of files and papers cleared out of the drawers and scattered across the top. She dropped a hand to her hip, rose even as her eyebrow arched at the Swiffer in my hands like a weapon. “What are you planning to do? Dust me to death?”

“What are you doing here, Jenna?” he repeated.

“Breaking and entering, completely ruining Nick’s attempts at organization, and general crimes against the crown, obviously,” she said blandly. “So either close the door and help, Dumb and Dumber, or go back to talking first downs and engines. Or whatever you boys talk about.”

“You can’t just go through all his stuff,” I said in shock.

“Well, I’d go through Quinn’s stuff, but they’re both over there right now,” she said reasonably. “It’s harder to snoop through someone’s things when they’re in the room.”

Mal sighed, then turned around and closed the door behind us. It was as good as giving

Jenna permission to continue. The moment the lock clicked into place, she went back to skimming through the files. “So you decided to break into my house? Why?”

“I’m done letting them make me a victim,” she said, moving from one drawer to the one below it. “They won’t teach us new spells? Then I’ll find them on my own. I’ll teach myself if that’s what it takes. But what happened back there will never happen again.”

“You’re looking for grimoires?” I don’t know what surprised me more. That Jenna would steal another witch’s book of spells, or that she hadn’t already done it before.

Grimoires, or spellbooks, were basically journals that most witches kept all of their magic in.

Because there were so many spells, and so many variations, most people needed a written record. It was difficult work—because magic was a language, written spells had power just as much as spoken ones. Spells had to be broken down into the lines, spaced apart like diagrams on how to copy a Chinese symbol.

Mal shook his head. “You can’t do this.”

“I knew you weren’t going to help,” she replied scornfully. “Come on, Justin, you know I’m right. We need to be able to protect ourselves. You’re the one who keeps saying that they brought us here for a reason. If we’re in danger, can we really trust them to make sure Bailey and Cole are safe? Or what about Mal? He refuses to defend himself.”

“I don’t need to use magic to defend myself,” Mal snapped. “And quit trying to spin this into a good idea. It’s pretty much one of the stupidest you’ve ever come up with. Going through the

Witchers’ things? Illana Bryer hasn’t even unpacked yet, and you’re already trying to get us in trouble.”

“And what are you doing? Sneaking around looking at weird fires and making the locals think you’re a freak?” Jenna’s lips curled dangerously. “You’re stirring up just as much as I am. But if

Saint Malcolm wants to solve a mystery and get a treat from his owners, that’s okay.”

I looked over the mess Jenna had made, and the pair of them bickering with each other. “Put it all back, Jenna.”

“You can’t seriously be siding with him,” she snapped. “You know I’m right.”

I tapped out a rhythm like a heartbeat against the floor. “One minute, or I’m calling Quinn and turning you in.”

She gaped at me. This wasn’t done. It was one thing to side with Jenna, or against her. It was another to side with the adults. Even if Mal disagreed with her, argued that she should have stopped, if we got caught, he’d have her back.

So for her to stare at me like we’d never met before wasn’t entirely unexpected. But she put everything back, if not exactly where she’d found it, then close enough. The tension in the room could have compressed coal into diamonds.

Just before she closed the last drawer, she looked up at me. “I don’t know who you think you are all of a sudden,” she snapped, “but whoever he is, he’s a dick.”

Twelve

“The Covens are not gods, and the Solitaires are not the working class. We are all fragile, simple creatures. When faced with tyrants, what can we do but tear them down?”

Sherrod Daggett (C: Moonset)

Unknown Date

I came downstairs the next morning to some sort of weird, Opposite World version of the

Brady Bunch. Mal and Cole were at the table, already half hidden behind huge towers of breakfast foods. Quinn was behind the stove and he was putting together something that could only be qualified as a feast.

There was a tray of cut-up fruit, scrambled eggs, French toast, sausage, and an entire pot of coffee set on a warmer.

“Uhm … someone should go check on me,” I said, pointing back the way I came. “Because I must have cracked my head open in the shower. And this is my coma dream.”

“No coma,” Mal said.

Cole nodded vigorously. “Quinn’s my new god,” he said, shoving another sausage link in his mouth, “except not in a gay way.”

Mal lifted a hand to smack him, but Cole jumped out of his chair first and bounded out of reach. “Okay, okay. Maybe in a gay way, too. Whatever. All I know is that his French toast is kick ass, Jay.”

“Jay?” Mal and I spoke as one.

Cole shrugged. “Whatever. It’s part of your name, right?”

“My name’s Justin,” I said, settling down at the table across from Mal. Quinn was even wearing one of those dorky aprons with a slogan on it. My eyebrows raised. “‘May the forks be with you?’” I read.

He pointed with the spatula. “Shut up and eat.”