Moonset

“Where’s Bailey?” Jenna half asked, half demanded as she breezed into the kitchen.

“She changed her outfit, so then she said her makeup had to be redone.” Cole sounded mystified, but Jenna took it in stride, and sat down next to me with one leg propped on the chair. Last night’s argument hadn’t been forgotten though, which I realized as she angled her body away from me and towards the kitchen. She plucked out a cube of melon and popped it in her mouth. “Breakfast is yummy, Quinn,” she announced after swallowing.

“So explain this to me again,” Cole said. “They’ve already got schedules and everything for us?”

Quinn turned around, still half watching the things on the griddle. “They’re adjusting your schedules based on what you took in Kentucky. Since midterms are coming up in a few weeks, the school is coordinating your tests with what you were studying down south. So you’re not totally screwed for your exams.”

Groans from around the table. There wasn’t any getting out of test-taking, which sucked but wasn’t surprising.

“Don’t all thank me at once,” Quinn commented. “It took a lot of effort to get your old school to agree to this.”

“Thanks, Quinn,” Jenna said sweetly.

Cole followed it up with, “What about magic lessons? Are they in-school here, or do we have to go somewhere afterwards?” He looked to my left, and I saw the look he exchanged with

Jenna. She’d prompted him to ask, I was sure. But why?

“They’ll be last period, but there’s some adjustments that have to be made. So for now you’ll go to a last period study hall.” When there were enough witches in the school, our lessons were factored into a kind of independent study class, right down the hall from where kids were learning about Napoleon and Pythagoras.

What kind of adjustments had to be made? “Maybe they listened to you after all,” I said under my breath, carrying just enough for Jenna to hear me. It was meant to be a conciliatory gesture, to make up for the argument last night, but she ignored me.

Bailey came in a few minutes later, still tugging one of her boots off. She and Jenna both had gone for trendy rather than practical. I couldn’t understand why boots needed heels in the first place, but it was their choice.

“Pass me a yogurt,” Jenna added, as Bailey pulled up a spot at the table. She leaned over the table and tossed one at her, and then sat down next to Cole and studied the table. The meal passed in relative silence, except for the frequent comments about how amazing everything was and demands for things to be passed one way or the other. For just a few minutes, it was like we were some sort of normal family.

I could almost relax and enjoy it. Except I knew that school was going to be its own kind of hell. It always was.

Eventually, everyone started packing it in, rummaging around to find coats, shoes, and book bags. By the time all five of us were out the door and into the SUV, we had less than twenty minutes until the school day started.

“You know how to get there?” I asked. As the one riding shotgun, I had to play navigator if

Malcolm got lost. It didn’t happen that often, but I didn’t want today to be one of those rare days.

“Relax, Justin,” he said absently.

The high school wasn’t in the immediate downtown like most of the schools we went to. We drove through the center of Carrow Mill and down to the far side of town, where the school was located. Mal knew exactly where he was going.

Even eight schools later, there’s some stress about starting somewhere new. What’s everyone wearing in New York? Are they going to treat us like freaks? How long until I get called into the principal’s office? Is my sister going to protest animal dissection for the hell of it?

Nervous energy was responsible for the way Cole kept tapping out a rhythm on his knees, and the way Bailey kept squirming in her seat.

“Everyone knows not to use magic in public, right? And if you slip up, find an adult that can clean up the mess.” Slips always happened—the wrong spell at the wrong time. The witches who worked at the school were trained to cover up those issues—either by altering memories, undoing whatever effects were still ongoing, or providing a good cover story. It was even rougher being a magical teacher than a regular one.

I shifted around, trying to catch all of their eyes while the seatbelt strap cut into my neck.

“Cole?”

The tapping stopped. “I’m not going to do anything.” He sounded guilty already. Force of habit.

“We’re all going to be on our best behavior, little brother,” Jenna said, with absolute syrup in her voice. “No need to go turning anyone in to the authorities.”

I looked at the console’s clock. We still had about ten minutes. Plenty of time, I figured, as we pulled into the parking lot of … the most elaborate high school I’d ever seen.

“Wow,” Bailey breathed from behind me.

Carrow Mill High wasn’t some thirty-year-old structure built with only function in mind. This was a building that someone had taken great care to design. The curving walls of the buildings were sand-colored bricks, and everywhere I looked it seemed like there was something moving. Buildings sloped to one side, towered up into a clock tower, or circled around. It looked more like the kind of building you’d see in a movie, not a high school.

Malcolm finally found a spot in the side lot, where it looked like a lot of other students were parking as well. That made it a bit of a hike to get into the school, since we had to walk all the way back down alongside the buildings and then around to the front.

“We ready to do this?” I looked around, at the four other members of my family. Eighth school in three years. This was getting so old. But by this point I’d done it so many times I was used to being the new kid.

“Last school we went to got blown up,” Jenna mused.

I looked at the school and wondered. How would this one fare? Would we walk away in six months, no harm done? Or would the school year end more actively: in fire or flood?

Thirteen

“Carrow Mill is holy. A true sacred space. It’s where they came together. Where they left their hearts. Where they sacrificed themselves.”

Lucinda Dale (S)

Former disciple of Moonset, interview

Once we walked into the school, it was like a whirlwind. Someone must have held a drill to practice because as soon as we stepped into the office, a trio of counselors appeared to shoo us back into the hallway. Malcolm and I were together, Jenna and Bailey were together, and

Cole was off by himself.

They hustled us down the hallways, giving a rapid-fire summary of what we could expect as new students at Carrow Mill High. I gripped my orientation folder, and tried to make sense of the school map. Our first classes were helpfully marked with a big red X, but everything else was horribly smudged.

I tried asking questions, but the woman was on a mission. The hallways and everything in them had an entirely “new” look to them, and they were all decorated in shades of silver and blue, which must have been the school colors. The school was pristine, looking none the worse for wear despite housing almost a thousand kids a day—nine hundred of whom stared at us like we were the new sideshow freaks in town.

The bell rang, and the halls emptied out as everyone who knew where they were going slipped into their classrooms.

“The science building is through the walkway there,” the guidance counselor pointed to the rear of the building. “Mr. Daggett, you’ll be in SC 201. Mr. Denton, you’re in 114. Show the teacher your copy of your schedules and you should be fine.”

Even though the woman had barely introduced herself before hustling us off, and hadn’t bothered to really greet us at all, I still smiled at her. “Thanks.”