Moonset

A circle of blood spread underneath his chest, and tentacles stretched away from his limbs.

I’d seen this symbol before. If we pulled him up, I knew what we’d see. A dry spot in the shape of a crescent moon, a circle, and six wavy rays. The same symbol Mal and I had seen on the burnt-out house and on my locker.

Moonset’s symbol.

Sixteen

“Reports from the scene suggest that the explosions started just before noon, when the

Invisible Congress would have adjourned for lunch. At this time, we don’t know if there are any survivors. Feared dead are the Covens of Devon, the Sisters of Air, Iron Rose, Moonset, and Calmingbrook.”

Released Reports

On the Dark Monday attack

There wasn’t much time to put my thoughts together, or mourn, or whatever it was you did in situations like this. The adults took over almost immediately. Reinforcement police, two of them, appeared from either end of the crowd, herding people back. I pulled Ash out of the street and away from the body. As we walked away, the officers were putting up police tape and had brought out a sheet to cover over the man.

“All right people, move along. It’s time to go home,” a strident voice called out. My heart sunk. I knew that voice. I hated that voice. Miss Virago appeared on the scene and took control. There was a small group with her—men and women no older than her. The Witchers were on the scene. The coffee I’d drunk started burning a hole through my stomach lining. It shouldn’t be possible, but the situation just got worse and worse.

Was she pretending to be an actual government official, now? As far as I knew, working for the Congress was not the same as working for the FBI. Witches continued to survive by living a life of secrecy—all our laws, our crimes, our prosecutions had to happen under the radar. We didn’t have any actual authority to the rest of the world.

But never underestimate the power of a bitchy woman in a business suit and heels. It helped to have magic, of course, to stop people from asking questions.

At my side, Ash looked nauseous. “I need to call my dad,” she said. She untangled herself from my arm, leaving me only with phantom pain as she dipped and ducked through the crowd.

“Time to get off the street, Mr. Daggett,” Meghan said, taking her place on my other side, and grabbing the arm that Ash hadn’t just been clinging to. She dragged me back the way we’d come, towards the coffee shop, and all I could do was panic. What if Ash saw something?

What if she heard something?

But no, the Witchers were supposed to be good at containment, at making sure normal people don’t remember anything about magic.

“What’s going on?” I asked, because the Witchers she’d brought with her had rounded up some of the onlookers in groups of four or five. Each of the Witchers was talking, but the people they were talking to were … wrong. Slack-faced, wide-eyed. Vacant. It took me a second to realize they were being fascinated.

Fascination is a highly regulated branch of magic. The ability to control a person’s thoughts, to bewitch them so thoroughly that they’ll believe anything you tell them, was widely coveted and easily abused. It was almost exclusively the purview of the Witchers themselves, along with whoever the Congress decided to allow to learn the basics. Even those who were good at it—

normal witches—could barely work more than five or six at a time—fascination had its limits.

My stomach twisted again. Normal. If there was one thing the five of us were, it wasn’t that.

But those were secrets I’d sworn never to tell. I covered my nerves up with curiosity. “You’re making them forget?”

Meghan didn’t actually smile, but the muscles in her mouth unpinched for just a moment. It looked like the closest she ever came. “First, we’re finding out what they remember. Then we’re making them forget.”

She said it so easily. Like stripping away people’s memories meant nothing to her. Who knew, maybe it didn’t. The only comfort to me was that spells of fascination didn’t normally work on witches. Again, normal.

I knew an interrogation was coming, and I had to prepare. I had the entire length of the street before the coffee shop to pull myself together. To wipe away any trace of what the Harbinger’s words had done to me, the truths he’d revealed.

Meghan didn’t take us to the coffee shop, though. We walked one building further—an empty storefront with dust-coated windows and Going Out of Business flyers, faded and grimy, taped to the glass.

The door was unlocked, and she gestured me inside. I followed, at least grateful that Ash wouldn’t stumble in on whatever interrogation this was going to be. The idea that she’d find out what I was on a night like tonight … that was unconscionable.

“How did you find out there was going to be an … incident tonight?” Virago asked, feigning a sweet tongue as if I’d forget the callous shrew she really was.

“I didn’t. I went out for coffee with a friend, and we saw people running for the clock tower.” I shrugged. “We went outside to see what was going on.”

“And that’s when you saw the man. The sympathizer.”

I nodded.

“He was very sick,” she confided, like we were friends. “Did you know that?”

“He harassed Malcolm and me before,” I said, because I knew that she knew. Everything that happened to us ended up in a report somewhere.

“And what did he say to you tonight?”

“He was up in the clock tower,” I said. “I never saw him tonight. I mean, other than that.”

A benevolent, charming smile. “You don’t expect me to believe that, do you Justin? Now, what did he say to you? We need to know what he was planning.”

What he was planning? “What are you talking about?” I asked. Maybe if I knew how Virago and the other Witchers were planning to spin this, I could figure out … something. Some idea of what they wanted.

Some of her patience wore away, smooth like an ocean wearing away at a rock. “We know he was shouting things. Preaching, proselytizing, whatever. What we need to know is what he said. That’s the only way we can stop whatever he’s set into motion.”

But it didn’t sound like the Harbinger had set anything into motion. He’d been scared, and his mind wasn’t all there, but he’d been more a victim than a villain. He’d said there was a warlock, and after the streetlight explosions and the Moonset symbol pooling beneath him, I was convinced.

What I needed was to talk this over with Jenna. She saw through things easier than I did—

maybe she was just better at reading people, or maybe the fact that she inherently distrusted everyone made her see things I couldn’t. But she’d know what to do with what I’d heard.

“Nothing that made any sense,” I said, looking down at the floor. There were several different sets of footprints, some of them starting to dust over, and others as fresh as ours. Were the

Witchers using this as some sort of hideout?

“It might not make sense to you,” she said, her tone getting more brittle. She knew I wasn’t interested in cooperating. “But it’s important that you tell all the same.”

“Tell her what she wants to know, Justin,” Quinn said, coming into the storefront. He was dressed in a pea coat and a sweater that looked like they could have both been the same shade of gray. They could have given the