Moonset

them. He waited until the blue fire burned white before turning back to me.

“’We only need one,’” I said shakily. “You wanted to know what the Harbinger said to me that night.”

“Justin!” Jenna’s alarm was more shocked than acerbic, which only proved how traumatized she’d been tonight.

“We have to tell someone,” I said, slumping down in my seat. “And we need answers.”

“And you think he’s going to give them?”

I would have nodded, but I wasn’t sure I would be able to lift my head back up if it dropped.

“Check his wards. He’s not making this conversation private for his health.” I didn’t have to see the symbols burning in the air to know what they were. I thought I had some understanding of what drove Quinn now. If we could help him stop the warlock, he might not break faith with the

Congress, but he would skirt the line as much as possible.

“Why do you think the warlock doesn’t want you here?” Quinn asked. “Downstairs, you sounded confused.”

“Not the warlock,” I said, “something else. There weren’t just two voices I heard. There were a l ot. I knew they were talking to someone, but he didn’t say anything back. It wasn’t a conversation.”

Jenna’s eyes widened. “They were instructions.”

I would have nodded if I could. “They’ve kept saying, ‘They only need one.’ One of us. One of

Moonset’s children.” I turned my head as much as I could and looked at Quinn. “Why only one?

Everyone knows we’re a package deal. We can’t be split up. It doesn’t make any sense.”

The curse that was bound up between all of us meant we couldn’t be ripped away from one another, but the voices sounded like that was exactly what they wanted. It can’t be that easy. If it was, all we would have to do is wait, and the curse would eliminate the warlock and whoever was pulling his strings.

“The Coven bond protects you,” Quinn said slowly, “but that protection comes with a cost.”

Jenna crossed her arms in front of her. “What kind of cost?”

He held up one finger. “It’s easier for the Abyss to gain a foothold into a solitary witch because there’s only one mind to contend with.” He then held up both hands, and linked his fingers together. “A coven, on the other hand, has a bond that links them. It’s harder to infect a

Coven witch, because a group is stronger than just one.”

Jenna and I looked at each other.

“But there are weaknesses, too,” he continued. “If the Abyss can single out just one witch, and overcome him even despite the Coven bond, it gains an advantage in taking the rest of the

Coven. With each member it claims, that control gets stronger until the Coven succumbs entirely.”

“So you think that’s what happened tonight? The warlock sent some Maleficia out to try and take control of one of us?” Jenna asked.

“It would certainly fit,” he said. “But we still don’t know what, exactly, the warlock wants. The

Congress hoped that bringing you here would at least make that much clear. If we knew what he wanted, we could plan to stop him. But ever since you arrived, he’s been erratic. Confused.

We think the Maleficia may have broken him. And now it seeks a new host.”

“One of us,” I whispered.

“All of us,” Jenna clarified.

I meant to ask more, to find out more about what the Congress had in store for us, but I could barely keep my eyes open.

“Sleep,” Quinn said. “We’ll wait, and figure this out in the morning.”

Only there wasn’t anything to figure out in the morning. In fact, the rest of my suspension was a blur of books and boredom. Quinn warned me that I’d be sore for a day or two, lethargic and worn down because of the Maleficia attack. But he still expected his stupid essays.

Last night’s attack led to some changes, one of which was that while the other four were still allowed to go to school (there’d been some debate on whether or not it was safe), they had to arrive and leave together. In addition, all of us had to be home and indoors before nightfall, when the Maleficia was believed to be strongest. In the event of another attack, the Witchers wanted to make sure we were as protected as well as possible.

Which meant that my day was filled with constant interruptions as groups of Witchers in twos and threes walked through the house, examining weak points and bolstering the house wards.

Maleficia wasn’t supposed to be able to cross a house’s threshold, but they didn’t want to take any chances.

I stayed on the couch, because half the time I could barely keep my eyes open and I didn’t think sleeping at the kitchen table would end well. Gravity was a bitch, and the floors were hardwood.

I finished the first paper about the Coven Wars by the skin of my teeth, but as soon as I emailed the document to him, he came downstairs with another stack of books and my next assignment. If possible, these books were even dustier than the first ones. “I want you to write a report on how a warlock is brought to trial. How is a charge of invoking the black arts proven?

Talk about the trial, the investigations, and everything up until a guilty verdict. And then you can talk about how the process has changed in the last twenty years.”

I was waiting for a word count, but Quinn didn’t say anything further. “How long?” I’d max out on a thousand words before even covering half of what he was asking for.

“As long as it takes,” he said. “Be succinct. You should be able to wrap it up in … five or six thousand words.”

Quinn wanted the Never-ending Paper. Five thousand words was huge—that would take me at least a month! But I was too drained to argue. But surprisingly, the books he’d given me weren’t nearly as dry as the ones for the first assignment. Maybe the writing style was more modern, or maybe it was because the subject matter hit closer to home.

Coven trials were cruel, devastating processes that always ended badly. In comparison, the

Salem witch trials and the witch hysteria that gripped the world were passive, calm affairs.

Now trials were public affairs, open to any witch who wished to attend. An emphasis was placed on “innocent until proven guilty” and other modern conceits—with one main exception.

Moonset, the book explained, had been tried “in absentia” and thus their sentence had been carried out almost immediately upon capture.

It made sense, though. If there had been a trial, it would have been a circus. Sherrod

Daggett was charismatic and enticing. Putting him on the stand would have only done harm by giving him yet another platform.

The last day of my suspension, I felt a little better. I only slept about half of the day, and while I was still tired, I wasn’t as bone-weary as I’d been the day before. I worked on the paper at the kitchen table, spreading the research out.

Tucked in the middle of Quinn’s stack of books, I found one book that wasn’t dusty and unused. It was a copy of Moonset: A Dark Legacy —the definitive encyclopedia of the lives of our parents, from beginning to execution. It was full of personal letters, interviews, and trial transcripts that covered every aspect of their lives.

All of us had read the book cover to cover. Well, all except Bailey, I think. Jenna, Mal, and I had read it when we were still in middle school, sneaking copies out of our guardians’ houses.

We wanted to know more about who our parents had been. As soon as we were done, we all wished we’d never read it.

“How goes the slave labor?” Jenna asked as she came inside, dropping her school bag on the papers filled with notes I had spread all over the kitchen table.

“Not as bad as I thought.” I stretched, using the motion to shove her bag forward, away from my things. Yawning, I pulled the loose sheets back into a pile and stuck it next to the laptop I was working on. “How was school?”

“Monotonous. Until further notice—meaning until they hire a new sucker to take over the magic class—we’re all reading biographies of important historical witches. What’s the point of having magic if you can’t ever