Moonset

“I can help,” she offered, but I shook my head.

“She’s my responsibility.”

“Justin … ” but she couldn’t follow it up with anything. What could she even say? Sorry I lied to you? Sorry I knew all along who you were? Sorry you thought I was normal and bizarre and sweet?

It was almost ten minutes before the Witchers emerged, declaring the threat banished. The

Santas had dropped almost as soon as we broke for the doors, but Maleficia could have been lingering in the shadows and corners of the theater. Backup, in the form of a half-dozen plainclothes twenty-somethings with a military way of moving, arrived not soon after.

It only took another ten minutes to turn a potential attack into something less stable than a dream. The Witchers worked quickly, wiping memories and replacing fears with a sense of calm. Under their direction, kids with footage on their phone deleted the evidence, and the theater’s security cameras were erased. I looked around while all this was going on, not sure what I was looking for exactly, but knowing I didn’t find it. Something’s not right.

They decided to blame it on a gas leak, exacerbated by someone, probably a teenager, pulling one of the fire alarms and setting off the sprinkler system.

Quinn arrived with the reinforcements and grabbed Bailey out of my hands after I stumbled.

“I’ve got her!”

He shook his head. “You need to take a minute. Catch your breath. Stretch.”

“I can take care of my sister,” I snapped, reaching for her.

“You already did,” Quinn said in a soothing tone. “You kept her from getting hurt. But now we need to take care of both of you and make sure you’re both okay.”

I didn’t like what he was implying. “We’re fine.”

“Maybe it looks that way … ”

I reached out and grabbed for Bailey. Quinn only resisted for a moment before he helped shift her weight over to me. “We’re fine. We kept the warlock from hurting as many people as we could. And now you’re just going to imply that there’s something wrong with us?” My stomach turned. “We saved people tonight. And you’re still looking at us like we’re the bad guys.”

“Justin, that’s not what he’s saying.” But I didn’t want to hear what Ash had to say either.

I moved for the exit. Righteous indignation or not, carrying Bailey was a struggle. I wasn’t born in a gym like Mal—my arms only had so much strength. I might have moved a bit quicker than necessary, but they’d blame it on the anger.

There was a car out front, and I slid Bailey into the back, laying her head carefully down on the seat. She started to stir as soon as I pulled away. “Jus … ?”

“You’re okay,” I said, swallowing. “You did really good, Bails. Saved the day.”

“Not yet,” she murmured, shifting until she found a more comfortable position. She was out again almost instantly.

Quinn wasn’t one of the Witchers who drove us back to the house, and the two who rode with us didn’t try to say anything or interfere at all. I carried Bailey up into her room, passing Cole’s shut door and hearing the bass of his music rattling the walls. He didn’t even open the door to see what was going on.

Jenna appeared at the top of the steps when I walked into the house. “Quinn called. Told me what happened. Are you okay?” She looked like she was about to fly down the stairs, and that was a remarkably un- Jenna like thing to see.

“I’m fine. We’re both fine. Bailey wore herself out. She’s sleeping it off. I’m about to do the same.” While I’d been fine slinging magic around at the time, now that the adrenaline had started to disappear, exhaustion crept in and took its place.

“Right,” she said quietly. “Everyone’s meeting over here tomorrow. They want us to stay inside again for a couple of days. Totally ruins my plans for the weekend.” She didn’t sound too broken up about it.

“Have you noticed how every time there’s a problem, they try to pull us off the streets?” I wondered, grabbing the railing post at the bottom of the stairs. “I thought we were supposed to be bait.”

Jenna shrugged. “I think they don’t know what they want us to be. For what it’s worth, Quinn was arguing on the phone with someone about pulling us out of here. And that was before the attack.” She came down the stairs slowly, her mouth pursed in thought. “Not saying he’s our new best friend, but maybe he’s not a total pawn.”

“Maybe,” I agreed, licking my lips. I wanted something to drink, but the kitchen was too far.

I’d just grab some water in the bathroom. Or maybe there was still a bottle left in my room from earlier.

I started climbing the stairs, almost at the top when she asked, “Other than the warlock interruptus, how was the date? Everything you ever dreamed?”

Everything I should have expected, more like. I wasn’t ready to tell Jenna about Ash. I wasn’t ready to tell anyone. “It was fine. I’m going to bed.”

Jenna watched me from the bottom of the stairs. “Night, Justin.”

All thoughts of sleep evaporated when I walked into my room. There, carefully laid out on the edge of my bed, was my father’s spellbook. The one that I’d locked up in the school a week ago.

Twenty-Five

(On being asked why she followed Moonset)

“We changed the world. Who wouldn’t want that?

They never acted superior to us. But they were.”

(pause) “They had plans for all of us.”

Lucinda Dale (S)

Personal Interview

What was it doing here? It had been almost a week since I’d deposited the book inside a locker at school until I could figure out some other way to get rid of it. The book was dangerous. Maybe not physically dangerous, the way the Santa mannequins had been tonight, but dangerous on so many other levels. The amount of trouble I could get into if someone knew

I had Sherrod Daggett’s spellbook in my bedroom.

There was something poking out of the top. A paper that I definitely hadn’t seen before.

Something new. I flipped the book open, and a postcard fell out. Well, half of a postcard. It had been torn right down the middle. Turning it over in my hand, I saw the Golden Gate Bridge in half of its glory. I turned it back around, and the message that had been written in red pen.

Happy reading. CB.

CB. Cullen Bridger. Like the bridge on the postcard hadn’t been obvious enough. He’d been here? In my house? He was here in Carrow Mill?

I went to the door, about to shout for someone—Jenna, Quinn, anyone—but reality stopped me. I couldn’t show anyone. Not anyone. Jenna would want to know where the spellbook had come from. Quinn would turn me over to the Witchers and the Congress. Mal would just get pissed.

He’s been in my house. There’s been Witchers all over the place for weeks and he just strolled in here like it was no big deal. I sank down onto the bed, wondering what I’d gotten myself into. Why did I even steal it? What was wrong with me?

Bridger knew I’d found Sherrod’s book. But why would he want me to have it? Unless there was something in the book he wanted me to find. All the more reason to get rid of the book again.

But the Maleficia attack tonight only reinforced how little I knew on my own. If it hadn’t been for Ash, the mannequins would have taken one of us. Or both. Maybe there were spells in the book that would help me protect