Darkbound (The Legacy of Moonset) (2 page)

T
w
o

The Coven bond has been central to magic
since the beginning. Covens are how we know
we are meant for something more. That there
is a grand design that we are all a part of.

Coventry in the 21st Century

Winter in New York was underrated
I thought as I focused on the window instead of the lecture. Snow days were a luxury you didn’t get in the far south, where it snowed once if you were lucky. This was the first time in a few years we’d gotten a real East Coast winter.

I didn’t mind the snow at all. It might have been nice not to be the only one driving in it, since Justin and Jenna weren’t allowed to drive, and Bailey and Cole were still too young. But there was still something to be said for the snowy, quaint town we called home. For now. Carrow Mill was the perfect small town nexus—tiny in itself, but ten minutes in any direction led to a city three times its size. Cities that held all the amenities Carrow Mill lacked.

I kept my focus on the outside because it was infinitely better than the brewing tension inside the classroom. I’m sure the others were eager and attentive, but even still I knew that I was a stone in their shoe they just couldn’t shake. Even if they wanted to ignore me, I was there in the back of the room. Insolent. Ruining everything. I knew they were just biding their time until class was over.

Until the real lesson could begin.

I kept an eye on my watch, but otherwise let the rest of the room fade out around me. There was still too much going on today: one more class with Justin, then our afternoon lesson, and an excruciating ride home before I could escape them and be free for the rest of the day.

Ten minutes before the bell, movement in the corner of my eyes made me look up and freeze. The tension in the room was more apparent, even though we were one person short. Kelly was gone, and Cole had shut the door behind her.

The four of them watched me each in their own peculiar way. To Cole, I was like a science experiment he thought might explode. Jenna, like something she stepped in. Bailey, something that broke her heart. And Justin, like I was a showdown he was resigned to lose.

I sighed, pulled the music from my ears and stood up.

Of course Jenna was the first to start. She prowled across the room until she was on the other side of my desk, her dark eyes narrowed.

“It’s simple,” she said, tapping her nails against the laminated desktop. Her nail polish was royal purple, the exact shade of her top. How Jenna had been elected to lead the intervention, I didn’t know. “If you screw this up, I’m going to kill you.”

The other three alternated who looked at me, and who looked away. Justin shifted closer to the door, matching Cole on the other side. They acted like I was a wild animal, and any sudden movements might spook me out of the room entirely. If only it were that easy.

“Come on, Mal,” Bailey said softly from my left, staring with the baby deer eyes that might have worked a few months ago. But not now. “We need this.” Ever since Luca’s attack, Bailey grew quieter, day by day, fading into the corners. Was I the only one who noticed?

Two weeks ago, the five of us were subdued and attacked. Luca had invoked Maleficia and painted the town with Moonset’s symbol. A circle shaded except for a crescent moon of white, with six curving rays like a sun. It had been Moonset’s marker during the war, and Luca’s calling card fifteen years later. He’d brought us here and hoped to sacrifice us to his masters in the Abyss. Only Justin was able to fight back—we owed him our lives. Later that night had come a second attack, just as unexpected, and again Justin fought for the rest of us.

Part of me wished that he had lost. One of them. Maybe both. It was hard to say. He’d faced off against a warlock who had summoned a group of monsters straight from Hell—monsters who tried to possess us and take our magic for themselves. Then he fought the witches who were supposed to be looking out for us—the government that used us as bait, as sacrifices, as tools. They wanted to lock us up and throw away the key.

They thought we were dangerous. We were the children of Moonset. There wasn’t a witch alive who didn’t know about Moonset’s crimes. Most couldn’t help but wonder: how far had the apples fallen from the tree? My father had named me Malcolm, and in Spanish, “Mal” meant bad. It was a little on the nose as far as I was concerned. But no one had ever asked me what I thought.

“We
don’t
need this,” I snapped. Bailey winced at my tone. “Are you all
insane
? They used us as bait and hoped Luca would
kill us
. And now you want to cozy up to them because they’re promising to teach you some scraps?”

“They want to teach us to protect ourselves,” Cole chimed in, parroting words that Jenna had most likely repeated several times before. He even matched her tone—part disdain, part amusement. “So that what happened never happens again.”

“And you’re just going to trust that that’s the truth?” I asked, arching an eyebrow at Jenna. This wasn’t really four against one. It was Jenna versus me, the same as it always was. Justin might step up to her when she went over the edge, but when it came to magical power, they had the same hunger. Feast or famine, it put us all in danger either way.

She pursed her lips and shook her hair out again, the helmet before battle. “That doesn’t matter,” she said. “We protect ourselves. You know that’s the only way.”

There were certain rules we’d come to live by. Some were more important than others, but two were particularly
sacrosanct. The first: we could only ever rely on ourselves. The second: adults couldn’t be trusted. I agreed with the second wholeheartedly, but I was an island compared to the others: the only person I could rely on was me.

But now it seemed like the rules had changed, and all it had taken was for Jenna to fake a change of heart. The adults saw contrition and it had soothed away seventeen years of bad behavior and outrageous stunts. It really made me wonder who was more naïve: Jenna, who thought the adults were doing this to help us; or the adults, who thought that Jenna would use her power responsibly.

Either way, I wanted no part in it. But there was only so far I could go. The albatross was never far.

The issue at hand was the bond that chained all of us together.

Our coven bond was … unconventional. Most bonds form in high school, sometimes in college. Ours was prenatal, or something close to it. Moonset had learned ways of manipulating the Coven bond, and ours had peculiarities.

Normal covens could come together or move apart as they wished. Their bonds would stretch from one side of the planet to the other. But ours was not made out of elastic, it was forged out of steel chains.

The curse. Moonset wanted to make sure we were never separated. Anyone who tried to split us up was hurt, and catastrophes struck until we were reunited. It offered a measure of protection—like when Justin was attacked by the wraith last year, the bond activated and destroyed the creature.

“It’s not the only way,” I pointed out, “but it
is
the only way you get what you want. That’s all this is. You want to be the baddest witch around, and if it gets the rest of us killed, oh well.”

“Hey, that’s not fair,” Cole said, climbing to his feet. Justin grabbed him by the back of the shirt and yanked him back down, but Cole wasn’t placated easily. “You’re not any different,” he continued. “You hate magic so you’re punishing the rest of us by epoxy.”

“Proxy,” Justin corrected quietly.

Cole looked mystified. “But epoxy’s that stuff that’s like glue. And you’re sticking it to someone, so you punish them by epoxy.”

Justin shook his head, hiding a smile behind his hand. “Not exactly.” But as he inhaled to explain the actual phrasing to Cole, Jenna cut him off.

“Cole’s right. It’s not like you’re doing this out of some sort of evolved sense of morality. You’re pouting, and you’re screwing over the rest of us.”

“Did you ever stop to think about what’s going on around us?” I pointed out calmly, focusing on the other three and letting Jenna stew in her own juices. There would be no getting through to her. But the others … they had good sense. Some of the time. “The only reason we’re in danger at all is because the Covens keep jerking us around on chains. And because we keep trying to use magic to make our problems go away.”

Justin looked towards the windows, a flash of discomfort slipping across his face.
What’s that about?
He shifted where he was, putting his weight on his right foot and toed the ground with his left.

“You can’t blame the Covens for what Luca did,” Bailey said quietly. It was like the volume in the room had been instantly muted. Her quiet acceptance of her role in Luca’s plans had been hard on her. “He used me. And I turned on all of you. What happened was my fault.”

“No, it wasn’t, Bay,” Jenna said, instantly all warmth and light. She shot me a dirty look as she crossed the room and crouched down in front of Bailey, clasping their hands together. “You’re nothing like Luca. He chose to do everything he did. You didn’t get a choice. You were infected. Just like the rest of us.”

“But I should have been better,” Bailey protested, and I could hear the building tears in her voice. “I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

I hesitated, though it took me a second to figure out why. The self-loathing in Bailey’s voice was just a little too pitch-perfect. That’s when I realized that they’d worked this out in advance. When did Bailey get so manipulative? No, that wasn’t it. When did Bailey start studying Jenna 101? It was a classic move, threading a moment of weakness into an argument she wanted to win.

Neither Justin nor Cole looked all that concerned, which cinched it. When reason and threats didn’t work, they would move on to deception. Awesome. These were supposed to be the only people I could trust.

“Coven magic requires everyone working together,” Jenna said, repeating the day’s lesson. “We have to commit.”

There was someone here who definitely needed to be committed. At least we agreed on that. “We don’t work together,” I pointed out. “Ever.”

“Don’t you think it’s time we grew up?” Jenna asked, and that was the last straw. Jenna could pretend to be the bigger person, but I didn’t have to play along with this. With any of it.

“So you’re all buying this crap?” Silence from the other three. “You’d have to be. Glad to know the rules have changed. If one of us disagrees, we do whatever it takes to force him to do what we want? Manipulate him, control him, whatever. Good to know.” Sure, I was always the counterpoint to whatever Jenna wanted to do, but usually Justin and Bailey could be made to see reason. But they had her back this time.

“Maybe she’s doing it for the wrong reasons,” Justin finally said, breaking a silence that had run as long as the intervention, “but she’s not wrong about it being necessary. We can’t protect ourselves the way things are going. Maybe if we’d been able to, Bailey could have fought off Luca’s influence. Or you guys could have resisted Bailey’s influence on
you.
Or … I don’t know. A hundred other things. We don’t
know
what the Coven bond can let us do. We need to learn.”

“More magic,” I said bitterly. “Because that always makes things better.”

“Things are already worse, cupcake,” Jenna said snidely. Immediately, Bailey and Cole jumped all over her, and she held up her hands in apology. “Sorry. But this … ” she took a deep breath. “It’s important, Malcolm. We’re sitting ducks in the meantime.”

“And who’s going to save us, Jenna? You?” The snide disbelief in my voice comes naturally. She’s not exactly the most magnanimous person I’ve ever known. She’s a typical girl of privilege—her problems are always more serious and fascinating than anyone else’s. “Thirty-one, by the way.”

“Thirty-one what?” The attempts at sibling cohesion dropped from her face all at once.

“That’s how many people you sent to the hospital the last time you played around with magic. Since I’m sure you never actually looked up what kind of damage you left behind.” I skimmed my eyes over the other three, because I knew none of them probably had either. All three looked away.

It didn’t faze Jenna. She stared me down, unblinking. “Do you even remember what it’s like to have fun? You’re such a buzzkill all the time. God forbid you let loose a little.”

There was no point to any of this. I tried not to think about her words, about the accusation, but it rattled around inside my head and touched on things I didn’t want to think about.

Jenna left first, pulling Cole along behind her. Justin tried to say something to me, but I turned my back to him and pretended that there was a sudden need to investigate the contents of my backpack.

Eventually, he left, and it was just me and Bailey. She hesitated at my side, a baby bird that was caught between a desperate fear of heights and the need to fly. “Mal? Are you okay?”

I grabbed a handful of the backpack’s material, rough and slippery against my hand. Squeezed until some of the pressure left my head. “You’re better than that,” I said quietly.

“I know you think I am,” she said, ghosting away from me. Her voice echoed from the door, weary and older than she had any right to be. “But I’m really not.”

T
h
r
e
e

The Denton family was one of the first to settle in Carrow Mill. Always a haven for witches, the Dentons were known for their loyal and generous natures. But even the old bloodlines can go bad.

Moonset: A Dark Legacy

I was halfway down the hall on the way to my locker when the halls started to clear and the bell rang. So now on top of pissed off, I was going to be late for my next class.

I opened my locker just to slam it closed, and then repeated the process.

“Congratulations, I think you killed it,” an amused boy said from behind me.

“I’m not waiting all day,” a waspish voice added. “You’re the one that wanted cheese fries, not me.”

I turned to find Kevin and Maddy, friends but not really friends. At least not yet. But one thing was for certain—more witches. I couldn’t get away from them.

They were two of the locals who’d been here before us. Kevin was cool, even if he was like our guardian Quinn: part of the magical elite. His great-great-someone-or-other had made a name for themselves years ago, and his family had been in the thick of magical politics ever since. He’d moved to Carrow Mill a few years ago for school.

Maddy, on the other hand, was a native. She’d grown up here, and her family had known the Moonset witches back before they were terrorists. As it happened, she wasn’t my cup of tea, but she was Kevin’s best friend, and where one went, the other invariably ended up. There was the whole rivalry she had with Justin—I had my suspicions as to why, but I kept them to myself—but in recent weeks she’d been almost pleasant. Until today.

Actually, all the witches of Carrow Mill had been incredibly tight before we arrived. Maddy’s
other
best friend was Justin’s current girlfriend, Ash. I hadn’t seen much of her around though, ever since the farmhouse.

“We’re heading out for food. You want to join?” Kevin asked, eyeing my locker. “Looks like you could use the break.”

“You’re just going to take off, and no one’s going to notice?” I crossed my arms in front of me and leaned against the locker. “I’ve read the handbook. Students don’t get off-campus privileges for lunch.”

Maddy rolled her eyes. “Students, no. Witches? Yes.”
She waggled her fingers and then gestured both of us to
follow her as she started back down the hall. Without anything better to do, I started to follow. “As long as we show up for our
real
lessons, no one’s going to say anything. And as long as you’re with us, no one’s going to give you a hard time.”

“You want to talk about it?” Kevin asked, as we shouldered our way out the side exit of the school and headed for Maddy’s car.

Did I want to vent about Jenna and the others? Of course I did. “Not really,” I grunted.

He nodded like that was the answer he expected. “You’ll feel differently after the cheese fries, trust me.”

“I don’t know what you think is going to happen, but cheese fries aren’t going to fix my problems.” Maddy faked a gasp as she clicked the button on her keychain to unlock her doors. She drove a nondescript black sedan, the kind of car that looked more like it was for security than lunchtime jailbreaks.

“You haven’t had Charming’s, obviously,” Kevin said, claiming the passenger seat for himself. I climbed into the back, half-wondering what I was doing here. Or why they’d been so interested in dragging me along.

“Charming’s is this restaurant outside of town with seriously the most amazing food,” Maddy said. “Trust me, it’s the kind of thing only the locals know about. The first time I took Kevin there, I thought he was going to faint.”

“I wasn’t going to
faint,
” he replied with a good-natured grin. There was a moment when it faltered, when he glanced in his visor mirror and our eyes met, before he snapped it shut and shifted in his seat until his back was to the door and he could look at both of us. “It was during two-a-days, and I had low blood sugar.”

“You had a cheese fry addiction,” Maddy laughed.

When she wasn’t picking on my brother, she was actually almost … pleasant. Who would have thought?

I listened to their back and forth for a while as Maddy drove us out of town. “But seriously,” I asked during a lull in the conversation, “Charming’s? That’s really what they named their restaurant?”

Kevin shot a triumphant look at Maddy, who scowled in the rearview mirror. “I told you I’m not the only one who thinks it’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid,” she said, turning her attention back to the road. “It’s tradition. It all goes back to the Carrow family, the ones that helped settle the area. After a few generations, there was just old man Carrow and a few distant nieces and nephews who wanted nothing to do with him.

“Old man Carrow loved kids, but every time he tried to have some they died young. Influenza, croup, that sort of thing. So eventually, he was a rich old man who’d outlived everyone he knew. And he decided to take his fortune and do something useful with it. And what he ended up with was an amusement park for the children of the community. He called it the Enchanted Forest because he was obsessed with fairy tales.”

An amusement park? Around here?
I think I would have noticed that.
“So where is it?”

Maddy waved a negligent hand. “Back there somewhere,” she said, gesturing towards the woods on our left. “Most of it burned down a long time ago, but if you get past the fence, you can still see the main plaza. It’s all that’s left of the old park. A couple junked-up outhouses, a rusty old food truck, and a whole lot of garbage. Kids around here used to hike over there, but there’s not really all that much to see.”

After a few more minutes, we pulled into a parking lot for a run-down but thriving restaurant. The sides of the roof slanted in, like the wrong gust of wind would send the whole building tumbling down. One side of the building was taken up by a giant mural of a castle and a tower, but it had been in the sun so long that the entire thing was faded and washed out.

I looked back the way we had come, and tried to imagine it in the past. Maybe it wasn’t so weird. An old-fashioned amusement park and a local business trying to capitalize on the theme. “So the park shut down and the restaurant survived?”

“Basically,” Maddy nodded. “I’m telling you, you’re really underestimating the cheese fries.”

And it turned out she was right. The fries were thick with batter, crisp and golden, and scalding to the touch. And the cheese tasted like actual cheese made by angels, the kind of delicious that was terrible for you. I ate every bite, and as I did, the whole story started to spill out. Jenna, and the tension between us, and the new Coven class and everything.

“You need to find something for
you
,” Kevin insisted. “I mean, I play sports and try to do the regular teenage thing because it’s the only way to keep myself sane. Both of my older siblings were magical prodigies. A football scholarship won’t impress my parents, but I do it because it’s something I love. You just need to find that.”

“Yes, Mal,” Maddy added, in a monotone, “live your dreams. Be the ball. Jock out with your—”

“Alright!” I said hurriedly. “I get it.” But I cracked a smile for the first time in hours.

“You just want him to join one of your six thousand teams,” Maddy said, using a French fry to point at Kevin. “I see through this whole pep talk. What’s next, anyway? Baseball?”

“It’s not just about the team,” Kevin said, but he ducked his head down and I saw through the lie. He looked down at the basket in front of him, empty except for a single French fry, which he then dipped in Maddy’s cheese. “If Mal doesn’t carve out a place for himself, it’s not like the others are going to do it for him. He’s got to stand his ground sometime.”

Maddy sighed and leaned back in her chair. “I just think you’re underestimating what his sister’s going to do if he gets in the way of what she wants.”

Kevin laughed. “How bad could it really get, though?”

As it turned out? Really bad.