There’d been confusion back when we were first recovered. We looked too similar, and we were so close, that they assumed we really were twins. My mother had been tall and pale, blond-haired and green-eyed. I didn’t look a thing like her.
As we got older, the resemblances grew more pronounced. It wasn’t as though I was
Sherrod’s mirror image, but the resemblance was so strong it made people nervous. Another thing about my past I couldn’t help.
“Is that everything?” Jenna said, emphasizing the boredom in her tone. “Everyone’s heard about Moonset’s dirty laundry.” But the words bothered her, I knew they did. They always bothered us.
It was hard, knowing what my parents had been capable of. What they’d done. The legacy that had been left for the others and me. But still, on some level, I wanted to separate them. To split the Moonset side from the side that would have been Mom and Dad. Monsters can’t love, and everyone was agreed that the members of Moonset were monsters.
At least that’s how I felt sometimes.
“And then my mom was a terrible person who did lots of terrible things,” Jenna continued, exhaling. “She was weak, and she got killed. Gosh, doesn’t it bother me to know my mom was a weakling?” She straightened, and her voice turned harsh. “You can’t push my buttons, you twit.”
Meghan raised an eyebrow. No matter what we did, or how we reacted, she always seemed pleased. Like we were giving her exactly what she wanted.
“How has no one shoved a stake through your heart by now?” Jenna wondered.
Quinn’s lips twitched, betraying his feelings on the matter. “Ask your questions. Then politely get back on your broom and get the hell out of my house.”
Meghan tsked. “Language, darling.” She looked down at her tablet, and her pen started tapping out a rhythm all over again. “The pair of you need to be debriefed about what happened in Kentucky.”
I exhaled. “You’re kidding, right? You waited like two weeks to find out what happened?”
“Be fair, Justin,” Jenna said, “she spent most of that afternoon flat on her back. She probably needed all the time she could get to recover.”
Jenna was just as good at baiting as Meghan seemed to be. Maybe even better. Meghan’s hand clenched into a fist and disappeared under the sleeve of her coat. “Was that the first time you’ve come across a wraith?”
“Have you read our files?” Mal countered calmly.
“I’m the one asking the questions.”
“A question you already know the answer to.” Mal’s eyebrow rose slightly in challenge.
“Next.”
Surprisingly, she moved on. “Did the wraith tell you why he’d come after you? What he wanted? Where he was planning to take you?”
Mal looked pointedly at me. Oh, right. I should probably answer since he hadn’t been there.
“He didn’t say a whole lot. Called us Moonset, said Bridger sent—”
“—We have no proof that Cullen Bridger is even still alive, let alone plotting kidnappings or assassinations,” Meghan broke in immediately, talking over me. “At best, it’s hearsay. At worst, suggesting it is dangerously close to treason.”
My jaw dropped. “You’re kidding me, right?”
Meghan’s mask of indifference said that no, she wasn’t kidding. “The Congress is investigating the wraith as an isolated incident. One most likely engineered, accidentally of course, by someone on the scene.”
“Someone on the scene?” I asked. “You mean one of us? You think one of u s called the wraith there? But you were there. You heard it! Both of you did! It said that Bridger sent it.”
Meghan’s voice became sharp. “There is no conspiracy of Moonset sympathizers. There is no underground rebellion. Cullen Bridger has most likely been dead for twenty years.”
“’Most likely?’” I said.
“So you’re just going to pretend nothing happened?” Mal demanded.
Jenna summed it up perfectly. “Are you fucking insane?”
Quinn, on the far side of the room, hadn’t moved since Meghan arrived, but now he reached up and scrubbed at his face. Unlike the three of us, he hadn’t shown any reaction at the insanity
Meghan was spouting.
“You knew about this, didn’t you?” I asked him. It wasn’t like I trusted him—we barely knew each other so far. But it grated at me, having proof that he couldn’t be trusted.
“Justin … ” Quinn had that tone that adults used, when Jenna was being exasperating, or
Cole ridiculous.
“I much prefer children when they are barely seen and never heard,” a new voice interrupted, neatly slicing through the mood of the room. The woman appeared almost out of nowhere, as though she’d pulled herself out of a secret door in the shadows.
“Me too,” Meghan jumped in, suddenly eager and cheerful.
The woman was tall and bone thin, her dark hair swept away from a gaunt face. She was old, but it was hard to pinpoint her age. Her face was lined from years of living, but the sheer intensity of her eyes suggested a woman in the prime of her life.
Oh shit. Oh shit.
“Yes,” she drawled, nodding her head as she looked down at me. A moment of understanding passed between us, and then her thin lips twisted, almost in a smile. She was amused. I was amusing.
Because I knew this woman. A woman who shouldn’t—couldn’t—be here right now. I took a step back, and then sank weakly down onto a chair.
Quinn cleared his throat. “This is Mrs. Bryer.”
Illana Bryer. She was the leader of the Fallingbrook Coven, one of the few Great Covens that had survived the Moonset war. But it hadn’t been without a cost: she’d lost a husband, a child, and both of her siblings to the conflict. Before Moonset, she had been a powerful witch, but in their wake she had become one of the most famous and influential witches alive.
She’d executed most of our parents herself.
And this was not our first meeting.
“I’d say it’s nice to see you again, Mr. Daggett, but we mustn’t sugarcoat things,” she said, with faint traces of an accent nearly cut from her words. Something European, or maybe
Russian. “I believe we had a deal, did we not?”
Jenna stiffened at the introduction. She knew who Illana Bryer was. We all did. The classroom lessons about Moonset we’d had growing up featured her in a starring role. But even worse was the look on her face at Illana’s greeting. I’d never told any of them about my encounter with Illana, nor the threats she’d laid out so casually. “Justin?” There were so many demands and questions laced in my name, but I didn’t know what to say. She whirled on the older woman. “How do you know my brother?” she demanded.
“You don’t speak to her like that,” Meghan snapped, moving to come between them.
“Oh good, dramatics,” Illana sighed. “Quinn, be so kind as to escort Miss Virago and the boy to the door. I’d like to speak to the twins in private.”
Quinn looked like he wanted to argue, but he nodded his head stiffly and gestured to the others. Meghan spun on her heel and went without protest, but Mal was gearing up for a fight.
“We’ll be fine,” I said, and he eventually nodded.
Illana waited until the room cleared out and the front door closed before she answered
Jenna’s question. “Everyone knows your brother,” she said, as pleasantly as a woman was called a “battle ax” as a compliment, could. “Just as they know you.”
Not everyone has the pleasure of having their family threatened by Illana Bryer, though. It had been almost a year since I’d seen her. I’d come home from school one day, Jenna staying late for detention or vandalism or the usual sort of thing that kept her after school.