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I was still standing there, trying to figure where to sit when I heard the clack of heels behind me.
“Have a seat, Mr. Daggett.”
Illana Bryer stalked around the table, taking a seat in the center, directly across from where I was standing now.
“Or stand if you wish,” she add. “Fantastic impression you’ve made. How proud are you?
Tired of letting your sister take the spotlight?”
Was she trying to be funny? “I know she used magic on me. I heard you.”
“You are no idiot,” Illana confirmed. “But how you could walk into a situation like that and let your guard down is beyond me. The woman drew out every scrap of anger lingering in that sullen little brain of yours, and you didn’t even try to stop her.”
“She was supposed to be my teacher.” I wasn’t making an excuse or defending myself. It was a statement of fact. “It’s not my fault she provoked me.”
“Wasn’t it?” she drawled. “You should have known from the moment you met her that Marisol
Crawford was no friend to you. Do you really think that just because someone is a teacher means they were never a daughter? A friend?”
She was saying Moonset took someone from Mrs. Crawford. Again, not the first time I’ve ever been in that situation. I dropped my head. “I should have been paying more attention,” I admitted. “What happens now?
The door opened behind me, and a woman not quite as old as Illana appeared. Illana stood up, gestured next to her. “Justin Daggett, meet your head principal, Miss Villanova.”
“Not the twin I thought I’d be spending my afternoon with,” Miss Villanova said. “Have you gone over everything already?”
“We’ve only just started,” Illana said.
Miss Villanova didn’t looked like she smiled much. “The school board maintains a low tolerance for violent outbursts, Mr. Daggett. Now, I understand that most schools bend the rules for you and your … family.” Her mouth twisted, just saying the word.
Bending the rules? Had they even read Jenna’s file? The principal continued. “But we set our standards a bit higher. Alternative arrangements will be made for your Independent Study classes. I can’t have my other students put in jeopardy. In the meantime, I think a two-day suspension will give you enough time to reconsider your behavior in my school.”
The room was suddenly frigid. “What?”
“You’re suspended.” Illana didn’t beat around the bush. She was blunt, forceful, and without regret. “Use your time wisely. Learn to pay more attention.”
This couldn’t be happening.
There was a knee-jerk reaction where I was filled with relief that the word she used was
“suspended” not “expulsion.” However, there were much bigger problems with that statement. I wasn’t the one who was supposed to be suspended. I wasn’t the one who got expelled. I was the good twin.
“But you know I was set up,” I said. I had to fix this. Somehow. “She did … something. She wanted me to freak out like that.”
“Which you did,” Illana agreed. “Regardless of how it happened, you still violated school policy.”
The principal cleared her throat. “Your guardian has already been called,” she said to me.
Her expression said everything she wouldn’t say out loud. Disgusted and dismissive. “You can wait out by the secretary.”
I hesitated only long enough for her to snap an additional, “Go!” Then I was up and out of the chair so fast it kept rolling back even as I was turning the doorknob. I waited in the front part of the office.
People came and left, most throwing curious glances my way, but I kept my eyes focused on the ground. I couldn’t believe this was happening.
“I know what it’s like.”
I looked up to see Luca slouched in front of me. He fidgeted, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, never quite meeting my eyes.
“Know what it’s like?”
“Being put down by people like Maddy. It’s not just you.” For a second, he looked like he wanted to say something else, but the secretary dropped her phone, and the sound bulleted through the office. Luca flinched so hard he probably had whiplash, and scurried for the door.
Five minutes later Quinn showed up, the muscles in his jaw clenched. Five seconds after that, we were leaving.
We made it four blocks before he said anything. The heaters were going full blast, filling the car with warmth and tension.
“This is a joke, right? Tell me this is a joke.”
“I get it,” I responded quietly. “But she used magic on me. What was I supposed to do?”
“Do you have—” he cut himself off, frustration strangling his voice. Despite the obvious tension in the car, Quinn was a model driver. He slowed for school zones, came to complete stops, and let me dwell for whole streets at a time before continuing. “If you don’t want people to connect you with your parents, you can’t lash out like that.”
“She used magic. ” The “it wasn’t my fault” should have been more clear than it was.
“Do you think anyone’s going to tell that part of the story? No, they’re going to remember the son of Sherrod Daggett spewing hate speech and threats. In a week, no one will even remember that the teacher was fired for abusing her power. They’ll say she lost control of her classroom and put the other students in danger.”
“But that’s not what happened!” How was logic failing me all of a sudden? I’d always been the levelheaded one, the one who could cut through the heightened emotions and reach some kind of common ground.
“That’s all anyone will care to remember,” Quinn replied. “It makes a better story than the truth.”
“I should have expected something,” I said after a moment. “I saw the way she looked at me last night.”
“Last night?” Quinn’s voice was suddenly sharp.
“She was there. Outside … y’know,” I waved my hand around, rather than say the words.
“She was glaring at me, like I was something she’d stepped in. Or like she blamed me.”
“But she was in the crowd,” he persisted. “Before you got there? Why didn’t you tell me that sooner?”
“Why would it matter?” I asked as we turned onto our street. “There were a lot of people standing outside last night. You guys interrogated them all, remember?”
“Not all of them,” Quinn murmured. “You’re sure it was her?”
I nodded.
We pulled into the driveway, and Quinn turned off the engine. There was a moment where I thought he was going to confide in me—tell me what was really going on in Carrow Mill. But as usual, the truth was skipped when gruff ignorance would suffice.
“You have to be better than even they expect you to be. If you can’t prove them wrong about who you are, they’ll eat you alive.”
He opened his door and went into the house, leaving me in the passenger seat. “I don’t even know who I am,” I said slowly, to absolutely no one.
It took me a while to make it inside. Part of me still didn’t trust Quinn. But his advice was sound.
It always was. But he still hadn’t told us the truth about anything. His allegiance was to his grandmother and the Congress, no matter what advice he gave.
That wasn’t enough.
He was in the kitchen looking over a small stack of papers. Were they about me? I might actually get expelled before Jenna this time. I picked up the manila folder he’d dropped on the table before I lost my nerve. I walked over to the coffee maker, and the jar of pens and markers next to it. Quinn didn’t say anything, but I could feel him watching.
As carefully as possible, I began to draw the Moonset symbol in permanent marker on the file folder. First the circle, then outlining the crescent moon and coloring in the rest. Then the tentacles, one at the top, one at the bottom, and two on either side.
“There’s a warlock in Carrow Mill,” I said as calmly as I could, even though it felt like some kind of betrayal to confide in Quinn without checking in with the others. Jenna would be furious, of course, and Cole and Bailey could hold a grudge almost as long. “I thought he was stalking us with this symbol, but he’s been using it longer than that, hasn’t he?”
Quinn’s eyes locked on the drawing, but the rest of him was frozen.
“He’s been spreading this symbol around town, and somehow, you figured out it was a request. He wanted us brought here, and the Congress thought it made brilliant sense. You thought you could draw him out. So you brought us here, and you’ve been waiting for him to make his move.” I picked up the folder and waved it in his face. “Stop me when I’m wrong.”
“You’re not wrong,” he said. “But I’m not supposed to talk about that with you. My grandparents would have my head.” He considered that for a moment. “Maybe literally.”
“You’ve been putting us all in danger ever since we got here. It’s not like you’re with us every hour of every day—what if something happened? What if he came after us when we were out at the mall that day, or at school?”
“Do you really think we just brought you here and left you unsupervised?” Quinn asked, smirking a little. “Justin, there are more Witchers in the five miles surrounding Carrow Mill than almost anywhere else in the world right now. Not one, but two of the Great Covens have relocated here. My grandmother basically wrote the book on how to deal with warlocks. And
I’m no slouch, if I do say so myself.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you’ve been using us. I’m not bait, Quinn. None of us are.
And it’s bullshit that you all get to decide otherwise.”
“I understand why you feel that way,” Quinn said carefully.
“Screw that,” I shouted. Now that I was really being honest, and saying all the things I’d been thinking for weeks, it was hard to rein it in. “Don’t placate me because you think it’s what I want to hear. It’s bad enough that they treat us like we’re tainted most of the time. But now they’re telling us that we’re expendable? That it’s cool if a warlock kills us in the line of fire?”
I expected Quinn to tell me to calm down, or to breathe. That’s what adults always said, when they wanted you to shut up. “Go on,” he said instead.
“God, Jenna’s right. You never had any intention of teaching us to defend ourselves, yet you’re throwing us into situations that could get us killed. First, you left us in Kentucky when you knew a wraith was coming—”
“That was Meghan’s call,” he interrupted, but I kept talking anyway.
“—and now you brought us here like you don’t even give a shit what happens to us.”
For as far back as I could remember, I’d been the one to play by the rules. Mal was the model kid—barely got into trouble and way too mature for his age, but I was the one who’d always followed the rules. I cleaned up after Jenna when I had to, but even before that I tried to keep everyone on the same path. The right path.
But what was the point? The Congress was never going to see us as anything other than what we were now: five mistakes that were occasionally useful in drawing out the Congress’s enemies.
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