Rise of the Moon: Arcana Book One

by JB Caine

Once we finished our drinks, we sat and talked for another half an hour, and then rose to leave. As he let me back into the passenger seat, I felt a little electrical prickle on my arm. I looked for the source, expecting to see Quinn standing in a doorway somewhere, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Alex backed out of the parking spot and headed toward my house. I was pleased that he remembered the way without having to ask. He pulled up at the end of my front walk, the way he had done seven weeks earlier.

  “This was really nice,” I smiled, wondering what he would do next.

  “Yeah, it really was.” He seemed to be wondering, too.

  So I leaned over and kissed him softly, and maybe a little bit lingeringly, on the cheek. As I pulled away, he turned toward me and brushed his lips against mine. We smiled at each other, blushing.

  “See you tomorrow,” I said, buzzing with adrenaline.

  “Yeah, tomorrow,” he replied, and I sort of liked that he wasn’t eloquent or smooth about it. I got out of the car and trotted up the front walk. When I reached the screen door to the front porch, I looked back. He was still sitting there, watching me and grinning.

  Good date. Very good date.

  Chapter 31

  The next few days passed by smoothly. Gemma seemed fine, and in fact, didn’t seem to miss the ring at all. At least she never mentioned it.

  Treigh and I were good, and Treigh and Michael were good, too. I more or less stayed away from the subject, and let Treigh give me updates when he wanted to. I never brought Michael up or asked about their relationship. Which apparently it had become. I was very happy for Treigh, even if there was still a little bit of tension between us on that particular subject.

  I didn’t sense any more little electrical pings on my magical alarm system, and I started to feel just a little bit safer than I had for weeks.

  I felt like I was starting to get a handle on this magical abilities thing. According to what my aunt had told me, though, my grandmother had spent decades exploring the capabilities and limitations of her abilities, so the odds were that I had just scratched the surface. I decided to see if the stuff Aunt Kitty brought would bring any further enlightenment.

  I unzipped the suitcase in order to inventory the contents of what Aunt Kitty had brought. In one pocket, I found a bag of crystals, a couple of books about meditation and herbal medicine, a black cloth with silver embroidery. In another pocket, I found a pamphlet about chakras and a chart about something called the Tree of Life. In the center section, I found the motherlode: several notebooks and cookbooks in my grandmother’s handwriting, and a shoebox full of pictures.

  I flipped through the journals and saw very little of interest at first glance. They appeared to be actual day-to-day diaries, mostly, filled with her reflections on daily activities. I would have to go through them in more detail, though, as there might be references to some of the things she’d learned about her abilities during the course of her trial-and-error experimentation.

  I began sorting through the photographs, some of which seemed to go back to the fifties, while others were clearly taken within my lifetime. It was astonishing to me to see photos of my grandmother with long, straight hair and a headband, smiling awkwardly for an elementary school picture. Her face was unlined and youthful, but she still had those same intense dark eyes. I found a similar picture of me from preschool, with the same long, straight hair, but with eyes not quite as dark or as intense.

  I found pictures of my mother and aunt at various ages, and a few rare shots with my grandfather, who died before I was born, in them. As I neared the bottom of the stack, I found a photo which made my blood run cold and set my hands shaking.

  My mother was smiling and young, probably fresh out of college. She had that signature Alvarez hair up in a high ponytail, and her face was lit up with laughter. Her left arm was flung affectionately around the waist of a man who was obviously the object of her affection: a handsome man with thick, black hair and gray eyes. Dominic Quinn.

  Trembling, I moved slowly across the hall to my mother’s room.

  “Mom?” I handed her the photo, afraid to say more.

  She took the photo and looked at it, and her expression changed from curiosity to one of reverie and maybe a little sadness.

  “Oh, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this picture before. I didn’t even know your grandmother had it.” She gazed wistfully at the photo, transfixed and lost in thought. Then, as if suddenly remembering my presence, she looked up at me. She seemed unable to interpret the expression on my face, but she looked vaguely ashamed.

  “This must have been quite a surprise for you to find,” she said.

  Fear, rage, confusion...my emotions spun through me so quickly that I almost couldn’t feel anything at all.

  “You could say that,” I replied.

  “I didn’t know I had any pictures of him. We weren’t really together all that long before he left me and moved back home to London.”

  Wait.

  No.

  “Are you saying that’s my father?” I asked, panic trumping out all the other feelings.

  “Yes, Lia, that’s your dad, Dorian Blair. He…”

  “Mom, that’s Dominic Quinn. That’s the man who kidnapped me!”

  “What?”

  “The man in this picture...my father, apparently...is the Magician.”

  The implications of this information were overwhelming. I wasn’t sure where to begin or how to feel. My mother and I just stared at each other for a moment, trying to take in the many facets of this knowledge.

  I now knew what my father looked like.

  Not only had I met him several times in the past couple of months, but he had apparently sought me out as soon as I became the Moon.

  My father’s idea of dad-daughter bonding was a little stalking and kidnapping.

  My father was a very powerful Arcana, and apparently had plans for me magically speaking.

  And then, the questions:

  What, exactly, did my father want from me, and why did he think kidnapping was the way to get it?

  Did he know when he met my mother that we were the keepers of the Moon card?

  And if the answer to #2 was yes, did he somehow influence my mother into a relationship?

  Also, if #2 was a yes, why not just stay involved in my life instead of disappearing for 16 years and then showing up like this?

  And, on a much more random level, if he was from London, why didn’t he have an accent during any of the times I’d met him?

  We called my aunt and told her the news, which alarmed her greatly.

  “There’s something much deeper going on here. The odds of this being coincidental are astronomical. The Arcana are scattered all over North America and Europe. Most of us have only met one or two others in our lives. There’s no way this wasn’t orchestrated. The question is, what does he hope to gain?”

  My mother was on the edge of tears. Here was a man she had cared for, who had played her in potentially the worst of ways. He likely hadn’t cared for her at all. And as if that weren’t bad enough, he was posing danger to the child they shared, the child who had been the center of her life for nearly 17 years. “I don’t know what Dorian’s up to, but there’s no way he’s getting to Lia again.” And then she let loose a string of profanity that was as impressive as it was rare for her. I understood. Rage was preferable to pain and fear as feelings went. My father had taught me that, too.

  I felt a gentle tug at my mind. I wasn’t sure how I knew, but I was certain that Selene had been waiting for me to make this discovery, and now she wanted to talk. I excused myself and left my mother on the phone with her sister.

  Alone in my room, I took the card in my hand and sat on my floor like I had so many times recently.

  I am in a canoe on the ocean. This time I’m sitting up, staring at the Goddess who had been waiting for me.

  ‘You knew,’ I accuse her.

  She shrugs noncommittally. ‘Of course I knew. I’m t
he Mistress of Secrets, I told you. All secrets belong to me, not just yours.”

  ‘So why didn’t you just tell me?’

  ‘I am the Keeper of Secrets, not the Revealer of Secrets. But now that you know, there is a great deal for us to talk about. You are the bloodline of two Arcana. That presents certain...complexities.’

  Her logic makes sense, and I realize that I am not angry at her, but at him. It was his secret to share all along, and the fact that he hadn’t not only robbed me of a father, which I could live with, but also placed my family in danger and emotionally wounded my mother.

  ‘What complexities?’ I ask.

  ‘You have twice the magic in your blood. And you have both my abilities and the potential for his.’

  This is something I had not considered. ‘What does that mean, in a practical sense?’

  She looks off to sea, but I can see that the conundrum intrigues her. ‘You are very powerful, certainly, or you will be once you learn more. Your grandmother would greatly envy your position. She was always experimenting, trying to stretch her powers, but ultimately, her powers were limited to what I offered her. Yours do not have those same limits. You are not just the Moon’s child, but potentially the Magician’s as well.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ I lean forward, and the canoe rocks slightly. She turns to face me.

  ‘You are the Moon, Lia, but you could be the Magician also.’

  ‘At the same time?’ This revelation is mind-blowing. I can’t imagine what that would look like, or what it would mean. My life is already out of control.

  ‘Perhaps. This is a new phenomenon. But you can be sure of this: he has a plan. The Magician is the embodiment of strength of will. He will not give up on whatever goal he has in mind. You might consider learning more about what you can do. Follow your grandmother’s example in this. You must prepare.”

  ‘Prepare for what?’

  ‘The Magician’s next move. His endgame. There is one, you know, and your innocence and naiveté means nothing to him, except that he can use you more easily. Learn. Prepare. Be the strongest.’

  And then she dissolves into the moonlight’s reflection on the water.

  I opened my eyes and tried to digest what she was saying. I was going to need help. And snacks. Lots of snacks.

  Chapter 32

  Among all my other problems was the fact that the regular, daily grind of school and teenaged drama didn’t just disappear because I was dealing with the complications of having a two-headed magical lineage. I still had homework and tests. I still felt awkward about talking to Treigh about his relationship with Michael (which might seem minor, but when someone is your best friend, it’s a big deal), I still had a budding something with Alex that I didn’t know how to define.

  On the bright side, Gemma and I knocked Mr. Adams’ socks off with our Wicked performance, and she got highly praised (a very rare occurrence in any advanced drama class, I assure you) on her cutting, which left her glowing with pride. She also didn’t seem too upset about her missing ring, so I felt pretty solid about what I’d done. I was still careful about what I said around her, though, just in case.

  I spent a lot of time on the phone with Aunt Kitty, talking about what it meant to have two magical parents, but she said she’d never heard of it happening before, so we couldn’t be totally sure of what the implications were. I spent about a half an hour each night working on my telekinesis and was getting pretty adept with anything less than ten pounds.

  I read through my grandmother’s journals, and found very little of value. Either she kept her magical notes somewhere else, or she didn’t write them down. I did find one passage which alluded to her magical experiments, but I wasn’t sure how useful it was.

  April 14, 1987

  Progress is slow and incremental. I hate having limits, but I understand why it’s necessary. Combinations equal complications, but oh, what an adventure that would be! There are those who would breed a reigning family who blend several cards together, but the danger outweighs the potential in my mind. I’ve seen what experiments from only one can do...combined power would be a great temptation, and could alter the Pattern altogether. Too risky. They aren’t happy with my decision not to join them, but I think they’ll leave me alone as long as I don’t stand in their way. After all, I have my girls to think of, and one of them will be heir to my decisions.

  So, my grandmother had been approached, just as my aunt had thought, and had refused this idea of combining magical lineages. I had to agree; that sounded like too much power for humans to wield.

  On Friday night, Treigh came over for dinner, and I updated him on the week’s discoveries. We had agreed not to discuss my abilities at school or over text or phone, since there was no way to be sure our communications were safe from the Magician’s or the Tower’s ears. After dinner, I talked Treigh into going with me to surprise Alex on the ghost tour he was leading.

  We showed up to the tour office in the Colonial Quarter just a few minutes before departure and bought our tickets. Alex beamed when he saw us, then flipped into tour guide mode and off we went.

  This time, though, I was ready. I had put on my mental “ghost glasses” and was astonished at the number of spirits wandering the streets of Old St. Augustine. Most of them were what the ghost books called “residuals”. Not really ghosts exactly, more like trapped recordings, replaying past events and unaware of the humans around them. Funnily enough, of all the tourists in the group, there seemed to be one woman, maybe 50 years old, who seemed to be able to sense some of what I could see.

  When we passed the many of the haunted homes on the tour, there was nothing there to see. Maybe some energy, but no ghosts. But when we passed by one alley in particular, things changed.

  As we walked by, I was shocked to see two men struggling. At first, I thought it was two men from a nearby bar arguing, but then I realized that they had that translucent shimmer that set spirits apart from the living. Even so, I almost cried out out when one man stabbed the other.

  At that same moment, the sensitive woman (that’s what Aunt Kitty called normal humans who could perceive spirits) gasped and grabbed her husband’s arm.

  “What’s up?” I heard him say softly. “Everything okay?”

  She shook her head, eyes fixed on the spot where the residual spirits no doubt replayed the same murder over and over every night. “Someone died here. Stabbed,” she whispered back, and clung to him until we’d moved past the area.

  Interesting. I wished I could talk to her about what she’d seen.

  When we approached the Old City Gate and the Huguenot Cemetery, I saw several spirits wandering around the grounds. A couple of them turned and regarded the group as we passed by. I looked for the little girl, and found her sitting in the crook of an oak tree. I made eye contact and nodded to her. She pointed again at the gate, and I nodded again.

  When we stopped at the gate for Alex to narrate the next-to-last stop on the tour, I opened up my mouth without thinking. “Is the ghost of a little girl ever seen near here?”

  Alex looked a little uncomfortable, but recovered quickly. “Not right here, exactly, but there’s a little girl ghost who has been spotted several times in the cemetery over there. It’s believed that she may be the spirit of a girl who died of yellow fever about 200 years ago. Her body was dumped here by the gate, but no one claimed her, so she was buried there.”

  Many of the guests oohed and aahed at his explanation, and the middle-aged woman stared at me intently. When our eyes met, she nodded, a silent understanding passing between us.

  At the end of the tour, I gave Alex a hug and complimented his guide skills. I was rewarded with a kiss on the top of my head and a promise to text me sometime over the weekend. I couldn’t help wondering if he’d remember to do it, now that it was his own idea. Treigh took me home with a promise to see me Monday, because he and Michael would be Christmas shopping and hanging out over the weekend.

  Overall, it was a pre
tty good Friday night.

  Chapter 33

  Saturday was quiet. Alex did remember to text, but he was working all weekend, so getting together was out of the question. As a result, I got some much-needed binge-watching done and finished my homework.

  Sunday morning, by tradition, was housecleaning morning. Mom went out to the grocery store, and made me promise not to leave the house until she got home. She didn’t have to tell me twice! She had been gone maybe 40 minutes, and I was cleaning my room. As I carried the vacuum upstairs, I felt my phone buzz.

  Lia, I’m stuck in the garage. Can you come help?

  Yep, on my way.

  Stuck in the garage? How does that even happen? I slipped my shoes on and headed out back to the detached garage where my mother kept her car. I tried pulling up on the rolling door, but it wouldn’t budge. Stuck indeed.

  I walked around to the side door and turned the knob. It opened easily.

  “Mom?” I called into the dimness.

  I heard a sound on the far side of the car, but I couldn’t see her. My skin prickled fiercely, and I felt a new fear creep into my heart.

  “Mom, are you okay?” She had to be okay...if something had happened to her… I stepped in and flipped the light switch. The fluorescent light blazed to life above me, and suddenly I was yanked inside by an unseen force. The door slammed shut behind me.

  Across the garage stood the Magician, my father, Dorian Blair, with a sneer plastered on his face. Despite what he had put me through less than two weeks earlier, I had only one thought:

  “Where’s Mom?”

  He inclined his head to the left. There she stood...my mother...my rock...holding a screwdriver to her own throat. She made a whimpering sound, but didn’t speak. Her eyes were full of apologies. “Wouldn’t want anything to happen to her, now would we?” He looked at her, and she pressed the screwdriver against her neck, denting the skin, but not breaking it.