Free Trembling by V. J. Chambers

detention, I walked home. I had
expected Lilith to be there, so I hadn't been too worried about having an
evening at home by myself. However, Lilith was apparently at work with Jason,
so I had the house to myself. I didn't like that. I really, really hated being
by myself.

When I'd left detention, I'd made a point of having a completely fake
conversation on my phone with Jason, chatting with him about what we were going
to do together when I got home. I didn't want Mr. Sutherland to think that I
was going to be there by myself. If he really did work for the Sons, he'd know
where I lived, and he might come in and attack me. Mr. Sutherland didn't seem
to pay any attention to my conversation. I wondered if I  
was
  being paranoid. But it didn't matter.
It was better for me to play it safe. I couldn't afford to take risks.

Once back in the apartment, I locked all the doors. I tried to work on some
homework for about a half an hour, but I couldn't concentrate. Instead, I got
out the book I'd borrowed from Mr. Sutherland. I paged to the picture of the
rising sun emblem and read the copy underneath it.

"This picture," it read, "is believed to be associated with a
society entitled The Rising Suns. Little is known about this society except
that several of its members were executed as witches in the seventeenth
century."

Hmm. Bust. I looked through the index, but there weren't any other mentions of
The Rising Suns. The book offering no more information, I got on the internet.
A google search for rising sun yielded pages on the Phoenix Suns, the Animals
Song "House of the Rising Sun," and an obscure music video on
youtube. Nothing. I searched through the search results a little longer and
finally found a reference to the same book I was holding. Weird. If this book
had referenced the secret society, then where were its sources? Had they made
The Rising Suns up? Or was it just that the Sons had taken great pains to
eradicate any trace of their existence?  

Idly, I did a search for "bell secret society." I found out that
there was a made-for-tv movie from 1970 called  
The
Brotherhood of the Bell
. It was about Skull and Bones. It didn't
seem to have anything to do with Mr. Dingle's bell. Jason was right. It didn't
really make any sense for the members of the Sons to steal this bell if it
wasn't associated with them. The picture on the side of it
—
was it actually an old symbol for the
Sons? Why had Mr. Dingle acquired it then? And why would the Sons want to let
me know they were watching me? It was too confusing. The more I thought about
it, the more confused I got. What was I supposed to do with this information?
I'd decided that I would take care of this without Jason's help. What was I
going to do?

It was starting to get dark outside. I really didn't like the dark. I walked
around the apartment, checking the doors and windows, making sure they were
locked and secure. I thought about my conversation with Jason earlier. I'd
asked him to train me to fight the Sons. Jason had said no.  

When Jason and I had first settled down in
Bradenton
, he'd been happy to teach me stuff.
The origin of that had been back when we were on the run. In
New York
, I'd wanted to let Jason go out on
his own, because I thought that I was in the way. He could fight better than
me. I felt like I slowed him down. Jason had told me that he could teach me to
take care of myself. When we'd gotten settled, Jason had started to take me
shooting. He figured that if I knew how to shoot a gun, I'd feel much safer.

He was right. I liked it. We went to a shooting range in
Sarasota
. We had to use fake IDs to get in
since we weren't 18, but those were easily obtained, considering most kids have
fake IDs for the purpose of buying alcohol. We went twice a week at the
beginning. Jason taught me all kinds of things. He'd practically grown up with
a gun in his hand and had been shooting since he was about five years old. I
got better and better. We started to