Slayer

by Kiersten White

  As she looks over our stacks of DVDs, it strikes me that Artemis is just a teenager. Like me. We’re sixteen, but she never gets to act it except these few precious hours once a week. Thinking of how young we are reminds me of why I ran from the library. “So,” I ask casually, “did Mom talk to you about boarding school?”

  “What? No. What are you talking about?”

  I take a deep, shaky breath. What if Artemis agrees with our mother’s reasoning? It will break me. But I can’t keep any more secrets. I can barely hold the ones I have. “She wants to send me away.”

  Artemis whips her head around and stares at me in shock. “Are you kidding me?”

  “She had a pamphlet and everything.”

  Artemis’s eyes flash with fury. “No. I won’t let her do that. She’s not separating us.”

  My relief is sudden and overwhelming. Whatever we might disagree on or fight about, Artemis is still on my side. She might do more with our mom, might be the one our mom wants to stay, but Artemis is mine. I plop down on the bed. Artemis sits beside me, and I lean my head against her shoulder.

  Now that I know for sure it won’t happen—Artemis won’t let it—I can relax enough to actually think about it without being angry. “What if you came with me? Traded fight training for physical education. Demonology for geology. Latin for . . . well, Latin, I guess, but probably less creepy Latin.”

  Artemis snorts. “Can you imagine us in a normal school?”

  I close my eyes. “I can, actually. And think: If it were an all-girls school, so many options for a babe like you.”

  Artemis laughs, but it’s dark and a little sad. “I’m never getting out of here, Nina. Mom would never send me. And the Council wouldn’t agree. Or pay for it. I don’t know if they even could at this point. Besides, now you’re a—”

  I wait for her to say “Slayer.” I want her to. As soon as she acknowledges it, maybe it will break this weirdness between us. I can tell her how confusing last night was for me. I can tell her all the things I’m feeling. And I can tell her about the demon in the shed.

  But she doesn’t finish the sentence. “Well, whatever is happening with you, we’ll figure it out together. Mom’s not sending you away from me.”

  It’s not quite the validation I was hoping for. But I appreciate that she’ll still fight for me. Out of the secrets piling up between us, I pick one truth to tell her. “I stole something from Mom’s room.”

  She puts the laptop aside. “What?”

  I slide off her bed and go to mine, where I retrieve the diaries. She sits on the floor across from me. I open the first one to the front page. It’s Bradford Smythe’s Watcher diary.

  “Weird,” Artemis says. “Why would Mom have that?”

  “I didn’t know he was ever an active Watcher. I can’t imagine him in the field.”

  She grabs the other one, then makes a noise like a wounded animal and drops it to the floor. I pick it up.

  The name engraved on the front cover—that I hadn’t seen through the dust and in my hurry to hide the book—is Merrick Jamison-Smythe. I eagerly open it, but Artemis puts her hand on top of mine and gently closes it again. “No,” she says.

  “Why not? It’s Dad’s. Don’t you want to know what he wrote?”

  She looks haunted. “No. It’s not Dad’s. It belongs to the Watcher Merrick Jamison-Smythe. I want to remember him as Dad. Being a Watcher consumes every other aspect of my life. I just—I need to keep Dad as Dad, you know?”

  I don’t agree with her, but I do understand. And a private part of me is glad. My father knew I was a Potential, and his journal is about his time with Slayers. Now that I’m a Slayer too, I almost feel like he wrote this for me, and me only. I push it under my bed, promising to return to it when I’m alone.

  Artemis picks up Bradford Smythe’s diary and starts flipping through it. “Why would Mom have this one?”

  “It was in her nightstand with Dad’s. I don’t get it either.”

  She settles on a page, skimming. “Oh, I see. He worked with a Potential. I don’t recognize her name. This was decades ago.”

  I lean close to read over her shoulder. “What happens to Potentials who age out? Or, I guess, what happened? Past tense.” They were the lucky ones. When only one Slayer was called at a time, if a Potential got too old, her odds of becoming the new Slayer dwindled and disappeared. I would have been a dwindler for sure.

  “The ones who were identified and trained from childhood were absorbed into the Watchers. They knew too much at that point, and it provided new blood for the old families. Most never made full Watcher status, but that’s how they staffed such a large operation. Back when it was large.”

  “So even though they didn’t become Slayers, they still weren’t off the hook?”

  “Nope.” Artemis pops the p on the end of the word. “Once a part of Watcher society, the only ways out are death, prison, or failure so complete you join Wesley Wyndam-Pryce in private investigation working for a vampire named Angel.” She grins wickedly. “I can never get over how funny that one is. I try to bring it up whenever possible in front of Wanda. ‘Sorry, are these boxes private? Can I investigate them? Isn’t Imogen Post an angel with those children?’ ”

  I cackle. This is my Artemis. This is the sister I know and love.

  She smirks. “I have to figure out ways to make the days bearable. Sometimes I play tricks on Ruth Zabuto. I once switched out her focusing crystals with rock candy. She didn’t notice. Ever. So when she complains about magic being gone, just know she wasn’t good at it even when it was here.”

  “What do you do to Bradford?”

  She shrugs. “He’s like an old teddy bear. He only asks me to do things that matter and he always thanks me, so I don’t mind. Though I do occasionally switch out his mustache gel for toothpaste. He smells extra minty-fresh those days.”

  “And Mom?”

  Artemis’s eyes lose their sparkle. “Nothing.” She hands me the journal, pulling her knees up and resting her chin on them. “Nina, I know you’re jealous. That I work with Mom. That I always know where she goes and what she does. But it doesn’t make us closer. If anything, it makes us even less like mother and daughter. She watches me so carefully, and she’s so strict. There are times when I’m jealous of you. Puttering around in your clinic, helping everyone.”

  “But I don’t! Not really. Anyone can do what I do in there. You’re going to help so many more people.”

  She turns so her cheek rests on her knee and she’s looking at me. “You help people just by being you. You help me. Watchers all live with one foot in the darkness, but you . . . you always manage to bring the light. If I’ve been hard on you the last couple of days, it’s because—I don’t want you to lose that.”

  I want to tell her everything I’ve been feeling. And this is my chance. “Artemis, I—”

  “It’s okay.” She shakes her head, cutting me off. My heart sinks. She doesn’t want to talk about me being a Slayer. It helps that I know at least part of why. But it means I still can’t be honest with her.

  She continues. “I can protect you from this darkness. Even if I’m not a real Watcher. If there even is such a thing as a real Watcher now. I’ve got you.” She pokes at the book. “What else does the diary say?” Her abrupt subject change is not lost on me. But if Artemis needs to not talk about things, I’ll respect that. She’s helped me so much over the years. I’m still learning how to do the same for her.

  “A lot of training procedure.” I flip through pages of dietary schedules, tests, and techniques. I skip to the end, wondering how this particular Potential ended up. What did she get assigned to do? Did she become one of our accountants? A cook? Special ops? It took a lot of different jobs to keep us running when we were at full capacity. I wonder if any of the Slayers ever ended up as medics. Maybe I would have had something in common with one.

  “Wait.” I point to one of the last entries. “She did become the Slayer. And she had a baby. And
then—oh, sad. She got killed by vampires. She was only Slayer for a few months. It looks like Bradford Smythe took the baby in.” The name of the baby is at the end of the book.

  “Helen,” Artemis and I both read at the same time.

  Helen. Our mother.

  How many times can my past break and reform itself? Our mother wasn’t born to be a Watcher. She was adopted into it. She was the daughter of a Slayer. A woman she never knew. A woman who died for a calling I now have. The same calling that killed my father.

  I should be stunned that she would keep something so huge from us, but that’s the least surprising part of this. My mother has been an opaque mystery to me for so long now. But this revelation answers one thing.

  “No wonder Mom hates Slayers so much,” I whisper. “It goes way beyond Buffy. Artemis, do you—do you think she hates that I am a Slayer, or does she hate me for being a Slayer?”

  “Mom doesn’t hate you.”

  “She’s pushed me away all these years! She lied to everyone about me being a Potential. And gods, I get it now. It’s not just about Dad. It’s her whole life. I represent everything that’s ever hurt her.” I feel burdened by my mother’s pain, irrationally angry with her for having a tragic history. I didn’t ask for any of this. I don’t want to feel sorry for her. I won’t.

  “The whole Slayer thing, it’s not fair,” Artemis says. I think she’s talking about our mom, until she continues. “Why would it even happen to you? It makes no sense. I don’t get it. It never should have been you.”

  “Who should it have been, then?” I ask, feeling defensive. I’m conflicted about being a Slayer, sure, but it’s a mystical event. If I was Chosen, it’s because I was supposed to be.

  Artemis surprises me. “No one,” she says, her voice harsh. “No one. They never should have forced this on anyone. Not since the very first Slayer. A bunch of weak, arrogant men decided what was best and saddled all the rest of us with the consequences.” Artemis grabs the diary, slams it shut, and throws it in the corner of the room.

  She climbs back on her bed. “Come on. I just want to watch a dumb movie and not think about anything.”

  Artemis is done with the conversation. And now that I’m seeing what a toll this life has taken on her, I’m determined to protect her, instead. So we put on a rom-com, and I paint her fingernails crimson, my hands steady, the paint perfect. She does mine, but her fingers tremble and leave my cuticles looking as bloody as they were after the pit.

  • • •

  I startle awake, bleary-headed and confused. Dawn is creeping soft and inevitable across the horizon. After our movie, we both passed out early. My nonsleeping nights finally caught up to me with a vengeance.

  I lie silently in bed, thinking about what we learned. Our mother was the daughter of a Slayer. If she hadn’t been, she never would have met the Watchers. Never become one. Never met our father. We wouldn’t be Watchers. But we also wouldn’t even exist.

  And this means that my grandmother was a Slayer too. I wish I could talk to her. I wish I could talk to anyone who understands what I’m going through. I wish Cosmina had been nicer. Gods, I’d even take a chat with Buffy right now.

  I could always go find Eve Silvera. Or even old Bradford Smythe. He knew my grandmother. He could tell me about her. But I don’t want either of them. I want actual family.

  I want my dad. Artemis didn’t want to read my father’s diary, but I need to.

  I get it from under my bed, grab Bradford’s from where it’s lying open in the corner, and hurry toward the gym—where I almost run right into Eve Silvera.

  “Nina!” She steadies me with her hands on my shoulders. Does she ever sleep? “Where are you off to?”

  “Training room?” I don’t want to tell her I’m trying to read my dad’s diary in peace.

  She smiles approvingly. “I didn’t find you yesterday to talk after what happened in Dublin, but I thought you might like a day to decompress. None of it demands immediate attention. I’m so sorry you ran into such a mess. I feel like I’ve failed you, sending you into something without having all the information.”

  “You couldn’t have known! You were supporting me. You believed me about Cosmina.” That means a lot. And it also means a lot that she cares about my feelings.

  “I will always believe in you. And while I regret my haste in sending you, what you did in Dublin is incredible. Especially considering that you’ve had no training. Your abilities are genuinely astonishing. I guess there is something to the notion of saving the best for last. Apparently even when it comes to Slayers.”

  It’s so much the opposite of my mother’s reaction—even Artemis’s reaction—that I stand there stunned. Eve not only wants me to be a Slayer; she thinks I’m doing a good job.

  She squeezes my shoulder. “Don’t worry about Cosmina or Dublin. Bradford Smythe and I are looking into it. Best to keep it quiet, though. Your mother, Wanda, and Ruth don’t know, and I would like to keep it that way.”

  “Right. Of course. Anything I can help with?”

  She shakes her head. “You already did your part, and you should be very proud.” She beams, then walks away to wherever she was going.

  Happier, I settle on a pile of mats in the corner of the gym. I need to research more about the Coldplay demon too, but he’s not going anywhere. Cillian has texted me regular updates, so I know he’s safe. For now my own questions about being a Slayer feel more pressing.

  My father’s diary is thick, the pages worn and wrinkled. He wasn’t only Buffy’s Watcher. He had two other Slayers before her. I was always proud that he got to be Watcher to so many Slayers. But now that I’m a Slayer, I realize that means he had to bury two Slayers. Because Slayers don’t retire. They die.

  I crack the book open to somewhere in the middle. I don’t recognize his handwriting, which makes me feel a sharp pang of loss. It’s messy, but his thoughts are well organized. This section has notes on training techniques that have had more success than others, as well as an anecdote on his Slayer facing a gang of vampires that had taken over a small town. The Slayer lured them to a cemetery, where my father had set up booby traps to take them out one by one so the Slayer’s odds would be better.

  A tear splashes down onto the page, making the word it fell on blurry and indistinct. Even though he never told us about this, Artemis and I have used half these booby traps in our own rooms over the years. I know fighting vampires isn’t genetic, but between his skills and my grandmother’s Slayer status, maybe I really was born for this.

  I feel a sudden intense connection to my father. I might not remember him very well, but we’ve carried on his legacy in more ways than we realized.

  And I’m certain that my father would be proud of me being a Slayer. My mother might hate it—might even hate me for it—but my father would be as proud of me as he is of this girl he writes about with professional affection. I wish he were here to train me. He wouldn’t have kept my Potential status hidden. He would have prepared me. Would have used our years together to help me become the greatest Slayer ever.

  For the first time, I’m genuinely happy about being a Slayer. Not just elated over the physical tricks I can do or high on adrenaline. But truly happy. Because I can see how much my dad cared, how proud he was of this girl, in the way he writes about her.

  And I can pretend it’s me. I can imagine that he would have extended that same pride and care to my own training. My father loved these girls like they were his own. How much more would he have loved a Slayer who really was his own? If he were alive, everything would be different. My mother would still be herself. Artemis would never have had to take care of me, because he would have. And I would have been trained, prepared, truly watched over.

  Wiping away my tears, I skip ahead. Half of me hopes there will be entries on his family, even though I know this was a professional journal, not a personal one. And then I stop. I’ve hit the section where he’s preparing to meet a new Slayer.

  Bu
ffy.

  It’s close to the end of the book. Because it’s close to the end of everything.

  “I’m concerned about the prophecy,” he writes. “Helen insists we needn’t worry, but these things are always more complicated than they seem on the surface. I told Helen I wasn’t going to take the assignment. But this new Slayer is the least-prepared girl I have ever seen. I got the preliminary surveillance. It is, quite frankly, terrifying. I am not one to judge the system, as the ancient power knows more than I do about whose potential will translate into the Slayer most needed for our time, but . . . surely it chose wrong?”

  I snort. Then I reread the first part that references my mom. I remember a prophecy about Buffy. It had to do with the Master, the first major vampire threat she faced after moving to Sunnydale. Something about “the Master will rise and the Slayer will die.” It came true. She did die. It just didn’t stick. Buffy always was bad at following the rules.

  But . . . the Watchers didn’t have that prophecy at the time. Her weirdo vampire-with-a-soul boyfriend gave Rupert Giles the prophecy after my father died. I remember, because there was a whole stink about how a vampire could have access to a prophecy the Watchers didn’t. So my father couldn’t have known about that one. He’s talking about another prophecy.

  And if the prophecy was about Buffy, why would he want to turn down being her Watcher? It doesn’t make any sense. I wish I could ask my mom about it, but that’s not going to happen.

  “I have to accept the assignment,” my father’s words continue. “Buffy needs me. I won’t entrust her life and safety to anyone else. Helen will see that the prophecy never comes true. Bradford will help. And my girls will never—”

  It has to be a different prophecy. Something more personal, if he’s mentioning us. But what? I eagerly look to the next page.

  It’s gone. It’s been sliced out. The next page starts midsentence with details about his first disastrous training session with Buffy, and his fears that the ancient vampire Lothos had already begun to hunt for her. No mention of our family.