“Maybe. It explains why I had that dream, and makes it more likely it was demonic, right?”
Eve leans back, setting down her teacup. “It does indeed.” She taps her red fingernails on the saucer, then speaks again. “But did the demon say it was Bradford Smythe specifically?”
“No, he just said Smythe.”
“There’s another Smythe in the castle.”
I lean back, feeling like I’ve been punched. My mom. Of course. What if my mom was his contact? If she knew Doug was coming, she wouldn’t be surprised by the hellhounds hunting him. She would have known the hellhounds weren’t hunting us specifically. But would she really risk the castle, all of us, for a demon?
But hadn’t I sort of done the same thing by keeping him secret?
I rub my forehead. “Well, we can’t ask Doug, because Honora followed me to the shed, and we fought.”
“You fought Honora?” Leo looks alarmed.
I can’t help but smile a little. “You won the bet.”
His face cracks into his own smile, but it looks sad. “I knew I would.”
“Anyway, Doug got away. I think Honora’s connected to the group that was holding Doug captive. He knew her. She took off when he disappeared. Probably hunting him. But my money’s on her never bringing him back here. I think she’d return him to his captors.”
“What happened while we were away? How did things spiral this far?” Eve straightens, radiating strength. “Well. It’s up to us to fix things. And we will. Because that’s what we do. First things first, I’ll go speak with your mother.”
“Don’t do that!” I squeak. “If you ask about any of this, she’ll figure out I’ve been training. And if she knew that, she’d send me away for sure.”
Eve shakes her head. “I would never let that happen. She kept your potential hidden from us for all those years; she’s not sending you away now that we know what you are. You’re not just a Slayer. You’re our Slayer. Let me handle your mother. We’re your Watchers; our job is to support you.” She reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. I squeeze back, more grateful and relieved than I can say.
She smiles warmly at Leo. “Why don’t you two go train, work out some of Nina’s stress. I’ll get to work on the demon questions. If Honora is involved in something this big, I’ll find answers. I still have a few Watcher tricks up my sleeves.”
Leo nods curtly. I follow him out, feeling lighter than I have since the first hellhound attacked. I shouldn’t have been trying to do this on my own. I was making a classic Buffy mistake. Not trusting my Watchers. Not using them. How could I have fallen into it so easily? I have Leo, and, even better, I have Eve. She’ll take care of things, because that’s what Watchers do. That’s what mothers do.
As if on cue, my mother bursts out of her room. She startles when she sees us, holding her large tote bag to her chest like she thinks we’ll try to take it.
“Nina!” she says. “Leo?”
I want to ask her about Doug. What she knew. But I also want to ask how she is, to try and express how sorry I am about losing Bradford, a man she must have loved dearly even if I never really saw that side of their relationship. But my mother speaks first.
“I’m glad I ran into you. I have an assignment for you.”
“What?” My chest flutters with surprise and excitement.
“Not you. Leo.”
I deflate, but she doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.
“There’s a Slayer in Dublin. I have reason to believe she’s in trouble.” My mother reaches into her suit jacket and retrieves a small address book. She flips through it—I see dozens of entries—until she finds the page she’s looking for. She does still have a list of Slayers that she’s keeping to herself. She rips the page free and hands it to Leo.
“Cosmina,” Leo says. Then he course corrects. We shouldn’t recognize her name, as far as my mother is concerned. “That’s the Slayer?”
If my mother knows about Cosmina, does she know what we did? No. There’s no way. We’d be in so much trouble if she had any idea.
But why this sudden desire to send Leo to meet Cosmina? Why now, when we’ve avoided Slayers for two years?
Actually, Eve mentioned something about a Slayer in Costa Rica. That was how they found each other again. But that Slayer was already dead. Maybe my mom has been contacting Slayers for a long time and hiding it. But I don’t know why she would do that either.
I always thought she hated Slayers. But her mother was one. And I’m one now too. I suspect it’s a lot more complicated than I’ve ever understood.
“Yes,” my mother says, answering Leo’s question. “Cosmina Enescu. That’s her address. I’d like you to go immediately.” She’s snatching up Leo. He’s not hers. He’s mine. My Watcher. She doesn’t get to be part of this.
Besides, how is my mother handing out assignments right now? It’s only been hours since Bradford’s death. What have they done with the body? Anything? What are they going to do? Shouldn’t my mom be dealing with that instead?
“Are you sad?” I blurt.
“What?” She raises her eyebrows.
“About Bradford Smythe! He raised you. And now he’s dead.”
“He didn’t raise me.” She stops, something stricken finally breaking through on her face. “The whole community did. It’s complicated.”
“Why, because he was your mother’s Watcher?”
She freezes. Leo stares down at the slip of paper like it’s filled with text he’s suddenly compelled to read. I can’t believe I’m doing this in front of him.
Actually, his presence is why I finally feel able to do this. He makes me stronger. Braver. I refuse to back down or explain myself. “If I don’t understand, it’s only because you never talk to me. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me your mother was a Slayer.”
Emotions battle across her features, and then finally her tight, distant expression returns. “Because it doesn’t matter. Leo, please let me know as soon as you find Cosmina. Invite her to the castle, if she’ll come.”
“What?” I shout.
They both turn to me, surprised. Eve opens her door and peers out into the hallway.
“You can’t invite her here! We don’t know anything about her! You’re the one who’s always going on about secrecy and how we can’t work with Slayers because we can’t trust them to keep our secrets safe!”
“Dublin has gotten dangerous, Nina. Would you rather me leave Cosmina vulnerable and alone?”
“Yes!” I stop, take a deep breath. “No. But, gods, are you really so desperate to replace me that you’ll find the nearest Slayer and bring her in instead?”
“That’s not what this is about.”
“That’s exactly what this is about! Well, guess what, Mom? Producing another Slayer won’t change anything. I was already Chosen. Past tense. It’s done. You might hate it, you might hate me, but like you said: It doesn’t matter.” I turn on my heel and stomp out of the fancy residence wing.
I almost run into Artemis in the main hall. Her face is flushed, sweat on her forehead. “No sign of the demon. Or Honora.”
Rhys walks past us, chipper and oblivious. “Come on,” he says. “We’re going to be late for class.”
Class? It feels almost laughable right now to behave like students when we’re already deep into real-world scenarios. “Where’s Cillian?” I ask Rhys. “He’s okay?”
“High as a kite. I left him in my room to rest. In the meantime, I’m going to class, where you can fill me in on what you and my boyfriend have been up to.” He doesn’t sound happy with me. I don’t blame him. I violated his trust and put Cillian at risk.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter.
“Class,” Rhys snaps.
It feels tremendously unimportant, but Leo didn’t follow me out of the residence wing, so I can’t train with him. I could go out and search for Doug, but Artemis is watching me, perched like a hawk ready to swoop in. And I don’t want Rhys any madder at me.
Artemis slips into the library a few minutes after us, not sitting next to me. Her arms are folded, her lips forming a tight, stern line. Rhys is scribbling in a manner that can only be described as aggressive. Poor Imogen stumbles through her lecture on the difficulties of translating runes into verbal language.
I’m churning with anger too. Honora. My mother. Cosmina. Maybe it’s selfish of me—definitely it’s selfish of me, knowing what I do about Cosmina’s life—but I don’t want her here. First boarding school, now a new Slayer. My mother is determined to make sure I have no place in the castle.
I flip through my notes but pause when I get to my last entry. It was the prophecy translation assignment. My eyes bug out as I read it.
Child of Slayer
Child of Watcher
The two become one
The one becomes two
Girls of fire
Protector and Hunter
One to mend the world
And one to tear it asunder
When all else ends, when hope perishes alongside wonder, her darkness shall rise and all shall be devoured.
Suddenly it’s personal. “Child of Watcher, Child of Slayer” didn’t mean anything before. But now I know the truth of my family history. My father was a child of a Watcher. My mother wasn’t.
And my father mentioned a prophecy in his diary that seemed of personal concern to him and my family.
I stand. “Artemis.”
Imogen stops midsentence, alarmed by the expression on my face. “Is everything okay?”
“I need to talk to Artemis. Now.” I grab my notes and hurry out of the library. Artemis is behind me. I’m relieved. I worried she wouldn’t come. When we get back to our room, I slam the door and throw my notes onto the bed. “Look at this prophecy.”
Artemis rubs her forehead. “With everything else going on, I hardly think me helping you cheat on translations is a priority.”
“No, that’s not— The prophecy! It’s about a child of a Watcher and a child of a Slayer having two girls who will go on to break the world!” I jab my finger at it. “Gods, Artemis, look at it. It could be—it might be—it could be us. There’s no timeline, but we should at least talk about it.”
Artemis gives me a flat stare. She’s always the first to support me. But she looks like our mother again. “There’s a demon loose and you’re worried about some musty old prophecy?”
“I found a reference to a prophecy in Dad’s diary. I’ll bet it’s this one.”
She looks like I’ve struck her. “You read it without me.”
“You didn’t want to read it. I never said I didn’t. I came straight here to talk to you after, but you were getting cozy with Honora, and I wasn’t about to share personal information with her!”
“This isn’t about Honora!”
“It is!”
Artemis kicks over the stack of books I stole from the library for Doug research. “Nothing is about Honora! You need to get over this grudge. People could die because you decided you would rather punch it out with her than listen to someone with way more demon experience than you’ll ever have!”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Just because I’m not a Watcher-in-training, my instincts don’t matter? I’m a Slayer!”
Artemis throws her hands in the air. “Oh, good. Let’s bring that up! Because you discovering you’re a Slayer—two months after the change happened—makes you an expert in everything!”
I flinch at her tone. All my anger dries up, leaving only hurt in its wake. It’s not like I didn’t know something had happened to me. I was afraid to face what it was. “Why are you being like this? I’m asking for your help.”
“Of course you are. That’s what you do. That’s what everyone does.” She spits out the words. “We have hundreds—thousands—of prophecies in that library. If this one mattered, someone would have said something. This is the last thing we should be worried about now. You’re trying to find something else to distract me from the fact that you hid a freaking demon from me.”
It hits me hard. She’s right. She’s absolutely right. This isn’t a priority now, but I want it to be. I want anything that brings us together to be a priority. I latched onto this prophecy as soon as I saw it because it was easier to think about than everything else. It was easier than sitting in class, easier than making things up with Rhys. Easier than talking about this growing chasm between my sister and me. “That’s not it at all,” I lie. I step toward her.
She steps back.
“What about you?” I ask. “What was Honora talking about, saying you gave up your chance at being a full Watcher for me?”
Artemis turns away. “It doesn’t matter.” She might as well be our mother. This is how we deal with pain, with hard things. We shut down. And we shut each other out. She leaves me alone with a prophecy of doom and a broken heart.
She had studied the words enough that she knew them by heart. But she still found them sometimes. Ran her finger over them.
Her own mother had failed. Spectacularly. And for a while the hunter had thought, perhaps, she wouldn’t be needed. After all, if a prophecy ends up being inaccurate, how can it come true? She told herself that, but she didn’t quite believe it.
Prophecies are slippery things, after all.
And so she watched, and she waited. There was no rush. The girls grew. One strong and smart and capable, one weak and clever and kind. Maybe the prophecy had never been about them. Maybe all her work, all her sacrifice, had been for nothing.
She was okay with that. Better to be wrong and have sacrificed a few lives than to be wrong and sacrifice the world. She wouldn’t have felt guilty if she had succeeded in killing one of the girls. That was why she was the hunter. Because she knew she would do whatever it took to keep the world safe.
For a long time—for years—it looked like she wouldn’t have to do anything.
But then the weak became strong. The healer became killer. Which meant the other twin’s fate beckoned as well.
Something would have to be done. And soon.
A knock on her door pulled her from her reverie. She pasted the smile on her face. “Just a minute!” The knives she had been stroking were placed gently back in her drawers, alongside a box of ballpoint pens, her favorite lipsticks, and a photo of Artemis and Athena.
22
THERE’S A KNOCK. EVEN THOUGH Artemis wouldn’t knock on our own door, I’m still disappointed when I open it and find Eve Silvera.
I must look as miserable as I feel; she radiates sympathy. “May I come in?”
“Of course.”
She takes in the room with a smile. “Where’s Artemis?”
Tears well up in my eyes and Eve envelops me in a hug. She smells cool and crisp, like an autumn night breeze. “It will work itself out. And I’m here to help with whatever doesn’t. This is why Slayers have Watchers. It’s too much for any girl to bear alone.” She pats my back and I pull away, sniffling but comforted. What would it have been like, to have a mother like Eve?
Eve gets to business. “Leo told me about your mother’s request that he go find Cosmina. I’m concerned.”
“Me too! I think it’s a terrible idea.”
“We don’t know anything about this girl, except that she was more than willing to leave you to die. We have a responsibility to reach out to Slayers, yes. But this is hasty and ill-advised. I’m still waiting on information from contacts within the city. Between the demon you discovered and whatever mess this Cosmina is embroiled in, I don’t see any reason to rush into a relationship with her. I’ve told Leo as much.” She frowns in concern. “I’m leery of the other Council members too. Not just your mother. If you’re right about Honora, she’s not acting as a Watcher anymore. I don’t know how much Wanda knows about it. She could be involved as well. So we can’t discuss this with any of them. But I wanted to make sure you agreed with my decision to wait before contact
ing Cosmina. I may be a Watcher, but you’re our Slayer.”
I am. I’m the castle’s Slayer. I know it’s just reinforcing my own petty reasons, but I latch onto her justifications. “We need more information about Cosmina. That’s how Watchers do things.” I may not agree with all the Watcher practices, but I have always agreed with that one.
A twinge of guilt and uncertainty tugs at me. My dreams sent me to Cosmina. And I helped her. But I know she still needs help.
I don’t want to give it to her.
“What a stroke of tremendous good fortune, having a Slayer who is also a Watcher.” Eve means it as a compliment, but I feel like I’m failing as both. I give her a fake smile. She opens the door to leave. “You tell me if anything comes up in your dreams, and in the meantime, I’ll handle Dublin, the demon, Cosmina, and Bradford’s death. If there’s a connection, I’ll find it.”
“Let me know if I can do anything?”
“I don’t doubt I’ll need you very soon.” She smiles and leaves.
Still uneasy, I pull on one of Artemis’s black leather jackets and head to the gym. Instead of training, I’ll ask Leo to scout with me to see if we can turn up Doug’s trail. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find him. Artemis didn’t, but she’s not a Slayer. At least then I’ll be doing something instead of just waiting. I know Eve is a Watcher, but I can’t sit back and let her do everything.
Leo’s waiting for me. “There you are. Come on.” He turns and walks out of the gym.
“Oh, good. I was thinking we’d look for Doug.”
“I trust your instincts that he’s not dangerous.”
“I was actually more worried about what would happen if Honora gets to him first.”
“Then we’ll know where he is, and we’ll deal with her.” He says it matter-of-factly. Instead of leading me to the forest, we go to the garage.
“So then where are we going?” I ask as he grabs the keys to the Range Rover.
“To talk to Cosmina.”
I freeze with my hand on the door. “Your mom said we shouldn’t. She said you talked about it.”
“You and I both saw how much trouble Cosmina was in. My mother didn’t. What if it were you out there all by yourself?” His concern is so genuine that I feel like the worst person in the world.
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