“I was twenty feet from the castle!” I throw my hands up in the air. They’re talking about me like I’m not even here. “What, should Artemis walk me around on a leash? She can’t protect me all the time! And apparently she doesn’t need to.”
Artemis flinches. I didn’t mean to hurt
her. I know how much she defines herself as my protector. And I’ve let her take that role without question. Maybe that was a mistake for both of us. I reach out to place a hand on her arm, but she crosses her arms tightly instead. “Regardless,” she says. “Slayer or something else. We have to figure it out.”
Our mother stares at the space above my head. Her face is tight and pinched with anger. Her own soft, auburn hair is pulled back into a severe ponytail, her gray eyes beginning to wrinkle in hard lines. What right does she have to be angry with us? None of this is my fault. Or is she mad that this means she has to actually interact with us? Then I realize she has . . . tears pooling in the bottoms of her eyes?
Oh gods. Buffy. The Slayer. My mom lost everything because of a Slayer. If it’s hard for me to think about Buffy, how much harder is it for my mother?
“Mom,” I choke out.
She turns away on one sharp heel, cutting me off. “I have to go speak with the Council. There’s no need for you to come. We’re still on lockdown, so don’t leave.”
Artemis and I look at each other in confusion. It’s not that I’m surprised to be ignored by our mother. But for her to refuse to even talk about something so obviously dire?
My sister quickly shifts from confused to pissed. “That’s it? She comes home to the news that the castle has been breached by a hellhound that you killed, and we get dismissed?” Her jaw sets in determination. “Let’s go to the meeting.”
“I think it’s pretty clear we’re not invited now that Mom’s here.”
“We can go if she doesn’t know we’re there.” Artemis stands, her face as cold and hard as the stones of our walls. She storms out of our room; I follow more warily. But she turns in the opposite direction of the Council chambers, sideways across the dormitories. We’re in the rear of the castle, a confusing warren of hallways connecting a tangle of mostly unused rooms.
Imogen pokes her head out of her suite. I go in there only to do well-child checkups. Measure their growth, listen to their heartbeats, deliver lollipops. Whenever I do, I’m reminded with a pang of kindly Nurse Abrams. She taught me back at the old headquarters. She used to wear an apron with the front pockets filled with lollipops, even though she mostly worked on adults. “Even Watchers need sweetness,” she told me once. “Especially them, I think.”
We lost so much more than our headquarters to the First. We lost our heart, too.
“What’s going on?” Imogen always looks exhausted, but there’s a new and frantic layer of fear on top of it. “Has there been another attack? Your mother walked by. She’s never in the dorms.”
“No new attacks,” I say. “Our mom was just . . . saying hi after her trip.”
Imogen doesn’t believe me, and I don’t blame her. But she has enough grace to pretend like my mother stopping by for a friendly maternal visit is something that might have happened. Imogen glances over her shoulder at the door cracked open, the Littles gathered around a table and playing with clay. “They don’t know we’re on lockdown.” She pauses, then juts out her chin as though daring us to challenge her. “We’re not telling them. They’ve had enough things to be scared of in their lives. If it gets dangerous, I’m loading them in a car and I’m not looking back.”
I wonder why we didn’t do that in the first place. But if we lose the Littles, we lose the next generation of Watchers. The last one, quite possibly. And they would never know their heritage or what their parents died for.
“Rhys’s on patrol with Jade.” Artemis pats a sleek walkie-talkie hooked onto her belt. I hadn’t noticed it before, and I’m instantly jealous. Of course they’ve never given one to me. All I have is the castle cell phone with its terrible reception. Half the time it doesn’t even send texts. But I’ve never mattered like Artemis. Do I matter now? Do I want to, if it means being a—?
I shudder. It’s hard to even think the word.
Imogen nods curtly. “Let me know if there are any updates on the hellhound.” We all know the Council won’t bother to tell her. I might be walkie-talkie-less, but the Council never loops in Imogen, either. She’s the only person more sidelined than I am. Selfishly, I’ve always been grateful that she’s lower on the rungs, even if it is completely unfair. Otherwise I might have gotten stuck with nanny duty, and while I like the Littles, I definitely do not like them that much.
Artemis leads to me to a section of the castle that’s closed down. Various relics of bygone eras—a grimy toolbox, a moldering wall hanging, a mushroom-print shirt crumpled in a corner, and a stuffed rabbit with cotton spilling out like guts—litter the floor. Artemis moves past it all to a splintering door and tugs it open. The interior is pitch-black. I can already feel the spiderwebs clinging to my skin, and I haven’t even walked in yet. I just know it’s a spider closet.
“Come on,” she calls. I step in, holding out my hands, but I don’t bump into Artemis. A tiny point of light waves and I see a hand sticking out of a person-size hole at the bottom of the wall. I would never have thought to look down there.
The penlight jerks impatiently. “Come on,” Artemis repeats. I get onto my knees and crawl through. There are no spiderwebs. So either there are no spiders, or this particular secret crawl space is frequently used. I suspect the latter. Which means Artemis has never told me about it.
I’m hurt. We might not be finish-each-other’s-sentences twins, but we don’t keep secrets about our different lives here at the castle.
Except, of course, I did keep something from her. Something so much bigger than a secret passageway. I can’t help asking anyway, “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
She shrugs. “I was worried it would trigger your asthma.”
I’ve had mild asthma since the fire. But she could have at least told me. It’s yet another reminder that this castle holds more than I’ll ever have access to. I scramble through, finally able to stand. The space is narrow and frigid, and other than Artemis’s tiny penlight, it’s completely dark.
“This way,” she whispers. I follow her as the passage twists and turns. Sometimes the black gapes to either side, hinting at other passages.
“How many rooms does this go to?” I whisper.
“A lot.”