Slayer (Slayer 1)

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.”