Chosen (Slayer 2)

“You spied on Buffy?” Maricruz seems less alarmed than curious.

Jade pushes her hair out of her face, then pulls three glasses from under the counter. “Yes, but I was also part of the coven. We did all sorts of stuff. I really liked it. Like having sisters.”

“Sisters are overrated.” I scowl at my glass as Jade fills it with just a bit of whiskey and then pours in Coke to dilute it.

“Amen,” Maricruz mutters.

“To rubbish families, dead fathers, absent mothers, and lost sisters,” Cillian says, holding up his glass.

We all cheers to that. The whiskey burns, and not even this much Coke can cut through it. But I drink it anyway. An hour later, we’re lying on the floor in a square, heads on one another’s stomachs. I have the phone balanced on my forehead, willing it to ring.

“Bollocks,” Cillian says. “Joan of Arc was not a Slayer.”

“She was so!” I gesture aggressively, spilling half my drink down my arm. The phone slips off and clatters to the floor. “The Siege of Orléans was actually a vampire siege. It was one of the only known organized vampire armies in history. Generally vampires are solitary, but they had a very charismatic leader who saw the upheaval as an opportunity to place kings and rulers who were sympathetic to them and would turn a blind eye to their activities. Orléans contained a Watcher outpost, and they wanted to burn it down. One of the Watchers was an advisor to the French regent, who the vampires were hoping to sire. But they knew they had to get rid of the local Watchers first.”

“You’re lying.”

“She’s not.” Jade has both her hands in the air, admiring her manicure. “We have a whole series of books on it. The Watchers were heavily involved in the Hundred Years’ War and the War of the Roses. Richard the Third was half demon.”

“No!”

“Yes. That’s why his skeletal structure was so odd.”

“You’re all such nerds,” Maricruz says in a dreamy, affectionate tone.

“Anyway,” I say, “Joan was a Slayer. I’ve never run into her in my dreams, though. I’ll have to look for her. Except my dreams seem broken lately.”

“To broken dreams!” Jade picks up her glass and lifts it in the air.

“Are your Slayer dreams working?” I ask Maricruz.

“I don’t like dreaming.”

Cillian

interrupts. “So did the queen ever have her own Watcher to advise her on supernatural threats?”

Jade turns her head where it rests on my stomach and makes eye contact with me, slowly winking one eye. “Oh yes.”

I pick it up. “For centuries. Queen Elizabeth had an affair with hers. It was very scandalous.”

“No!”

“Mm-hmm.” Jade pauses. “Though obviously it didn’t produce Charles. He’s all Philip’s. Which means my crush on Prince Harry is not at all incestuous.”

I nod. “An important point.”

Maricruz narrows her eyes. “Wait, was it your—”

“A great-great-uncle or something.” Jade shrugs casually.

I keep going. “So her great-great-uncle was out, but they put another Watcher in after. It was a very prestigious position. The queen’s Watcher had a number assigned so the queen’s forces could talk about him without giving away his role. Some numbers have magical significance. This one was an infinity symbol followed by a seven.”

Jade manages to keep her voice even. “They called him Double O Seven to simplify, though.”

Cillian sits straight up, dislodging my head from his abdomen. “No fecking way. Watchers were 007? Watchers? It was real?”

I lean back on my elbows. “Well, yeah. Most things are real. Normal people catch rumors and make them into stories. Myths. Spy novels.”