Collapsed unconscious on the grass is a lanky thing in a Coldplay T-shirt and skinny jeans. It has acid-yellow skin, black horns, and black lips to match. The demon’s face is bruised and swollen, one scaly cheek sliced down to the bone. Peeking out from its clothes are a lot more wounds. One arm is at an angle I’m pretty sure no arm should ever be at, even when attached to a demon.

That makes two demons within twenty-four hours. Threatening my family. My home. My friends. A pulse of blinding rage fills me, and I take a step toward the demon.

“It’s a demon, right?” Cillian’s voice snaps me out of my enraged stupor. I blink, trying to shake off some of the kill-kill-kill roaring through me. It feels foreign, like my brain playing a song I don’t know. Once, when we still lived in London, Artemis and Jade snuck me into a concert. The bass was so powerful I could feel it inside, competing with and overtaking my heart. This is similar. Like my heart isn’t mine anymore. The beat is a foreign entity.

Slayer, something whispers deep inside. I shove it further down.

Cillian is wigging out. His eyes are open so wide they practically glow in the darkness of the house. He hasn’t crossed the threshold into the yard. “I know you guys told me about demons, but I didn’t really believe it. That thing earlier could have been some crazy, sick dog or wolf or hyena. In Ireland. But this? I believe you now.”

“Did you do something?” I turn to him. “Summon them? How?” Summoning shouldn’t work anymore. All the portals are gone, any magic used to lure the demons broken.

“No! God, no. Why would I want this? I didn’t realize that thing was out here until an hour ago. I couldn’t sleep and went to get the rubbish bins for collection before I forgot.”

Though I can’t discount the connection that both demons have been found around Cillian, I still believe him. Cillian has never been anything but helpful. If he wanted to hurt us, if he had some sinister ulterior motive, he could have done something ages ago. And I know he loves Rhys. The way they look at each other is so sweet it practically gives me a sugar rush.

“Right. So. There’s a demon in your backyard.” I tug nervously on my hair. “Why did you ask me to come? Did you ask because I killed—because of what I did to that other one?”

Is that already my role? Stabby-stabby-kill girl?

Or breaky-breaky-neck girl, really, since I don’t have any weapons. I’ll need weapons if demons are going to start popping up everywhere. I usually have a stake on me—like a comfort blanket that can kill things—but stakes aren’t a one-size-fits-all demon-slaying tool.

Cillian shakes his head. “No, that’s not why. I mean, maybe a little. I don’t want any

one to get hurt. But we don’t know anything about it.”

“We know it’s a demon.”

“Right, but it’s wearing a fecking Coldplay shirt. How evil can something wearing a Coldplay shirt be?”

He has a point. “So why did you ask me?”

“Because you fix people. You’re always watching those horrible first aid tutorials. And all the medical supplies you have me order? You know how to help people. I thought—” Cillian shrugs, suddenly sheepish as we both look at the radioactively yellow demon. “I thought it might need help.”

Relief and gratitude wash over me. Cillian didn’t ask me here to kill something. He asked me here to help something. I want to hug him for being my friend, for thinking of me the way I think of myself: as a healer. I’m the girl who patches things up. Not the one who breaks them.

My initial instinct to attack nags at me, filling me with guilt. I want to at least give Coldplay there a chance. Being a Slayer doesn’t mean I have to kill everything that moves.

Actually, I have no idea what being a Slayer means. And I don’t care. I’m a Watcher, so I’ll deal with the demon our way. Study first, reach an informed conclusion, and then decide on a course of action. True Watcher procedure at its best, like I’ve tried telling Artemis for years. Our role was never supposed to be the violent one.

I nod toward the shed. “Got anything in there we can use to restrain it?”

Cillian squinches up his face, then snaps his fingers. “Yeah, actually. Could you help me get it in?” While he unlocks the shed door, I cross the yard and grab the demon’s arms.

“Eew!” I shriek, pulling back my hands as though burned. Cillian whips around, terrified. “It’s sticky. Oh, gross, it’s sticky.” Shuddering, I try to touch only the clothed parts of its body. I start to lift the demon, and I nearly toss it up into the air. It’s so much easier than I expected it to be. But I don’t feel elated over this surging new strength. It’s another reminder of how my body is something other than what I’ve always known.

“How? How are you doing that? Is the demon bloke filled with helium or something?”

The grossness of what I’m holding comes over me again. “Open the shed—oh gods, the stickiness is seeping through my shirt. It’s my favorite shirt. I’m going to have to burn it. And also my skin. And everything. Just—hurry!”

As soon as Cillian opens the door, I push past him and drop the demon unceremoniously on the floor.

Cillian is possibly more freaked out by me than by the demon. “You carried that—that thing like it’s a bag of . . . things that don’t weigh much. And that’s after you went Terminator on the hellhound. You’ve never been like this. Did something happen when you killed that dog thing?”

“By thing, you mean demon. Just like this discolored horny thing.”

“Could we say ‘horned,’ not ‘horny’? Because I am already creeped out enough.”

Cillian pulls a chain hanging down from a bare bulb, which throws everything into yellow-tinged relief. His mother’s shed is as cluttered as Rhys’s bookshelves, holding what appears to be the detritus of at least a dozen different lives. Dream catchers, Buddhas, crystals and incense, a stack of Bibles along with what looks like a Book of Mormon and a whole pile of L. Ron Hubbard novels, several statues of gods and goddesses of various traditions and religions, and an entire bin of ghost-hunting and medium shows.

Tags: Kiersten White Slayer Fantasy
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