Chosen - Kiersten White Page 0,11

name aloud in ages. I want it to surround me like a hug. Instead, it just falls from my mouth.

“What about him?”

“He gave the power back to me.”

Imogen hops off the counter. “Whoa, whoa, hold up. Leo’s dead.”

“Yeah.” I nod, miserable. After the dream where he restored everything in a seething burst of energy, I waited for him. But he never showed up. “Maybe a cambion thing. He was half demon, after all. Might have been able to stick around in some form long enough to transfer the power. Walking on dreams to get here or something.”

“Have you researched it?”

I take another cookie and shove it in my mouth. “Slayer now, remember? I don’t have to research.”

“You really are claiming your destiny. I’m so proud.” She puts her hands over her heart, laughing, then turns as a timer announces another batch of cookies is done.

The truth is, I didn’t research cambions because it hurt too much. If Leo were still alive, he would have come back. He saved us, gave us enough time to defeat his mother. Everything we’re building here is because of him. I just wish he could see it. It’s his legacy as much as anything else. Sometimes I let myself imagine that he survived. That we all yelled at him for lying to us about his mother, that we actually got to work through the anger to the good stuff on the other side.

But it hurts, just like the idea of researching him or probing the mess of unresolved emotions he left along with my renewed powers. I talk to Imogen’s back. “Don’t tell anyone, okay?” It’s too sad and too special and Rhys would pull it apart to find out how it worked, and my mother would clumsily try to comfort me, and I can’t deal with either option.

Imogen mimes zipping her lips. “I am a perfect graveyard of secrets. They come to me and are buried snug and tight, six feet under.” She resumes waltzing around the kitchen while I finish off the cookies. She doesn’t talk again until I get up to stumble to bed.

“Next time,” she says, passing me a plate to take, “don’t hold back. You should never hold back. Promise me.”

I wave the cookies. Imogen is a bit of a mystery as always, but it’s nice to have her on my side. Almost like having my sister back. “Promise.”

5

I LINE UP THE BODIES.

One: Eve Silvera. Her lipstick is still perfect, her pantsuit unwrinkled. She should be broken beyond repair, but she looks like she’s sleeping. It’s nice.

Two: Next to her, Leo. I try not to look at him, but I can’t help it. His dark hair brushes his shoulders, his strong jaw not softened in death or sleep. His eyelids look so delicate, like they could flutter open anytime. But they won’t.

Three: Cosmina. I arrange the dead Slayer’s blue hair around her head like a halo. Pretty.

Four: Myself. No. Not myself. Artemis. Does she look more like me now, or do I look more like her? I cradle her a little longer, then sigh. It has to be done. I line her up next to the others. If she’s here, then she’s dead, and if she’s dead, then it’s my fault.

I want to cry, but here, in my childhood bedroom, surrounded by the static purple-black flames that once tried to claim me, I’m not allowed to. I have to take care of the bodies. I look up toward the door. So many more bodies waiting for me, arranged in neat triangles. I can see a few I recognize—Bradford Smythe. Cillian. Rhys. My mother. Everyone from the castle. But more behind them, waiting for me to bring them in and lay them nicely in a row.

So many bodies. How did I get so many bodies?

“Hello.”

I turn to see a pretty Chinese girl, late teens or early twenties, her long black hair in a single braid. “You’re not dead,” I say.

“No.” Her eyes keep flicking to my bodies. She holds out a hand. “Ice cream.”

“What?”

“You need ice cream.”

Puzzled, I take her hand. She tugs me, hard, and we leave my room. With a sudden rush of awareness, the truth slams into me:

I’m dreaming. This is a Slayer dream. And I’ve had it before. So many times. At least the bedroom-and-bodies part. Not this new development.

“Ice cream.” She points emphatically to a table with a huge bowl of ice cream and a spoon. I sit obediently, looking at our surroundings. The room is