doesn’t care. And maybe she doesn’t, since I’m the one at the center of it. She likes me to be invisible.
Artemis faces our mother. Her back is to me, blocking me out of the conversation. “She killed a hellhound! If you’re so sure she’s not a Slayer, then there’s something else, and we need to take care of it.”
“I’m disappointed in you, Artemis. Nina never should have been put in this position. She never should have come in contact with a demon in the first place.”
“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,