Slaye - Kiersten White Page 0,2

creepy seeing Imogen treat that particular tome like anything else on the shelf.

“Fresh out of batteries and no one can find the right size.” Rhys scowls at his text as though insulted by the demon he’s reading about. “When Buffy breaks something, she breaks it good. Personally, I think that if confronted with the Seed of Wonder—the source of all magic on earth, a genuine mystical miracle—I might opt to, say, study it. Research. Really think through my options. There had to be another way to avert that particular apocalypse.”

“Buffy sees, Buffy destroys,” I mutter. Her name feels almost like a swear word on my tongue. We don’t say it aloud in my family. Then again, we don’t say much in my family at all, besides “Have you seen my best dagger?” and “Where are our stake-carving supplies?” and “Hello, my twin daughters, it is I, your mother, and I love one of you better than the other and chose to save the good twin first when a fire was about to kill you both.”

Okay, not that last one. Because again: We don’t talk much. Living under the same roof isn’t as cozy as it sounds when that roof covers a massive castle.

“Think of all we could have learned,” Rhys says mournfully, “if I had had even an hour with the Seed of Wonder. . . .”

“In her defense, the world was ending,” Imogen says.

“In her not defense, she was the reason the world was ending,” I counter. “And now magic is dead.”

Imogen shrugs. “No more hellmouths or portals. No more demons popping in for vacations and sightseeing.”

I snort. “Foodie tours of Planet Human are canceled. Sorry, demonic dimensions. Of course, it also means no current tourists can get back to their home-sweet-hellholes.”

Rhys scowls, pulling off his glasses and polishing them. “You’re joking about the disruption and destruction of all the research we’ve compiled on demonic traveling, portals, dimensions, gateways, and hellmouths. None of it is current anymore. Even if I wanted to understand how things have changed, I couldn’t.”

“See? Buffy hurts everyone. Poor Rhys. No books on this subject.” I pat his head.

Imogen tosses a huge volume on the table. “And yet your homework still isn’t done. Try this one.” A poof of dust blows outward from the book; I flinch away and cover my nose.

She grimaces. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. I actually haven’t had an asthma attack in a while.” It’s fine that my asthma mysteriously disappeared the same day Buffy destroyed magic, the world almost ended, and I got showered in interdimensional demonic goo. Totally fine. Has nothing to do with the demon. Neither does the fact that I’m desperate to go running or start training or do anything with my body besides snuggle up and read, which used to be its primary occupation.

I pull down my sweater sleeve over my hand and carefully wipe the leather cover. “ ‘The Apocalypses of . . . Arcturius the Farsighted’? Sounds like the dude just needed a better prescription for glasses.”

Rhys leans close, peering curiously. “I haven’t read that volume.” He sounds jealous.

Notes have been scrawled in the margins, the handwriting changing as it moves through the centuries. On the last few pages there are orange fingerprints, like someone was reading while eating Cheetos. The Watchers before me have made their own notes, commenting and filling in details. Seeing their work overwhelms me with a sense of responsibility. It’s not every sixteen-year-old girl who can trace her family’s calling back through the centuries of helping Slayers, fighting demons, and otherwise saving the world.

I find a good entry. “Did you know that in 1910, one of the Merryweathers prevented an octopus uprising? A leviathan demon gave them sentience and they were going to overthrow us! Merryweather doesn’t give many details. It appears they defeated them with . . .” I squint. “Lemon. And butter. I think this is a recipe.”

Imogen taps on the book. “Just translate the last ten prophecies, how about?”

I get to work. Rhys occasionally asks Imogen questions, and by the time our class period is almost over, he has what looks like half the extensive shelves piled on our groaning table. In years past, Rhys and I wouldn’t have studied together. He’d have been in classes with the other future Council hopefuls. But there are so few of us now, we’ve had to relax some of the structure and tradition. Not all of it, though. Without tradition, what would we be? Just a bunch of weirdos hiding in a

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