pulls a wicked-looking knife from a sheath on her thigh beneath her swirling, layered skirts.
“What about—” I start.
“Library!” Artemis barks. “Now!”
Bradford Smythe shoots me a heavy, mournful look. He seems like he has something to say. I half expect him to pull a hard candy out of his suit pocket and give it to me with a pat on the head. That’s about the extent of our interactions over the last several years. There’s never any reason for the Council to talk to me. After all, my mom is on the Council, and she never needs me. Why should any of the rest of them?
Rhys grabs Cillian’s hand to tug him along, and I run after them to the library. Jade is gone, hopefully back to her room, where Bradford Smythe can find her easily. Rhys locates a lever on the far shelf and it swings open to reveal a cramped, dusty room. We shut ourselves in.
“Explanations,” Cillian says, panting. “What was that thing? And why are we locked inside the castle? And am I finally allowed to ask how the hell you lot moved a castle here in the first place? Because I have been working mightily to pretend otherwise, but I’ve lived in Shancoom my entire life, and I’m certain if we had always had a castle in the forest, I would have known about it. And, Nina, what—what—how did you do that out there?”
His gaze on me is searching and incredulous. We’ve been friends since before he and Rhys started dating. He’s more freaked out about what I did to the hellhound than the fact that there was a hellhound. I stare at the well-worn floor planks, polished by generations of my people walking here, learning here, planning here. Resting here.
The castle was never our main headquarters. It used to be a retreat for Watchers. But two years ago, way before the Seed of Wonder fiasco, the old Council and nearly every member of the Watcher society got blown up by fanatic followers of an ancient entity known as the First Evil. And it all happened because Buffy threw the balance of good and evil so out of whack that it left an opening for the First to wriggle through.
The First sent out its acolytes to murder everyone who could fight it. That meant all the potential future Slayers it could find—girls who were born with the possibility to someday take up the mantle of Slayer when the previous one died. It also meant all the Watchers. Even after Buffy rejected us, the First knew we were a threat. Buffy ended up defeating it and saving the world.
But she didn’t save a single Watcher.
Those of us who survived were either out on assignment in deep cover—only Bradford Smythe and Wanda Wyndam-Pryce’s daughter, Honora—or here on a field trip. Rhys Zabuto, Jade Weatherby, Artemis, Imogen Post, the Littles, and myself. My mother, Ruth Zabuto, and Wanda Wyndam-Pryce brought us to see what we could look forward to someday, to get some fresh air, and to undergo a few ritual cleansings to prepare for magical training.
I wasn’t going to do those. No magical training for me, just like no physical training. I was supposed to watch the Littles while Imogen went through it. Back in those days she took care of them part-time. They wouldn’t let Imogen train to be a full Watcher, because her mother, Gwendolyn Post, had betrayed the Watchers and tricked the Slayers into giving her a weapon of unimaginable power. It had always nagged at me that Imogen was held accountable for something she hadn’t even done. We were here because of our parents, sure, but that didn’t mean we were them—or even who they wanted us to be. I knew that better than anyone.
But Ruth bent the rules for Imogen because she wanted everyone who could to have basic spell training, and the best place for it was our seat of ancient power. So our heritage saved our lives. The castle protected us from being blown up along with the rest of our people.
“We should be out there with them.” I place my hand against the shelf sealing us in. I don’t say what I really mean, which is that Rhys should be out there with them. He’s the one who got picked to train as a future Council member. But we both know why Artemis is running the defense and Rhys is hiding here with us.