Slayer (Slayer #1)

She rubs her face, then tugs her hair back into a ponytail. “It’s not like you have a choice. You’re already a Slayer. Ignoring it won’t make it go away.”

It stings. “I know that. Obviously. But that doesn’t make it suck less that I don’t have any choices here.”

Artemis stands, turning her back on me as she pulls clothes out of the closet for herself. She’s going to the meeting even though I told her not to. Her voice is soft when she finally speaks again. “When have we ever had choices?”

I stand to go to her, but she turns and tosses her clothing selection onto her bed, avoiding my eyes. “I can train you. Besides, we don’t even know what they’re going to say at the meeting. One step at a time.”

“Thanks.” I mean it. I feel better with her on my side, because she’s always been on my side. She’s the one who got them to approve my castle clinic and the funds to stock it, after all. Even when she doesn’t care about the same things I do, she cares about me. I start to rethink my decision to hide the demon from her. “Listen, last night—”

There’s a knock on our door. “Artemis?”

It’s our mom.

We share a look of fear. I throw myself back into bed, feigning sleep. Artemis opens the door softly. “What?” she whispers.

“Good, you’re up. I need your help checking the perimeters to see if we can determine where the hellhound came from.”

“Give me a second to change.”

The door closes. Our mom never visits us at this hour. I half suspect she was using the hellhound as an excuse to make sure I was here. I don’t peek my eyes open, just in case, as Artemis gets dressed and then slips out. I sit up, annoyed. I don’t even get a conversation, let alone a request to help, even though it was me who killed the hellhound. Artemis is still the one our mother chooses. Even when I’m a Chosen One.

And now I’m going to be late. I pad silently through the castle’s dark halls, careful that I don’t bump into my mother. The training center is located in the old throne room, which was converted to a gym. Another room I never had a place in. But I know where it is.

I duck inside just in time to see a knife flying through the air, right at my face.

8

I STARE UP AT THE knife, embedded and still quivering in the door where my head had been a split second before. I’m on my back on the floor. My body knew how to avoid the danger, even if my brain didn’t.

“In situations such as this,” Bradford Smythe says, sounding like he’s delivering a well-rehearsed lecture on geometry, “you’re supposed to catch the knife. That way you avoid being stabbed and take control of the weapon for your own use.”

“I’ll remember that the next time someone throws a knife at my head!” I stand, furious, and then freeze. Because it isn’t just Bradford “Good Morning, Here’s a Knife” Smythe in the training room. It’s also Eve Silvera.

And Leo.

I am suddenly aware—with more panicked urgency than the knife had induced—that I rolled out of bed and came straight here. My hair is wild on one side and flat on the other. My face probably still has pillow creases. And I’m wearing a long-sleeved flannel shirt three sizes too big . . . with shorts underneath so short it looks like I’m only wearing the shirt. I was so bleary from my whacked-out dreams that I didn’t even bother changing into appropriate clothes for knife dodging. Which I would have had to borrow from Artemis in the first place. But I thought this was a talking meeting, not one that would threaten my life.

“Hello, Athena,” Leo says.

I had forgotten. He’s the only person around here who calls me by my real name. When I was little I was always Athena, but after the fire and my brief hospital stay, somehow it turned into Nina. I became someone to be taken care of and got pet-named right out of the Greek pantheon. The way Leo said my name used to flutter my stomach, because I thought it meant he saw me or respected me or wanted to marry me once we were both older so we could be the ultimate Watcher couple and save the world together while also maybe riding horses under a rainbow along a beach.

(There was a poem about that too. I’ve never been so prolific about anything in my life as I was during my Leo Poetry phase.)

I tug my shirt down, which makes the neck slip over one of my shoulders. Oh, sweet hellmouths, I’m not even wearing a bra. When I imagined meeting Leo again—which wasn’t often, because I was pretty sure he was dead and it was easier to not imagine him at all—it had always been in some really cool way. Like he was horribly injured and my quick thinking stopped the bleeding and saved his life. Or . . . well, actually, all my scenarios involved him being horribly injured. It was comforting. And it meant he would be the one embarrassed, not me.

None of them involved him standing professionally beside his mother while I was in my pajamas.

Gods, I hate him.

“Nina?” Eve asks.

I hastily do the top two buttons of my shirt and focus on her instead. She’s dressed as formally as she was during the meeting we spied on, but now her blazer is a deep plum. Her lipstick matches it again. I remember I’m not supposed to have been listening to the meeting, so I should be shocked they’re here. “Hi! Wow, you’re back.”

Her lips twist in an amused smile. “I am well aware of the secrets of this castle. Namely that it has no secrets. You don’t have to pretend like you didn’t know.”

I hurry to change the subject, not wanting to reveal the secret passageways. “I’m glad you guys aren’t dead!” Oh gods, let me stop talking. “I mean, we thought you were. Dead. And we were all really sad!” It comes out sounding cringingly insincere, which makes me feel awful—despite my never wanting to see Leo again, it was terrible believing the Silveras were dead. “It’s, uh, nice for someone to be alive for once. Usually it’s the opposite. Hey, does anyone have another knife they want to throw at me?”

Bradford Smythe lets out a phlegmy laugh. Then he gets serious, his bushy eyebrows half covering his eyes, like Spanish moss hanging on a tree. “Nina, my child, you’re a Slayer.”