Slayer (Slayer #1)

Leo leans against the wall, settling in. “I want to talk to her in person. Make sure she’s okay.”

We can’t afford to hang around all night. The Doug problem is still waiting for me back at the castle, as well as the mystery of Bradford’s death. I want to press my mother for some actual answers. I bet Eve will back me up. Hell, Wanda Wyndam-Pryce will too, if only to catch my mom in wrongdoing again. I don’t want to believe it was my mom who’s been contacting demons and bringing them to the very castle she spent all this time keeping secret, but it seems more and more likely. That, or it really was Bradford, and he’s dead because of it.

Cosmina can’t take up too much of our time. She’s pretty low priority, all things considered. I knock harder, and the door swings open. It hasn’t been latched all the way. Dread pooling deep in my stomach, I force myself to step into the apartment.

Cosmina’s home after all.

Sort of.

23

I’M FIXATED ON THE YELLOW ducks. No girl wearing pajamas with yellow ducks on them should be lying dead on the floor.

“Bed’s cold,” Artemis says. “But it looks like she was in it before this happened. Check the body for marks.”

Leo’s frozen at my side. We came to help her. We were too late. I was too late. My dreams gave her to me, and I failed her. My father died to save a Slayer. I wouldn’t even risk losing my spot in the castle for her sake.

“Window’s secure, and we’re four stories up. They probably got in through the door. Check the body!” Artemis snaps her fingers impatiently.

She’s not my Watcher. But she is the only one of us who seems capable of coherent thought. I half expect her to tell me to leave the room, to shield me from this, but she’s done doing that, apparently. I kneel next to Cosmina’s body. She’s lying on her back, staring at the ceiling. According to movies I should close her eyelids, but it feels disrespectful. She met death open-eyed and fighting. Who am I to pretend she’s at peace?

“No marks.” I check her neck and exposed skin. “Her knuckles look raw, but that might have been from before.” She’s stiff, too. I haven’t studied dead bodies as much as living ones, but I suspect she’s been dead for more than a few hours. Possibly a full day.

“Was it your demon?” Artemis asks.

“First of all, he’s not my demon,” I snap. “If anything, he was Honora’s. And second of all, Cosmina’s been dead awhile, probably since before Doug got free. Maybe it was the fighting pit people.” Cosmina knew they were dangerous. They’d already proven as much. Why didn’t we force her to come with us then? Protect her?

It would have been against her will, though. I don’t know that we could have. She’d been a Slayer a lot longer than me.

And now she’s dead.

Artemis steps around a fallen lamp, her boots crunching brightly in the glass. “You don’t know Doug’s not a killer. And there was definitely a struggle.”

“This wasn’t Doug,” I repeat, but I’m distracted.

Cosmina was probably asleep when she was attacked. And there are no marks on her. It’s too much like Bradford Smythe. I want Eve’s other theory to be true—the one where I dreamed Bradford’s death because my super Slayer senses clued me in that he was sick—but the similarities are too much to discount. Which makes two dead bodies. But what do Bradford and Cosmina have in common? Or rather, what did they?

“Why do you think Mom decided we needed to help Cosmina right now? And only wanted to send Leo?” I ask. “Doesn’t it seem suspicious that Mom wanted to track down Cosmina specifically? The one Slayer we secretly already knew?”

“And who was already dead.” Artemis frowns, staring at the body. “Where did Mom get her information?”

“She had a book full of addresses. She must have taken her Slayer database off the computer.”

“It is weird,” Artemis says. I fight back the deeply inappropriate elation I feel that she agrees with me. “And why send Leo? Why didn’t she come herself?”

“She could be helping take care of Bradford’s body,” Leo says. It’s generous of him. But it doesn’t seem right.

“She was going somewhere. When we ran into her and she told you to do this. Remember? She had a bag. I don’t think it was anything to do with Bradford.”

“Don’t jump to any conclusions,” Leo says. “You don’t have all the information. I—”

“Looks like I don’t need an invitation anymore.” A vampire steps across the door’s threshold, grinning. Before we can react, she jumps at Leo, going straight for his neck. He ducks under her lunge, twists, and throws her against the wall.

She lands in a heap, then stands, laughing. “Whoops. Should have gone for the scrawny one first.” She winks at me.

Artemis pulls out a stake, doing a super-intimidating move where she spins it over the back of her hand and catches it again. I spent a whole summer when I was fourteen trying to learn it. Emphasis on “trying.”

“Who sent you?” Artemis demands.