Slayer (Slayer #1)

Physically affectionate Artemis makes alarm bells go off. If she’s hugging me, I’m right. Something is seriously wrong.

“I had no idea what actually happened,” she says, pulling back and inspecting me, searching my face to confirm I’m okay. “When I saw the dead hellhound outside, I assumed Rhys killed it. God, Nina. I should have been there.”

“You couldn’t have known. None of us could have.”

“How did you kill it?”

I swallow the rising panic. There’s so much I’ve kept locked away inside, unwilling to confront it myself. So much I couldn’t say aloud, because that would make it real. The dam finally opens. “It was like—like I wasn’t me anymore,” I admit. “Artemis, I’m scared.” My eyes fill with tears.

“The closet?” Artemis’s tone is gentler than I’ve heard in a long time.

Suddenly she’s not Castle Artemis. She’s my Artemis—my twin sister, who I can trust with anything. We climb into the closet and sit shoulder to shoulder. We used to do this in our old house, hide in our closet when we were little and did something naughty. Later, it was where she’d take me when the nightmares were too bad and I was too scared to sleep. It’s our place for telling secrets.

And I’ve never had a bigger one.

I scoot so that my back is against the wall, smashing the hanging clothes. Mine are all bright, rainbow colors, pieces that make me happy when I need it. Artemis’s are all black, utilitarian. If she ever needs cheering, she doesn’t have time to look for it in what she wears.

She mimics my posture. “Tell me.”

I take a deep breath. “I didn’t know what I was doing when the hellhound attacked. It was like instinct. My body took over completely and I killed that thing without even thinking.”

She doesn’t respond.

The thing I’m most scared of, the thing I’ve been ignoring, comes to the surface like a demon crawling from the blackest depths. I should have told her the day I first felt it. But what if Artemis can’t fix this? Artemis fixes everything, but this might be too much for even her. What will that do to her, if she can’t help? What will it do to me?

“I’ve . . . I’ve been feeling weird. For a couple of months now.”

The timing is not lost on her. “A couple of months generally, or a couple of months precisely?”

“Do you remember the day with the big transdimensional demons?”

Artemis chokes out a laugh. “I do, in fact, remember that day.”

• • •

We had been outside, on one of Artemis’s rare breaks.

I shifted on the blanket and squinted up at the sky. “What does that cloud look like to you?”

Artemis didn’t look up from her sandwich. “Water vapor.”

I elbowed her in the side. “Come on. Use your imagination.”

“I can’t. My imagination died a long, agonizing death due to inhaling too much weapon polish.”

I shifted onto my side to face her. “You don’t have to do all the grunt work, you know.”

Artemis rolled her eyes. Sometimes I watched her face and wondered if mine looked the same when I made those expressions. We had mirror features, but mine didn’t work like hers. Everything she did was pointed, precise, powerful. Everything I did was . . .

Not.

I shooed away a fat black fly buzzing close to my face. “You’re smarter than all those stuffy old layabouts, anyway. You should be doing the research and writing while they do the polishing.”

“I didn’t pass the test, so this is my role. And it’s not like there’s anyone else to do it.”

Rhys collapsed onto the blanket next to me. He and Artemis had been training since they were children. As soon as we rejoined the Watchers, Artemis was put straight into full potential Council training. Our mother insisted on it. She never even let me try. But why couldn’t we have Council members who were focused on healing? Who viewed the world—both natural and supernatural—as something to be fixed, not fought?

“What does that cloud look like to you?” I asked, pointing.