Slayer(17)

I didn’t think about his lips once. Because I literally never stopped thinking about them. They were the subject of one of the poems Honora read aloud.

Your lips are a promise

I’d love to keep

They haunt me when waking

And tease when asleep

His poetic lips part as he answers a question about Costa Rica. I’m annoyed with them for taking up time. Shouldn’t the Council be talking about the hellhound? And me? Even when I do something that should have been impossible, actual trained Watchers take precedence. Typical.

Leo has changed, though. It’s been years, after all. He’s taller. He was always lean, but what had been youthful skinniness has filled out into muscles, much like his face has settled into the best version of itself. If anything, he’s handsomer than ever.

What an absolute butthead.

His jerk mouth opens and his jerk voice answers another question about his time in South America. “Yes, sir. I continued my training. We had to be flexible, of course, lacking the resources of the Council. My Watcher project was more of a practical examination than a scholarly presentation. I studied the habits of a parasitic demon in Venezuela and determined a magical inoculation that prevented it from feeding on the people there, killing it.”

“What have you been doing here?” Eve Silvera asks the Council. She seems so nice that I feel bad resenting her. But I want them gone. I can’t imagine they’ll stay here long. Leo will probably do what Honora did—she’s out hunting demons, her ear to the ground so we’ll know if anything big is coming. After all, what’s a Watcher without—

“Slayers?” Eve asks, finishing my thought for me. “You mean to tell me you haven’t brought in any of the new Slayers? What have you been doing all this time?”

“There were the children to think about.” Bradford Smythe’s voice is so low it sounds growly even when he’s being cheerful, which he isn’t right now.

“Yes, but there have always been children. We’re all that’s left of the Watchers. We have a responsibility to do our jobs, and our jobs don’t exist without a Slayer.”

My mother answers. I don’t remember her having a British accent when we were little, but now her words are clipped, efficient. Vowels are wrangled into perfect order. Even her voice changed when we rejoined the Watchers. “Safety was the first priority. We couldn’t risk revealing our location after the attack. With so many new Slayers, they couldn’t be properly vetted. And then the world changed yet again with the destruction of magic.”

“But you were looking for Slayers,” Eve says. “That’s where we found you. Outside that poor girl’s village. We were all too late.”

My mother’s words grow even more deliberate, as though each is chosen for its utter lack of meaning. “I was conducting Slayer-related field observations in conjunction with confirming the closing of all hell-dimension access points.”

Artemis shifts beside me. We both know what it sounds like when our mother gives a nonanswer in order to avoid a lie. Why would she tell us that she was checking hellmouths if she was actually searching for Slayers?

Ruth Zabuto’s voice trembles. “Do you have any magic, Eve?”

Eve shakes her head, gentle and apologetic. “Since Buffy destroyed the Seed of Wonder, we have not seen any evidence of magic. And all the portals are gone. We’ve been traveling too, checking them to make certain nothing remained that we were unaware of.”

“I’m surprised we didn’t find each other sooner.” Once again my mother’s tone is so careful I suspect there’s more meaning to her statement.

Wanda Wyndam-Pryce clears her throat. “Best to be thorough with our checks. Well done.” She acts like she assigned the Silveras to do it. She has a way of saying things that makes it sound like everyone works for her, all the time. “I expect you’ll have a written report for us soon.”

I’m still annoyed this is taking precedence over today’s hellhound attack, but there are hundreds of semipermanent portal sites across the globe. My mom has covered only the UK and North, Central, and South America. So there’s still work to be done. A goal. A goal that will take the Silveras away from here before I ever have to look in Leo’s eyes again.

After all, his eyes are like two pools of blackness, so dark and deep, when I look at him, I cannot breathe. Oh, I hate him. Or I hate poor thirteen-year-old me.

“Between Helen’s information and ours, we can officially declare all hellmouths and demonic portals inactive. Now that we’re reunited, it’s time to move forward. To become Watchers again. It’s time,” Eve says, my hopes for their swift exit sinking, “to get a Slayer.”

“We already have one,” Ruth Zabuto says with a dismissive wave of her hand.

Bradford Smythe reflexively coughs.

My mother speaks first, her tone no longer passive. “No, we do not.”

Wanda Wyndam-Pryce pounces. She’s always hated my mother. The Wyndam-Pryces were once considered the most prestigious Watcher family, but then their golden boy, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce—they have a thing for alliteration and for feeling superior—was so staggeringly inept that he was fired from the Council. Wanda has never gotten over her disappointment that my father’s tenure as a Watcher is held in esteem while the Wyndam-Pryces’ only actively assigned Watcher ended up as a private investigator in Los Angeles—working for a vampire.