Chosen

by Kiersten White

  I laugh, a sharp, harsh sound. “I didn’t have to watch myself suffer, I had to feel myself suffer. I had to live it. You don’t know what’s best for me.”

  Rhys adjusts his glasses again. “My mind is made up. There’s a reason Slayers had Watchers. Sometimes someone less close to the problem needs to make the decision.”

  Cillian drops his book on the floor. He may as well have slapped Rhys. Rhys stares in horror, but Cillian leans back, folding his arms. “Maybe some people need to decide for themselves what will help them be better off.” Then he slowly, deliberately puts his feet on top of the book like it’s a footrest.

  Rhys stands, sputtering. “Get out of my library!”

  “Gladly! Nina, let’s go.”

  “Where are you going?” Rhys demands.

  “Why don’t you research to find out?”

  I follow Cillian. I have to figure out where Leo is on my own, and I’m so mad at everyone in this garbage castle for thinking they know what I need more than I do. We nearly run into Jade. One look at her face shows she’s in as bad a way as we are, at least emotionally.

  “Misery, meet company. Come on,” Cillian says, gesturing to the massive front door. “We’re going out.”

  Jade never gives up a chance to sleep. She spends most afternoons napping. So I’m surprised when she twitches and then nods. “Yeah. I wanna come.”

  Jessi peers out the door to the gym. “Where are you all going?”

  “Out. Wanna come?”

  “Yes, I’d be happy to leave three innocent children alone so they can get themselves fed dinner and bathed and tucked into bed with a story and a kiss. Honestly. If I had any powers left, you’d—” She slams the door.

  “I’m not really sorry she passed,” Cillian says.

  “Yeah, me neither.” I link my arm through his and we walk straight out of the castle. A figure is lurking right outside the door, and I have a stake in hand immediately.

  “There’s gonna be a lot of blood to clean up if you stake me.” Maricruz peels herself free from the shadowy alcove of the castle steps. “Needed some air. I’m assuming that’s okay?”

  Taylor, her blond shadow, is nowhere to be seen. “Come with us,” Jade said.

  “Am I in trouble?”

  Cillian looks determined. “Not yet, but the afternoon is young.”

  The car is where we parked it outside the garage. I have the phone with me, and I’m powerless until Artemis calls back. Might as well kill some time. I toss the keys to Cillian. He starts the car and we peel out. He does a terrible job street parking on the cobblestones in front of his shop, but it’s Shancoom. Traffic is like something out of a fairy tale here. Far away and make-believe.

  He unlocks the shop and we tumble in. I love it in here. It used to be a magic supply shop, but when magic died and Cillian’s mother took off, Cillian needed a way for it to make money. He converted it to a soda and sweets shop. Shancoom gets a mild number of tourists, which means he sells just enough to keep the lights on at his house.

  “Oh! I have fifty thousand pounds!” The fact that I almost forgot is a testament to how much else has been going on the last few days. Oz brought the bag in before he left, and I tucked it away in the gym. Without telling my mother, maybe a little because I felt like the fact that I had a freshly murdered man’s money might not reflect very well on my innocence.

  “Then why the hell are we at Cillian’s soda shop and not on a tropical island?” Jade gestures at her heavily coated self. “I look really good in a bikini! I think. I’ve never actually owned one.”

  “Bikinis not standard Watcher-issued clothing?” Cillian asks, pulling out several glass bottles of Coke from his fridge and popping the lids off. He also grabs a root beer, which he keeps on hand only for me because no one in this country appreciates the delicious American taste.

  “They don’t come in tweed,” I snort, imagining Rhys in tweed board shorts. Cillian must be doing the same, because he collapses with giggles.

  “Instead of a three-piece suit, he’d wear a three-piece swimsuit.” Cillian gasps for air, and I lean over the counter, holding my stomach.

  “You two are ridiculous.” Jade takes a long swig of her Coke. Her eyes are heavily lined with turquoise, maybe to distract from the bags under them. She looks rough. “Seriously, though, where did you get fifty thousand pounds and what are you going to do with it?”

  “I share this question.” Maricruz sits at the counter and looks around the room.

  “Got it from the rich dead guy because I won his hunt. And I’m going to use it to fund Sanctuary for the next few months until we figure out ways to generate more income.”

  “Well, that’s … responsible, I guess.” Maricruz taps her black fingernails against the side of her Coke bottle. Then her face lights up and she raises one eyebrow. “Too responsible. I’ll be back.” She slips out the door. Cillian, Jade, and I shrug at one another, then proceed to design Rhys’s ideal bathing suit. I check my phone obsessively, but it remains stubbornly blank.

  Maricruz reappears with a bag. It clinks ominously. “Guess who remembered the legal drinking age in this country is lower?” She pulls out a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of absinthe.

  “Absinthe?” I ask.

  “No way!” Jade takes the bottle and holds it out, gazing at it. “It was my coven’s favorite.” She spent several months undercover in a coven that subcontracted for Buffy back when Buffy was leading an army of Slayers all across the globe. It disbanded when magic died. “Absinthe is awful, but I kind of miss it. And them. It was nice, you know? Having a purpose.”

  “Spying on Buffy?” I ask.

  “You spied on Buffy?” Maricruz seems less alarmed than curious.

  Jade pushes her hair out of her face, then pulls three glasses from under the counter. “Yes, but I was also part of the coven. We did all sorts of stuff. I really liked it. Like having sisters.”

  “Sisters are overrated.” I scowl at my glass as Jade fills it with just a bit of whiskey and then pours in Coke to dilute it.

  “Amen,” Maricruz mutters.

  “To rubbish families, dead fathers, absent mothers, and lost sisters,” Cillian says, holding up his glass.

  We all cheers to that. The whiskey burns, and not even this much Coke can cut through it. But I drink it anyway. An hour later, we’re lying on the floor in a square, heads on one another’s stomachs. I have the phone balanced on my forehead, willing it to ring.

  “Bollocks,” Cillian says. “Joan of Arc was not a Slayer.”

  “She was so!” I gesture aggressively, spilling half my drink down my arm. The phone slips off and clatters to the floor. “The Siege of Orléans was actually a vampire siege. It was one of the only known organized vampire armies in history. Generally vampires are solitary, but they had a very charismatic leader who saw the upheaval as an opportunity to place kings and rulers who were sympathetic to them and would turn a blind eye to their activities. Orléans contained a Watcher outpost, and they wanted to burn it down. One of the Watchers was an advisor to the French regent, who the vampires were hoping to sire. But they knew they had to get rid of the local Watchers first.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “She’s not.” Jade has both her hands in the air, admiring her manicure. “We have a whole series of books on it. The Watchers were heavily involved in the Hundred Years’ War and the War of the Roses. Richard the Third was half demon.”

  “No!”

  “Yes. That’s why his skeletal structure was so odd.”

  “You’re all such nerds,” Maricruz says in a dreamy, affectionate tone.

  “Anyway,” I say, “Joan was a Slayer. I’ve never run into her in my dreams, though. I’ll have to look for her. Except my dreams seem broken lately.”

  “To broken dreams!” Jade picks up her glass and lifts it in the air.

  “Are your Slayer dreams working?” I ask Maricruz.

  “I don’t like dreaming.”

  Cillian
interrupts. “So did the queen ever have her own Watcher to advise her on supernatural threats?”

  Jade turns her head where it rests on my stomach and makes eye contact with me, slowly winking one eye. “Oh yes.”

  I pick it up. “For centuries. Queen Elizabeth had an affair with hers. It was very scandalous.”

  “No!”

  “Mm-hmm.” Jade pauses. “Though obviously it didn’t produce Charles. He’s all Philip’s. Which means my crush on Prince Harry is not at all incestuous.”

  I nod. “An important point.”

  Maricruz narrows her eyes. “Wait, was it your—”

  “A great-great-uncle or something.” Jade shrugs casually.

  I keep going. “So her great-great-uncle was out, but they put another Watcher in after. It was a very prestigious position. The queen’s Watcher had a number assigned so the queen’s forces could talk about him without giving away his role. Some numbers have magical significance. This one was an infinity symbol followed by a seven.”

  Jade manages to keep her voice even. “They called him Double O Seven to simplify, though.”

  Cillian sits straight up, dislodging my head from his abdomen. “No fecking way. Watchers were 007? Watchers? It was real?”

  I lean back on my elbows. “Well, yeah. Most things are real. Normal people catch rumors and make them into stories. Myths. Spy novels.”

  Maricruz’s lips are pursed, and her cheeks are getting steadily darker from holding back a laugh. I flash my eyes at her, and she gives a minute nod. She’s onto us, but she’s not spoiling it.

  “But Ian Fleming got it mostly wrong.” Jade sits up too, pouring herself a new drink. “Double O Seven wasn’t dealing with Russians and spies, he was protecting the queen from an order of vampires who planned to use her in a sacrifice to end the sun and bring about eternal darkness so they could ravage the land at their leisure.”

  Cillian’s dark eyes are almost circles, they’re open so wide. He shakes his head. “I can’t believe this.”

  “You shouldn’t,” I snort, finally breaking.

  Jade cackles. “None of it was true.” Maricruz throws her head back as she laughs, though I don’t know how she knew we were lying.

  “You absolute cows!” Cillian grabs a handful of crisps from a bowl and throws them at us.

  “But the Joan of Arc thing was true!” I say.

  “Like I’ll believe anything out of your mouth now.”

  “Double O Seven!” Jade laughs until she falls over. I can’t stop either.

  Cillian finally joins us. “You Only Live Twice was obviously about vampires.”

  Maricruz claps her hands. “On Her Majesty’s Supernatural Service.”

  “The Watcher Who Loved Me.” I laugh until my stomach hurts, until tears stream from my eyes.

  Jade does too, until I realize her laughter has shifted from laugh-crying to actual crying. I turn on my side to look at her. “What’s wrong?”

  She takes a few breaths to calm herself down until she can talk. “I think I really do like Doug. Not just because of the happy stuff. He’s so funny and kind. And he has the prettiest eyes. But I blew it, and I wish I could go back, and I used to know a spell for that, but it won’t work now, so it’s broken and it’s my fault and there’s nothing I can do.”

  “We can never go back.” Maricruz looks haunted.

  “Are you and what’s-her-face a thing?” Jade asks, sniffling.

  “Taylor? No. She’s my friend. She’s the reason I was hiding outside. I love her. I’d do anything for her. Have done anything for her. But sometimes it gets too heavy, you know? I keep waiting for her to get better, and she doesn’t. And I’ll always love her and be there for her. But I’m tired. And I can’t let her know I’m tired, or it’ll hurt her, and I won’t ever be the one to hurt her.”

  Cillian squeezes her hand. “You’re a good friend. How did you end up in Buffy’s army? Why did you leave New York?” Cillian asks.

  She shakes her head. “There are lots of kinds of monsters. I don’t want to talk about it. I wouldn’t go back, even if I could.”

  Jade is still crying. Cillian sits up and pulls her over so her head is resting on his leg. He strokes her hair gently. “Sometimes I wish the world hadn’t changed. If magic hadn’t gone away, my mother wouldn’t have left to chase it. But then I never would have known the truth about you guys. And finally gotten close to my boyfriend. Rhys is it for me. I know he is. But sometimes he gets so rigid, and it’s like he disappears behind his glasses and books, and I don’t know how to reach him.”

  “It’s how he was raised,” I say, my tears real now too. “None of us were taught how to have healthy relationships.” I sniffle unattractively. “My ex-could-have-been-boyfriend stayed with a predatory creep instead of coming back to us for help. And now that he’s not dead anymore, he’s maybe dying.”

  Jade’s still crying, but she also snorts a laugh. “Cheers. You win.”

  Cillian nods in agreement, lifting his empty glass. Maricruz doesn’t look up.

  I meet Cillian’s glass with my own. “Bully for me.”

  On cue, my phone dings. I scrabble for it, thinking it’s Artemis. But it’s an angry text from Rhys, demanding to know where we are. I text back. “Drunk at the soda shop,” I mumble aloud, squinting at the screen. “Can’t drive back. Come pick us up.”

  PICK YOURSELVES UP is the response.

  “Looks like we’re walking.” I stand, my leg half asleep from being against the hard linoleum floor. The door chimes, and Cillian’s mom observes us with her hands on her hips.

  “One of you is not old enough to drink.” She gives me a heavy look. I can feel my face burning. One thing I haven’t been able to shed from my Watcher upbringing is the absolute shame of breaking any rules. We lived by rules, and frequently died if those rules weren’t followed.

  I hang my head. “Sorry.”

  “I won’t tell your mother, if you promise not to do it again.”

  “Oh, bugger off.” Cillian scowls.

  His mother seems to grow somehow, her braids wrapped around her head like a terrible crown of power and authority. “Young man.”

  “Can you give us a ride back to our castle?” Jade asks, hiccupping. “We’re all very drunk.”

  I shove her. But I’m tipsy and not paying attention to things like extra strength. She goes careening into the counter. “Sorry!”

  “Bish,” she slurs, glaring at me and rubbing her hip. Maricruz helps right her.

  “Well. I don’t approve of this, but I’m glad you all had the sense not to try and drive. I’ll give you a ride back.” She waits as we slink out and Cillian turns off the lights and locks up.

  “I like what you did with the shop,” she says.

  His silence is more aggressive than my Jade shoving. When we get to the castle, he climbs out of the car.

  “You aren’t coming home?” his mother asks.

  He doesn’t respond as he stomps away toward the front door. Maricruz and Jade follow him, weaving. Esther turns off the car and climbs out. Her voice is low and sad. “I’ll walk back. Here are the keys.”

  “He’s angry,” I say.

  “I know.”

  “You should talk to him.”

  “I know.”

  “My mom never talked to me.”

  She reaches out and pats my cheek, her hand soft and warm. “Motherhood is far more complicated than you can even imagine.”

  “Then make it simple. We need to know what the triangle thing was. Even if it hurts.”

  “What if it hurts him?” She’s watching him walk away with a look I can’t interpret.

  “I’ll protect him.”

  “Keep him away from this. If you want to know more, come talk to me about it. Without Cillian. The Sleeping One worshippers have been around for centuries; they’re not going anywhere now. But tell Cillian whatever you have to in order to keep him out of it. Okay?”

  I don’t know why she needs him excluded,
but there’s an intensity and desperation to her plea that I respond to. And the Sleeping One is a name I haven’t heard before. It might be enough to find information even if butthead Artemis never calls me back. “Okay. I’ll visit tomorrow afternoon.” I have castle meetings in the morning, and I still have to visit Leo.

  She nods, then walks back into the woods.

  I catch up to the others, bid Maricruz good night, and help a staggering Jade inside to her room, then follow Cillian to mine.

  I throw myself onto my bed and squeeze my eyes shut. I have so much spinning around me. So many questions and problems. What I need is a Watcher. Leo was supposed to be my Watcher. I should be able to turn all this nonsense over to him so I can focus on the important, punchy bits. But I can’t even talk to him, apparently.

  Slayer stamina means most of the alcohol has already left my system. That hardly seems like a fair side effect. If anyone should be able to get good and sloshed on occasion, it’s Slayers. But as it leaves, I realize I know exactly where Leo is. Which means I’ll talk to him tomorrow.

  I fall asleep listening to my phone ring and ring and fail to connect me with Artemis.

  19

  CHAO-AHN IS IN HER CARTOON hall of horrors, waiting for me.

  “I don’t want any ice cream.”

  “You are always gone. You don’t talk to me.” She jabs at me with a spoon.

  “It’s not a slumber-party scenario! You three can stay as long as you want. We’ll protect you. But I kind of have a lot going on right now.”

  She mutters something in Cantonese that feels like swearing at me, even if I don’t understand the words. I grab the carton of ice cream and shovel it into my mouth. “Happy?” I mumble around it.

  She shakes her head. “This would be easier if we were awake.”

  “And we’d be less likely to be stabbed by her.” I nod toward Sineya, prowling on the edges of the dream.

  “She never stabs me. She likes me.”

  “Congratulations.” I salute her with my spoon. “Have you seen Buffy around? I can’t find her lately.”

  Chao-Ahn scowls. “No.”