She nods and disappears. When she comes back, she’s scowling. “They almost staked me! They’re so jumpy.”
“Did you appear in the closet next to them?”
“Yes, obviously. That was fastest.”
I take a deep breath, my heart hammering, my soul as bruised as my body. “But everyone there is okay.”
“Yes. Jessi yelled at me for scaring the small people, though.”
“Go back—through the door this time—and tell Jessi to take them to Cillian’s house. Tell them to leave through the window. I don’t want the Littles seeing any of this.” Not the hellhound corpse, not my unconscious mother, and certainly not this horror in the library.
Oh gods, what will I tell the Littles if Ruth dies? She’s Thea’s great-great-aunt and basically a grandmother to all of them. We never should have kept the Littles here. We should have sent them away years ago. My idea for Sanctuary was not only inherently flawed, it was deeply selfish. I’m as bad as the old Watchers. I decided it was going to be what I wanted it to be, and I barreled forward, not considering the risks.
Now Ruth Zabuto still might die, Leo is taken, and these little kids could have been kidnapped or worse. Because if Artemis did this to Ruth, then I was wrong to assume she’d leave the Littles alone. I have no idea what she is capable of. Maybe I never did.
And it is all—entirely, every bit of it—my fault. I let Artemis do everything she did.
I can’t wrap my head around the image of my sister slitting ancient Ruth’s throat, though. Why? Why would she do this? What happened to her?
“Nina,” Imogen says. She eyes Ruth with shock. “She’s not dead? I thought she was dead. There’s no way someone could survive that.”
Rhys gasps a sob, taking his grandmother’s hand. I help Cillian load her onto the stretcher.
“She’s stronger than anyone,” Cillian says. “She’ll make it.”
“Rhys, we’re giving her your blood.”
He nods through his tears. I know the basics of how to do a blood transfusion. It’s one of the things I studied more than anything else. I thought I’d have to use it someday because of a vampire attack.
Not because of my own sister.
“Cillian, I’m sending the Littles to your house. But I need to know. Is it safe?” I can’t discount the fact that his mom has items connecting her to all of this. She was willing to talk to me, but I never got to visit and find out what she knows. And Artemis pretended to be willing to talk to me too. We can’t trust family anymore. We can’t trust anyone.
Cillian squeezes my shoulder. It hurts. “She’s not a bad person. I’m sure.”
Jade picks up one end of the stretcher. “Come on, let’s get to the medical center. Then I’ll come back to help … clean up.” She used to work closely with Ruth. They both specialized in magic before it died. Jade stares down at Ruth, who is so much lighter than her mounds of shawls would have hinted at. She barely feels here at all. It makes it seem that much more likely she won’t stay. Cillian gently nudges me out of the way and takes the other end of the stretcher. I follow them down the hallways, both moving as fast as is safe while Rhys pads alongside his grandmother, still holding her hand.
Artemis. My sister. My mirror image. Attacking wrinkled and perpetually beshawled Ruth Zabuto, whom we’ve known since we were little girls. Putting a knife to her throat and cutting.
I try not to picture it, but I can’t picture anything else as we hurry through the hallways toward the place where maybe I can still help at least one person.
* * *
Two hours later, Rhys is down quite a bit of blood and his grandma seems stable, as far as I can tell. I debated sending her to the nearest hospital, but it’s an hour away. I don’t doubt she would have died before getting there, and I don’t know how we’d explain her injury or the way it was closed. I’ve got her on a fluid IV, and we’re monitoring her vitals. Her pulse is weak but steady. She hasn’t woken up, though.
I’m sitting in the hall outside the medical center. Having Ruth on a cot inside with Rhys sitting next to her takes up nearly all the space, but I don’t want to be far in case she wakes up.
Imogen seems surprised to see me there. She must be here to check on Ruth. She peers inside and sees Rhys there. “You two should go rest. I’ll watch her.”
“No,” Rhys says. His voice is raw but determined.
She hesitates, then joins me on the floor. “How are you?”
“I can’t figure it out. Why would Artemis try to kill Ruth? Can you tell me exactly how it happened?”
Imogen sighs. “Artemis came into the castle through the library window. Ruth tried to stop her. I was behind the false shelves in the secret room guarding the passage. By the time I got out, it was too late.”
“Almost too late,” I correct. I need that “almost” more than I’ve ever needed anything. “She’s too old. I should never have kept her here. Or the Littles. I put everyone at risk.” I hang my head and put my hands over my eyes. “You were all at risk this whole time just by being around me. I threatened Tsip, and I meant it. And I almost—I could have—Imogen, I could have killed someone today. A person, not a vampire.”
Imogen reaches out and takes my hand, squeezing it. “But you didn’t. Your sister did, though. Or at least tried to. She cut Ruth’s throat, Nina, and she left you for dead too.”
“When are we going after her?” Rhys asks. He’s standing in the doorway. His face is grim and cold, the bandage on his arm evidence of what he was willing to sacrifice to keep his grandma alive.
“I don’t know.”
“Not good enough,” he snaps. “You knew, didn’t you? You knew she was working with these maniacs. And you didn’t tell us.”
“I knew,” I whisper.
“And now my grandma is—” He chokes on the words. When he can speak again, his voice is cold. “You protected Artemis, and we all paid the price. No more. We need a plan.”
Imogen laces her fingers through mine. “We’re going to get Leo back, which means we’re going to face her again. And we need to know that you understand.”
“Understand what?” I don’t understand anything.
“She chose a side, and it wasn’t ours. She’s our enemy. We can’t afford to think of her as anything else now. I’m worried—hell, I’m terrified—that next time you go against her, she won’t be satisfied with burying you under a tower wall. We almost lost Ruth. We still might. We can’t afford to lose you.”
I want to cover my face again, hide from this, but Imogen has my hand. “She’s my sister.”
Rhys snorts an ugly sound. “Didn’t stop her from leaving you buried under half the castle. She doesn’t care about you. She doesn’t care about any of us.”
Imogen’s voice is softer. “I know she’s your sister. Which is why it has to be you who stops her. Promise me that if it comes down to you and Artemis, you’ll make the right choice.”
“We owe it to my grandma,” Rhys says. “You know she would have died to protect any of us. Even to protect Artemis.” He spits her name.
“Promise you’ll make the right choice,” Imogen repeats.
Artemis once made me promise the same thing. That I’d choose myself over her. I didn’t, and we nearly got a new hellmouth. I thought we’d averted the end of the world, but it feels like it quietly ended in the last few days and I didn’t notice until it was too late.
Artemis chose Honora and Sean over us. Artemis tried to kill Ruth. Artemis could have killed me. And Artemis took Leo. I can’t meet the pain and fury in Rhys’s eyes, or the weight in Imogen’s.
“I promise,” I whisper to the floor.
ARTEMIS
THEY HAD A CAGE ALL ready to go for him, but Leo is in no shape to run or fight. He can barely even stand. It hurts Artemis to look at him slumped in there. She always liked him. Admired him. Envied him, even.
But he should never have passed his Watcher test. He proved he would choose his mother over the world, or at
least over the Watchers. He knew what she was and he let her continue. Did he know what he was, even back in the days they trained together? He must have. He was always the most careful, the most precise. The most controlled. Because unlike the rest of them, his inner demons were literal. Does that make them easier to fight, though? When they have a name, a species, a neat little Latin classification?
Artemis’s own demons aren’t so easily defined. She can’t forget the look on Nina’s face as she pushed Artemis toward safety. Yes, Nina brought down the wall by trying to hit Artemis so hard even Artemis doesn’t know if she would have recovered, but Nina also shoved her out of harm’s way. And then Artemis left her there. Buried.
It’s gnawing at her, wriggling inside like an infection. Maybe she’s doing the wrong thing. Maybe she betrayed her sister and stole a friend and manipulated the only girl she’s ever loved and none of it will work out. She wasn’t chosen, after all. She never wins. Not really.
She looks away from Leo in the cage, focusing on her girlfriend, who’s checking the other cages in these caverns and marking down demonic inventory. “How’d you get him to go with you?” Artemis asks Honora.
Honora looks up from her pad. “Same way someone could make me willingly walk to my doom.” She looks back down, swallowing but keeping her expression light and disinterested. “Threaten the person I love most in the whole world.”
It’s the closest Honora has come to saying I love you. Neither of them has. Maybe neither of them is capable of it, after the ways they were raised. Maybe Artemis doesn’t deserve it and never will. Artemis’s throat aches, her eyes burn.
Her voice comes out a whisper so she won’t cry. “What if it’s the person you love most in the world who’s leading you to doom?”
“Then I would die like I wanted to live. Believing in her. Fighting at her side.”
Artemis wipes under her eyes. She will win. She has to. For Honora. For Nina. But most of all for herself, so she can be the person she needs to be to deserve any of this. To be strong enough to keep it. “For the record, I love you too.”
Honora closes her eyes. The look on her face is so raw and private that Artemis knows to turn away. To give Honora time alone to feel everything she needs to. Artemis just hopes they have enough time left.
She walks across a catwalk and sits next to Leo where he’s leaning against the rough stone wall of the cavern that forms the back of his cage. On one of the metal catwalks nearby, chains are being welded to the platform in front of the thing that will solve all of Artemis’s problems. Including the pain she feels thinking about Nina. When Nina sees the results, she’ll understand. And Honora won’t have to worry about anything, ever again.
There’s scraping and moaning and a few sharp snarls. A line of chained demons is being arranged, prodded into place by the black-cloaked zealots. Artemis hates the Sleeping One worshippers with an instinctive self-preservation and has done what she could to avoid speaking to any of them. How long have they been working on these caverns? Or have the caverns always been here, ready and waiting?
“Why?” Leo asks.
Artemis doesn’t look at him. “What would you do to protect my sister?”
“Anything.”
“Me too.” Artemis is only half lying. She would do anything. Has done everything. And it didn’t matter. Ever since the day she had to watch Nina get left behind in that fire, she’s been trying to protect her and failing at it. She couldn’t protect Nina from the pain of her crush on Leo, from the rejection of the Watchers, from the dismissal of her healing interests and efforts to improve things. She couldn’t protect either of them from the heartbreak of a cold, distant mother. Or from the death of their father. She would love to be able to protect Nina. Will love to be able to.
But more than that, she wants to protect herself. She can’t deny it. Not after what she’s done to get to this point.
Artemis doesn’t want to hurt anymore. She doesn’t want to have to watch these things happen and not be able to fix them. She doesn’t want Watchers like her father to die, or people like Honora to work every day to undo and hide the damage done by her own mother. She doesn’t want Nina to have to be a Slayer, to risk her life because she can’t stop caring about everyone and everything.
The world is so broken, and it hurts too much. She has no desire to be its god, not like the Sleeping One. She just wants enough actual power to change things. Maybe if she had been the Slayer, it would be different. But it’s not. Not yet. Not until she makes it different.
She doesn’t want to hurt Leo, but she will. In his Watcher test, he once chose the world over what he loved most. She’s hoping what he loves most now is Nina, and that he makes the wrong choice.
She nods toward the demons. “You know all those breeds. You know what they do. Each and every one of them is a mindless predator.”
“Then kill them. Don’t ask me to drain them. It’s cruel. It’s wrong.”
“But you’re dying without it.”
“I don’t care.” He looks haunted. “Once I start, what if I can’t stop? What if I turn into my mother? I won’t risk it. Better to die.”
Artemis rolls her eyes. “Gee, that’s noble. So glad you—a perfectly nice, nonmurdery mostly human who knows enough about the world to actually protect the innocent in it—are choosing to die rather than let all these vicious demons die instead. You know that one drinks bone broth made from children, right? Judging by the rings on his claws, he’s been alive for a few hundred years. Imagine how many children that is. How many bowls of soup. But sure. Better that you don’t risk maybe someday hurting someone.”
“You’re twisting this. Me choosing not to benefit from killing these demons is not the same as turning them loose.” Leo regards her with a calm gaze. He was always good at seeing through people. It’s inconvenient. She doesn’t want to be seen right now.
“Fine. Don’t do it. You’re right, I won’t let them go even if you don’t drain them. But what do you think will happen to Nina?”
“She’ll get over me.” The words hurt for him to say, but he believes them.
“No, you arrogant dolt. It’s not about her feelings for you. It’s about Nina herself. If they can’t get power transferred from you, they’re going to go looking for new sources. And who do we know—who do they know—who’s positively bursting with power?”
“No,” he whispers.
“They’ll see the same thing your mother did. Helping them was the only way I could steer them away from Nina. But if you don’t work out, there will be nothing I can do. I can’t fight a hellgod, Leo. And I don’t think Nina can either.” She leans close, almost pressing against the bars, and whispers. “I have a plan. Do what they tell you to. Take the power. Transfer it. Charge up his amplifier. And trust me. It’s the demons or it’s Nina.”
It’s not. She would never let Nina get close to the Sleeping One. It wouldn’t work anyway, without an incubus- or succubus-type demon to transfer the power. But Leo doesn’t know that. And thankfully he’s too depleted, too exhausted, too desperately in love with her sister to see through Artemis’s lie.
She softens her voice, makes it more like Nina’s, then puts her hand through the bars to rest it on his arm. “You were going to let yourself die to keep her safe. Live to keep her safe, instead.”
This—feeding on other living creatures—is the line Leo chose, the one he wouldn’t cross. If she were really his friend, she would find another way to make this all work.
She can’t afford to be his friend. She sees the moment on his face when Leo breaks. He nods. “I’ll do it.”
Artemis squeezes his arm, then stands to inform Sean they can start. She’s waited long enough. This is the end, or the beginning, or both.
26
THE CAR BUMPS ALONG THE dirt road toward Shancoom. I’m in the back sandwiched between Jade and Doug while Rhys drives and Cillian sits in the passenger seat. My mother is slowly waking up, guarded by the purring kitten and Imogen, an
d I’ve left Tsip in charge of still-unconscious Ruth with a strict no-eyeballs mandate. The demon is still bitter over the dusty fate of her vampire trophies, and I don’t want to take any chances leaving her up to her own devices. Imogen offered to be in charge of Ruth, but Tsip can get to me in a heartbeat if something is wrong.
Facing Ruth’s mortality feels like the end of a Watcher era. She’s the last of the old guard, two generations ahead of my own mother. The amount of experience and knowledge we almost lost today—could still lose—is too overwhelming to even think about. And I certainly can’t think about who tried to take that knowledge and experience and crotchety old warmth from us.
Ruth is already working on next year’s Christmas scarves for the castle. The current one must be sitting unfinished, her needles still in it, waiting for her wrinkled, deft fingers—
The silence in the car is palpable. Everyone is hurt and everyone is angry. At Artemis, yeah, but also at me. And I don’t blame them. I couldn’t have known she was going to attack the castle, but I absolutely made it possible.
Rhys clears his throat, Cillian taps his fingers on the armrest, and Doug, who made certain I was sitting between him and Jade, twitches but keeps his eyes firmly on the window, staring out at the dark forest only now softening with the dawn.
It’s a new day. A terrible, empty new day, ushered in with loss and failure.
We pull up to Cillian’s and Rhys puts the car in park. It’s obviously hard for him, but he turns around to address me. “We should talk about the plan to get Leo back.”
“Didn’t you want him locked up?” Jade asks. “Why do you care if Artemis took him? Our plan should be to go after her, not him.”
I want to argue, but I have no right to. Not on this subject.
Rhys scowls. “Yes, I did want him locked up. By us, so we could take care of him. I didn’t want him kidnapped by these fanatics for whatever nefarious purpose they have in mind.”
“No one in a black cloak has ever been good news,” Doug mutters in agreement.
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