“Call Tsip.” I lean against the wall next to my mother. “It’s over. We lost.”
“But Doug—”
“Leo.” His name coats my tongue like the dust of the tower; I almost choke on it. “It was Leo they wanted all along. And they got him.”
“Oh.” Jade has the grace to sound sorry. She knocks twice on the door before pulling out the walkie-talkie and announcing the all clear. Cillian and Rhys will have a walkie-talkie, as will Ruth Zabuto and Imogen in the library and Jessi in the Littles suite.
Tsip pops up in the middle of the hall. She looks around eagerly, but there are no enemies with available eyeballs. Her shoulders deflate, and she scowls. “Is it over?”
“Yeah.” It’s over. It’s all over. Everything. Sanctuary. Me. Because if I couldn’t protect Leo, and I couldn’t stop myself from almost killing my own sister, how can I claim to protect anyone? I’m not a Watcher. I’m not a Slayer.
I’m a failure.
I’m a monster.
All that extra demon in me has nothing to say now. It won. There’s no reason for it to gloat or try to take over. It already has me.
“What should we do?” Jade asks. The sound of boards being pried free from the door behind us is the only noise in the cavernous Great Hall. It’ll take Doug forever to get out. Not that it matters. There’s no rush. We have no plan. No way of making one. And I’m certainly not going to try.
Leo is gone. Artemis is lost to me. Sean and Honora and their zealots won.
“Nina?” Imogen rushes into the Great Hall. I stand so fast I almost fall over. She’s covered in blood and shaking.
“Where are you hurt?” I look for a wound, but I can’t find one.
“It’s not—it’s not my …” She takes a deep breath. “Ruth is dead. It was Artemis.”
“No.” No. I run past Imogen, careening off walls, my balance not quite back yet and my speed too much for my battered body. I get to the library to find the door ajar. That crack of light spilling from inside slices me open. I push the door, not wanting to see. Needing to see.
Ruth is splayed on the floor. Her plaid skirt has ridden up, revealing baggy nylon panty hose, and I want to sob at how much I know she’d hate that I saw that. Instead of her favorite pair of fake pearls, her throat wears a jagged red line, the dark pool beneath her rippling.
Rippling. Which means there’s still blood flowing into it. Which means Ruth’s heart is still beating. “Pelly!” I scream. “Pelly!”
Pelly races in behind me. It doesn’t even pause. It crouches next to Ruth and pulls off a strip of skin from its forearm, the skin thin and translucent. It puts it over the slit in Ruth’s throat, stopping the blood.
I kneel in the pool, feeling it soak into my pants. I put my fingers against Ruth’s repaired throat, hoping, praying. Her own skin is papery thin, Pelly’s replacement smooth. But there’s no pulse. No pulse. The darkness inside me wells, threatening to swallow everything, but then, there! A flutter. The tiniest brush of life. Ruth isn’t dead.
“Rhys is O-negative!” I shout, not knowing who I’m shouting to.
Jade answers. She followed me. “I’m on it. I’ll get him and a stretcher.” I hear her sprinting away down the corridor. There’s nothing I can do for Ruth until I have Rhys and some supplies.
“Tsip!” I scream.
She pops up next to me. “Yes?”
“Go check on Jessi and the Littles and the other Slayers. Come back immediately and tell me they’re okay.” They have to be okay.
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.
* * *