Suddenly every girl with the potential to become a Slayer did become a Slayer, or would become a Slayer when she was old enough.
She let the Watchers die, and then she flooded the earth with almost two thousand new Slayers. And then she got around a thousand of them killed in battle, because of course she did. There’s a reason there was only supposed to be one Slayer and a whole organization of Watchers. And having all those new Slayers didn’t tip the balance in favor of good. It did the opposite. Demons content to slurk through the night, doing their demon-y things? Suddenly felt threatened. The more Buffy pushes, the more the darkness pushes back. And it pushed back so hard, the world almost ended.
I give up on the window. There’s nothing out there. I don’t know how I know, but I do. And I feel sick with dread at what all these new abilities and senses might mean. For sixty-freaking-two days I’ve been able to ignore them. But I can’t anymore.
Rhys has caught up to Buffy’s most recent terrible exploits in his explanation. “Do you remember a couple months back when the world almost ended?”
“The world almost ended?” Cillian asks, aghast.
“Oh, right.” Rhys rubs his forehead. Maybe this is the real reason we don’t talk about this stuff to anyone who isn’t a Watcher. It’s complicated. “The world almost ended because another dimension was taking over ours.”
“Sixty-two days ago,” I whisper. And we had to sit here in our castle, watching it unfold, because if we revealed ourselves, odds were we’d die in the crossfire. I hated it. Artemis about went mad. But what bothers me the most is, even without our help, it worked out. Sort of. “In order to prevent the end of the world, Buffy destroyed the Seed of Wonder that fed all magic on earth.”
Cillian whistles low and soft. “I thought it was just . . . one of those things. Like we lost the magic Wi-Fi signal or something.”
“Didn’t you notice that day the sky burst open and there were earthquakes and tsunamis and stuff?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Global warming.”
Rhys has gotten lost in the spines on the bookshelves. It’s hard for him to focus, looking at all these books he didn’t know we had. So I continue. “Right. Global warming, and also transdimensional global threat. And all of this—the broken magic, the new Slayers, the almost end of the world—it’s all because of Buffy.”
Cillian snorts. “Sorry, I just. I can’t get over her name. Buffy.”
I fold my arms, glaring. “What, she has a girly name, so she can’t destroy the world?”
Cillian holds up his hands defensively. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
“She was a cheerleader before she became a Slayer,” Rhys says.
Cillian bursts out laughing.
I don’t want to defend Buffy—ever—but I’m annoyed anyway. “Have you seen a cheerleading competition? Each and every one of those girls could take you, even without mystical Slayer powers.”
“Is that how you killed the demon thingy out there, then? You’ve trained as a cheerleader?”
I feel the crack all over again. “That’s not the point. I don’t even like Buffy. All she ever does is react. She never thinks through the consequences, and my family keeps paying the price.” I take a deep breath to steady myself. “And the whole world too. Because this last time, she also broke it. No more magic. No more connections to other worlds. And no more new Slayers. Ever. She blew the door wide open, and then she slammed it shut.”
“She needs to make up her mind,” Cillian says. “Make more Slayers! End the Slayers. Break the world! Save the world.”
Rhys takes over my chair at the high window, looking out. “To be fair, a lot of people have tried to destroy the world over the years. It’s a whole thing.”
“Huh. Who knew?”
“We did,” Rhys says.
“Fair enough.” Cillian grabs my hand and makes me sit next to him. “So, what’s your story, Nina? This Buffy. It’s personal, innit?”
I close my eyes, words that have been drilled into my brain since birth swimming into focus. Into every generation a Slayer is born: one girl in all the world, a Chosen One. She alone will wield the strength and skill to fight the vampires, demons, and forces of darkness; to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their number. She is the Slayer.
There’s a painful lump in my throat when I speak. “Every Slayer used to get a Watcher. And Buffy got the best.” I open my eyes and smile. “My dad was her first Watcher.”
When Merrick Jamison-Smythe found her, she had no idea who she was or what was coming for her. My dad had worked his whole life training Slayers, teaching them, helping them. And he watched those he trained before her die. So when faced with a choice between allowing himself to be used against Buffy or dying, he chose the Chosen One.
He saved her. And we lost him. Rupert Giles took over, becoming the Watcher everyone remembers. Their relationship—his indulgent refusal to follow rules or establish needed structure, his rejection of his own heritage—was the beginning of the end of everything. And still when anyone thinks of Buffy’s Watcher, they think of Giles. Not my father.
“So who is your Slayer now?” Cillian asks, deftly changing the subject. But he puts his hand on my shoulder, a light, reassuring pressure. He understands dead dads.
“We don’t have one.” Rhys climbs down from the chair at the window.
“Shouldn’t you have, like, a bunch, since there are so many?”
“After most of us got—” Rhys pauses. Blown up, I think. He chooses the more tactful “With so few of us left, we’ve been trying to determine our best course of action.”
We don’t know how Slayers would react to being contacted by us. How Buffy would react if she found out there was still an active group of Watchers. I honestly don’t know if we’ll ever fix the rift Buffy created between Slayers and Watchers. But in the meantime. . . . “Trying to determine our best course of action” feels like Watcherspeak for hiding. Doing nothing. I get that it was in our best interests to lie low and pretend the Watchers Council was gone for good. Disbanding for real was never a question. We are still Watchers—protectors—no matter what. But now that the world is filled with Slayers (Buffy’s fault), magic is dead (Buffy’s fault), and all the interdimensional portals are dead (Buffy’s fault), things have changed yet again. That’s what my mom is out there doing. Making sure we understand how everything has changed, what the new threats are.
I’m not sure what the Council’s long-term plan is after my mom’s scouting work is finished. Still, if we don’t check that every hellmouth and portal is actually closed, who will?
That’s why it’s so important that the Watchers remain. In a world remade again and again, where the rules keep changing, where a Chosen One becomes Chosen Many, where magic disappears, where the old ways are broken, we are the one constant.
We still keep watch.
It’s not enough, though. The Council hasn’t been able to decide what to do. Because there are so few of us now and so many of them. How do we pick one Slayer with so many options? And how do we risk our own lives, knowing what Slayers inevitably bring? Their gift is death.