Chapter 4--August 6th, 1981

I kind of freaked out after he called me the Slayer. I had never heard that appellation before, but it sounded right; sounded powerful and deadly. I asked him to leave and he did. I didn't get much sleep that night. In fact I hadn't gotten or really needed much sleep since I got off that bus. But yet I felt tired and worn out much of the time. There were now just too many hours in the day for me to indulge in my favorite past time of overanalyzing everything. I had hoped the tour would help me shake that habit, but now it had come back with a vengeance.

I was revisiting all my past and future sins this afternoon when my mother showed Rosso into my room again. He had used the excuse of bringing me some advance study materials for the SAT test to work on. Just what I needed on my summer break. I wanted it all to go away, but I couldn't turn my back on my problems. I had to ask the question.

"What does being the Slayer mean?"

As I suspected, I didn't like the answers I got over the next hour. At least the pressure of number one spot on the mathletes paled in comparison to my new responsibilities. I wanted desperately to doubt what he told me, but encountering those two creatures in St. Paul had utterly and deeply convinced me he was on the level. I was scared, but tried not to show it.

As I learned more about the Slayer and the Watchers, I asked how he had gotten involved in all this. He explained that his mother had become a divorcee before it became a quite acceptable thing to be and moved to England, where she met and wed a minor member of the English nobility. It turned out his new step-father's first wife had been killed in a most horrible manner by a vampire named Kakistos. She and her husband were Watchers. Their teenage son was head boy at the Watcher's Academy and naturally Rosso was expected to attend. Family tradition and all that.

Rosso attended the Academy for a few years and got a solid background in Watcher lore, but he knew he would never be cut out for fieldwork. He couldn't stomach the idea of being mentor to a girl who would most likely get killed before she got out of her teens. He would much prefer to be counselor to girls and boys who would have the chance to live. So he didn't shed too many tears when his mother and step-father broke up after four years and he moved back to the States with his mom.

At the beginning of the last school year Rosso had gotten a visit from his step-father. It seems the Watchers had identified me as a Potential Slayer. But they considered me a low-order probability to become the Chosen because of the late age I had manifested and because of my aura. They were strapped for Watchers to train all their high probability Potentials, so they asked Rosso to keep an eye on me since I did attend the school he worked at after all.

After the previous Slayer died in Australia at the exact moment I was getting off the bus in Ann Arbor, they searched high and low for the new Chosen, but their seers had an unusually hard time locating me. Finally they narrowed it down to the Detroit area and asked Rosso to determine if I was indeed the new Slayer or not.

Then Rosso offered me a choice. If I wanted, he would lie to the Watchers and tell them I wasn't the Chosen. But he warned me that it was highly unlikely I would ever be able to lead a completely normal life again. The Watchers wouldn't be fooled for long and vampires, demons, and other strange things seemed to be unconsciously attracted to the Slayer, no matter where she lived. Or maybe the Slayer was attracted to them-it was hard to tell.

"I don't like to admit it," Rosso wearily said, "but being trained by a Watchers is probably the safest course for you and your family. Especially since those two creatures seem to have a general idea of where you live. Sooner or later you're going to get some visitors, and they won't be the friendly types."

"I can feel that in my gut," I said as I got up and paced around her room. The blankets had gotten uncomfortably hot from me and Rosso sitting on them for so long. "Must be my new Slayer intuition," I said with a small laugh.

"Must be. I'll call the Council when I get home. I suppose they're already getting someone ready to come over."

"They'll send only one? Wouldn't more be better?"

"There's a long tradition of "One Slayer, One Watcher." More people would mostly mean more bodies you'd have to closely protect. Anyway I doubt they would get too many volunteers to work with an activated Potential. Its different when a girl becomes the Slayer after the Watcher has trained her for a year or two. Most Watchers would do anything for a Slayer they have come to care about. Just like I would do anything for you, Lindsay."

The warm feeling I got in my heart after he said that was the highlight of my day. I knew on an intellectual level that a teenager is naturally callous to authority figures (and just about anyone else) but the depth of his feeling really touched something inside me. So naturally I asked him to leave before ten seconds had gone by.