Archive of Our Own ^beta

In the year of our Lord 1878, the next Slayer was called following the unfortunate death of the previous Slayer in Paraguay. The Council, who would have typically been informed of this matter, remained ignorant through the previous Watcher, George Pratt's, hope of resurrecting his charge. Similarly ignorant, the boy who was to be her Watcher, gathered up any belongings he could carry with him: the lighter his father had given him, his Watcher tome, and his personal journal of poems & plants, and crept away in the early morning on hopes of escaping the pre-determined life that had been laid out before him. But much like the ancient heroes of poems and epics he idolised, neither could escape the destiny or the path that they were on. Though her mother knew nothing of the supernatural world and even less about what being a slayer entails, she named her youngest child well: Enola.

Young Enola was in the middle of solving a clue in the disappearance of her Mother when this death occurred. Any new energy and strength was chalked up to the adrenaline and blood pumping through her veins as she relaxed into the plush seats of the train car after removing her overcoat the next afternoon. Certainly, this slayer was better prepared for the trials she would face than the ones who came before her, but her mind was elsewhere as she pulled out the newspaper she had tucked into her pocket and began to examine the postings in it in the dim light of the gas lamp inside of the carriage.

Perhaps it was the intensity of the dark black night outside of the bustling train that piqued her adrenaline. In truth, it was the senses she did not know she had yet. The carpetbag grunted. Her attention snapped to it and her eyes widened. With a little shout, it rolled over the side of the shelf and onto the floor with another heavy grunt. Tense, she watched a young man crawl out of it, his hair brown and slightly curled and his light linen suit turned yellowish-orange in the singular light in the small carriage lightly streaked with dirt.

He looked up to her, one arm out of the carpetbag from which he was emerging. “Hello.”

“Please.” Eyes darting from the carriage window to the boy just beneath it, Enola took a breath in the middle of her sentence. Instincts she didn’t yet know the purpose of crawled at her skin. “Get out of this carriage.”

“I can’t,” the boy said, with a glint in his eye as he folded a switchblade comb and tucked it into the inner pocket on his suit jacket. “I’m in hiding.”

Getting up with no care of being seen through the window, he sat down across from her, shoulders slightly hunched. “Bit of a to-do. Bribed a porter to put me in this and get me on board.”

“Get out of this carriage right now.”

He considered her and squinted slightly. Then, as though he realised something, his hand came up to reach for something at the side of his eye. When it was left wanting, he reached into his left breast pocket and emerged with a pair of spectacles that he put on his nose. Squinting again, he said, “...You’re a… strange-looking gentleman.”

“You think you look normal?” Enola retorted, her hands clasped in front of her.

Examining her from head to toe, a glint appeared in his eyes. “You’re not a boy at all.”

She fidgeted slightly and her chin dipped out in the tell she had tried very hard to erase. Lips pursed, Enola’s thoughts raced as she tried to think of a way to shake off this very persistent stranger, who, if her deductions were correct, had a man combing a train for him at this very moment.

“I might be a boy.”

He leaned forward. “Who are you?”

“What are you?” She shot back.

As though he were remembering the manners that should have been instinct to him, he rolled his lips together, face flushing slightly, and stuck out a hand, his eyes darting down to focus on the brass fixing below the red upholstery. “I’m Viscount Tewkesbury, the Marquess of Basilwether.”

Deductions were Sherlock’s speciality, not Enola’s. Still, she took a moment to examine this Viscount the same way he had her: from head to toe. At most, she decided, he was twenty based on the lack of hair on his chin and the faint spots on his right cheek. The shadows cast onto his cheekbones made what would have been more of a babyface carved and older.

Appearance can tell you many things, Enola, whispered her mother’s voice in her head. The young viscount was trying to rebel in subtle ways based on his brown hair that hit below his chin and moved fluidly instead of the close cropped and gelled down style of the day. It wasn’t entirely effective. Shifting in his seat at her silent assessment, she noticed the ink on the tips and the small brown lines of dirt under the fingernails of his still extended hand.

“You’re a nincompoop,” Enola decided, moving past the nudge in her brain that told her this boy was important. That could be addressed after she found her mother. Jaw dropping for only a moment, he blinked a few times as his hand withdrew. Tewkesbury drew in a breath and nodded to himself.

“I'll have you know,” he said after a moment. “I have just undertaken a particularly daring escape-”

Enola, not particularly willing to keep that farce going, cut in. “You have not escaped. There is a man in a brown bowler hat currently on this train searching for you, and once he finds you, he will think I helped hide you, and I will be endangered by this.” She exhaled and bunched up her mouth, glancing once at the window. “Therefore, I ask you to get out of this carriage.”

A beat.

“You remind me of my uncle,” replied Tewkesbury, head tilted a bit like a cat. He shook his head and pursed his lips as though this alone disproved what Enola had seen. “I've left anyone looking for me at the station.”

“Of course someone’s on the train.” Enola groaned, looking again towards the window as though the man with the Bowler hat might be looking through it at that very moment. “You simply haven't looked properly.”

Tewkesbury crossed his legs. “He's bossy too. Works in South America for the Council-” He stopped and as his eyes widened a bit, he cleared his throat. “A Council. Left them all: my mother, my grandmother.” His mouth twitched up into a smile. “But I'm fine. I'm free.”

“Good.” Enola moved over to the door and put her hand on the latch. “Get out of the carriage, then.”

He paused, his mind racing as he finally allowed himself to review what Enola had relayed to him. “A man in a brown bowler hat?”

Why on earth had his mother hired a vampire? That vampire, no less. Taking a deep breath, Tewkesbury placed both hands on either side of him and pressed down into the seat. She didn’t know. She couldn’t know, in fact. It was the men on the Tewkesbury line that knew, and, having married in, his mother would have no idea on how to spot a vampire.

“It'll be fine,” he muttered to himself. Taking another deep breath, his eyes unfocused behind his glasses. “It'll be fine.”

With a sigh, he nodded once to Enola and took a step out of the carriage. As he looked to both sides to decide which way to go, his eyes went wide and he jumped back into the carriage and stood in the middle, looking everywhere in the small room to where he could side.

“He's coming!” He hissed.

Enola furrowed her brow. As though she didn’t quite believe him even as he jumped up onto the seat and pressed his back against the wall, she poked her head into the train corridor. She sighed when she saw a large man in a black suit, his wavy shoulder-length hair underneath a black bowler cap.

“He's checking every carriage,” she reported.

Tewkesbury groaned. “Wonderful.” He widened his eyes again and looked down to her. The small ovular spectacles slid slightly down his nose. “You have to help me.”

Breathing heavily, he glanced over to the open door. Enola looked at it and closed it with slow and bitter reluctance for the boy who was making her escape so much harder. The boy in question closed his eyes and tilted his head up to the ceiling. “He didn't see me. He didn’t sense me.”

“Of course he did,” Enola scoffed, hand still on the handle. “Therefore, I say good day to you, Viscount Tewkesbury, Marquess of Basilwether.”

She looked meaningfully up at him where he was splayed, back against the wall, squished under the luggage shelf. When he finally stared back at her, face flushed and chest still heaving with anxiety, Enola tilted her head towards the door and moved her hand.

“You really do remind me of my uncle,” he said, quickly. She paused. “You have that same stare.”

The door opened, pushing Enola back behind it so that the back of her knees pressed into the seat behind her. She couldn’t quite see the man in the bowler hat’s face, but she could hear the faint Irish brogue that laced his voice. A tell of a man who had lived long enough in England that he had picked up other’s way of speaking.

“Now,” said the man, the word moving as though it curled around his tongue like a snake. Instinctively, Enola tensed. “There you are, little Watcher.”

She could tell that Tewkesbury was fighting against every instinct in his trembling body to look over to her in terror. He stared over at the massive figure in horror. Enola furrowed her brow. The man in the bowler hat, though he was large, had not added any warmth into the small room made frigid by an autumn night.

“I know who you are,” Tewkesbury choked out. Her instincts screamed at her.

Paint your own picture, Enola. Don't be thrown off course by other people. Especially men!

Squeezing up her face as she made a decision she would probably regret, Enola shoved at the door. It hit the man in the bowler hat with a bang, and he stumbled. Tewkesbury’s brow furrowed; two new dents in the door: a pair of hands on one side and the side of a man imprinted on another.

With a snarl, the man in the bowler hat turned to her, and she drew back in shock. The man’s eyes were yellow and slitted like a reptile’s, and the skin where his eyebrows should have been were bumped and rigid as though the excess skin on his forehead had been pushed down.

He lunged towards her, and she responded by elbowing him in the upper chest. Her fist snapping up so that the back of her hand hit his face, he grunted and fell back against the strength. Eyes closed for only a moment, he was back on his feet a moment later, serated teeth bared as he swung towards her. She cried out.

“Slayer,” he hissed, his eyes turning into slits.

Tewkesbury, who had moved so that his hand was on the handle to the outer door of the carriage, snapped his head to look at Enola as she leaned to the left and kicked his side with her right foot. Opening his mouth like he should call for help, he took another glance at the man in the black coat and gulped. Anyone who showed up would become prey.

The vampire advanced on her, bowler hat left upside-down on the floor. His mouth spread into a grin. Once Enola was close enough to him, Tewkesbury, like a bat out of hell, simultaneously wrapped his left arm around her waist and pressed down on the latch, throwing himself backwards out of the moving train.

_____________________________

Rolling down the hill, wrapped together, they came to a stop on their backs, each panting.

“Who was that?!” Enola exclaimed, darting to her feet and gesturing to the lone sillhouette hanging out of the open carriage door of the quickly retreating train. Tewkesbury sat up on his elbows, rubbing at his eyebrows with his thumb and ring finger. “You knew him!”

He huffed out an incredulous laugh. “He was trying to kill me.” Breathing heavily, Tewkesbury looked up at where she stood, squinting at her blurry figure. “He was going to kill me,” he whispered.

“I'm not ready to die on a train,” Enola hissed, spinning around on her heel. He scrambled to his feet and followed her as she stomped along the bottom of the hill, parallel to the train. “I'm not ready to die at all. I wasn't going to before I met-” she whirled around to poke her pointer finger at his chest “-you!”

He stared down at her in disbelief. “You’re the Slayer.”

“What? What are you talking about?” Enola poked him in the chest again, and he stepped back with the force of it. “What was that thing? Why was he after you?”

“You don’t know.” Tewkesbury breathed out. Throwing her hands up in the air, Enola turned around and continued her march. He stood there for a moment and then broke into a jog to catch up with her. “How do you not know?”

“How do I not know what?”

He looked over the country landscape bathed in moonlight instead of answering this. Day would be preferred, of course, but there was little to no cover where a vampire would be hiding. the Slayer was in Paraguay or… Panama or something. Everyone knew that. Why would she be on a train to London, dressed in men’s clothing?

Enola shot a dirty look at him. “You do know you’ve ruined phase three of my plan.”

“Phase what?” At least she had a plan of some kind. Where was his Uncle? He was meant to be Watching her. “Who the hell are you?”

She pursed her lips and huffed out a sigh. Stopping in her tracks, Enola stared at the caboose of the train disappearing into the night sky. Then, she sat down on the grassy hill with a grunt. Tewkesbury, still squinting, stared at her for a moment as she drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs.

Sighing, he sat beside her, long legs spread out beside him. “Look, I believe our recent brush with death deserves me at least a name,” he said.

“Enola Holmes.”

He looked at her again. The flat cap and pins she had used to hold up her hair had been lost during the tumble, and her long dark brown hair lay over her back.

“Holmes…” Rolling the name around in his mouth, Tewkesbury pinched his lips together as he tried to remember why the name was familiar. He turned to her fully, sweeping his legs together so they were crossed in front of him. “Like Sherlock?”

Enola nodded. “And I am undercover,” she emphasised, “so forget I told you that piece of information.”

His eyes widened. The greatest detective in the world working against the supernatural. “Undercover working for him?”

“Undercover from him,” she answered with heat, staring at the gently swaying grass. So, not the answer he had been hoping for. It was inconceivable to think that he wouldn’t know about a member of his own family being the Slayer. What would Sherlock Holmes have against the Slayer, though?

He would only be chasing down the Slayer for two reasons: He had no idea that the Slayer was good or, even worse, Sherlock Holmes had been Turned. Either one would drive the Slayer away from him. “Hence why you're dressed as a boy,” Tewkesbury muttered, completing the thought aloud.

“Hence,” Enola said, “why you are to say nothing.”

The pair sat there, staring at each other in a deadlock. Tewkesbury needed to get the Slayer to London. More importantly, he needed to get her to her Watcher, his uncle, who was, no doubt, looking for her at that very moment. Enola needed to get to London to find her mother.

She raised her eyebrows at him. “So?”

“What?” Maybe she did know, and she was asking him, as the closest Watcher, what they were to do.

“Thank you?” Enola prompted, moving her right hand towards her in a beckoning motion. “You're supposed to say thank you.”

Still baffled, Tewkesbury gaped at her. “For what?”

An animal bleated in the distance and a light breeze moved through. She shivered. Looking down to the grass, Enola sighed and turned her attention to their surroundings.

“We should think about sleeping soon,” she said.

“We should think about eating soon,” he countered.

She shot him another look. “We have nothing to eat.”

Brightening up, Tewkesbury twisted himself to the side so his back was to her and reached out to grab a plant by its stem. Enola didn’t recognise the spinny sage green bulbs with magenta and black barbed tops

“Of course we do. Arctium lappa, which you'll know as burdock.” Grinning, he plucked off one of the bulbs and offered it to her. “Very tasty.”

When the only reply was her wide-eyes, Tewkesbury gulped and looked around. He grabbed a fistfull of some green groundcover between them. “Um, and then there's Trifolium.” She raised her eyebrows. “Clover.”

Searching again, Tewkesbury squinted a blurry white patch. “And is that…” Enola watched this, in her own deduction, incredibly strange boy, adjust himself so he was prone and sniff a patch of mushrooms. He chuckled.

“Yes, I knew it!” Snatching three up in a bunch, he presented them to Enola with the slightly pressed Clovers like a bouquet. “Agaricus lanipes. The Princess.” Tewkesbury grinned. His skills were applicable here! He could get the Slayer to London and prove himself. “Delicious.”

She exhaled slowly, mouth open as if she were on the verge of saying something when he pushed himself up into sitting position again and said, “If you can get a fire started, I can make us a feast.”

“Fine.”

Half an hour later, as they sat next to the small fire made of the various twigs and dried leaves they had collected and lit with the help of Tewkesbury’s large lighter he’d told her was useful for clearing dead brush, Enola ran through the events on the train. What was that thing? How did he look so much like a man and yet was clearly not one at all?

“I'm not entirely an idiot, you know,” Tewkesbury broke the silence. She stared into the fire. How does one lose a very persistent Viscount with a… thing on his tail? Admittedly, the mystery was intriguing. She couldn’t exactly leave him out here. That creature had seen her too. How could she keep him from being recognised?

Enola hummed.

“I've been thinking,” she said slowly, unwilling to admit that the idea was only half-formed in her brain. “You need to disguise yourself a little.”

Merely raising his eyebrows, he tilted his head again. What could they change?

“How do you feel about your hair?”

Tewkesbury shrugged. “I've never cared for it. Cut it off with a knife?”

Enola nodded, relieved to have something to do. An itch had grown underneath her skin since she had boarded the train. Her quest was unfinished. Pulling out the pen-knife she had nicked from Sherlock’s old room with her clothes, she grabbed a large stone they had discarded earlier when making the firepit and began to sharpen the old blade.

Tewkesbury watched, attention caught by the sparks that darted off of the metal to join their brethren in the flames. She would be good at her job. His brow furrowed again. On the train, Enola had fought like someone who had been trained. She knew basic survival skills like making a fire, finding a safe spot to camp, and where to find drinkable watter. No ladies he knew were given such education. But she didn’t know about Slaying? His questions grew.

“Who taught you how to sharpen it like that?”

She sent a small smile his way as she put the rock to the side and examined the knife in the light. “My mother.”

“Your mother is very different to mine,” he replied. They chuckled.

Sitting in the silence, Tewkesbury recalled his journal and patted himself down in search of it and a pen. He flipped through the first half of the book reserved for his records of plants he had come across until he found an empty page. Scribbling down the date and the types of plants, the entire night was dutifully recorded so that it could be turned into verse later.

Enola asked, “Who taught you about flowers and herbs?”

“My father.” His mouth twitched into a momentarily sad smile.

“I never really knew my father.”

“My father's dead too.”

They stared at each other. Then, simultaneously, they said, “I'm sorry.”

Caught in the mortifying ordeal of being known and, even worse, sympathised with, the pair turned away from each other and returned to their tasks with flushed faces. Enola ground into the right side of the blade where a small nick had been made. She wondered about the story behind it.

“Why have you run?” Tewkesbury asked. At her furrowed brow, he elaborated. “From home, I mean.”

Enola huffed out a laugh and placed the knife in her lap. “I didn't want to go to Miss Harrison's Finishing School for Young Ladies.”

He nodded, chuckling a bit. Who would send the Slayer to Finishing School?

“Why have you?”

He cleared his throat and looked down. “Well, uh, a tree branch broke above me while I was collecting wild mushrooms.” Tilting his head back and forth, he hesitated to tell her. the Slayer would see him as weak. “It should have crushed me, but I managed to roll out of the way, and I realized that…”

“What?”

He screwed up his face. “You'll laugh at me.”

“I won't,” Enola deadpanned. Still, his shoulders drew up and his tongue poked the inside of his cheek.

“My life seemed to flash before me,” he admitted. “I was just about to take my seat on-” Tewkesbury looked up to her. “-a Council.”

Enola knee bounced. “The very same ‘a Council’ that your uncle works for?”

He nodded. She deserved to know.

“I- I had these ideas about how we might progress.” He wavered. “The way that it works is that… There’s one main position, really. ‘The Watcher’. That person looks over the… ward of the Council. But there are a lot of families that are part of this. Old families, you know. Since there can only be Watcher, the eldest of the seven families who was not chosen takes a seat on the Council. Otherwise, the seat remains empty. I’m meant to take the seat upon my twentieth birthday in two months.”

“And your Uncle is part of the council?”

Tewkesbury shook his head. “He’s the Watcher.”

His Uncle would know what to do. Better than him, anyway.

“But my family were set on me joining the army and then going overseas, just like my uncle. Or waiting to join the Council. Then, I’ll take up the family seat in the House of Lords at five and twenty.”

Taking a breath, he confessed the very thing his grandmother had brushed off. “I want to go back to University. I studied history… for my post on the Council. But, my hope is to study English literature. For my poetry, you see.” He adjusted his posture so that his chin rested on his bent knee. “And I realized I was scared; scared I would hate every second of the rest of my life.”

“Why would I laugh at that?” Enola asked.

“Don't I sound pathetic?”

She shook her head. “No.” The very tension seemed to drain out of him again.

“Why were they going to send you to the finishing school?” he asked.

Enola, already drained from the day, laid down with her back on the ground and arms as a makeshift pillow behind her head. Tewkesbury looked over to her.

“In the morning, we'll have to move fast,” Enola instructed. She rolled her lips together and stared up at the starry sky. “The bowler hat… man will be hot on your tail…” Turning only her head to look at him, she asked, “Where's your destination? I'm going to-”

His destination already changed from Oxford to where she was headed, Tewkesbury spoke in slightly stilted unison with her: “London.” Chuckling awkwardly at the sudden attention, he reached up to rub the back of his neck.

“Well, then, shall we, um, stick together?” Though it was a suggestion to her, Tewkesbury had already made his mind up. “If you like.”

Enola shook her head. “No,” she decided, turning her head back to stare up at the sky. “We'll get to London and go our separate ways.” A beat. “Understood?”

Any hope he had of not having to tail the Slayer after they ‘parted ways’ was snuffed. Suddenly remembering the knife in her lap and their plan for disguises, Enola sat up and moved quicker than the average sixteen year old girl would be able to. She didn’t seem to notice this and focused in on Tewkesbury’s flinch when she appeared at his shoulder to grab a handful of his hair.

“Understood.” He cleared his throat as she began to hack off his hair and pulled his head to the side. “Totally.” With a pained grunt, he glared at her. She ignored this. “Entirely. Do you have to be quite so brutal with the hair?”

“Yes.”

The sheep bleated again in the distance. Enola ran her fingers through his hair, now much shorter, a lighter brown, and curly at the roots after not being weighed down. He shivered against his will. Regardless of what he or the Slayer wanted, he was a Watcher. After he got her to the Council where she could be trained, he could disappear to King’s College to get his degree. Then, and only then would they be separated.

_____________________________

The city was much louder than Enola had expected or could tolerate. Though it was not exactly bright, each bleat, honk, and shout made her tense up even more and her head pound. The smells were slightly familiar; having grown up in the country, Enola was no stranger to the smell of manure. Around the two of them, the market bustled as vendors shouted their prices out to passersby and offered up various goods.

“Oh,” Tewkesbury said, squinting at his surroundings. He turned to her, “So, this is where we part ways?”

“It is.”

He nodded but didn’t move. “Thank you, Enola Holmes.”

“You’re supposed to have forgotten that name,” she reminded him. He smiled, and though he could not exactly see her face, his memory conjured an image of them sleeping next to each other the previous night.

Nodding to her in a facsimile of a flustered bow, Tewkesbury looked at her shoulder instead of her eyes. “I will see you again,” he promised. Turning on his heel, he disappeared into the people on the sidewalk. Enola tracked him with her eyes until Tewkesbury turned a corner and vanished from view.

“He’ll be fine,” she decided and pivoted to face the street.

London was, of course, the beating heart of England. It was there, she knew, that she would find her Mother, in the hubbub of something. However, though Eudoria prepared her daughter for many things, the outside world was not one of them.

Any ideas she had about London being the home of polite society from books, newspapers, and stories were dashed when she was nearly run over by a cart when crossing the street and the driver cursed at her. Still, the capital was the Center of Civilisation, was it not? The home of music, of literature, of progress, and the finest things money can buy.

A young man in a flat cap waved a paper around in his hand as he called, “Lords debate reform bill! Londoners beware: mysterious murders in the streets! A shilling apiece!”

Enola moved on. Though she was intrigued by the headlines the boy had called out, she was in London for one reason and one reason only: her Mother. A man bumped into her on the pavement, and she yelped as she was pushed to the side. London didn’t match her expectations. People there, she decided, were much more excitable than in the country.

Aimlessly wandering, she passed by a man lecturing a gathering crowd by a fountain. “Without this reform, this country isn't ours, it's theirs,” he shouted. The crowd cheered. “We must petition the Lords. And we've not only got to do it for ourselves, but for our children!”

“Vote for change!” Another man called out, and the crowd cheered again. Enola looked down to her clothing and twisted her mouth up. The creature on the train had seen her in this. If I were to fit in and stay hidden from her brothers, Enola had to become something unexpected.

“This is our chance!” Yelled the lecturer as she wrenched her focus away from him and spotted a tailor shop. “Demand the vote! Vote for all men!” The crowd burst into cheers and echoed the sentiment in a chant that faded when she entered the shop. Once the door closed behind her, Tewkesbury, having traded his light overcoat for a worn black coat with one of the men in the crowd, moved his position to keep an eye on the front window of the shop.

It was there that she squeezed herself into the second-hand dress the seamstress had begrudgingly provided to her. The skirt was not her usual type, and fell to the floor like a lady’s would. While it would hamper her ability to fight, Enola hoped that it would disguise her well-enough that she shouldn’t need to fight.

From there, Tewkesbury remained twenty paces behind her at all times and followed her to a lodging house. Once he was satisfied she had gone upstairs, he went in and requested a room of his own. Suddenly alone as the sounds of squeaking animals, crying babies, and arguing echoed through the walls, Tewkesbury had time to figure out a plan of action.

“How can I get her to the Council?” he muttered to himself, hunched over with his elbows on his knees. Perhaps she wasn’t his Uncle’s Slayer. His eyes widened. She had been Called, and she had no idea. He breathed out, “like an avenging angel.”

Struck with inspiration rather unhelpful to the task he had committed himself to, Tewkesbury fished around for his journal and flipped to an empty page. The poem almost formed itself. A doomed life, pre-destined, the only one standing between the underworld and humanity. It was almost Greek.

In her room only a floor above, Enola edited her devious code until she was sure it would be a challenge. Satisfied, she pulled the wrinkles out of her dress from sitting at the rickety desk in her small room and left the boarding house to place the advertisements. Seeing as he was rather caught up in another thing, her Watcher remained ignorant of her temporary absence.

“The case of the Missing Marquess!” The paper boys called.

_____________________________

The next day, Tewkesbury woke early and positioned himself in the alley nearby to see when she would leave the building. Enola emerged at half-past four. He darted back into the shadows by the overflowing metal bins when she looked from side-to-side. Glancing up to the sky, he muttered, “God, am I happy for that Watcher sense.”

His new spectacles would take another two weeks, at least, and so Tewkesbury relied upon the inner instinct that identified if he was close to the Slayer. As Enola moved deftly through the crowds, he tossed aside any surfacing thoughts that suggested she might be able to sense him as well in favor of tailing her.

“Afternoon,” Enola greeted with her pallid demeanor as she stepped into the tea shop. The waitress returned the greeting. The ceiling shook and a thud echoed from the top floor. She narrowed her eyes. “What’s up there?”

Outside of the teashop, Tewkesbury waged an internal battle. “If I go in there,” he reminded himself, pacing, “she’ll likely see me, and the whole farce will be up. She’ll slip away and I can’t get her to the council.” He rolled his lips together and looked into the window of the small wooden building. There weren’t many people around. “But if I don’t, she’s in danger of encountering a creature she has yet to learn to fight.”

He swore. Maybe he could claim it was a coincidence. After all, there were people searching for him. He was ‘laying low’, so to speak. Finally, he pushed into the teashop, only to find that his awareness of her had dulled. The ceiling shook, and Tewkesbury flinched with wide-eyes, praying to whatever was out there that it wasn’t the Slayer who was doing that.

Upstairs, Enola watched in awe as the women sparred in the room to the left of the stairway. A young black woman noticed her in the corridor and walked over. “You wanting to be recruited?”

“No,” she answered, eyes stuck on the pair fighting on the mat. “Uh… I'm looking for Eudoria Vernet Holmes.”

The woman, Enola inferred, must have been far more perceptive and intelligent than she presented herself as when her shoulders relaxed in recognition and her face broke into a grin.

“Enola? Enola Holmes. It is you, isn't it?”Enola stilled. Walking around her, the woman breathed out an incredulous laugh. “Why are you dressed like a powder puff?”

She took a step back and placed her hands on Enola’s upper arms. “Oh, my! You look the spit of her.”

“You recognize me?” Her voice came out a croak. The woman turned them away from the room and guided her shaky steps into a small room on the other side of the second floor.

“Of course I do,” The woman said as if it were obvious. She furrowed her brow. “I was your first teacher. Don't you remember?”

Memories of Edith - her name was Edith! - broke through the dam and Enola began to recall summer days of form training in the orchard, scraped knees after hours of sparring, and sweaty victory.

Edith grinned. “You've progressed nicely, I can see.” She frowned. “You're alone? In London?”

“Yes.” Enola admitted, eager to impress her old teacher. “There was a useless boy, but I rid myself of him.”

The useless boy in question was anxiously draining his second cup of tea just below her.

Edith only hummed, so she hastened to assure her that she could handle herself. “I have money, lodgings. I just need to find her,” she said.

“What makes you think that she wants to be found?” Edith asked, dropping her hands from Enola’s shoulders. “Eudoria's been hiding all her life. If she wants to stay hidden, she will.” A faint smile passed by her lips. “And besides, she has work to do.”

“What work?”

Edith hesitated, considering. Then, she shook her head. “I cannot say.”

In a flash, Enola ran through all the clues she had: the Chrysanthemums, the address, Edith, the advertisements. She looked to Edith. “Ellie Houseman.” Edith tensed. “Who is Ellie Houseman?”

Edith sighed.

“I wish I could help you more,” she said.

“You can,” Enola accused. “But you won't.”

“I must get back to my students,” Edith told her and turned her back. “You can see yourself out.”

Frustrated at the dead-ends and desperate for answers, Enola moved forward with a shout and grabbed Edith to toss her to the floor. They grappelled with each other with grunts and familiar adrenaline rushed through her. One of the chairs at the wooden table by the table cracked when her leg kicked it, but neither woman paid attention to it.

Though she would have certainly beaten Edith in a battle of strength, pride overtook her as she attempted the last hold Edith had taught her. She grunted with effort, but Edith slipped out of her loose hold and pinned Enola on her stomach with her arm pointed up at the air locked by Edith’s right knee and her other hand held against her back.

“Ah, the corkscrew.” Edith reminisced. “You could never manage that one, could ya?”

Enola pushed against the hold but couldn’t escape. With a sigh, Edith leaned in to whisper advice.

“If you wanna stay in London, be tough,” she told Enola. “Be tough, live the life, but don't do it because you're looking for someone.” That said, she released Enola’s arms and stood up. “Do it because you're looking for yourself.”

Panting with the sudden exertion, Enola watched her disappear down the corridor to another training room. She collapsed into a wooden chair by the window and rubbed at her temples. The clues. It all had to come back to the clues. What did her Mother like?

Ellie Houseman was one of those clues. Edith’s reaction to the name alone had cemented that in her mind. Ellie Houseman was the one who had received those letters at the very address she was sitting. Was it an anagram? A key to a code within the nonsensical letter?

“Word games,” she whispered. Enola had been made to read every book in Ferndell’s Library. Every book. What was in that letter? She muttered to herself as she summarised all of her mother’s correspondence she remembered reading in search of clues. “‘Bankmen met.’”

Standing up, Enola paced around the small kitchen. Her hand came up to worry at her chin. “Bankmen... met,” she repeated slower. Her mother’s voice echoed in her head.

Her head snapped up to stare out the open window where dusk had begun to descend. “The Embankment!”

Snapping to herself and grinning in the ecstasy in having decoded a clue, Enola leaned against the row of cupboards that lined both walls like soldiers and mindlessly opened and closed the door as she tried to recall what else was in that letter to Ellie Housman. It was all patterns, and Enola thrived in those.

What phrase didn’t make sense? ‘Entangle herb.’ It wouldn’t be the same kind of cipher. That would be far too risky for whatever her Mother had been a part of. Enola tilted her head against the chipped wall as she ran though any possible anagrams.

“Bethnal Green,” she exclaimed and took a moment to double-check that work. Yes, all of the letters matched. But who was Ellie Houseman, and what, exactly, had she gotten her mother involved with? Bethnal Green wasn’t specific enough. Enola was missing a specific meeting location in the letter. Ellie Houseman.

Enola, once again on the hunt, pushed herself away from the cupboard. “Limehouse Lane.”

She was right. It was a message for her; a message for Enola. Limehouse Lane was significant to them both. If she closed her eyes, Enola could still remember the squawking of seagulls and the lesson she had learned at a young age. Just like that one, this quest to find her must be a lesson from her Mother.

“Try to be excited, not disappointed, at the possibilities of something new.” Nodding to herself at this affirmation and reminder, Enola surveyed the room for anything she could use as a weapon if need be. Though she was not sure exactly why, her gaze landed on the broken chair and she bent down to pick up the broken leg in her hand.

Tossing it up and down once, Enola considered it. The jagged edges could prove useful, it could be used as a distraction, and it was far more covert than her knife. Whatever her Mother was involved in, it was clearly keeping her there.

“Mycroft was right.” Enola said more to herself and her weapon than any eavesdroppers. “You are dangerous.”

She paused. Gritting her teeth, Enola brushed the sawdust out of her skirt and stalked into the corridor without pausing to look at the training room. Sherlock had been right too. Her mother did have a plan.

Tewkesbury, seeing her emerge from the upstairs, turned to hide his face in the corner. Since she was focused on this new revelation, Enola disregarded the prickle on the back of her neck that warned her she was being watched and pushed out into the twilight. Once she was at the end of the block, she glanced back to the innocuous teashop.

“What are you planning, Mother?” Then, almost unwittingly, Enola whispered out the question she had avoided answering since she had seen the advertisements. She tucked the wooden leg into the sash of her dress. “Do I want to find you?”

Before she had time to react, a hand grabbed Enola by the collar of her dress and threw her up against the brick side of the building closest to her. She slumped against it and the hand pushed her up to eye level by her throat. Clawing at it, Enola stared at the bowler hat man in terror as she gasped for air.

His face shifted into the same creature she had seen on the train. “Let’s do this again, slayer.”

Enola kicked aimlessly, but the man was large and her feet didn’t even come close to his body. She let out a scream. His eyes flashed and his hands shifted to cover her mouth and hold her up like the back of her neck like an animal. Nonetheless, Enola continued to fight and call out for help through his hand as he dragged her into the alley and threw her down onto the pavement. Squatting next to her as she tried to regain her bearings, he cocked his head.

“I will ask you this only once, Slayer,” the man told her, each word laden with the promise of future pain. Eyes wide, Enola closed her eyes as nausea welled up in her throat. He leaned in and pressed her knee into her stomach. She grunted. “Where is the Marquess?”

“Who?”

He growled and she flinched. Enola’s eyes darted down to where his other leg was extended by her ankles. Before she could think better, she wrapped her ankles around his calf and flipped him over into the corkscrew, slamming his face into the metal bin next to them. Grunting, they stayed there, pating for a moment.

“We went our separate ways,” Enola spat out, hoping and praying the man would leave her alone once he knew that she had no information on Tewkesbury. Heaving him up again by the back of his collar, she slammed his face again into the metal bin.

“I've not seen him.” He groaned. “I have nothing to do with him.”

“Shame.”

Breathing heavily, Enola stopped to consider what to do. “You’ve seen my face,” she muttered and pressed her lips together.

The man huffed a panting laugh. “I’ve no quarrel with you, Slayer. In fact,” he said, “I’d prefer if we left each other alone. That’s how I’ve lived this long. Problem is, I’ve been paid to look for your little Watcher there and I’m not one to give up a hunt.”

Enola shook her head in disbelief. “Who the hell are you?”

She lifted him up by the collar in the same manner he had to her just a few moments before and turned him so that they faced each other. His face shifted to that of a man, and his mouth spread into a grin. Clean-shaven, probably five and twenty with thick eyebrows in the place of the ridges and dark eyes that locked onto her own, everything she had seen screamed at her that something was Wrong with him.

“They call me Angelus, love.” He ran his tongue over the bottom of his teeth. “You don’t come after me and I shan’t come after you. Just don’t get in my way with the Watcher, hear?”

Disturbed, Enola swallowed the spit pooling in her mouth and, with a solid toss, pushed him over the rim of the metal bin. His head cracked against the brick wall and he slid into the rubbish, unconscious. Taking a moment to breathe, Enola stared at him agape and then turned and ran.

Her Watcher followed her in the shadows.

_____________________________

“That useless boy,” she swore as she stomped up the stairs to her lodgings and slammed the door shut.

It is good to care for the vulnerable, but not if it means risking your life. But Tewkesbury was innocent in this matter, and though he had landed her more trouble than anticipated, her conscience gleefully informed her that leaving boys at the mercy of the creatures hunting them was not, in fact, a thing that a Good Detective does.

Enola had barely escaped from the warehouse. She had no idea if that creature, Angelus, had too. All she knew was that she had left her dagger in his shoulder and him looking dead on the floor. Not that such things as death seemed to stop him in their previous encounters. Another thing she had no idea of was what Angelus was, exactly. In fact, she had no idea why he was after her and why he insisted on calling her ‘Slayer.’

The truth was, Enola did not ask for Viscount Tewkesbury, Marquess of Basilwether in her life. Nor did she particularly want the Viscount Tewkesbury, Marquess of Basilwether in her life. Regardless of either party’s wishes, they were tied together.

She flopped onto the bed. “Why do I feel responsibility for the Viscount Tewkesbury, Marquess of Basilwether?”

Even as she asked the question, Enola knew the answer. It was the same answer would have had regardless of him being a Watcher. If he’d only been just a Marquess, she would have come to the same conclusion. Enola spoke aloud, merely to bargain with the invisible presence of her Mother and her lessons that lurked over her shoulder.

“Because…” she sighed and ran a hand down her face. “There are those that want to hurt him...and he has not the strength to stop them.”

Enola yelled in frustration, sitting up and punching the air. Why were these things happening? Why had that man - Angelus - called her ‘Slayer’? How had she lifted him with strength she did not have? Fighting Angelus and those after Tewkesbury was not only a matter of physical strength, but the constitution.

She ceased her invisible fight and staired aimlessly at her desk, drained from the long day. “-And I do have that strength.”

Sometimes you have to let nature take its course, the echo of her Mother said. But that lesson did not apply when the things she was fighting were unnatural. Enola huffed.

“He is foolish, and proud, and utterly ridiculous.” She closed her eyes and gulped. “But he's on the edge of a cliff.”

It was what a good detective would do. It was what Sherlock would do. Her mother would have to wait.

_____________________________

Tewkesbury watched Enola emerge from the tailor in black mourning clothes. Idling on the other side of the street, his face hidden behind a newspaper proclaiming his very disappearance, his ears caught the very end of Enola’s instructions to a hired cab.

“-To Basilwether, please.”

Uncaring of his own protection in shock, he snapped the newspaper down and watched in horror as the carriage trundled away to the very place he could not return to.

“What can I do?” He ran a hand through his hair and paced on the pavement. “Why would she be going there?” A few of the pedestrians glared at him, but he paid them no mind. “Unless the council has already contacted her…” Tewkesbury looked up at where the carriage had vanished. “And she’s going to look for her Watcher.”

Of course, this was partially true in the fact that Enola had added finding Tewkesbury to her list of tasks, but Tewkesbury was a man with a single track mind. Rolling his lips together, he flagged down a cab and directed it to the Diogenes Club in Charing Cross where he knew he would find someone to answer his questions.

“May I help you?” the maitre’d asked, taking in his sooty black overcoat. Tewkesbury, suddenly wordless, swallowed his spit and blinked at him. How was he to identify himself without declaring himself as the missing marquess?

“I, uh,” he said, clutching his journal in his hands. “I’m George’s nephew. William. I’m here to see the Council.”

Though many lessons have been passed down by Father to Son through the Watcher Families since the very first Watcher in pre-historic Africa, Tewkesbury’s father had passed before he could share much of it with his son. So, as the maitre’d nodded and ushered him to a private room with a secret door, he tried his best to tamper his bitter excitement.

Was it a mistake? To his knowledge, he was the only unattached of the families. All of the others around his age had been allowed to step down from any potential positions in favor of serving as archivalists, living-records, and historians around the world or were already on the council. By walking into this situation, he was as good as signing his future away to follow the Slayer around for the rest of their lives.

John Peel, now bent and weighed down with age in the years since Tewkesbury had seen him so that he resembled a bulldog even more, looked up from the head of the conference table with a smile. “William.”

“Sir.”

Another man at the table cleared his throat. His gut pressed into the table and his face framed with red mutton-chops that were the same colour as his almost entirely bald head save for the wisps of hair that stubbornly remained in a ring between his ears. Against his will, his brain began to conjure an uncruel limerick.

Tewkesbury startled and straightened up. “I’m here to report.”

“What on earth do you mean?” asked Winston, another one of his father’s friends, as he leaned back in his chair and furrowed his brow. Mouth slightly open, Tewkesbury surveyed the blank and slightly irritated faces of this Council. Was that all they did? Sit in this room and make decisions?

“The Slayer, sir.” His hands shook.

“And what of the chit? She’s in Portugal or something or the other with your uncle!”

Tewkesbury gulped. “No, sir. Another slayer has been called. You really didn’t know?”

The Council looked to each other accusingly as their heads turned everywhich way like birds. He shook at the foot of the table, his eyes caught on an empty seat three down from John Peel at the right. That was to be his if he was not Enola’s Watcher. Then it would be him shut up in this cage day-after-day, hearing about Enola and the Slayers who would come after. All of his careful planning had gone to naught. He was trapped.

“Report,” Winston ordered after yelling the room into simmering submission. Tewkesbury chuckled lightly and pulled up his journal to relay the events directly from his record.

One of the men groaned. “Oh Lord, John. Why are we entertaining such trifles? The boy knows nothing about Watching. He’s going to read us one of his bloody poems!”

Peel waved him off and took a drag from his cigarette. He nodded at Tewkesbury to continue.

“Right.” He cleared his throat. “Two nights ago, I was accosted on my train by Angelus. It is my belief that he is… hunting me.” Eyes fixated on the edge of the wooden table, Tewkesbury let out a nervous laugh. “For lack of a better word. When on my train, a young woman fought him off. It was he who identified her as the Slayer.”

The room sat in silence save for the crackling of the fire and the sounds of the street below. Shuffling lest he face his future, he shoved his journal into the front pocket of his trouser and his shoulders curled up even more.

“Inconceiveable,” declared the man with the mutton chops. “George would have notified us if his Slayer was killed. Angelus must have been mistaken.”

The others began to agree with this point in a slow cascade.

“Don’t you want to know her name?”

But, as usual, he was ignored. Why devote resources to a girl who wasn’t the Slayer, after all? Enola had fought Angelus twice. She would be collateral damage as far as the Council was concerned. He couldn’t do a damn thing about it. A Watcher trains the Slayer; he guides her. He did not fight.

The Council turned back to whatever they were discussing before his entrance. Tewkesbury exhaled in disbelief but offered no rebuttal after failing to muster up the courage to defy them. It was possible that Angelus had been mistaken. It wasn’t as though vampires had a Slayer sense, right?

If Enola was not the Slayer, his plans were still intact. There was no need to follow her any longer. Nodding in agreement, Tewkesbury bid them the customary farewells and disappeared back into London, lonelier than he was before.

_____________________________

Enola puzzled over Tewkesbury and the Basilwethers for the next week. Her every thought was so consumed by the mystery as she tried to untangle the yarn that was Tewkesbury that she nearly passed by the market they had been dropped off at.

A familiar voice reached her ears, so she stopped in her place and stepped out of the way of the people behind her.

“I want four yellow flowers, two blue, and a red one,” Tewkesbury instructed the seller. “I don't care about the breed. Any flower will do.”

Enola marched up to him and pulled him to face her by his sleeve. His eyes grew wide as he took in her dress and he sputtered, “What are you doing here?”

“Why,” she asked with disbelief, looking towards the offerings at the flower stall, “if you're passionate about flowers, would you come to London?”

He looked at her, suddenly unsure what to do or say now that he knew she wasn’t the Slayer. Enola looked up to him expectantly. Thinking over any possible reasons he could give, Tewkesbury thought of the poetry he had written since arriving.

“Because I can be lost here.”

“And yet I found you,” Enola shot back.

If she was not the Slayer and had no knowledge of such things, why would she have gone to the estate? He handed the flower back to the seller numbly. His own case had been the headline for the week, and so he was all too familiar with its details.

“You're here for the money. They've offered a reward.”

She hadn’t changed much in the week since he’d seen her last. What was he thinking? Of course she hadn’t. Enola, as remarkable as she was, was a normal, living human.

Enola shrugged and widened her eyes in faux innocence. “Have they? I didn't know.” She tilted her head and a grin spread across her face. “Well, I must tie you up and claim it!”

He jumped back from her and moved to dart away, but she bent over in joyous laughter. Suddenly caught, Tewkesbury lowered his arms.

“Stars and garters, are you really so ridiculous?” Enola scoffed. “I've come here because I've grown to like you more in your absence, and because-” she looked down “-as it turns out, your life is still in danger.”

Tewkesbury stared at her and then grabbed a chrysanthemum only a shade off from her dress to hand to her.. “What's made you like me more?”

“Really? That is your question? Not ‘Who is trying to kill me?’” Enola gave an incredulous huff. Suddenly conscious that they were being watched and overwhelmed with a desire to ensure his safety and proximity, she looped her left arm through his right and began dragging him into the hubbub of the streets where they could lose any attention.

It was an urge she had never had. Life at Ferndell was isolated, and she had only had her mother for company for the majority of the time. To have the constant urge to keep Tewksbury close was not as off-putting as she expected it to be. Enola was entirely too empirical.

Occam’s Razor and all that tripe. Any instincts she had were in reaction to Angelus trying to drown her and him being after Tewksbury. It was a hard won sense that she was so aware of where he was.

Walking around the market nearly made life slow down for a moment. She was not Enola Holmes, detective. Nor was she a runaway or a lost girl looking for her Mother. Staring at the flower in her hands, Enola felt another whim she hadn’t in years: the push to make conversation.

“I found your flower pressings. They were quite beautiful.”

It was clearly the flower’s fault.

A sudden jolt of longing for a life he would never have pierced through him, and he stared at her. Perhaps being her Watcher was not such a terrible fate. But she was not the Slayer, so he was destined for the Council or for another. If he had been her Watcher, perhaps he could have gone to University and lived more of a normal life. Enola didn’t seem like she would begrudge him his freedom.

Enola did not notice this attention. “I don't give a fig about flowers, of course.” She tossed the flower in another’s stall.

That sappy feeling that inspired his poems vanished.

“That's because you're ignorant.”

She whirled on him. “Ignorant? How dare you?”

“Ignorant and willfully so,” Tewkesbury accused, finding himself rather enjoying riling her up.

“You could change your mind about a boy.” Enola glared up at him as they walked, lips pursed. Why had she spent so much time on this useless irritant?

“I'm not a boy,” he retorted and inhaled deeply, pushing back his blue overcoat. “I'm a man.”

She stepped back to examine him again and crossed her arms. He felt rather like he was being flayed - and oh, what a delightful metaphor that was - but it exhilarated him.

“You're a man when I tell you you're a man.”

Even with that insult that might have truly flayed him a month ago, he smiled and examined her in kind.

“You do look better in breeches, I'll give you that.” Tewkesbury offered his arm to her again, like a gentleman should, and she took it. Static shocked him when she touched him. “I've missed you, Enola Holmes.”

“I wanted to miss you,” Enola grumbled, “but I kept getting dragged back towards you. Now, come on. We're in serious danger, if you didn't know.”

Tugging him along at a more suitable pace, Tewkesbury followed her in a daze to her room. His mother would have his head should she ever find out he had been in a lady’s room unchaperoned. He gaped at the empty and stained bed with only a sheet and a blanket.

“Is this how you're living?”

Enola, less than unimpressed by his shock when she mistook it for snobbery, shot back, “Did you just rent a room at the Ritz?”

His face flushed as he recalled that he had stayed in the room just a floor away.

“I afforded myself a shade more comfort than this,” he mustered. Enola rolled her eyes.

“Well, the woman I boarded off assured me this was a fine room.”

Tewkesbury hummed as he pursed his lips. Whether or not she was the Slayer, this was no place for Enola. “The woman you boarded off lied.”

With a groan, Enola flopped down on the bed and looked over to him. Her brown hair spread like a halo behind her, and he found himself composing improper poems about the girl who had haunted his thoughts since they had met on the train.

“I have but a single bed,” Enola informed him after a glance outside the window, “so you'll have to sleep on the floor.”

“You keep old newspapers?” He picked one up and sat down on the side of the bed. A series of suspicious murders that he had the faint recollection of hearing about during his week exploring London. The victims were of all types: working class, aristocrats, women, men, children. They were all found dumped in alleys with their throat slit. He narrowed his eyes and moved it closer to his face to read better.

Enola attempted to snatch it from her prone position. “Be careful with that,” she hissed. He easily evaded this attempt.

“I haven't finished reading it yet.” Flipping to the next page, a grin spread across his face. “Oh. I'm in this one.”

She didn’t even pretend to be interested in the article angled to her. “So you are.”

“Look!” He pointed at a solemn looking drawing of him in his glasses, his hair short and slicked back. “Viscount William Tewkesbury, Marquess of Basilwether, nineteen years of age. Also known as…” his voice trailed off.

Clearing his throat, he looked at her and flushed, looking quickly away and folding the newspaper together. “Why do you keep all these old newspapers, Enola Holmes?”

“My mother,” Enola answered, now interested in what Tewkesbury could possibly be called. ‘Tewks’? ‘That annoying bastard’? “I'm waiting for her to leave me a message.” She sat up against the headboard and chewed on the inside of her cheek. “She hasn't yet.”

“‘Message’?” He looked down to the stack of accumulated newspapers. “What…”

“She likes ciphers. Coded messages that need to be deciphered.”

“And why would she leave you a message?”

A week ago, Enola might have bristled at that question. Knowing what she did then, she tried to sink into the metal headboard in hopes of it swallowing her. “Because she left me.”

His mouth popped open and he turned to her to begin an apology. Enola didn’t notice.

“And I thought she meant for me to find her,” she continued, “but I'm not sure she did now. So I left her a message, and I'm hopeful of a reply. I keep the newspapers to check. To be a Holmes, you must find your own path… and I had thought this was merely one of my Mother’s lessons to help me find mine.”

Tewkesbury nodded, staring at the newspapers that called him the moniker he hated the most. She may not be the Slayer, but she was someone in need of help. Swinging his head back to look at her, it only took a few seconds for her to throw him an irritated expression.

“Don't look at me like that.”

He drew back. “I'm sorry.”

“I don't want your pity, Tewkesbury,” Enola ordered in the same way she had told him that they would go their separate ways. “If you don't stop looking at me like that, Viscount Irritation, Marquess of Bothersomeshire, I'll murder you myself.”

Letting lose a laugh, his attention turned to his ink-stained hands. Then, quietly, “People don't seem to want us, do they?”

The Council, Society, King’s College, and the House of Lords.

“No,” Enola replied, tilting her head. He huffed out a breath and pushed himself up from the bed.

“Still, at least we've got each other. I'll make us some tea.” They existed in mutual understanding as he placed the kettle into the small fireplace and lit her meagre logs with his silver brick of a lighter. Enola watched him as he did such, but while his back was turned, she snatched the folded up newspaper and tucked it beneath her straw pillow.

He handed her a steaming cup. “So you genuinely believe my life's in danger? From whom?”

Angelus and - likely - his ilk had been on the train, but that could be chalked up to mere coincidence. Originally, he had thought Angelus had been sent after him, because the vampire had a habit of working as an ‘investigator’ in hopes of finding easy prey.

“Your past and your future,” Enola relayed.

He raised his eyebrows and took a sip. “Whatever does that mean?”

She pursed her lips and drank from the black tea in lieu of replying. How does one relay such a terrible thing? Sherlock would know how to do it.

“Your family.” He froze and turned to look at her. “They didn't send a detective to find you. They could have, and they didn't. Instead, they sent a… monster.”

There was little to no doubt in his mind that Angelus knew which family was patronising him, but still, he croaked out, “Why would anyone want me dead?”

“Countless reasons.” Enola raised her eyebrows. “Your personality, your ridiculous hair, your silly smile, or… possibly your land, your estate, your title, your seat.” She shrugged as though it were really that simple. “Same reasons they wanted your father dead. Greed does funny things to people, Tewkesbury.”

His head awhirl, Tewkesbury tried to place the pieces together. His father had been a Watcher. Of course Angelus had killed him. “So now you're saying you think they killed my father?”

“I don't think. I know.”

He shook his head. Enola thought that Angelus was merely a murderer. She had no idea of the Supernatural. Why would Angelus risk going after a Watcher? His father hadn’t even been drained.

“No. No, none of this makes the slightest sense. My father's death was caused by a botched burglary, and... and it would have been easier to kill me before I ran away, rather than now…”

Reports had shown that Angelus was in the Union, in North America, when his father had been killed ten years before. It couldn’t have been him. Relieved that he had disproved this idea, Tewkesbury leaned over his knees and worried his hands together.

Enola nodded, solemn. “I entirely agree. I think they tried to.”

His head snapped up to look at her.

“I found the branch that almost killed you,” she reported. “It had been cut.”

“Cut?”

Vampires did not need an invitation on be on the property. Had Angelus been after him earlier than he had thought?

Both of them jumped to their feet as pounding echoed at the door and the handle began to furiously jiggle. They looked to each other and then to the window, where it had descended into night. Tewkesbury looked to the door. How had Angelus managed to enter? What if he got Enola?

She darted over to the chest at the end of her bed and pulled it off of the ground, nails and all. His eyes went wide. “Move the chest!” Stumbling for a moment, he moved to the other side and began to pull it.

“Open up, Miss Posy,” a voice called. Tewkesbury’s brow furrowed. That wasn’t Angelus. Who was Miss Posy? “Or should I say Miss Holmes?”

The brass fixings on the trunk scraped eerily on the floor, protesting its movement.

“Inspector Lestrade, I need to report an attempted mjurder,” Enola called through gritted teeth. “You're supposed to be on our side.”

Through the wall, they heard the inspector argue with someone else. “Help me get in through this door. You'll get your money when we catch her. Come on!”

Tewkesbury didn’t stop and pulled at the immoveable chest.

“See that window over there?” Enola whispered. “It leads onto a roof. I need you to climb out and take off into nowhere.”

He gaped at her. “And leave you?”

“I need to hold this door!”

“But you need to get away too!” Tewkesbury insisted. He glanced back to the door where Lestrade had begun to throw his shoulder into it. Enola may not have been the Slayer, but he was Watching over her.

She leaned forward. “If he catches you, your life will be in danger. If he catches me, it's simply a life I do not want. Now go.” Enola pushed him towards the open window, and he stepped up onto the windowsill with a feeling rather like horror.

“I don't want to leave you, Enola.”

The wood splintered under Lestrade’s shoulder and he flinched.

“Go!” She screamed. “Go!”

Against every better instinct he had, Tewkesbury nodded and jumped into the night.

_____________________________

Returning to his new lodgings, which were, as Enola had deduced, much better than the boarding house she had chosen, Tewkesbury collapsed onto the bed. Why did he care so much? Why was there so much panic coursing through his veins?

Enola was correct: if he had been caught, his life was at risk. But she was being forced into one that she resented, and that was what he identified with. The hollow pit in his chest he had come to associate with her absence reminded him that she had sacrificed herself for him.

“I should have bloody turned around,” he spat to no one. “Bloody hell.”

The ever fading sense of her still urged him to turn back. What on earth could that sense have been? They hadn’t known each other for long enough for him to claim it as love, for he was sure he had felt no such affection for her.

Unwittingly, Tewkesbury had always been aware of where she was since they had met. Of course, that had been when he had mistaken her as the Slayer. But that hadn’t faded. Not even during the week that they had spent apart.

Then there was the matter of her abilities. He had seen those dents in the carriage door and managed to rationalise them to a trick of the light or perhaps because of Angelus. But, just that night she had pulled a nailed-down trunk from the ground and done most of the work to push it over to the door.

And the sense: his uncle had shared that Watchers were attuned to their Slayers once they had bonded.

“She’s the Slayer.” He laid there, unbreathing.

The Council had been wrong. For whatever reason his Uncle had, they were misinformed.

“I’m her Watcher.”

Saying it aloud made it feel no less real. Though all of the pieces went together, he still couldn’t see the big picture. Strangely, the loss he felt when he saw the empty chair was absent. Being the Watcher was not a death sentence. Almost beside himself at this realization, Tewkesbury shot up to sit in the same position Enola had only half an hour before with his back against the headboard.

Being the Watcher - the last thing he had expected when he had run away from home - prevented many of the issues he was running from in the first place. Tewkesbury would not be sent away to the army, nor would he be forced to join the Council.

He groaned. “And I let the Slayer be captured. Bloody fucking hell.”

But why had his uncle not informed the Council of his Slayer passing? Why had this burden been placed on him? He might not have known if Enola hadn’t been on that train or if it had been a human instead of Angelus sent after him.

“I’d like to send this telegram to George Pratt, if you would,” he told the clerk at the telegraph office the next morning. The boy took it without a second thought, and, flinching, Tewkesbury handed over more of the money he had squirreled away to survive at Cambridge.

Then, sitting down on a bench in St James’ Park, he pulled out his journal from the right pocket of his blue overcoat. Enola’s arm had been intertwined with his own just yesterday. And, like the fop he was, he’d left her.

He sighed and stared at the blank page. “Fuck.”

What was a message that Enola would understand while not alerting anyone who may or may not be trying to kill him?

Word games.

She said she liked ciphers. Her mother posted ciphers in the advertisements in newspapers. Enola was certain to read it, and maybe if he could write a poem with enough hidden meaning and intrigue, they could plan an escape.

“And then I’ll tell her about being the Slayer,” Tewkesbury promised himself, glaring at the very accusatory pigeon that had hopped onto his bench.

After nearly a month of no responses from both his Uncle and his Slayer, he mustered up the little courage he had and, slipping his new spectacles on his face to ensure he had the house-number correct, knocked on Sherlock Holmes’ door.

“Can I help you?” An older woman looked expectantly at him, and though he stuttered for a moment, journal clutched tightly in his hands, Tewkesbury managed to relay that he was there to see Mr Holmes.

Sat in the office littered with various bits & bobs and practically covered in paper, Tewkesbury stewed in his thoughts. Mr Holmes had to know about Enola being the Slayer. All he had to do was impress upon him how important she was.

“Colour me shocked,” a man said from the doorway. Caught at nothing in particular, Tewkesbury jumped in his seat and folded his hands over his journal. Sherlock Holmes, about the same size as Angelus, raised an eyebrow at him and sat down on the other side of the desk. “The Missing Marquess. Lestrade wasn’t joking.”

He huffed a small laugh. “No, sir.”

“You’re here about Enola.”

Tewkesbury twisted his lips and looked down to his journal, flipping it open to the poem he had written about her. “How much do you know of the Slayer?”

_____________________________

“Mr Holmes.” The headmistress simpered.

Sherlock answered with a tight smile. “Thank you, Miss Harrison.”

Looking pointedly at the door, he raised his eyebrows and clasped his hands behind his back.

“Oh.” She said, “Of course.”

Sherlock flapped open the newspaper he had brought with him, and her heart crawled up into her throat. “I have never seen such a range of romances in my life. It's enough to turn you to newspapers. What in heaven are you looking for?” he asked. “Why might you be interested in the personals? You've gone quite mad.”

Enola dropped the posture she held around Miss Harrison and scowled at him. “I have a right to be mad in a place like this.”

“I was forced into calligraphy as a child,” Sherlock offered. “Hated it, but there's rarely a case where someone's handwriting doesn't tell me something I need to know.”

“And what might I learn from deportment?” Enola asked, crossing her arms and raising her eyebrows. The large white collar bunched up around her shoulders awkwardly.

“The way a person stands may disguise who they are. Nothing's wasted.” Trailing his eyes down the personals, he found the latest poem the Viscount had posted he’d informed Sherlock Enola would know. “I wonder why they call him William the Bloody,” he muttered.

Enola pursed her lips. “Have you found her?”

“No, not yet. I went to the tearooms, where Edith threatened me with a teapot. And to Limehouse.” He pointed to her with the folded newspaper. “I believe you went there too.” Sherlock chuckled. “You've become quite the detective, Enola.”

“Did you find the gunpowder? And the bombs?”

He nodded. Just like Enola, Sherlock had followed the clues and had not yet pulled the full picture together. All he needed was to track down his mother.

“Perhaps she wants to change the world,” he offered, looking at her stack of newspapers.

There are two ways to change the world: the slow way that ate at your soul and strength and was available to a very select few or the destructive one. Eudoria Holmes had never been patient, and that was a trait she had passed down to each of her children.

They all manifested it in their different ways. Mycroft tried his hardest to be Normal. As such, he was in a position of power because he had clawed his way to the top. Sherlock lived an insatiable life, searching for new entertainment and puzzles. Enola was most like Eudoria in that she felt the constraints of the world her brothers would never experience.

Enola nodded in agreement. “Perhaps it's a world that needs changing.” She thought for a moment. “Will you stop her?”

Sherlock thought of Edith.

“I don't get involved in politics. Or people, either, unless they're clues.”

She accepted this with a slight nod of her head. Arms crossed, shoulders back and chin tucked. All of these were signs of mistrust and fear. Sherlock couldn’t figure any clues that involved him which would result in such behaviour from Enola.

“Did you help Mycroft catch me?”

All of a sudden, she was the little girl who had trailed after him when he was home on holidays from university, pestering him with questions about how the world worked, why things were the way they were.

“No.”

“But you found out about the money.” She looked him in the eye. “You told him.”

He recalled Tewkesbury’s warnings. Enola had no idea who she was. Neither had he, just a few days before. Nonetheless, she was his little sister.

“You disappeared,” Sherlock said. “We had to know how far you would run.”

She scoffed and turned around to pace the room like a caged animal. The itch to do something other than needlework and finish school lessons reared its head again at the sliver of freedom.

“I'm just a case to you, aren't I?” Enola accused. “A curiosity. Is that why you're here, to pick my brains?”

Sherlock drew in a breath. Not necessarily, considering that Enola was ignorant to what he was truly curious about. Once the Watcher had told her, then he could ask his questions. “No.”

He looked down to the newspapers where the article recounting the Viscount’s case glared up at him accusingly. Though the boy had come to him, Sherlock was intrigued to find out more.

“-Or possibly you're feeling guilty,” she raged, whirling around to face him with her hands clenched in fists.

“I'm here because I care for you.”

She scoffed.

“You're being emotional,” he said, examining her like a specimen. “It's understandable, but unnecessary.”

Enola ran her hands through her hair and growled when her fingers stuck on the pins that kept her braided bun in place. It was a paradox for Sherlock to see her as a predestined warrior and a young girl at the same time.

She was suited for it, of course. She was a Holmes, after all. But she was so young and still a child.

Suddenly overwhelmed with such thoughts, Sherlock nodded to the article about Tewkesbury. “It's an intrigue, isn't it?”

“Emotion?” Enola retorted as though she were introducing him to a foreign concept. He nearly laughed.

“The Tewkesbury case.” She froze and looked at him. “A bit more complicated than a simple disappearance. He jumped from the train…” Sherlock’s gaze swung to her. “With another boy. Were they being chased, do you think?”

Enola whispered, eyes wide, “How did you know that?”

“I traced your departure to the same station that he left from.” And Sherlock had heard the information from the source but at the point he received it, it was merely confirming what he already knew.

“Edith mentioned ‘a useless boy.’ And I was telegrammed about a young female assistant of mine who visited the Tewkesbury residence.” Enola flinched at that and send him a sheepish smile. “Have you solved it?”

She shook her head. “Not yet.”

So young and yet burdened with the same intelligence they shared with their mother with the drive that would kill all three if they let it. Sherlock pushed out a breath. How he longed for a puzzle… or something more to distract him from these terrible thoughts.

“The only advice I can give to you, one detective to another,” he said, knowing that Enola wanted to be like him as much as he tried to keep her from it. “Sometimes you must dangle your feet in the water in order to attract the sharks.”

She narrowed her eyes. “So that's why you came here. Shark lessons.”

“No, no. I came here…” Sighing, Sherlock closed his eyes and stood, stepping forward to the little sister he still loomed over and offered her his discovery. “To give you this.”

Enola stared at the pinecone dog in his hand. If what Tewkesbury had told him was true, she would need any reminder of her humanity that she could get. Sherlock was sure that Enola could be the one to find the balance between her ever present thoughts that spread into any nook and cranny it could find like water and humanity.

He cleared his throat. “I found it under her pillow. She kept it, you see.”

“Dash…” Enola took it from his hand like it was the most precious thing in the world.

“Sentimental, really, but she always did…” He smiled. “She always found you quite extraordinary. As do I, Enola Holmes.”

Enola looked at him in visible shock. He attempted to not let this affect him and looked down to the little pinecone dog in her hand.

“The choice is always yours. Whatever society may claim, it can't control you. As Mother has proven.” Enola took in a sharp breath. Sherlock nodded to the bed. “Keep the paper.”

Her mother thought she was extraordinary. The door closed behind him.

“Extraordinary,” she whispered to herself and Dash. Chuckling, Enola set Dash down on her sidetable and sat on the bed where Tewkesbury’s picture stared up at her. In between classes and how exhausted she was at the end of every day, Enola had scarcely a moment to solve a case she was a hundred miles away from.

“Viscount William Tewkesbury, Marquess of Basilwether, nineteen years of age. Also known as-” Enola coughed in shock. “-William the Bloody? Whyever for?”

Picking up the paper, Enola saw a small leather bound Sherlock had left underneath it. Her brow furrowed. Perhaps he didn’t meant to leave it behind. How had he managed to get that in? Her fingers traced the embossed gold of the title. Each gold lamé inscription in the corner spoke of nearly the same thing: ‘The word of the Lord endureth forever,’ ‘Trust in the living God,’ ‘Glory to God; peace, good will toward men,’ and ‘The gift of God is eternal life.’

“Vampyr,” she whispered. Whatever could that mean? She read the inscriptions again. “The word of the Lord endureth forever…”

Tewkesbury’s picture in the paper caught her eye. “The Lords… Lord.” Enola jumped up and began to pace. “‘Every vote counts.’”

A knock came at the door. Enola jumped and gasped, her hands coming up to rest at her heart. That strange feeling was back. She furrowed her brow. That sense and prickling on her neck like she’d had around Angelus. But, no; this one was different. She knew that feeling.

“Delivery from Ferndell Hall,” the delivery man said when she opened the door. Care of Mr Mycroft Holmes.”

Enola narrowed her eyes at the large basket and muttered, “What does he want?” Sighing, she opened the door until the man could fit the basket through.

“Well…” He grunted. “Whatever it is, it's heavy.”

The wicker basket landed in the middle of her small room with a thud. With a tip of his hat, the delivery man left and the door swung shut behind him. Enola circled the basket. That sense again. What on earth could it be?

“What on earth does Mycroft want?”

The basket moved. She backed up slightly and began to look around for anything she could use as a weapon. Had Angelus found her or was it some other creature?

It sneezed and began to rustle as though there was something inside. Narrowing her eyes, Enola raced forward and kicked the side of it, hoping that it wasn’t some poor animal she would be hurting.

“Ow!” the basket shouted, and the lid flipped open. Tewksbury burst out like a jack in the box, wobbling slightly as he gained his balance. Looking up to her, breathing heavily, he adjusted his glasses and sent her a sheepish grin.

Enola tackled him. “Tewkesbury!”

He chuckled, stumbled backwards from the weight of her arms wrapping around his torso, and patted her awkwardly on the back when she mashed her face into his shoulder.

“You're supposed to be helping me out, not getting in with me.” They both looked down at the crushed basket.

Enola, remembering herself, stepped back and brushed her hands off on her dress. “How did you find me?”

“Well, you said you didn't want to come to Miss Harrison's Finishing School for Young Ladies. I have quite the prodigious memory when I choose to use it.” He grinned. Then, nudging the basket with his foot, Tewkesbury raised his eyebrows expectantly. “So I thought we'd go out the same way I came in.”

“Huh.”

“I even wore my most porter-ish coat.”

He flapped the back of the black overcoat he’d had since that first day in London to emphasise how ‘porter-ish’ it was. Enola brightened up. “That's an excellent idea!”

But no sooner had she bunched herself up into the green lining of the basket, she reached up her hand and began to say, “Nope! Nope, nope, nope.” Tewkesbury stared at her. “Help me up.”

He pulled her up with a grunt and she steadied herself with the hand holding the copy of Vampyr on his chest. His personal copy of Vampyr that contained all of his annotations. Face flushed, he tried desperately to push down any possible rhymes that arose. This was the Slayer.

“Miss Harrison,” Enola said with a frown. “She will see right through you.”

He groaned. “I knew there was a flaw!”

_____________________________

Stupid Slayer. Stupid Watcher duties. Why had he been so excited to get into this? He grunted again as he dragged the Slayer basket into the hall. Enola groaned, so he shushed her. Little by little, he managed to move the basket down the hall, hoping and praying that no one would come across them - him - and ask any questions.

Chattering voices echoed down the long corridor. For a moment, he could nearly pretend he was at Cambridge and had fulfilled his goal of running away from his destiny. But regardless of destiny, Tewkesbury did not have the strength of a Slayer, so moving the basket containing his Slayer was like dripping molasses.

“Stop there.” He whirled around to see a strict looking woman, her face pinched like the photos of the Queen he had seen, and her hair pulled back so tightly it made her seem ageless. “Who are you? Have you permission to be in this school?”

Tewkesbury blinked. “Um… I was just delivering a package… miss.” His words came out as a mess of South London and Yorkshire. She raised an eyebrow. “Um, to the headmistress. Could you please direct me to her office?”

“I am the headmistress of the school.”

Nothing from Enola in the basket. He wasn’t sure whether he should be happy about that.

Tewkesbury looked at the parcel, keeping his grip on the fraying straw handle. “Well, then, um, this is for you.”

“Well, open it up,” she ordered. “Let me see what's inside.”

His mouth moved wordlessly. Somehow the stare of an older woman had rendered him silent. Enola kicked him from inside. “Oh, I-I can't, miss. I was given express instructions that this be opened in private.”

“Oh, how ridiculous-’

“By my employer, miss.”

Please let the headmistress be so focused on his very porterish-jacket and presence in the school that she didn’t notice his very clean face, resemblance to the missing marquess, or the basket that just kicked him.

“And who might that be?” She crossed her arms.

He gulped. “Mycroft Holmes.”

The bell rang as her eyes widened slightly and her thin lips spread into what he would deem as a slightly hopeful smile. If anything, it made her look years younger.

Students of all ages, all wearing the plain black dress and white collar Enola was, streamed into the hallway like ants meeting on a crumb. The headmistress repeated Mycroft’s name in wonder before she turned to a group of students beside her.

“Girls…” she said, “Would you just take this parcel into my office that I might open it later?”

Then, she looked to him expectantly. Giving a flat and awkward smile, he tilted his head down and reluctantly stepped away to allow the four students to grab the handles on either side of the basket. They all grunted as they lifted it only a few inches off the ground.

“No dilly-dallying!” Ms Harrison called.

He could hear the girls complaining from the echoing stone hallways. Tewkesbury nearly snorted. He could practically hear Enola griping to herself that she ‘wasn’t that heavy’.

“So, what are you waiting for?” She turned back to him, lips pinched again but a sparkle in her eye. “A tip? Go on, begone.”

Thankful for the dismissal, Tewkesbury practically ran out of the building and out onto the green. Panting still from dragging the basket, he looked up to the blue afternoon sky for a moment. No vampires, no demons, just uptight-headmistresses, lots of people, and breaking the Slayer out of school.

Enola pulled beside him on the beige sand drive in an uncovered Starley & Sutton. When he didn’t move, she grabbed him by his left arm and pulled him into the small automotive so that he was facing the rear. It wasn’t meant for two people, so as she pushed on and the car shook, he swayed with it, pressed up against her even when he turned around to sit.

“Can you actually drive this?” he yelled, face flushed.

She grinned. “I know the basic rudiments.”

With a grunt, Enola adjusted the gear and the panting engine sputtered and took off.

“My automobile!” The headmistress cried, and made chase. Enola knew the basic rudiments, but in Tewkesbury’s opinion, she had no care for the etiquette of driving. Pushing on the gas, she sped the car onto the green and towards the country road. He called out directions, lifted slightly off his seat and his left hand bracing on the back of the red leather upholstery.

“The bush!”

She drove right through it and he sputtered at the leaves that flew into his face. Miss Harrison screamed something in rage that faded as they shot out onto the empty country road.

“Oh.” Tewkesbury said as they passed the third farm down the road from the Finishing School and he finally managed to calm himself down enough to look at her. “The book.”

Enola glanced down to it. “What is it?”

“It’s…. Um…”

Why hadn’t he bothered to pay more attention to the tutoring that Peel had given him on being a Watcher? Well, for one, he had been twelve. For another, Tewkesbury had never considered that he would be in that Position.

Though she didn’t take her eyes off the road, Enola cleared her throat and seemed to take pity on his flustered stuttering.

“Thank you,” she said, quiet and quick like she was very nearly embarrassed at having needed help. “That was, uh… You did save me.”

He swallowed a laugh.

“The best bit was my idea, but you did save me,” Enola told him.

Tewkesbury nodded, his lips swallowed up like he had eaten a lemon when she wasn’t looking and his face flushed. “You're welcome. …I think.”

“I didn't like it in there.” She frowned.

Having seen the small room and met the Headmistress, he could only imagine how someone with extra energy and adrenaline would act when cooped up in a classroom all day.

Shaking his head, he drummed his fingers on his lap, glancing over at the book in hers. “No. No, of course not,” Tewkesbury said. “Now, let's get back to London and find a proper hiding place.”

Enola sent him an almost feral grin. He shuddered.

“I-” He stopped himself, fingers massaging his brows and his eyes closed. “I must confess something.”

Even as they bumped over the various stones and rocks on the dirt road, she didn’t even look at him when she said, “No, I will not marry you.”

“What?!” He sputtered as they turned, leaning into her with the inertia and his face grew even redder. “No, no, that wasn’t what I- I mean, I only meant to-”

His frantic ramblings were interrupted by pure laughter just like at the market. She hooted and howled, and as a result, Tewkesbury grabbed the wheel from her just before they drifted into the stone fence around some farmer’s land.

He swallowed the spit pooling in his mouth. Once they were safely returned to the road, with only a ghost of Enola’s temporary hilarity twitching around her lips, Tewkesbury asked, “Have you… Have you gotten a chance to read that book?”

“Not at all,” she replied, gaze sharpening. “Why?”

“On the train, I explained that my Uncle works for… a Council.”

“The Council.”

He nodded. “The very same. And that he works as a Watcher over a ward.”

The Slayer side-eyed him, and once she was sure it was safe, glanced down to the cover. Vampyr.

“And this ward,” Enola began, not liking the puzzle her brain was putting together. “Who are they?”

It was at that moment he wished to be whisked away from his present location like he had many times before. Heart in his throat beating loud enough he thought that Enola should be able to hear it and his breathing as quick as it had been when he ran away from her lodgings, Tewkesbury could only shake his head in an attempt to clear it and stare at the slowly passing greenery around him.

“A chosen one. In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer,” he whispered, eyes catching on the book.

Enola raised her eyebrows. “That’s mad.”

“It’s real.” He coughed some kind of sad chuckle. “I wish it wasn’t.”

“And I am to know this because of my skill as a detective?” It was clear that she didn’t believe him. He twisted up his mouth, unsure of how to convince her. “You believe that the attempts to kill you are because of your family are part of this… Council? That the people….” Enola trailed off.

Vampyr.

She twisted her lips until she could bite down on the inside of her cheek. “Angelus. He’s a vampire, is he not?”

“How do you know his name?”

God, how badly had he failed already? Enola was still alive, so there was that. She didn’t appear to be too pleased with his questioning either, if her pursed lips were anything to go by. “He called me the Slayer,” she confessed.

He drew in a hissing breath. “Yes. He did.”

“Could he have been mistaken?”

“I think not.” Tewkesbury shook his head. “Haven’t you noticed your increased energy? Strength? Stamina?”

This time it was Enola’s turn to exhale slowly in thought. She began to chew on her bottom lip in thought. Time passed by in silence and the sky grew cloudier and grey until he could no longer see the sun to tell the time.

Seeing as he was very tense already, existing in the unknown quiet of the wheels trundling along and the occasional sound of an animal made him button up even further. To make matters worse, his thoughts began to wander into the territories he had mercifully been able to ignore for the past week when he was planning this jailbreak with Mr Holmes.

Uncle George had never replied to his telegram. Since he was far away from home, Tewkesbury had no idea if his Uncle was even alive. Everything had gone to shit, for lack of a better word.

Someone had killed the previous Slayer. His Uncle, if he was alive, neglected to report this to the Council. Tewkesbury couldn’t blame him for that. He didn’t exactly like the Council either. But the fact of the matter was that Enola had been Called, and because he was the first Watcher she had met, they had bonded.

“So, I’m meant to be this… Slayer?” Enola asked finally. “Just some sort-of pre-destined thing?”

He pursed his lips. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know!” She cried. “I’m told that I’m some kind of warrior sent to defeat creatures, some demon nearly killed me when looking for you, and you are apparently my W-” Enola stopped.

“Your?”

She rolled her lips together, eyes wide and staring at her left hand. Then, with a screech of the brakes, the car stopped.

“Why have we stopped?” He looked behind them to check that no one was following, but there was nothing but the faint white specks of the sheep in the fields to their right they had left in the dust a mile before. “Enola, whatever you're planning…”

Her mother had told her that there would come a time when she would have to make a hard choice. Eudoria couldn’t have known, couldn’t she?

“Enola…”

In that moment, Enola discovered what mettle she truly had, and what was prepared to risk, for what matters. Viscount Irritation, Marquess of Bothersome was her responsibility. The creature hunting them both was hers to slay, but that still didn’t solve the root of the problem.

She shifted the gears. “We need to go to Basilwether.”

“What?!”

“An injustice has occurred,” Enola said, her jaw set. “It's time to right some wrongs.” She looked to him. “You want a culprit, find the motive.”

“I don't understand,” Tewkesbury sputtered.

Still a jumbled mess in her head, Enola tried her best to explain. “When were you due to be inducted into the Council?”

“At twenty.”

But he wouldn’t be inducted into the council. He was the Watcher now. He voiced as much to Enola. Lost in deducting, she merely nodded at this. “And if Angelus kills you?”

“Then you’re left with a group of old men who have never been in the field as a Watcher,” Tewkesbury realised. “The next oldest in the line is Richard Giles. He’s only four.”

Enola blew air out that pushed the hair from her face. How Angelus knew where to find Tewkesbury was the pressing issue. Weakening the Watchers Council and, by effect, the Slayer, was Angelus’ goal. But why Tewkesbury specifically? Would killing one of the more experienced members cripple them more? There was a missing piece.

“You told me on the train that you had ideas on how the Council might progress,” she said. “Who knew that?

“Who knew that?” He repeated. “My family, I suppose. My grandmother suggested that I should join the army and go overseas.”

His grandmother had pushed him towards the family seat in the House of Lords rather than letting it go to one of their cousins. Either way, it had been unlikely for him to keep the title of Marquess when he joined the council.

“And who stands to gain with your father dead and if you die?”

Considering this, he couldn’t conjure a solution. His Uncle was overseas and had no interest in the family seat or the Council position. But with his Slayer dead, George would take the seat on the Council, leaving Tewkesbury to become the next Watcher: a young, progressive, inexperienced boy who, if the Council’s opinions were true, would let the Slayer take charge in a way that a woman shouldn’t.

“The vampires,” he said. But that didn’t feel right. “I suspect that my mother had hired Angelus to find me and he has taken advantage of it.”

The car sputtered when she started it again. She sighed like she didn’t quite like it either. “Doesn't it make sense?”

Tewkesbury reached over to grab the book from her lap for the familiar feeling of fabric and paper under his fingertips. Face red, he didn’t dare look over to her.

“But what can we do about it?”

“Solve the crime, of course,” Enola answered like it was so simple. “And-” She glanced over to him “-slay the beast.”

They turned left towards Basilwether instead of right towards London and he barely contained his swear as he pushed himself up in his seat to look behind them towards the manure-covered city where they could hide from Angelus until they could come up with a plan.

“Enola, we are both extremely lucky to have lived this long, and you want to drive us into a place where there is most certain danger?”

God help him.

She leaned over in a yell as the various light let in by the tree cover danced over her face. “Sometimes, Lord Tewkesbury, you have to dangle your legs in the water to attract the bloody sharks!”

Picking up the Slayer’s tome, he pointed to the title with white knuckled fingers and a close lipped mouth. “Why would we want to attract the bloody sharks? Or, more realistically, vampires?!”

“Good point.”

_____________________________

It made all the sense in the world and no sense at all to her. Every empirical, scientific bone in her body argued that such stories were merely children’s tales. She had read Polidori, but that was fiction. Wasn’t it?

Firstly, there was the idea that such a massive issue had been kept secret for millienia. There were stories that she knew of: an epidemic a century and a half before in Eastern Europe where people had begun accusing each other of being Vampires. Surely someone would have noticed something. The public being ignorant put them in great danger.

Secondly, why was it just her? Not that Enola would complain about being given a little power, for once, but from the way that Tewkesbury had described the Council, it did not appear that the men who ran it would be at all open to her ideas.

But then there was the fact of the strength she had credited to her years of training with her mother and the urge to keep Tewkesbury close. A Watcher, he had said, but he had given no indication that he would be her Watcher. She pursed her lips in the darkness as they pulled up behind some bushes at Tewkesbury manor.

“This is a terrible idea,” he said, cleaning his glasses like he had for the past few hours in frantic, anxious silence. “The closer we get, the worse this idea becomes. Why are we doing this?”

“Unlike most well-bred ladies, I was never taught to embroider.”

Enola let out a grunt as she hopped out of the automotive. “I never molded wax roses, hemmed handkerchiefs, or strung seashells.”

He joined her, and they began to creep slowly to the house. “I was taught to watch and listen. I was taught to fight.” Then, standing up, she turned to him with tears in her eyes. “This is what my mother made me for.”

Tewkesbury considered her, brows furrowed and a hint of a smile playing at his lips.

“Trust me…” said Enola. “To find the answers we need. And to protect my Watcher.”

Flustered and a tad baffled, Tewkesbury waffled on what to say for a moment until he only said, “You don't know how to embroider?”

The light from the windows left burning illuminated the stone pathway that led up into the manor, and Enola found herself looking towards it. There it was: that feeling again.

“We need to do this,” she said, turning back to Tewkesbury. “You need to do this.” He inhaled and glanced up to the windows. “We... are doing this.” Turning on her heel, she called over her shoulder, “Come on.”

Giving up on any pretence of sneaking around, she marched up to the closest entrance. Tewkesbury wavered for a moment and dashed back to the automotive to tear off one of the wooden spokes before following her. The floor, being older than Angelus himself, creaked underneath them as they walked in, and he nearly swore in front of her.

“Where are all the servants?” Tewkesbury muttered, staring down the darkened corridor. Enola stood just in front of him, her chin lifted and her eyes surveying the exits like Edith had taught her. Large wooden doors were difficult to pull open, but as a benefit, they allowed one to escape easier once one was outside.

He called into the dark, still unwilling to believe that his family had any idea who they had sent after him. “Mother?” Enola grabbed him by the sleeve. “What's happening?”

“They know we're here,” she hissed. The sound of a knife scraping across brick she had become familiar with years before echoed in her ears. “Down!”

Grabbing him fully by the arm, Enola pulled Tewkesbury behind an ornate standing armour that lined the walls of the corridor with its brethren. He whimpered against his will, and Enola joined him in a crouch. Panting as they waited, Enola glancing down the corridor lit by moonlight every so often, Tewkesbury tapped her on the arm and handed over the makeshift stake he had taken from the wheel minutes before.

A chuckle ripped her attention away from him. “It’s so much more fun when they run.”

Tewkesbury’s eyes went wide. ‘Angelus’, he mouthed to her. She nodded. The tip of Angelus’ knife screeched across a suit of armour only a few down from their hiding place.

“Run,” Enola hissed.

Angelus sang, “I know you’re there, Slayer!”

Popping out of her spot, Enola kicked Angelus in the stomach. When he bent down with a panting groan, she screamed, “Run!”

Tewkesbury dashed from behind the armour. Angelus swung towards her and she caught his fist with her hand. Pushing against him with all of her might, she waited, panting until she was sure he had placed a majority of his weight behind it before letting go and stepping quickly out of his way as he stumbled where she had been standing moments ago.

“It's locked!” Tewkesbury yelled, shaking the large double-doors that led into the rest of the manor.

Angelus growled and when he had spun around, shoulders hunched before drawing himself up to his full height, his face had changed from the man to the monster. She screamed as he threw the knife at her. Glancing past him, Tewkesbury was ramming the door with his shoulder.

She punched at Angelus with her free hand when he advanced, and he jolted from it, spitting his own blood onto the floor and turning to her with an animalistic grin. Lifting the stake in her hand, Enola rushed at him and stabbed him in the shoulder. He grunted in pain, and she looked up to a panting Tewkesbury. “Down!” She screamed.

He ducked behind a stone bench. Kicking at Angelus’ ankle, he wrapped his arm around her neck as he fell to the ground. She landed on top of him with a grunt, staring him in his yellow eyes.

“Your neck will be my chalice, Slayer.” He grinned. Pulling her even closer, his mouth opened, and she screamed. “I’ll drain you, and then I’ll turn your little Watcher.”

Tewkesbury rushed forward, grabbing Angelus’ knife from the ground. “Enola! Duck!”

But she didn’t hear it, her blood rushing through her head and her ears full of screaming she didn’t recognise. In one movement, Tewkesbury plunged the dagger into Angelus’ head with a yell.

And then there was silence.
They stared at each other: Watcher & Slayer, until Enola broke down into sobs with Angelus’ arm heavy on her neck.

Tewkesbury swallowed the spit pooling in his mouth. “Enola?” She didn’t look at him. He took a deep breath. “Enola. We have to move. He’s not… dead-dead.”

“What?” It came out more like a croak as she stared down at the empty brown eyes of Angelus. Before he could think better of it, Tewkesbury pushed Angelus’ arm off of her neck. It fell to the tile with a meaty slap. Then, he grabbed Enola underneath her shoulders and rolled her off of the Vampire.

“We’ll take the stake out of his shoulder and dust him,” he said. “You need to catch your breath.”

But her head shot up and she looked down the corridor.

“What is it?”

Her mouth moved. “A tapping sound. Are there more of them?”

Arms wrapped around her so her shaking legs wouldn’t send her to the floor, Tewkesbury shook his head. “I don’t know. Can you… sense anything?”

She shook her head, still staring down the corridor where Angelus had emerged from. They needed to get into the house and to his Mother. God, his mother. What if Angelus had gotten to her?

Enola’s grip on his forearms increased as even he began to hear the familiar and faint tapping of a metal end of a cane on the tile floor. Tewkesbury furrowed his brows. It wasn’t urgent like he had expected from someone coming to their rescue.

An older woman in black mourning dress better suited for fourty years in the past turned around the corner. His eyes went wide and his grip loosened around Enola.

“Grandmother?”

She sighed. “Yes. I'm afraid so.” Looking at the both of them, his grandmother shook her head and leaned her cane against the wall to ready a shotgun at the both of them. Enola gasped. “It seems if you want a job done, you have to do it yourself.”

“No, Enola.” He pushed her behind him. “Where's my mother?”

“In London,” his grandmother said. “Looking for you.” She sighed again, like it was a shame. “They never understood. I'm so sorry, my darling. The future of the country is at stake.”

Enola moved forward. “No!”

Tewkesbury fell against the suit of armor behind him with a loud crash, breathing heavily. Slumping down to the floor, his grandmother advanced. Enola didn’t even think, moving purely on instincts. A click sounded from the rifle, and the pair stared at each other for a frozen moment until the dowager looked to her grandson on the floor.

“It's done,” She whispered. “It's done.”

Stepping backwards, unable to turn her back to the woman until her heel came into contact with something warm, Enola dropped down into a kneel by Tewkesbury’s side, taking in the gunshot that marred his dark jacket. Just like Angelus, his eyes stared up at the ceiling. Breaking into sobs, Enola called his name as she shook his bunched up lapels in her hands.

“Wake up,” she pleaded. “Come on.” When no response was forthcoming, her panting turned to whispers. “No… No!”

The dowager walked away with speed, her cane clacking on the tile. Enola paid her no attention.

Sobbing, she pressed down on his chest to feel any bit of heart beat. A gasp burst through the silence and he coughed, eyes gaining attention as he blinked and broke into shuddering breaths.

“Tewkesbury?”

He grunted and looked at her. “Be careful!”

“Be careful,” she exclaimed, eyes wide and anger filling her voice. Suddenly realising her position, Enola lifted her hands away from his chest and sat up.

He gasped and sat up a little with a hiss of pain to look at where the bullet had hit his left stomach, stopped by his journal. “I'm not entirely an idiot, you know.” Tewkesbury chuckled. “You were made to fight.”

Accepting her proffered hand, he let Enola pull him to his feet as his breath slowed down. Angelus didn’t move on the floor, and he licked his lips before speaking.

“Well,” Tewkesbury said. “You’ve defeated a human. Now we just need to train you on the Supernatural.”

Enola looked over at Angelus on the ground.

“He looks like a man,” she said, voice quiet.

“He isn’t.”

“I can’t kill him.”

Rolling his lips together, Tewkesbury placed a hand on her shoulder. “Then you shan’t. At least, not today. We’ll bring him to the woods and revoke his permission to enter the house.”

And then they would prepare.

_____________________________

Tewkesbury lowered his mother’s hands from his tie with a smile. “I look fine.”

His Uncle, older than he remembered, rolled his eyes at Tewkesbury’s mother and shook his head. Having returned to England only a few weeks before, he had holed himself up in the manor, refusing to speak about what had occurred with his Slayer until Tewkesbury had announced his intentions to follow Enola to London.

“Don't fuss over him, Caroline.”

Her mouth opened in protest and her hand lifted to caress his cheek. He caught it. “Please, Mother.”

“Oh, can I just…” she asked.

Tewkesbury huffed out a chuckle. “I'm trying to have Enola's respect.”

They stood there for a moment, his mother’s lips twitching up and pursing as her thoughts flashed across her face.

“It's quite the style, you know.”

She hadn’t disapproved, necessarily, of his impromptu haircut.

“Yes,” Tewkesbury replied. His uncle chuckled.

“I suppose it sets your face off nicely,” she admitted. Then, with a tilt of her head, his mother looked at the building that housed his and Enola’s new office. “Your father would be very proud of you.”

His heart swelled at that and his face broke into a grin. It had taken weeks to secure an office that the Council approved of after finally managing to convince them that Enola was the Slayer. The chattering of people around him filled his ears as his mother kissed his cheek and his uncle tugged her towards the Diogenes club where she would be read in, just like his grandmother had been.

To kill her own son. Watchers were taught that monsters were supernatural. Not truly fantasy, certainly, but human only in looks. His grandmother had shattered that belief so quickly.

Perhaps it was his own fault that he had been so open with her about his ideas about progressing the Council while hiding behind the smokescreen that his ideas were for England & the House of Lords. Some people enjoyed a world that benefitted them, and as someone who had sold out her son’s location and an invitation to her house to rid her son of his seat on the House of Lords, his grandmother certainly benefited from restricting voting.

Someone cleared their throat behind him.

“Congratulations.” Enola grinned up at him. “You finally look like the nincompoop you were born to be.”

He chuckled. Just like the first day they had met, she was in trousers, her hair tucked up under a cap.”

“No. You look good.” Enola grinned, her eyes darting towards the door. “This is… good.”

Reaching into the leather satchel his Uncle had given to him upon his twentieth birthday the week before, Tewkesbury pulled out the full Vampyr tome with a grunt. Enola raised her eyebrows at him.

“You have a lot to study,” he said. She snorted. Looking at the book held up only by his shaking hand, Tewkesbury continued, “It's, um...It's quite the thing.”

She groaned. “Can’t we just do the fighting? I train you in what I know and we move onto whatever weapons the Council has given us?”

Tewkesbury sent her a grin, tucking the tome underneath his arm and opening the door to the tailor’s she had gone to get her dress the first day in London. With a sarcastic curtsey, Enola filed in and waited for him to join her. The seamstress waved them upstairs with distracted attention, and Tewkesbury hesitated in the doorway to the office they had secured.

“So,” he asked. Enola looked up at him from running her fingertips across the wooden desk he had secured. “Are you safe? Are you… Are you...Are you comfortable?”

She sat in the office chair so similar to her brothers and looked at the nameplate she had chosen when Tewkesbury had proposed a central location in London. Enola Holmes, Private Detective & Slayer. Enola reached into the pocket of her trousers and pulled out Dash, staring at him like he might have the answers of what she was to do.

Running his free hand through his hair and stopping to scratch underneath his ear, Tewkesbury set the satchel on the ground and dropped the tome in front of her on the desk. “You're not still living - in that terrible lodgings house, are you?

“No.” Enola chuckled. “I used the reward money your mother gave me-”

He interrupted with a raised eyebrow. “Which you reluctantly took.”

“And found somewhere new.”

Enola spun the tome around so that it faced her and opened it to the first page, running her pointer finger down the prophecy Tewkesbury had recited to her in the Automobile. He shuffled in front of her.

“Well, Mother has said that there's, um...there's...there's always room for you with us.”

“Your mother clearly hasn't spent enough time with me,” She replied, flipping through the book and scanning the encyclopaedic listing of each Supernatural creature and how to defeat it.

Tewkesbury stared at her fingertips as she paused on the page about Vampires. Her hands shook for a moment. “And what if it was I that…,” he began, part of him already knowing the answer, “asked you to stay?”

Her lips twitched minutely, and he knew that she could refuse on multiple reasons.

“A kind offer,” Enola said, pulling a newspaper from her vest and flipping it open. He pinched his lips at the drawing of his grandmother on the front page, “but one I must refuse.”

Tewkesbury nodded, eyes stuck on the headline. DOWAGER VISCOUNTESS ARRESTED IN MURDER OF SON & ATTEMPTED MURDER OF MARQUESS. A shiver crawled down his spine as his thoughts were arrested back to that night, the pressure of the shotgun hitting his side and pushing him back into the armour. Laying there, listening to his grandmother threatened the Slayer and knowing he could not do a thing about it.

Almost like she knew what he was thinking, Enola rested the open newspaper on top of the tome and looked up at him. “You're not rid of me yet, Viscount Tewkesbury, Marquess of Basilwether,” she said.

“Ah. Quite right,” he agreed, turning his burning cheeks towards the window on the street. “I believe it is nearly half-past eleven.”

“By my calculations, that means five hours until sun-down,” Enola told him. “Shall we train?”

Standing up, she pressed her fingers down on the desk. Tewkesbury turned back to her and a grin spread on his face when she waited at the doorway expectantly to lead him down to the room he had outfitted with supplies of Edith’s recommendation. Placing Dash down on a barstool underneath a row of coat hooks, she surveyed the minimal training room full of items she would have never thought to get herself.

Enola’s grin spread across her face as she moved to the corner by the window to pick up a bo staff and tossed it to the side, whipping her hand to catch it a moment later. He sighed and gingerly removed his jacket, hanging it up on the hooks by the door.

Though he had not trained in that way since his Uncle had left for South America when he was fifteen, Tewkesbury picked up his own bow staff and struck at her. Enola easily moved out of the way and parried with a tilt up to the left. Their staffs clashed when he blocked the strike and pushed her back.

“You’re trained?”

He shrugged. “My Uncle thought it was useful when I was young.” Tewkesbury moved back and adjusted his double-handled position to hit her otherside. Enola moved back with a grin. “Need to train a Slayer, after all.”

They engaged in blows, each parrying and striking when they saw an opening, predicting and learning the other’s style and tactics. Enola tossed her cap off and wiped the sweat on her brow when Tewkesbury paused to catch his breath.

“Samhain is in a few days,” he said when she had pushed him back against the wall with her staff against his neck.

Enola raised her eyebrows. “Sow-in?”

“Celtic pronunciation.” Tewkesbury shrugged. “All Hallow’s Eve. With the veil thinner, more creatures are likely to be out.” Panting, he tapped at the staff against his neck and she stepped back to allow him to catch his breath. “Especially means that humans are more vulnerable. I would expect an increase of missing person’s across Mr Holmes’ desk.”

She grinned his way, picked up his discarded staff and with her own, tossed it into the oak barrel they had gotten them from at the top of the hour. Tewkesbury rubbed at his throat, closing his eyes and loosing a breath. Enola didn’t even seem to have lost any energy as she picked up a dagger to examine it.

He cleared his throat. “I’ve… um… arranged with Mr Holmes to direct any cases that appear… inhuman across your desk.”

Enola merely nodded, thinking of the Vampire they had left in the forest outside the bounds of the Basilwether property. Her hand tightened around the grip of the dagger when she recalled the threat he had made.

“Your neck will be my chalice, Slayer I’ll drain you, and then I’ll turn your little Watcher.”

Enola would dust him. She looked down the corridor and her eyes widened. Tewkesbury caught this and narrowed his eyes as he moved in front of her.

Her mother stepped into the room, looking just as she had the day she had left her. “Good afternoon, Enola.”

Wordless, all she could do was gape at the woman she would have given anything to see only two months prior in early September. Eudoria pinched her lips together as she examined Enola’s attire and perhaps Enola was only imagining it but she could have sworn she caught a glimpse of regret. Tewkesbury glanced at her, eyebrows raised, so she shook her head. Her mother was not a threat to her.

“This is a surprisingly nice room,” her Mother said, inhaling sharply before she spoke and walking around the worn red mat Tewkesbury had bought off of Edith. “I like the finishing touches.”

Enola watched as her mother grazed the top of the bo staff they had sparred with only minutes earlier. Tewkesbury moved backwards until they were side to side, turning slowly to fully face her Mother as Eudoria moved around the room.

“I can't stay long,” Eudoria said, looking once out the window. “People might be watching.” She froze when she saw Dash on the stool. “How on earth did you find that?”

Enola cleared her throat. “Sherlock did.”

“I thought you had forgotten it.” Her mother’s eyes turned wide. “You never could leave it alone as a little girl. You used to drag it around behind you-”

Enola cut in. “Sherlock said.”

“-You'd heard Queen Victoria had…”

“-Sherlock said that too.”

Her mother’s hand stopped in mid-air from where it was reaching towards her childhood toy. She looked to her daughter next to the missing marquess and pursed her lips, nodding and willing the tears to stay at bay.

“Well…” She said, her lips moving up into a momentary smile, “nice that you two have connected.”

Enola nodded and they stood there in silence. Tewkesbury looked desperately towards the door past Eudoria, unwilling to call the attention needed to escape to him.

Finally, her Mother broke the silence. “I'm sorry.” Enola shifted her weight onto her hip, crossing her arms in hopes of keeping everything she wanted to say inside. “I'm sorry. I wanted to tell you where I was going, but it wasn't safe.”

The small part of Enola that had hoped that her Mother had known about her being a potential Slayer shattered and she struggled to keep her sobs dammed up. Truly, she was only a girl, but just as her Mother had decided not to burden Enola with whatever she was doing, Enola knew that telling her would only put her in more danger.

“Are you safe now?”

Eudoria took a few shuddering breaths, her mouth twisting as she tried to find the words to describe her logic. Feeling Tewkesbury’s fingers slip into hers, Enola squeezed his hand once but didn’t dare do anything more.

“I didn't leave you because I didn't love you,” her Mother said, looking down at the floor. “I left for you...because I couldn't bear…” She finally met Enola’s eyes “-to have this world be your future. So I had to fight. You have to make some noise if you want to be heard.”

Enola merely nodded, her lips pursed. “Oh, it's funny.” She chuckled, remembering years of training, of lessons she had fought through to make her into what she was, of adventures and quests through Ferndell, solving puzzles and asking questions. “I thought… I was the one that was going to change the world.”

Her Mother didn’t know. If she had her way, her Mother may never know to protect her from the very things that haunted Enola’s nightmare the way her Mother had protected her from them growing up. Eudoria chuckled and sniffed, her eyes suspiciously wet in a way Enola hadn’t seen in years.

Her eyes drifted down to see Tewkesbury’s hand in Enola’s and she smiled. “What a woman you've become,” she whispered.

There are two ways to change the world: the slow way that ate at your soul and strength and was available to a very select few like Tewkesbury or the destructive one. Eudoria Holmes had never been patient, and that was a trait she had passed down to each of her children.

They all manifested it in their different ways. Mycroft was in his position of power by clawing his way to the top. Sherlock lived an insatiable life, searching for new entertainment and puzzles. Enola was most like Eudoria in that she felt the constraints of the world her brothers would never experience and felt the duty to change and fight for the world she wanted in her bones.

Shaking Tewkesbury’s grip off, Enola ran to her Mother and grabbed her in an embrace. Both chuckled in similar tune, sniffling in round as they swayed together. Her mother rested her chin on Enola’s head.

“Thank you for your irises,” she said when Enola drew away after a few minutes. Hands on Enola’s upper arms, her Mother looked down and took a breath before continuing. “Now, if you ever...ever need me, I'll be looking out for them.”

Enola’s brow furrowed and her mouth pressed down in a frown. She whispered, “You have to go?”

“Yes,” Eudoria said, “but...let's just stay like this for a bit.”

“I'd like that too.”

Tewkesbury watched, head tilted, and pulled out the new journal he had purchased the same day he had signed the lease on the office. Licking the nib of his pen, he opened it to a new page. What on earth could he write about? Perhaps his moniker could take on a different meaning, he considered, eyes landing on the collection of weapons.

In truth, this conclusion was just the beginning of the Slayer called Enola, which, backwards, spells 'alone'. To Tewkesbury, such a name was the perfect poetry. He leaned against the wall and began his Watcher diary.

To be a Holmes, you must find your own path. Enola had told him before they had been ambushed by Lestrade. Her brothers had, her Mother had, and now Enola had too. Keeping her Mother away from her life as the Slayer would perhaps leave her alone with only Tewkesbury and Sherlock aware, but being alone did not mean she had to be lonely. Her Mother had never wanted that.

Enola looked over to Tewkesbury scribbling furiously in his journal, leaned up against the wall, ink already beginning to stain his fingertips and fought back a grin. After a minute, she moved over to the window to see Eudoria turn around and wave up at the window. Enola waved back.

Her Mother had only wanted Enola to find her freedom, her future, and her purpose. And now? She looked down at the dagger in her hands, wondering how many Slayers had held it before, and shifted it into the icepick grip her Mother had drilled into her. Tewkesbury looked up from his journal, scanning the room in surprise to find Eudoria gone. When he saw her in ready position, silver knife in her hand, a smile spread across his face. Perhaps this was the Calling meant for both of them.

She was a detective, a decipherer, a finder of lost souls. Most of all, Enola thought as Tewkesbury dodged the wide swing of her dagger with a grin and a laugh, she was a Slayer.