This January, a new Slayer answers the call in In Every Generation, the YA novel sequel to Buffy the Vampire Slayer from author Kendare Blake. The difference this time is that the new Slayer is also a witch and comes from the Scoobies family. In Every Generation follows Frankie Rosenberg, daughter of Willow Rosenberg. Her life is changed when an attack on a Slayer convention wipes out every known Slayer. In an exclusive excerpt that Disney Publishing Worldwide provided to ComicBook.com, Frankie catches up with another member of the extended Scoobies family. Teen werewolf Jake is Oz’s cousin and the younger brother of the werewolf cousin who bit Oz, turning him into a werewolf as well.
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“In this scene, we join dedicated eco-warrior Frankie and dedicated lacrosse player Jake, in a bit of eco-witching in progress,” Blake says. “This scene also introduces some backstory about who Jake is, and what’s been up with the Osbourne werewolf clan in the years between.”
While they don’t show up in this excerpt, Blake also teased appearances by some of the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters. That’s not limited to Willow and Oz alone.
“I hope fans of the show enjoy catching up with Willow, Spike and Oz (and a little bit of Xander). I also hope they let their Buffy nostalgia run absolutely wild,” Blake says. “While introducing the new gang, I tried to hold onto that classic Buffyverse feeling–turning Frankie and the new Scoobs loose in Sunnydale felt a whole lot like coming home.”
You can read the excerpt from In Every Generation below. The book releases on January 4th.
“Need some help?” Jake asked.
“Nope,” Frankie said as he poked the tip of his lacrosse stick through the refuse. “And I’d get your stick out of there if you don’t want it magicked.”
“Magicked?”
Frankie took a deep breath. She pulled a bundle of herbs and a lighter out of her pocket and whispered,
“Consilium depurgo.”
Then she lit the herbs and dropped them with a bright orange poof onto the bin of mixed recycling. A little smoke and some coughing later, and the items inside were cleaned. After that, it was just a matter of sorting them by hand.
“Frankie,” Jake hissed, and blocked the smoking bin with his body. “A little discretion, maybe?”
“Calm down, nobody was looking.”
“Did you even check? And does your mom know you’re doing spells at school?”
“Yes,” Frankie said, even though her mom most certainly did not. “Does Oz know you’re playing with your stick at lunch?”
Jake made a face. He was a junior, and an athlete, and popular, yet somehow he still had enough time to constantly be on her case. He’d been that way since they were kids, when she was a tiny, budding witch and he was a less tiny werewolf following her around like she held an invisible leash.
“Did your mom teach you that spell?”
“Sort of.” Her mom had taught her, but teaching only went so far when she refused to demonstrate anything. Willow Rosenberg had been powerful once. More powerful even than the slayer. But she’d stopped doing magic after Frankie was born, and when Frankie asked why, she would only say, “Because I don’t need it anymore.” Secretly, Frankie thought her mom hid her magic so Frankie would feel less pressure. And even so it still wasn’t easy, taking her magical baby steps and stumbles with THE Willow Rosenberg watching.
“You’re getting pretty good,” said Jake.
“After many failures and herb burns,” said Frankie, and rubbed at the memories of scorches on her hands. “So you can go back to your friends. It was just a little eco-witching, which my mom totally allows.”
“Eco-witching?” Jake asked.
“Magic-tivism?” Frankie suggested. She squinted up at him in the sun of the quad, a pen and two pencils sticking out of the red bun on the back of her head. Jake smiled a little. He looked good. Better these days, than he had in a long time. It had only been a year since his parents had moved to the New Zealand werewolf commune. They’d had to go, after his older brother, Jordy, had an incident with Sunnydale Animal Control. Luckily, Jake’s cousin Oz moved back to Sunnydale, so Jake didn’t have to move with them.
“Are you and Oz coming over for dinner tonight?” Frankie asked.
“Are you cooking?”
“Not if you want it to be edible.”
Jake snorted and stretched his broad shoulders.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll make a stir-fry. Or Uncle Oz can grab veggie burgers?”
“Stop calling him your uncle. He’s your cousin.”
“He’s too old to be my cousin.”
Frankie clenched her teeth on the retort “that’s not how it works, Jake” because there was a lot of math involved: Jake’s brother, Jordy, who bit Oz with his first grown-up teeth and turned him into a werewolf, was ten years older than Jake. Oz was already seventeen when Jordy bit him, so that made Oz . . .
Frankie squinted. Old. That made Oz old. He was like a year older than her mom.
“You’ve got a point,” she said. “There’s got to be a cutoff age for cousins, and it’s probably somewhere around . . . forty. Anyway, let’s do burgers. Now, get out of here.”
“Don’t you still need help sorting?”
“I’ll get my own help.”
“How? You don’t even know anyone in this lunch period.” He looked around. That was an exaggeration. She knew lots of them. Or their names, anyway.
“Jake, go back to your friends. I’ll see you after school.” With an impish grin, she grabbed his lacrosse stick and held it up in the air. Jake’s body tensed immediately and he half crouched, wolflike and ready to fetch. He was even more wolflike than Oz, who embraced his werewolf spirit and could control it, calling it forth on command, full moon or no full moon.
Frankie waved the lacrosse stick back and forth. Every time it moved, Jake twitched.
“Okay, knock it off,” he said, and she handed it over. “Have I mentioned your werewolf humor never gets old?”
“Hi, Jake!”
Frankie looked over her shoulder. Jasmine Finnegan and another pretty junior girl waved to Jake, and he nodded and said,
“Hey.”
“Hey, Jake,” Frankie whispered. “There’s one kind of magic that’s always come naturally to me.”
“Huh?” Jake said. “Frankie, don’t—”
She fixed her eyes on the recycling bin and flicked her fingers, and the bin went sailing, spilling the contents all over the ground, right at Jasmine’s and the junior girl’s feet.
“Jake,” Frankie fake-scolded. “You are so clumsy!”
“Oh my gosh, let us help you.” Jasmine bent and immediately began picking up plastic bottles and empty cans of soda.
Frankie looked at Jake smugly. But before she could say that now she had plenty of help, what felt like a ball of cold water exploded in her gut. It hit so hard she staggered back.
“Frankie?” Jake asked.
She shivered violently as the cold spread from her stomach into her chest and down into her legs, and Jake reached out just as her world tilted and she hit the ground, jaw clenched and limbs seizing.
“Frankie, are you okay?”
“No, s-something’s wrong,” she stammered as he hovered over the top of her. She heard him call for help, and his face, handsome and annoying, flickered as her vision swam. The last thing she heard was herself saying, “Remember, to sort . . . properly. . . .”
And then she passed out.
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