Our favorite half-Slayer, half-vampire returns to face off against her toughest foe yet: her dear old grandma in the epic conclusion of the Serwa Boateng trilogy: Serwa Boateng’s Guide to Saving the World, on sale 5/6!
Family drama, friendship drama, boy drama, vampire drama . . . this one has it all and more. And you check out an exclusive chapter excerpt courtesy of author, Roseanne A. Brown right here.
The Compound
There are a few sentences that, once uttered, signal to the listener that whatever was just said was the absolute biggest, boldest, most landfill-smelling lie that has ever been told in the history of liar-dom. A few examples include, but are not limited to:
1. “This might hurt a little bit.”—doctors right before subjecting you to the worst pain of your entire life
2. “We’ll just pop in and say a quick hi to everyone before we head out.”—parents before dragging you to a boring adult party where you end up staying so long you start smelling like the furniture
3. “This is going to work this time.”—a fool about to do something that is almost certainly not going to work this time
Still, that doesn’t stop me from turning to my friends and saying with a confidence hovering somewhere between delusionally hopeful and alarmingly naive, “This is going to work this time.”
Eunju looks skeptical, Mateo looks worried, Gavin looks encouraging, and Roxy looks uncharacteristically blank. It’s the last expression that worries me the most.
“Right, because your last six attempts to escape worked sooooo well,” Roxy says with a sneer.
My chest tightens at the bitterness in my cousin’s voice. Eunju snarking at me is nothing new, but Roxy’s current chilliness toward me hurts. Of all the members of the Good Citizens Committee—or the GCC, as we call the group our art teacher made after the five of us kind of, sort of started a massive food fight at school—Roxy was the one who always stood by me no matter how out of control my schemes got. But I can’t even blame her for hating me right now. After all, I’m the reason the five of us have spent the last week trapped in the Compound, the global headquarters of a group of vampire-hunting Slayers known as the Abomofuo.
Seven whole days since any of us have seen the sun. Seven whole days since any of us have slept in our own bed. Seven whole days since the Okomfo, the priests who run the Abomofuo, wiped the memories of my friends’ families so no one would question why four kids suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth.
They didn’t wipe my family’s memories, though. There was no need to when it’s so broken right now that even calling us a family is more generous than any of us deserve. There’s:
1. my Auntie Effi, who’s currently in solitary confinement somewhere deep in the bowels of the Compound, awaiting trial for her crimes as the leader of the obayifo, witches from Ghanaian mythology with a taste for human blood;
2. my mom, who’s on bed rest due to her high-risk pregnancy with the second-ever recorded half-obayifo, half-Slayer child (Greetings from me, the first! Real fun being me, y’all!);
3. my dad, whose brain is being held hostage by black magic to the point that he can’t even remember his own name, much less the fact that he has a daughter and a wife whom he loves more than anything and therefore shouldn’t attempt to slash them with a sword.
Oh yeah, and how could I ever forget my dear old grandmother Nana Bekoe, an obayifo so dangerous the Abomofuo kept her trapped for decades in a magical object known as the Midnight Drum? She was recently set free in a series of events that were as hilarious as they were unfortunate. Nana Bekoe is the one pulling my dad’s puppet strings, and together they’ve assembled the forces of black magic into an army to wage an all-out war against the Slayers in retaliation for the death of my maternal aunt decades ago.
So yeah, being Serwa Boateng these days? One part Slayer, one part vampire, all parts distrusted by everyone on either side of an ancient magical conflict?
Being me is an absolute delight these days.
But as hopeless as it all sounds, I have a plan. Right before the Abomofuo trapped me and my friends in the Compound, I made a deal with Owuo, the god of death. (What’s the god of death like, you ask? Imagine if the Grim Reaper had the general demeanor of Old MacDonald—that’s more or less his whole deal.) Owuo gave me nine weeks to bring him someone to be his eternal companion down in Asamando, the underworld. And I’m going to give him someone, all right—Nana Bekoe. After all the pain she’s caused, the old bat more than deserves an eternity spent amusing a sadistic apron-wearing deity. It’s been a week since I made the deal, so I have eight weeks left to pull this off.
Let the record show that I’m aware sacrificing my grandmother rto the god of death isn’t exactly a “good” or “kind” or “morally decent” thing to do.
But I don’t see what other choice I have. Not when Nana Bekoe has sworn she won’t stop until every single Slayer in the world has been destroyed. This is bigger than Slayers versus Vampires now. This is Me versus Her, and I’m going to win.
No matter what it takes.
Hungry for more? Pre-order your copy of Rick Riordan Presents: Serwa Boateng’s Guide to Saving the World today!