Page 23

23

R oma’s sneakers land on the solid wood floor of an apartment, and her stomach lurches as her eyes adjust to the interior lighting. She knows this place?—knows it very well, actually.

This is the studio apartment where Obie set her up during her fake defection from the Sanctum. Her heart aches a little at the memory of him giving her a small smile as he handed her the key and telling her to text him if she needed anything.

At the memory of JJ sitting cross-legged on the couch across from her, trusting her with all of his doubts about the Sanctum and his love for his adopted daughter and the stirrings of his feelings for Cass.

It’s more than Roma was mentally prepared to deal with right now, and she swallows down the clench of guilt in her chest, glancing around. Ez either doesn’t realize that this used to be Roma’s place or is just choosing not to acknowledge it, and there’s no way Micah and Gregorio could possibly know, but somehow, Roma feels the weight of silent condemnation settling onto her shoulders anyway. “Well?” she says, trying to force it away. “What’s this varsity-level spell you want us to cast?”

Gregorio shoots her a withering look. “Patience, Gutierrez. We still need the rest of the crew, and??—?”

He’s interrupted by the purple-gold of a transport rift billowing open a few feet away. Obie walks through first, his eyes impassive; Roma has the nagging feeling that he chose this apartment in particular as a glaring reminder of her betrayal. Cass steps out after him, shooting her a scowl, and behind him walks??—

Roma’s heart leaps. “JJ,” she breathes, taking an instinctive step forward.

It’s been so long since she’s seen him. It’s been so long since she’s been this close to her old teammate, her old friend, the one she trained with and laughed with and talked with long into the night??—

She didn’t realize just how much she really missed him until precisely this moment.

But just as quickly as Roma moves forward, JJ steps back, his eyes hard. “Hi,” he says curtly, and he turns to Micah and Gregorio. “Do you still need me here? Since I’m apparently not your first choice for a human spellcaster anymore?”

The happiness in Roma’s chest shatters. She swallows hard past the sudden lump in her throat, blinking back the burning behind her eyes.

Right. The last time they spoke, it was at Lakeside with the summoner and the three neophytes, when Roma threatened to fight him and JJ drew his weapon on her, and the time before that??—

Well. The time before that was when JJ found out that Roma betrayed him and compromised Cass’s location. The time when Roma almost succeeded in bringing him back to the Sanctum by force?—and would’ve managed it if Ez and Obie hadn’t shown up.

Ez might be cautiously willing to trust Roma, but it’s abundantly clear that JJ still doesn’t. The thought makes her heart hurt. And she should be concerned because JJ’s suspicions could compromise her mission, should be concerned because her entire reason for being here?—her entire reason for accidentally starting the mega-rift epidemic and working with Ez and associating with these demons at all?—is to get him back to the Sanctum by any means necessary, but??—

But, if she’s being honest with herself, she cares a lot less about that and a lot more about how badly she hurt her old friend.

Gregorio doesn’t react to the accusation behind JJ’s words. “You can blame Laguerre for that,” he says shortly.

JJ’s glare shifts to Ez. Ez scoffs back at him. “JJ, I love you and all, but you and Obie have barely been able to close these mega-rifts?—and Obie has been doing most of the heavy lifting. You were the first to tell me that Gutierrez is the Redwater Sanctum’s best spellcaster, and judging by our results over the past few weeks, that hasn’t changed.”

The words set off the same warmth in Roma’s chest that they did when Ez said them to Micah and Gregorio, and she shoves down the roar of emotions that comes with it. What is wrong with her? She shouldn’t be so inexplicably pleased that Ez thinks she’s powerful, that Ez thinks she’s useful, that Ez thinks she’s a talented spellcaster??—

Roma shouldn’t put any stock in a demon’s opinion at all, but somewhere along the line, Ez’s approval apparently started to mean a lot to her. She determinedly tries not to analyze the thought too closely.

JJ’s jaw works. “Fine,” he says, and he turns back to Micah and Gregorio. “My question still stands, though. Do you need me here? Cass and I don’t like to leave our daughter at home alone for too long.”

“Well, there’s more to this story than just the spell,” Micah says. “And our contacts wanted you here specifically. Gutierrez the Younger was a later addition, but?—?” His eyes flicker towards her. “But they didn’t seem totally averse to her presence, either.”

“Contacts?” Roma repeats, unease creeping down her spine. “What contacts?”

As an answer, Gregorio snaps open a rift. “Gang’s all here,” he calls through it. “And we’ve warded and soundproofed the entire place. Let’s get a move on.”

“Don’t rush us, Ricci,” a shockingly familiar voice calls back, and Roma jerks away on instinct, all the blood rushing from her head at once. A few feet away, JJ goes absolutely rigid, eyes wide and face pale.

Roma knows that voice. She knows that goddamn voice, and so does JJ, but??—

But she hasn’t heard it in six long years. Judging by JJ’s stunned expression, neither has he.

But it doesn’t make sense. They disappeared years ago, ran away years ago, defected years ago, and??—

And it doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense, but when Naomi Gutierrez and Sawyer Solomon step through the rift side by side, Roma can already feel her carefully constructed life starting to crumble around her. Her breath hitches. “Naomi?”

“Sawyer?” JJ sputters.

And Sawyer smiles thinly as Gregorio closes the rift behind them. “Hiya, kiddos. Did you miss us?”

“Seriously?” the dead ringer for Roma asks, giving her companion a long-suffering look. “That’s the best you can come up with?”

The other woman shrugs one shoulder, looking from JJ’s stricken eyes to Roma’s bloodless face and back again. “There’s really no good way to start a conversation after six years of no contact.”

Roma is trembling next to Ez. Ez leans the slightest bit closer to her, lowering her voice. “Gutierrez, are they who I think they are?”

Roma’s voice is strained. “Yes.”

Naomi Gutierrez and Sawyer Solomon. Just last week, Roma confided in Ez about her complicated relationship with her runaway sister, about her bitterness at still living in the shadow of Naomi’s decisions, about how Naomi and Sawyer both modeled a strict adherence to the bloodlines hierarchy that still affects Roma to this day??—

Somehow, Ez doesn’t think this little reunion is going to end well.

“But you?—?” JJ’s voice sounds raw. “You left Redwater years ago. You’ve been gone for six years, and??—??”

“Actually,” Naomi cuts in, “we never left?—not for long, anyway. We had a few stints abroad when our research called for it, but…” She lets out a slow breath. “Redwater is our home. Always has been, always will be.”

Cass’s hand finds JJ’s shoulder, his eyes dark and sharp. “Micah. Gregorio. What the hell is going on?”

“We’re bringing you up to speed on what’s actually happening in this godforsaken town,” Gregorio says, and he gestures at Roma and JJ. “You might want to have your hunters sit down. They look like they’re about to pass out.”

Roma crosses her arms over her chest. She still looks pale and shaky, but there’s a defiant set to her jaw. “I’d rather stand, thanks.”

“Same,” JJ says quietly, but he leans the slightest bit towards Cass. Just as subtly, Cass shifts back against him, supporting some of JJ’s weight.

For a fleeting second, Ez considers pressing her shoulder against Roma’s, but she hastily discards the impulse. Roma is perfectly capable of standing on her own.

“All right.” Naomi blows her bangs out of her eyes, looking torn between determined and sad. “For those of you who don’t know us…” She waves awkwardly. “Hi. I’m Naomi Gutierrez. Roma’s older sister.”

“And I’m Sawyer Solomon,” Sawyer says breezily. “We’re both former self-defense instructors from the Redwater Sanctum.”

“Yes, I think we all deduced that from the context clues,” Obie says. His voice is even, but his shoulders are tense. “How about we skip the introductions and get to the part where you tell us why we’re here?”

Sawyer smiles back. It’s a bit of an unhinged smile, Ez thinks. “Oh, I like you,” she says, and she turns to Naomi. “I like him. He doesn’t bullshit around.”

“I don’t think he likes you,” Naomi informs her bluntly, and she focuses back on the crowd in front of her, folding her arms over her chest in a striking mirror of Roma’s posture. “All right. Let’s start at the beginning?—the very beginning. Twelve years ago, a group of unregistered demons murdered the Jackson and Locke families. The only survivors, Julian and Chester, were taken in by the Sanctum and trained to be hunters.”

Sawyer waggles her fingers. “I was assigned to do most of that training. Naomi taught JJ?—and Roma?—how to work as a strike team, but I was chosen to teach JJ and Chester how to be hunters.” She leans forward. “Which was a bizarre proposition from the start, because hunters aren’t made?—they’re born.”

Out of the corner of Ez’s eye, she sees JJ flinch. Roma shifts on her feet, hands twitching like she’s braced for a fight.

Almost like, Ez realizes with a jolt, she’s accustomed to defending JJ against that particular accusation.

“Sawyer was suspicious from the beginning,” Naomi continues, “but she kept her head down and did her job, just like the rest of us. But that all changed six years ago.” Her eyes find JJ. “Jayj, did you ever find it strange that the demons who killed your family came back to Redwater just in time for your final exam?”

The tension in the room instantly spikes, every eye zeroing in on JJ, and Ez swallows hard. She knew that JJ and Roma’s strike team was assigned to kill the unregistered demons responsible for the Jackson–Locke murders?—Cass told her and Obie as much?—but it never occurred to Ez to question why those demons were back in town in the first place.

“Don’t call me ‘Jayj,’” JJ says shortly. “And no. I didn’t. I presumed that the Sanctum was keeping tabs on them and managed to trick them into coming back.”

“Yeah.” Sawyer’s voice is quieter now. Less playfully antagonistic, more tiredly regretful. “Yeah, that’s what Naomi and I figured you’d think. That’s what the Council wanted you to think.”

Roma’s eyes narrow. “As opposed to…?”

“Something darker,” Gregorio says, and he nods at Sawyer. “Solomon here was investigating the situation in the background, and when those demons came back to Redwater, she found an anomaly. My job in the Redwater Chain is to track demons who enter or leave our jurisdiction for periods longer than four weeks, and she found a stack of forms that hypothetically would’ve come straight from my office: six TX-203s giving those demons permission to leave Redwater six years prior, and six VX-861s giving them permission to come back.”

“All of which were allegedly signed by one ‘G. Ricci,’” Micah adds, “who, as I think we’ve all figured out by now, hasn’t signed a solid half of the paperwork that Central Office claims he has.”

The words streak through Ez like lightning, puzzle pieces snapping together in her head?—and not making a bit of sense in the process. “The Chain hid them?” she repeats, skeptical. “But they were publicly wanted by the Chain for their crimes, especially after the Jackson–Locke murders. Why would Central Office protect them? And why would six unregistered demons even fill out the proper forms?”

“The better question is how,” Micah says. “As in, how did multiple TX-203s for multiple high-profile demons make it through multiple Chain departments without anyone sounding the alarm? I sure as hell would’ve noticed, and usually, every scrap of paperwork in Redwater crosses my desk. That means Central Office took pains to make sure no one outside of their inner circle saw those forms.”

“High-level corruption in the Chain,” Obie says, his eyes shifting to Ez. “Just like you thought.”

“Not for nothing,” Ez says, “but Roma and I presumed that corruption was, like, four or five people, tops. Not half of Central Office.”

Naomi nods. “That’s what Sawyer and I thought at first, too?—that we had one or two Sanctum hunters working with one or two Chain demons. So Sawyer tracked Gregorio down to see what he knew about those forms, I… got involved??—?”

“You mean that you stalked me,” Sawyer says, “and held a knife to my throat until I told you what I knew.”

Naomi doesn’t miss a beat. “But it was sexy, right?”

Sawyer’s lips twitch in a smirk. “Very.”

Roma chokes. Obie scrubs a hand down his face, clearly irritated, and Micah and Gregorio trade weary looks that imply this type of banter is a very frequent occurrence.

Looks like Naomi and Sawyer rode off into the sunset together after all.

Cass snaps his fingers impatiently. “Focus. What does this have to do with anything?”

His voice is hard. With a pang, Ez realizes that he’s gripping JJ’s shoulder so tightly that it would probably bruise a regular human, but with that dazed expression on JJ’s face, Ez doubts he even notices.

“Buzzkill,” Sawyer says, but she dutifully continues. “We met up with Gregorio and Micah a few times in the lead-up to Strike Team Kappa’s final exam. The entire con made sense from the Chain’s point of view?—either Kappa killed those unregistered demons, thus ridding the world of six dangerous criminals, or the demons killed Kappa, thus ridding the world of three hunters-in-training.”

“Which was a possibility, by the way, that we were not about to let happen,” Naomi adds, her eyes flickering from Roma to JJ and back again. “That was why we pushed you three so hard during practice runs, and that was why we stayed so close during the mission itself. If it was a setup, then we wanted to be prepared.”

“Besides that, the only aspect that didn’t make sense was what the Sanctum had to gain,” Sawyer says, and she grimaces. “Unfortunately, Micah and Gregorio figured that out.”

Ez’s eyes narrow. “‘Unfortunately’?”

“Yeah. It’s not pretty,” Gregorio says. “A few months before all this, Micah was assigned to create a streamlined version of an old form?—the FX-905b. He ended up visiting Chains worldwide to teach them how to use it.” His jaw tightens. “Which is how we discovered hints of covert communication between the Chain and the Sanctum on every continent.”

All at once, the world goes very quiet around Ez. Roma goes absolutely still. “What?”

“It’s not just Redwater,” Micah says. “It’s everywhere. Sprawling metropolises, tiny townships, and everything in between. Forged TX-203s, forged VX-861s…” He winces. “Forged transfer paperwork for neophyte demons. The location codes for their destinations never seemed to exist. Now, we’re pretty sure they were being funneled straight to their local Sanctums.”

“London was particularly brutal,” Gregorio adds. “That was where we found three more families.”

JJ squints at him. “Three more families?”

Gregorio hesitates. Glances at Sawyer.

Sawyer takes a deep breath, meeting JJ’s eyes. “Three more families,” she says, her voice measured and even, “that were murdered by unregistered demons a few years prior, leaving only three twelve-year-old children behind. The London Sanctum took them in.”

It’s like all the oxygen gets sucked out of the room at once. Feeling like she’s moving through molasses, Ez turns to look at JJ, who’s staring back at Sawyer with a concerningly blank expression.

Like the implications of the words are too awful for his brain to even process.

With mounting horror, Ez realizes why Micah and Gregorio insisted on JJ coming to this meeting. She realizes why Micah immediately recognized JJ all those months ago in Cass’s living room, and why both he and Gregorio had a vested interest in him, and why they helped to cover his and Cass’s tracks.

It was all building up to this one conversation.

“And we kept an eye on them,” Naomi adds softly. “They were already sixteen years old when Micah and Gregorio found them, and on the very day Strike Team Kappa passed their final exam, the VX-861s were filed to bring those unregistered demons back to London.” She arches an eyebrow. “Guess who was assigned to kill them about a month later?”

“That doesn’t?—?” JJ’s breathing looks faster than normal. “They couldn’t??—?”

“JJ,” Sawyer says gently, “you and Chester were the prototypes. The Sanctum put out the hits on your families, the Chain hired those demons to do the job, and the Sanctum and the Chain worked together to keep them off the radar until your final exam. It’s a pattern they’ve replicated at least two dozen times worldwide since then. After all, what better way to guarantee your loyalty than to give you the chance for revenge?”

“All in the name of bringing fresh blood into a system already overtaxed by the restrictions of the bloodlines hierarchy,” Naomi finishes, and her eyes slide to Roma. “So that’s the conspiracy you and Ez found: the Sanctum and the Chain have been on the same side from the start. Any questions?”