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T he Council is willing to hook you up with Kenneth Long?” Bryant sputters, incredulous. “Roma! That’s insane!”

“Insanely good for you,” Chester says, leaning against the brick boundary wall around the Sanctum’s property. Right now, the three of them are huddled away from prying ears on the very edge of the training grounds, discussing the latest developments in the Jackson case.

Roma both loves and hates that they’re calling it “the Jackson case.” Loves it, because it’s easier for her to dissociate from the fact that one of her best friends is an enemy now, and hates it, because??—

Well. She hates it for that exact same reason, actually. “I know,” she says, hugging her arms over her chest. Part of her is still running off the high from Tuesday night’s conversation with Councilwoman Nasir?—and the possibility of a marriage prospect most mixed-breed hunters could only dream of?—but the rest of her has long since settled back down to cold, pragmatic reality. “I’m not sure how Long will feel about it, but…”

Bryant waves a hand dismissively. “That’s irrelevant. He was probably expecting to get matched with another purebred, but he’ll do whatever the Council tells him. Plus, he’s the youngest in his family?—all his siblings are already carrying on the bloodline. Just like mine are,” she adds, a trace of bitterness creeping into her voice.

Roma fights back a wince. With Kenneth Long out of the running, Bryant’s only options now are to take the status hit of marrying a mixed-breed hunter here in Redwater or to get matched with a purebred in a different Sanctum entirely. “Sorry. About that. I know you were banking on getting paired with Long yourself, but??—?”

“That’s also irrelevant,” Bryant says, and lightly, she punches Roma’s arm. “It was a long shot, anyway?—I’ve checked our family trees, and the Nehemiahs and the Longs are just a little too close for comfort, genetically speaking. He’s all yours, girl.”

“Not that I think either of you would really want him,” Chester says, wrinkling his nose. “We’re usually on different shifts down in the prison, but I’ve worked with him a few times. He’s a dick.”

“But he’s a purebred dick,” Bryant stresses. “That’s the important part. He and Roma can just crank out a few babies and interact as little as possible the rest of the time.”

The idea nearly makes Roma shudder, not that she’d ever admit it to present company. Obviously, it’s the duty of every Sanctum hunter to procreate and raise the next generation, but there isn’t much about sex and pregnancy and childrearing that appeals to her.

Like, there isn’t much about it that appeals to her at all. She knows that it’s partly because she’d vastly prefer one of Kenneth’s sisters over Kenneth himself, but even then, the idea of having a family never really interested her.

Families have a habit of falling apart, after all.

“I’ll never understand these carefully arranged hunter marriages,” Chester says, folding his arms over his chest. “Most people marry for, you know, actual love and happiness nowadays, at least in this country.”

Bryant arches an eyebrow. “That’s a very specific point to mention, Locke. Any cute guys you want to introduce us to?”

“Like I have time to meet anyone. I spend every spare minute on research nowadays,” Chester says, and his eyes find Roma’s again. “So what’s your plan?”

Roma lets out a slow breath. “Honestly? No idea. I was actually hoping you two could help me with that. How am I supposed to convince JJ?—and his entourage?—that I’m really on their side this time? I don’t even think I could persuade Desi at this point, and Esmeralda Laguerre would probably try to stab me if I even approached them. She seems like a very stabby kind of demon.”

Bryant purses her lips, considering. “Well, that might not be completely true. You and Laguerre worked together to close that rift, right? And no one got stabbed?”

“Not literally,” Roma says. “But I sort of think she was trying to stab me with her eyes.”

“So it was a metaphorical stabbing,” Chester surmises.

Two words for you: metaphorical hay.

There’s no hay!

Pain twists through Roma’s chest. Firmly, she shoves the memory of Bryant and JJ’s lighthearted bickering away. “A very metaphorical stabbing,” she agrees solemnly. “But we really only cooperated because closing the rift to Tamaros was more important than our own issues. Those are the only two things hunters and demons agree on, right? Killing summoners and closing rifts. And it’s not like we can predict when summoners will show their ugly faces in town.”

For a long moment, Bryant considers her.

And then she smiles. “Unless we can.”

Chester looks confused. “What do you mean? We can’t just create summoners out of thin air.”

“Not summoners,” Bryant says. “Rifts. We have the requisite magic skills to open them, after all. Rifts in general might be demon magic, but rifts to Tamaros work around that by using a soon-to-be-summoned demon’s soul energy?—that’s how human summoners get away with it. If we opened a handful of rifts in public places where JJ and his posse just happened to be hanging out, then Roma could come in clutch to help them. She could weasel her way into their group easily.”

Roma’s pulse jumps. “That’s… a solid idea,” she says, the gears in her head already turning, “but there’s no way the Council would sign off on it.”

“Maybe they would,” Chester says slowly, his head tilting to one side with interest. “Roma, if they’re willing to match you with a purebred, then that means getting JJ back is a very high priority for them. They might be willing to bend the rules. Plus, it’s not like we’d actually have to summon anything?—we’d need to tap into a Tamaros demon’s soul energy to open the rift, but we wouldn’t have to actually pull it to Earth. And even if another demon accidentally wandered through, the Sanctum has been pretty keen on bringing neophytes back for testing lately. We could just transport it straight to the prison.”

Bryant grins. “I like the way you think, Locke. Hell, the two of us could probably even pull it off?—throw on some cloaking spells, pop open some rifts, and poof! Instant pretext for Roma to get all buddy-buddy with the demons.” Her smirk wavers. “And weird half-demons.”

Chester’s expression shuts down. “What do you think they did to him?” His voice is low, but there’s an undercurrent of sadness and restrained anger there that makes Roma’s heart hurt. “I?—I still don’t think he would leave us. Not like this. Sure, he missed life on the outside?—so do I, sometimes?—but leaving us for them? For the very things that murdered our families? It doesn’t make any sense. And the fact that his skin burns at our touch now…”

Roma’s stomach churns. “I’m still researching how the corrosion spell could’ve affected him,” she says quietly. “Technically, corrosion burns aren’t like other injuries?—the burns themselves are imbued with the corrosion spell, so they only heal as the spell itself evaporates over time. The injury isn’t caused by the enchantment—the injury is the enchantment.”

Chester’s jaw tightens. “But that doesn’t change the fact that only demons should be affected by it. Not humans. Not JJ.”

Roma winces. “Well, we’ve known from the start that Chin must be manipulating JJ somehow, right? Get him invested in the little demon girl, seduce him, and cut him off from the rest of us. Make him feel like he can’t come back. And I can’t think of anything more isolating than a spell to make it so he can’t even touch us.”

Esmeralda Laguerre herself probably came up with it. Roma fights back a scowl at the thought.

Bryant looks away. “I’m not so sure. JJ was always softer than the rest of us. Maybe he wanted to leave, and Chin was just his ticket out. Maybe the corrosion vulnerability is less to keep him away from us and more to keep us away from him.”

Chester stiffens. “He wouldn’t do that to us. Not after everything we’ve been through.”

“Well, maybe JJ isn’t the person we thought he was,” Bryant says shortly.

Hastily, Roma cuts in. “Regardless,” she says, “the Council wants him back. I’m not sure if it’s for testing or to see whether they can undo Chin’s brainwashing, but either way, I’ll have to earn his trust again to bring him home. Bryant, Chester, do you two really think you could pull off a false flag operation like that?”

Bryant and Chester glance at each other, eyebrows raised, and Roma breathes a quick sigh of relief. She knows that the two of them would defend each other to the death, but that would only be if they didn’t kill each other first.

And this particular tension feels familiar. Almost nostalgic. With a start, Roma realizes that they fell into these exact same roles after Naomi and Sawyer defected?—Chester insisted that they must’ve been manipulated somehow to take away the sting of abandonment; Bryant immediately wrote them off and demonized them to distance herself from the pain. Roma was a mess, of course, drowning in the fallout from losing her sister, her mentor, and her family’s reputation in one fell swoop, and JJ??—

JJ made it a point to check on Roma every single day. Her chest aches at the memory. He might’ve been soft for a hunter, but sometimes, Roma really does think he was the best of them.

Not that it matters now. She forces herself back to the present just as Chester nods firmly, turning to face her. “I think we could pull it off. You’re our best spellcaster, of course, but with a bit of practice, I think Bryant and I could throw on some cloaking spells and open some rifts.”

“We’ll just have to get the Council’s permission first,” Bryant adds, and she squares her shoulders. “Want me to pitch it to them? They might take it better coming from a purebred.”

Roma chews on her bottom lip, considering. “No. No, I’ll pitch it. If the mission goes wrong, I don’t want it circling back to you. But?—?” She takes a deep breath, meeting their eyes. “But could both of you come with me? Just to show the Council that we’re still a united front?” To show that JJ leaving didn’t break us?

Chester gives her the ghost of a smile. “Always, Gutierrez.”

“We’ll go right after lunch,” Bryant agrees, and she shoots Roma a smirk. “For now, though, let’s get back to training. You owe me a rematch from last week.”

Roma grins back. “Bring it, Nehemiah.”

And, as the three of them stride over to the nearest sparring mat, Roma has the feeling that this is the beginning of something huge.