Page 9

9

R oma impatiently checks the clock from her spot in the corner of DJ Ice Cream, shoveling rocky road into her mouth and glowering out the window.

She’s been doing a lot of glowering lately, she thinks. Bryant and Chester have been coming in clutch with their mega-rifts, as usual, and Roma has been dutifully closing them with the nearest demon, as usual, but??—

But that neophyte in the Sanctum’s prison is decidedly not usual?—and it’s been nagging at Roma for the past few days. Despite her most fervent promises to herself, she snuck back down there alone the day after her initial visit with Chester under the guise of checking another spell book.

She wasn’t altogether surprised to find the other two demons from the Lakeside debacle in adjacent cells at the very end of the main hall.

The only thing she can’t figure out is why. She checked their chain-of-custody binders, and the name “G. Ricci” was signed neatly each time?—and, more suspiciously, they were all delivered to the prison on the same date, less than twenty-four hours after their summoning. A lone hunter capturing three demons in one day isn’t something that goes unnoticed, especially in a small town like Redwater.

Like Roma told Chester, questioning the Sanctum is a dangerous game. Fortunately, it’s also a game that she plays better than he does. Being raised from birth as a mixed-breed hunter gives her a solid understanding of which boundaries she can toe and which she should stay far away from, and she’s been casually spending some extra hours in their in-house library, scouring through membership rosters for all the Sanctums in their state.

No record of a G. Ricci anywhere. At this point, she’s considering whether to expand her search to the entire East Coast. It’s not abnormal for hunters to visit other Sanctums, even ones on different continents?—in fact, they have two visiting strike teams from Ethiopia right now, along with a few spellcasters from South Korea.

But, as far as Roma can tell, there’s no G. Ricci visiting Redwater. No demonic attacks reported in town, no rumors about an especially skilled operative within the Sanctum. Nothing about out-of-town hunters or vindictive neophyte demons from Redwater’s legendary gossip mill, either.

All she’s heard about, really, is the mega-rift situation.

A situation that’s about to be repeated. Some of the mixed hunters helping with Roma’s assignment have been tracking the movements of JJ’s new posse, and while she’s pretty sure most of their tips are bogus, it looks like this one actually panned out. The bell over the door jingles cheerfully as Esmeralda Laguerre strolls into the ice cream shop, takes a single step towards the counter??—

And stops dead when she sees Roma. “No,” she snaps, jabbing an accusing finger at her.

Roma’s dislike of the demon ticks up another few notches. “What do you mean, ‘no’? I’m just eating, Laguerre.”

“Every time I see you, another rift opens,” Ez hisses. “So what’s the Sanctum’s game? Because I’m not stupid enough to think any of this is a coincidence.”

Roma’s stomach lurches. Quickly, she plasters on a sneer. “Seriously? Seriously? I haven’t been able to finish a meal on one of my days off in weeks, and you think this is my fault?” She leans forward, lowering her voice. “And I’m a hunter. I don’t want more demons on Earth. So why does a rift to Tamaros open every time I see you, Laguerre?”

Ez’s eyes flash. “You??—?”

Abruptly, there’s a wave of power from outside the shop, roiling through Roma’s veins and rattling her teeth. She gives Ez her most vicious smile. “What a surprise. The moment you show up, we have problems.”

“Shut up, Gutierrez,” Ez bites out, turning on her heel and stalking straight back outside. Roma follows with her ice cream in tow, hoping against hope that she’ll actually be able to finish it before it melts.

The predictable mega-rift is billowing open right in front of the strip mall, looming larger and larger by the second. Not for the first time, Roma is impressed. Bryant and Chester might never beat Roma in general-purpose spellcasting, but she thinks they’ll be experts in rift-opening by the time this operation is over.

By the time Roma gets JJ back.

Ez barely spares Roma a glance as she sets her ice cream on a nearby bench and jogs up to meet her. “Ready?”

Roma fights back a scowl. “As I ever am.”

“One, two, three?—in the name of Nostringvadha??—?”

“Ages upon ages??—?”

At this point, Roma is starting to get a sense for how her incantation flows with Ez’s, how their magic blends together. She hates to admit it, but she’s accustomed to it. Whenever she’s had to work with another demon over the past few weeks, whether that was Cass or Obie or someone else entirely, there was a noticeable amount of stuttering and fumbling, but Ez??—

Ez knows what she’s doing.

Luckily, so does Roma. “?—?command you to close!” she orders, holding her glowing hands out wide.

“?—?close what once was opened!” Ez intones at the same moment, making a sharp gesture downward.

The rift teeters dangerously, reeling from side to side, before folding in on itself and vanishing into nothing, just like usual. What’s not entirely usual, though, is that Ez immediately starts mumbling another incantation under her breath, her narrowed eyes sweeping around.

“What are you doing?” Roma asks, wrinkling her nose.

Ez makes a quick upward motion with her hand as she finishes the spell. A light breeze of magic rushes past Roma. “Anti-invisibility spell,” she says curtly, and just as quickly, she launches into another incantation.

A demonic version, Roma realizes with a jolt, of an anti- cloaking spell. Silently, she prays that Bryant and Chester are smart enough to stay out of sight inside the thrift shop next door until Ez leaves. “Why?”

Ez looks annoyed as she finishes the spell with a flick of her wrist, thankfully revealing a whole lot of nothing. “To try and find the summoner.”

“We haven’t seen an actual summoner in three weeks, Ez.”

“Do not call me that.” Ez crosses her arms over her chest, scowling. “Your better half pointed out that the spellcaster might be using magic to disguise themselves, but there’s no one around. Unless they glamoured themselves to look like a lamppost, we’re out of luck.”

Roma squints at her. “My better half? What does that??—??”

All at once, the meaning hits her like a freight train. Her stomach drops. “Wait. JJ? Are you?—are you talking about JJ?”

Ez’s face shuts down. “Yep. I usually have dinner with him and the crew once or twice a week.”

Roma’s chest feels tight. Obviously, she knows that JJ is surrounded on all sides by his circle of demon “friends” nowadays; obviously, she knows that he’s sequestered away with at least Cass and Desi most of the time??—

Somehow, though, it never occurred to her that he might have domestic little dinner dates with Ez and Obie, too. Her heart hurts. “Oh. And?—and he’s doing well?”

“That’s not really your concern anymore, is it?” Ez asks brusquely, and she snaps open a rift. “Later, Gutierrez. Here’s hoping we don’t do this again.”

And Roma doesn’t know what possesses her to ask. She doesn’t know if it’s just that Ez is the demon she sees most often, or that Ez was always the one who never stopped asking questions during Roma’s fake defection, or even that the mention of JJ hit a certain thread of nostalgia in her chest that she wasn’t expecting today, but??—

But, whatever the reason, she takes an impulsive step forward. “Wait.”

Ez pauses with one foot through the rift, eyes narrowed. “What?”

Roma’s throat feels dry. “Do you?—do you remember that first rift at Lakeside three weeks ago? With the summoner and the three demons?”

Ez scoffs. “Of course I do. You were particularly pissy after that fight.”

Roma nobly chooses to let the comment slide. “Those demons. What happened to them?”

Ez’s eyebrows furrow. “Maggie brought them back to the Chain,” she says slowly, stepping out of the rift and letting it fade behind her. “Like she always does. The Education Department registers them and helps them assimilate into society.”

“Right,” Roma says, nodding. “And they… assimilated?”

“As far as I know,” Ez says, squinting at her. “I didn’t follow up?—I never really have. Why?”

And, for a long moment, Roma wavers.

On the one hand, she should stop questioning it. She should really, really stop questioning it. After all, the Sanctum has been ramping up their testing program lately, and they’ve explicitly stated that they want every cell in the prison filled. If that goal is being met, then why should Roma care about the details?

But, on the other hand, she still doesn’t understand how three demons that were supposedly under the Chain’s care somehow ended up in the Sanctum. And, despite Roma’s dislike of demons in general and Esmeralda Laguerre in particular, she knows that Ez is the most likely person to investigate further. “I saw all three of them in the Sanctum’s prison a few days ago.”

Ez’s eyes widen. “What?”

“Yeah.” Roma shrugs uncomfortably. “I don’t know how they ended up there, and the chain-of-custody paperwork was… strange. Said that a lone hunter from out of town delivered all of them on the same day. I guess I just wanted to know if they went on a killing spree or something.”

Ez looks frozen in place. “And you’re sure? You’re positive they were the same demons?”

“I mean?—?” Roma lets out her breath in a hiss. “I wouldn’t stake my entire reputation on it, no. But I got a pretty solid look at them while we were closing that rift, and they seemed to have the same true forms.”

“That makes zero sense,” Ez says, crossing her arms over her chest. “Normally, neophyte demons have case managers and check-ins to help them manage the transition to Earth. Did the paperwork say when they showed up in your prison?”

“About a day after they were summoned.”

Ez’s frown deepens. “And who brought them in?”

G. Ricci. Roma bites back the words. Much as she wants answers, there’s no way she’s siccing a demon on a fellow hunter. “Not sure. The signature was illegible. It was the same signature for all three of them, though, which is what struck me as weird.”

“This entire situation is weird. Weird and awful,” Ez says, and suddenly, she looks a lot more human than Roma is used to?—human and worried and sad. “No demon should live in fear like that, especially not ones who are so new to Earth. They don’t even know about all the good in this dimension yet, and?—?” Abruptly, her expression closes off. “But it’s not like a hunter would care about that, right?”

The unexpected one-eighty takes Roma off guard, and that, more than anything else, sets her back in her usual defensive posture. “Not really,” she says curtly, and she turns away. “Anyway. Just curious. Later, Laguerre.”

“I sincerely hope not,” Ez says, and by the time Roma peeks back over her shoulder, her demonic counterpart is already gone.

Gone, and leaving Roma alone with a half-melted bowl of ice cream and an uncomfortable churning in her stomach.