Page 11 of Take You Home (Redwater Demons #3)

S o shadowing a professional torturer for the past four days has been a lot more boring than Obie expected.

He follows a few steps behind Chester as the hunter wheels a cart of biohazard bins across the prison, resisting the urge to drum his fingers against his leg with impatience.

They’re finally approaching the last fifteen minutes of Chester’s twelve-hour shift, and Obie is itching to get out of here and get back to researching how to break this ridiculous binding spell.

Again.

Part of the problem, he thinks bitterly, is that his baseline spellcasting skills aren’t as robust as they really should be after fifteen thousand years. Sure, he’s picked up a lot of knowledge over the millennia, but he’s never taken much time to translate it into practice.

Namely because he doesn’t need to. When demons are first summoned from Tamaros, they retain most of their innate magic abilities from that dimension, negating the need for formal spellcasting training for their first few months on Earth?—in fact, Desi is just now hitting the point where her instinctive magic is starting to fade, and she was summoned almost eight months ago.

For Obie, though, those intrinsic magic skills never disappeared.

Perks of being a god. He can and does use regular spellcasting most of the time to avoid suspicion, but if he needs something done particularly quickly and effectively, he’ll tap into his god powers and hope no one asks too many questions.

He’s tried using those powers to analyze and break this stupid binding spell, but he hasn’t had any luck. He can feel the shape of it connected to him?—just like he can still feel the curse the other gods cast on him all those years ago?—but he can’t chip away at it.

That leaves him with the altogether depressing solution of poring over old spell books while Chester works.

But he finished rereading his current tome from cover to cover around the ninth hour of Chester’s shift, and since the prison is covered with anti-rifting spell work, he can’t grab another book from his myriad pocket dimensions?—or even return the one he currently has tucked under one arm.

At this point, there’s really nothing to do except trail along in Chester’s wake while he buzzes around like a busy little murder hornet, sharpening knives and cleaning interrogation rooms and handling all the administrative work that Obie never really considered before recently.

But the nightmare of being forced to stand by and watch Chester cut open one of Obie’s brethren for fun and profit still hasn’t materialized, so he’ll accept the mind-numbing tedium for now.

And the ample opportunities to snoop and eavesdrop.

In particular, he’s been learning more than he ever expected about the prison’s layout.

Besides the main hallway with holding cells on the right and the locked door to the purebred-only wing at the end, he’s also been able to do some solid recon on the interrogation rooms themselves.

They’re located down eight hallways branching out from the interrogators’ break room, and with five rooms per hallway?—and two spare ones at the ends of the seventh and eighth hallways?—he’s rapidly starting to realize that the Redwater Sanctum’s operation is even more expansive than he thought.

A sharp whistle from a nearby hallway cuts through Obie’s thoughts. “Yo, Locke! Help me out with this.”

Chester immediately engages the brakes on his handcart to trot into the hall.

Obie barely bites back yet another dog joke, because considering how promptly Chester always responds when he’s called, they practically write themselves.

“What do you need, Foxe?” Chester asks, following her scowl to the computer screen mounted on the wall.

“Night shift forgot to make a digital profile for this hunter,” Foxe says, jabbing a finger at the offending name.

Obie glances at the screen; apparently, a new-to-Redwater hunter dropped off two demons in the early hours of the morning, but the overnight interrogators didn’t bother to register her. “You know how to do that, right?”

“Yeah, of course.” Chester takes Foxe’s place at the keyboard, deftly clicking through a few screens. “Do you want me to teach you how to do it? It’s a lot of steps, but it’s not really complicated.”

Foxe shakes her head. “Don’t bother. We only have to make new profiles every few months, if that, so it’s not even worth the effort. And if you’re the one doing it, at least I’ll know it’s getting done correctly.”

Obie’s eyebrows shoot up. Was that a compliment? Granted, she’s clearly forking off extra work onto Chester, but if Obie isn’t mistaken, Foxe is fairly high in the bloodlines hierarchy?—actually, he thinks her grandmother is a Solomon.

The fact that she’s even associating with a neophyte hunter, let alone trusting him with part of her workload, really speaks volumes about how competent she considers Chester.

It’s a sentiment that Obie has seen tacitly repeated in almost all of Chester’s professional interactions over the past few days.

“There we go,” Chester says, hitting one last button and straightening up. “One official profile for T. Roz. Does anyone else need to be registered?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Foxe says, clicking into a different screen. “Thanks, Locke.”

“Anytime,” Chester says, jogging out into the hallway to grab his cart again.

Obie falls back into step behind Chester, checking his cell phone.

Eleven minutes left. Based on the past few days, Chester is going to deliver those bloodstained torture devices across the prison to be professionally sterilized, pick up another few bins of clean instruments to put in the main supply room, and do one final sweep before clocking out for the night.

It’s a far cry from what Obie expected from his spellbound idiot’s job description, but according to what Chester told him after their first shift together, interrogators work in rotations.

Chester’s own monthlong interrogation stint was back in May, so he’ll be on auxiliary duty until the end of July.

After that, his current schedule?—three twelve-hour shifts and three six-hour shifts every week?—will downshift to a more palatable block of six-hour shifts once he starts interrogating again.

It’s more intel than Obie has ever had into how the prison operates.

He’s even started surreptitiously keeping track of the other interrogators’ schedules, trying to deduce who’ll be on duty when he stages his inevitable jailbreak.

After all, even if he isn’t watching Chester himself torture demons, he still passes their terrified faces every time he walks down the main hallway?—and he can still hear their screams through the not-quite-soundproofed walls .

Once this binding spell is gone, he’s going to make it a point to tear this entire prison to shreds.

In any case, that was also the first conversation Obie and Chester had that actually stayed mostly civil instead of devolving into spiteful aggression, and Obie grudgingly upgraded the hunter from “Locke” to “Chester” in his head afterward.

Over the past four days, it’s become distressingly clear that Chester is just unaccountably normal.

In fact, given some of the conversations he’s seen Chester have with his coworkers, Obie would almost go so far as to describe him as “nice.”

At the very least, it makes JJ and Roma’s affection for him seem much more justifiable.

Within ten minutes, Chester drops off the soiled blades for sterilization, picks up a few bins of clean ones, and carts them over to the supply room.

He sorts them into their proper drawers with his usual efficiency, does a quick lap around the prison to check that nothing is out of place, heads down the hallway towards the exit??—

“Locke.”

Chester stops dead, flinching. Frowning, Obie turns around to squint at the scowling hunter striding towards them.

Cold recognition floods through him. He’s only glimpsed this particular interrogator in passing around the prison, but he’s seen the man up close and personal in another place entirely.

Namely, Cass’s memories.

I cut open your boyfriend a few weeks ago, too. You should’ve heard how he screamed for me.

JJ’s, too.

One of the infirmary’s spellcasters had to take time out of her day to come down here and heal you. But I’m sure you’re used to being an inconvenience by now.

That’s Adrian Nostrand. He tortured JJ when he defected back in February and Cass when he was captured by a strike force in March. According to their coalition of ex-hunters, he’s known to be one of the more sadistic interrogators.

And he was Chester’s interrogation mentor, too. Obie’s dislike of both men ticks up a few notches.

“Hi,” Chester says shortly, and Obie shoots him a confused look. He’s been polite and eager to help all his other coworkers over the past few days, but now, his face is stony. “Did you need something?”

“Yeah,” Nostrand says, slowing to a stop just close enough to Chester to be uncomfortable. Chester stiffens the slightest bit, but he doesn’t back away. “Interrogation Rooms 26, 27, and 28 need to be cleaned. We’re getting three new demons on the next shift, and everywhere else is occupied.”

Obie’s jaw almost drops. Nostrand is giving Chester an hour-long assignment in the last two minutes of his shift? That can’t be allowed, can it?

Apparently, Chester is thinking the same thing. Almost imperceptibly, his eyes flicker to the clock above the prison’s exit.

Nostrand notices. His scowl deepens. “Are you refusing? You’re still on duty.”

Chester’s jaw twitches. Just as quickly, though, his expression settles back into an impassive mask. “I’m aware. How soon do you need those rooms? Mendoza is coming in on the next shift, so if he and I work together??—?”