Page 12 of Take You Home (Redwater Demons #3)

Nostrand shakes his head. “Mendoza is busy fixing an IT problem in the purebred-only wing. You’ll have to work solo.” Pointedly, he looks at the clock. “And I need them in thirty minutes. Councilwoman Long is coming down to check on these particular demons.”

Chester’s face remains emotionless. “All right. Consider it done,” he says, and he edges past Nostrand to stride down the hall, making his way back into the heart of the prison.

The moment he’s out of Nostrand’s earshot, he nearly breaks into a sprint, whipping out his key card to swipe back into the break room, bolting down the sixth hallway of interrogation rooms, shoving his way through the first door on the left??—

Obie follows him at an only slightly more sedate run, bewildered. “What the hell was that?”

Chester nearly jumps a foot in the air at Obie’s voice, like he forgot Obie was even there. “We really need to put a bell on you or something,” he mumbles darkly, already jogging to the closet across the room to grab his cleaning supplies.

“Uh-huh,” Obie says dismissively. “And it takes you a solid twenty minutes to clean one room, Locke. You can’t finish three in half an hour.”

Chester doesn’t look at him, pulling on a pair of gloves and setting up a bucket in the sink to fill with water. “Watch me.”

“Locke?—?”

“If you’re that concerned,” Chester bites out, heading over to the interrogation table to start cleaning off the corrosion-imbued straps, “you could always help me.”

Obie doesn’t move. Partly because he doesn’t really care if Chester gets in trouble for a job that shouldn’t have even been given to him in the first place, and partly because there’s no way he’s going to help clean one of his own people’s blood off the floor.

“I’m serious. What’s the deal with you and Nostrand? I thought he used to be your mentor.”

“He was,” Chester says curtly.

It’s like pulling teeth with him. “Then why did you two look ready to stab each other in the middle of the hallway? JJ and Roma seem to get along with Sawyer and Naomi pretty well besides the whole abandonment thing.”

Chester winces at the reminder. “Yeah, well, Nostrand and I aren’t on good terms. Never have been. Any other questions?”

Obie scoffs. “I suppose telling me why would be too much to ask?”

“Do you care?”

“No.”

“There’s your answer.” Chester stalks back to the sink, grabs the bucket of water, and carries it to the interrogation table, dunking his bloody washcloth in it. “You know, you and Nostrand would probably get along. He hates me as much as you do.”

Irritation spikes through Obie. “He tortured both Cass and JJ,” he snaps back, and for a brief moment, Chester goes still. “I don’t forgive. You’re lucky that you never hurt Cass, or March’s jailbreak would’ve gone a lot differently.”

Eventually, Chester nods. “Noted,” he says, going back to scrubbing the interrogation table. “Now, stop distracting me. The faster I finish these rooms, the faster we can get back to researching.”

Obie lets out his breath in a hiss. “Noted,” he says, and he settles in to lean against the wall, watching as Chester works overtime for the fourth time in four days.

“So there I was,” the elderly man known as Nack Bar George says dramatically, “toe to toe with two police officers, three bouncers, and a club boss in eight-inch platform heels and a sequined thong.”

The twin bowlers known as Trevor and Sasha look enthralled. Magdalena Khan, the demon who helped to start World War I and also happens to bowl on Wednesday nights, looks vaguely perplexed.

Frowning, Chester turns to Obie. “Aren’t you four supposed to be bowling?”

Obie shoots him a disgruntled look?—impressive, considering that Chester is currently invisible and soundproofed?—before refocusing his attention on George. “And then? Don’t leave them in suspense, G.”

“You know this story already?” Trevor asks.

“I was there,” Obie says. “I was the getaway driver.”

Chester’s eyebrows shoot up. Sasha looks delighted. “You were?”

Maggie squints at him. “Why wouldn’t you just use a rift to get away?”

“Because that takes all the fun out of it,” Obie says, and he turns back to George. “Please, go on.”

As Nack Bar George continues the admittedly captivating story of how he got kicked out of a strip club in Las Vegas for trying to convince the dancers to unionize, Chester takes the opportunity to glance around at the many patrons of Redwater Bowl, letting out a slow breath.

He can’t believe Obie wasn’t willing to miss his stupid bowling league tonight.

From how scandalized he looked when Chester even dared to suggest that he skip it while the two of them are, oh, magically spellbound together, Chester was sure that it must’ve been a high-stakes tournament with devastating repercussions if its star player didn’t show up to save the day.

Hell, Obie even snuck Chester a pair of bowling shoes to wear when the front desk clerk’s back was turned.

Instead, it seems more like Obie just hanging out with three friends?—plus Nack Bar George and various other bowlers, because Obie apparently knows everyone in this godforsaken alley. And he isn’t actually that good at bowling, a fact that amuses Chester to no end.

He’s not sure if it’s more or less amusing that Maggie Khan, one of the most feared demons in Redwater, is also on this bowling team, and that she’s also not that good.

When Chester first spotted her walking towards them, he frantically hissed at Obie that they needed to get out of there now, but Obie just rolled his eyes and said she wouldn’t be able to sense him.

He failed to provide any other explanation, so Chester is hoping he’s right. Honestly, he doesn’t have the slightest idea what kind of spell work Obie wove around him for tonight. There’s clearly an invisibility spell and a soundproofing spell involved, but beyond that, Chester is clueless.

Frankly, he doesn’t even think Obie himself knows the full extent of it.

Chester is slowly starting to realize that Obie doesn’t have the slightest concept of how normal demon abilities compare to godly demon abilities, and that he’s just been using his massive lifespan to explain away any inconsistencies.

Chester also suspects that he’s been vastly overestimating the local demons’ intelligence for years now, but he figures that’s beside the point.

Sighing, he turns his attention back to the spellcasting textbook he brought with him.

It’s been exactly one week since he screwed up the binding spell and subsequently screwed up his entire life, but despite the fact that he’s spent all his spare time researching?—and that Obie, as an unemployed billionaire who doesn’t need to sleep, has spent even more time researching?—they’re still no closer to a workable counterspell than before.

They’ve already tried a few point-by-point reversal variations using the original Magic-Weaver’s incantation, but to Chester’s chagrin, none of them made even the slightest dent in the spell.

That’s pretty much tacit confirmation that Obie’s instincts were right: Chester made a pre-casting error that changed the spell itself.

And, since Chester still refuses to let Obie poke around in his brain and Obie still refuses to let Chester watch him request a spell from the Deep, they don’t know how the spell is different.

Chester has been trying to self-diagnose what he could’ve messed up, but none of his old textbooks are helping.

In short, it’s less like they’re back to square one and more like they never left that particular square in the first place.

“… and that’s how I ended up at drag brunch with half a club of exotic dancers, a sizeable portion of the local police department, and the president of a small European nation,” Nack Bar George finishes proudly. “The end.”

Sasha shoots Obie a reproachful look. Sasha, as Chester has learned via observation and eavesdropping over the course of the evening, is a grad student with an incredible fondness for curly fries. “You didn’t actually do any getaway driving.”

“But I was prepared to,” Obie says. “I had the key in the ignition and everything.”

“That doesn’t count, man,” Trevor says solemnly, shaking his head. Trevor, Chester has deduced, is Sasha’s twin brother who works in the aquarium across town, which Chester will readily admit sounds like an awesome job.

He gets to hang out with the otters. Chester would love to hang out with some otters.

“I was there as backup and moral support!” Obie argues. “My contributions were valid!”

Maggie still looks flummoxed by this entire conversation. “But did the dancers ever unionize?”

“Sadly, no,” Nack Bar George says. “But they did instigate a class-action lawsuit against the club for unlawful business practices, so I still consider it a win for the people.” An alarm goes off in the general vicinity of the deep fryer; cheerfully, he pulls up a basket of mozzarella sticks and dumps them onto the team’s shared tray.

“And here’s another win for the people! Bon appétit, bowlers. Go get some strikes! ”

“Thanks, George,” Obie says, shoving a twenty into the tip jar and hefting the tray on one arm.

His teammates follow hot on his heels as he leads the way back to the sitting area, and they descend on the paper cartons of food like hungry vultures, piling their individual plates high with their plunder.

Chester’s stomach rumbles. He may have eaten an early dinner back at the Sanctum, but it can’t be denied that Redwater Bowl’s fried goods look and smell like heaven. Too bad he can’t snack on them while invisible.

Grimacing, Chester leans his hip against the team’s table, watching as Obie jogs over to take the turn he’s been neglecting for the past ten minutes. Two throws later, the pins are standing just as upright as before, standing vigil like they’re personally mocking him.

Despite the abject failure, Obie high-fives Maggie as she walks up to the approach to take his place. “A clean zero!” he announces to Trevor and Sasha, who are busy squabbling over the last boneless wing on the communal tray. “A momentous occasion.”

“A true accomplishment,” Trevor agrees, holding up a hand for a fist bump. Chester watches with some amusement as Sasha stealthily reaches towards the plate while he’s distracted. “Doing the noble work of maintaining our losing streak, and?— hey!”

“What?” Sasha asks, shoving the entire wing in her mouth. “You snooze, you lose.”

Obie grins as they promptly start bickering again, and a strange pang twines through Chester at the sight. This might just be the first time he’s ever seen Obie truly in his element, ever seen Obie truly happy.

It makes him seem more human. Part of Chester wants to believe that Obie dragged him out to bowling league tonight for exactly that purpose, to make Chester sympathize with him or see him as less of a threat, but?? —

But a larger part of him thinks that Obie really does love this alley and these people as much as he claims he does.

Chester doesn’t like it. He only wants to know Obie as the belligerent demon god who scowls at him from across his bedroom; he doesn’t want to see Obie as an actual person who likes bowling and mozzarella sticks.

Doesn’t want to watch him hanging out with his friends in a group that’s uncomfortably reminiscent of how Chester, Bryant, JJ, and Roma used to be.

Oblivious to Chester’s emotional turmoil, Obie picks up his personal plate from the tray. “I’ll be back soon?—just need to grab something from the lockers. Don’t kill each other.”

“No promises,” Sasha says, dodging a well-aimed smack from Trevor.

Shaking his head in amusement, Obie strides off across the alley. As Chester quickly learns, though, “soon” is a very relative term with him, because he stops at what seems like every lane to say hello to his fellow bowlers.

And his fellow bowlers, for their part, seem genuinely happy to chat with him, too.

Apparently, they don’t see him as a demon who could snap his fingers and raze this building to the ground; no, they see him as an integral part of the alley, as much of a permanent fixture as the thirty-six lanes or the neon sign that reads “Nack Bar” instead of “Snack Bar.”

They care about him. The ache behind Chester’s ribcage twinges harder, and he takes a deep breath to clear it out.

At long last, Obie and Chester transition from slick hardwood floors to gaudy old carpet, heading towards the lockers on the side wall.

Even with the soundproofing spell, Chester waits until there’s no one else in earshot before speaking.

“Did the entire alley just decide to collectively adopt you as their resident demon god?”

“It’s called ‘being polite,’ puppy.” Obie pops a curly fry into his mouth, looks both ways, and holds the paper plate to his chest, out of sight of everyone else. “Take some food, but make it snappy. I can hear your stomach growling halfway across the sitting area.”

Chester almost starts with surprise. “Oh. Uh, thanks,” he says, and he crowds in close next to Obie, hastily grabbing a handful of mozzarella sticks and boneless wings. “People won’t be able to see these floating in midair, right?”

Obie shrugs one shoulder, unconcerned. “I don’t think so.”

“Do you know anything about the spells you cast?”

“I know that they work,” Obie says, his eyes sweeping around as Chester eats. “We’ll probably pack up in around in hour. We can head back to the Sanctum after that.”

It’s almost nine p.m. already. Chester’s chest tightens. “Curfew is at ten, Smith. If I’m not back in time??—?”

“We rifted directly out of your room,” Obie cuts in, “and we’ll rift directly back in. There’s no paper trail, Locke. It’ll be fine.”

“But someone could come looking for me,” Chester snaps. “What then?”

“Then they’ll assume you’re in the showers or out cavorting with Nehemiah. Not my problem.” Obie’s eyes harden. “I’m already avoiding my best friends because you screwed up a spell you had no business casting. You’re not taking this away from me, too.”

Obie stalks back towards his team’s lane before Chester can respond, leaving him scrambling to catch up.

And, as Obie argues with Trevor about the merits of bleu cheese dressing and cheers Sasha on while she botches her next frame, Chester can’t help but wonder if Obie’s commitment to this place is less about the bowling itself and more about having a community that can’t be taken away from him.