Page 16 of Take You Home (Redwater Demons #3)

C ouncilwoman Tabitha Nasir’s office is just as cold and foreboding as Obie imagined it would be. Considering the hunters she’d descended from, he’s not surprised. “So you failed.”

Chester flinches, his eyes fixed on his sneakers.

Obie stands invisible just off to the side, watching the exchange cautiously.

The past twenty minutes have been an absolute blur, between sparking the power outage and freeing Laila and frying the memory card for the interrogation room’s video camera and??—

And watching Chester scramble to fabricate an explanation for why he had a dead demon strapped to his interrogation table.

Obie wishes he could be a little more satisfied about getting Chester into such deep trouble, but honestly, he isn’t. In fact, he feels more guilty than anything else.

Especially because Chester didn’t so much as raise a hand to harm Laila. All he did was ask questions and patiently wait for her answers.

That’s not what Obie expected from an interrogation with Chester Locke .

“Tell me exactly what happened,” Nasir orders now, her eyes narrowed. “You know how important our testing program is, Chester. Killing a neophyte is a waste of valuable resources.”

Obie grits his teeth at her referring to one of his people as a “resource,” but Chester just keeps looking at the floor.

“The demon was refusing to answer some of my questions about the gods’ inner realm.

I put a blade to her?—I mean, to its neck to try and persuade it to talk, but when the power went out?—?” He winces. “I was startled. My hand slipped.”

“And you cut its throat.” The councilwoman’s voice is hard and unyielding.

“I?—I nicked its carotid artery,” Chester stammers, his shoulders hunching. “Accidentally. And then I couldn’t find anything to staunch the bleeding in the dark, so??—?”

“You’ve gone through twelve years of training specifically to prevent situations like this, Chester,” Nasir snaps. “Our interrogators don’t make mistakes. Not the ones we value, anyway.”

For a split second, Chester’s face crumples. Just as quickly, though, his contrite mask slides back into place. “I understand, ma’am.”

Obie’s heart hurts. That was the only time Chester even showed the slightest hint of violence towards Laila: once her body was already a lifeless shell and he needed a cover story.

Obie knew that the remains of her human facade couldn’t feel pain, but he still cringed when Chester brought the knife to her throat.

Judging by the dead look on Chester’s face as he did it, he hated it just as much as Obie did.

“Do you understand, though?” Nasir’s voice is so dismissive that Obie almost flinches right alongside Chester.

“Redwater is at the epicenter of groundbreaking work right now. We’ve earned a reputation for having the most efficient and effective prison on the East Coast, maybe even in the entire country.

I won’t have your failures marring our good name. ”

It was one mistake?—or alleged mistake, at least. Guilt stabs through Obie as Chester continues staring at his sneakers, his breathing noticeably more unsteady than before.

Obie knew that Chester was on shaky ground here at the Sanctum. JJ has told him as much. But he didn’t realize just how shaky until today.

“You’re being taken off active interrogation duty, starting now,” the councilwoman says, and Chester’s head snaps up.

“We can’t afford any more of your negligence, Chester.

You’ll be doing auxiliary work to support our more skilled interrogators, and if we decide to reinstate your full status, we’ll expect you to perform up to our standards. Do I make myself clear?”

Chester nods jerkily. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good.” She gestures impatiently at him, already turning back to her computer. Like he’s a particularly mangy dog that she’s shooing outside. “You’re dismissed. Get back to work. I want that bloodied interrogation room spotless by the top of the hour.”

Another twenty-minute task that Chester will have less than ten minutes to complete. He doesn’t even seem to notice, though. “Yes, ma’am,” he repeats, and he hastily backs out of the room, shutting the door behind him with trembling hands.

Obie breaks into a jog to catch up, falling into step beside Chester as he strides down the hall. His heart cracks a little when Chester pulls his sleeve down over his wrist and scrubs his eyes with it, clearly fighting back tears. “You happy now?” he mumbles, his voice quiet and biting.

Obie grimaces. “Not really,” he admits softly.

Chester doesn’t answer. His footsteps are fast and his breathing shakes all the way down the hall, but by the time they descend the staircase to the prison, his expression is determinedly neutral again.

He swipes his key card at the door, keeps his eyes fixed straight ahead, makes a beeline for Room 21?—

Obie follows more slowly, his eyes narrowing at the other interrogators. Several of them sneer or shoot Chester disdainful looks as he speed-walks by, Foxe downright scoffing in his direction, and a slow thrum of anger builds behind Obie’s sternum.

Just days ago, half of these interrogators were taking advantage of Chester’s expertise. Do they truly think he’s incompetent now? Are they just following Nasir’s lead?

Or do they actually like it when Chester is on the Council’s hit list?

After what seems like far too long in the unforgiving hallways, they arrive back in the interrogation room.

Chester locks the door behind them and closes the blinds over the one-way mirror, shielding them from the other hunters’ accusing eyes.

Laila’s human facade is still on the interrogation table, her neck bloody from Chester’s knife, and Obie fights back a wince.

But Chester just walks to the closet, pulls out his cleaning supplies, and sets a bucket under the faucet. “You killed her.”

It’s not a question, but Obie answers it anyway. “No. I just disconnected her soul from her human body. She’ll be adrift for a while, but she should be able to reform herself in a few days?—in a different facade, this time.”

Chester glances up at him, frowning. “I didn’t know you could do that,” he says, and then he laughs shortly, carrying the bucket of water over to the worst of the mess and getting to work. “Then again, I don’t know a lot of things about you, Nostringvadha.”

There’s something unexpected in his tone. Not fear or revulsion, not respect or affection, but maybe?? —

Maybe curiosity. Obie checks that the video camera is still off before making himself visible, grabbing a pair of disposable gloves to match Chester’s, and picking up a sponge.

“Scooch over,” he orders, and he kneels down next to Chester, helping him clean the blood off the floor. “What do you want to know?”

Chester throws him a sideways glance, but he doesn’t protest as Obie starts scrubbing. “Can you really get into the gods’ inner realm?”

“I sincerely doubt it,” Obie says, wringing out his sponge over the bucket. “But I haven’t tried. If I even attempted to open a rift back there, they’d probably kill me before I could so much as peek inside. They’re not particularly fond of me, and they’re much more powerful than I am.”

A shiver runs through Chester. “Hard to imagine.”

For a split second, Obie wonders what that glimpse of Nostringvadha looked like from Chester’s point of view?—what his true form looked like to Chester, especially.

“When I first arrived on Earth,” he says cautiously, “I knew that I needed a physical body. But the area where I landed wasn’t populated by humans yet, and concepts like human facades and true forms obviously didn’t exist. So I mimicked features from all the creatures around me?—mammals, birds, reptiles.

Everything.” A smile tugs on his lips at the memories.

“Once I found a human tribe, I settled on a more humanlike appearance to avoid frightening them, but?—but I kept a lot of my original influences, too.”

“Hm.” Chester grabs the bucket, carries it over to the sink, and dumps out the blood-tinged water, turning on the faucet to refill it. “So were summoners the first to give demons human facades? Or did you teach neophytes how to do that?”

It’s a surprisingly perceptive question.

“No, that was me. The earliest summoners thought that all demons looked nightmarish and horrifying, like?—like me, so they only gave neophytes their ‘true forms.’ Once those demons were freed from their summoners, I showed them how to blend in with the humans.” He laughs bitterly.

“Sometimes, though, I wish I hadn’t. Sometimes, I think it would’ve been easier if I’d taught them how to be fish or birds.

Something less bound to the earth, you know?

More like color and light and sound. But I…

” He looks down at the blood on the tiles, remembering Ada’s broad smile and Kai’s tinkling laugh.

“I thought they’d feel more… fulfilled… with humans. ”

Chester sets the bucket back on the floor between them. “Yeah, well. Humans suck.”

Obie snorts with surprise. “Yeah. You kind of do. But demons suck sometimes, too. So I guess we’re even on that front.”

Chester’s lips quirk up the slightest bit. He goes back to scrubbing with his shoulders a little more relaxed than before.

“You…” Obie eyes him carefully. “You didn’t torture her. Laila, I mean.”

Chester shrugs one shoulder. Doesn’t look up. “I didn’t have to. She answered all my questions. That happens more often than you’d think, especially with neophyte demons. They don’t have any secrets to protect.”

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“Yeah, well.” Suddenly, there’s an edge to Chester’s voice. “After I was done with her, they probably would’ve sent her to the purebred-only wing. And I don’t know what they do with them there.”