Page 26 of Take You Home (Redwater Demons #3)

Ez skims over the neatly printed lines. “I mean, it would be pretty easy to build a counterspell from this,” she says, passing the spell to Roma. “The only problem is figuring out how the pre-casting process changed it. Any idea what the error might have been?”

“I know that he somehow made it bidirectional instead of unidirectional,” Obie says.

Roma stops reading halfway down the page, staring at him. “A bidirectional binding spell? So they can both control each other, you mean?”

“They actually can’t control each other at all,” Chester says, “but they also can’t be more than twenty feet apart, which obviously makes their lives a lot more difficult.”

Ez tilts her head to one side, intrigued. “That’s a fascinating side effect. Any chance you could bring them here to meet us? ”

“Uh…” Chester’s shoulders hunch. “I kind of doubt it. He’s a… very private person. And I think he’s embarrassed about the whole situation.”

“I mean, he should be,” Roma says. “Like, no shame about the BDSM, but pre-casting a complicated spell like this is just idiotic. Any other side effects?”

Obie cuts in before Chester can answer. “Not that they’ve told us.”

Surreptitiously, Chester presses the side of his sneaker against Obie’s ankle. How about this?

If they can’t figure it out from what we’ve given them, then I’ll let them know.

I don’t want them to go down a telepathy rabbit hole too quickly.

Out loud, Obie continues, “Kyle’s friend also walked me through what he remembered of the pre-casting process, so I wrote some notes about that on the back of the incantation. ”

Ez frowns. “Couldn’t you have just looked through his memories to get the full story?”

Obie presses his knee against Chester’s. Yeah, Locke. Couldn’t I have?

Shut up. Out loud, Chester says, “My friend was really creeped out by the idea, so he said no. And Obie didn’t want to hurt him by doing it without his consent.”

Roma pauses. “You can do it without people’s consent?”

Damn it. Obie kicks Chester’s shin as hard as the binding spell will let him before answering. “Sometimes. It’s a very finicky and context-dependent ability. I don’t like to use it too often.”

“He’s right,” Ez tells Roma. “I’d never even seen him do it until we broke Cass out of the Sanctum’s prison, and I’ve known him for over two hundred years.”

Roma looks even more bewildered. “You used it during the jailbreak? Why?”

Obie bites back a grimace. “To figure out where Cass was. ”

“Yeah, he hacked into Chester Locke’s brain to find him,” Ez adds.

Next to Obie, Chester twitches. Abruptly, Roma’s expression hardens. “Wait. That was how you gave him the concussion?”

Obie’s hackles rise. “No, I gave him the concussion by slamming his head into a wall. I looked through his memories beforehand. What’s your point?”

“Roma,” Ez says, her voice low and serious. “Don’t.”

Roma ignores her, leaning forward with narrowed eyes. “You really scared him, you know that? He wasn’t the same after that. He was obsessed with researching your memory powers?—hell, he was so obsessed that he even tried to research Nostringvadha’s memory powers. He lost sleep over it, and??—?”

Obie matches her pose, glaring straight back at her.

“And I would do it again, Gutierrez. You’re very well aware of what those interrogators did to Cass, and I wasn’t about to let them torture him for a second longer than necessary.

Anyone who got in our way was collateral damage.

The only reason I didn’t outright kill Locke?—or you and Nehemiah?—was because JJ wouldn’t have taken it well.

You’re lucky you even lived long enough to betray us a second time. ”

“Obie!” Ez snaps, and then, to Obie’s surprise, she turns to Chester. “I promise he’s not usually like this, Kyle.”

Wincing, Obie glances at Chester. He doesn’t look scared, not exactly, but??—

But Obie can see why Ez would think an admission like that might frighten a regular human. “Sorry, puppy,” he says quietly.

Chester shrugs uncomfortably. “You wanted your friend back. I get that.”

I want my friends back, Smith. I didn’t see another way to make that happen.

Swallowing hard, Obie turns back to Ez’s scowl. “So do you think you and Roma can manage that?” he asks, nodding at the incantation. “Make a counterspell for?—for Kyle’s friend?”

“Probably,” Ez says, and unexpectedly, she fishes out her credit card, holding it blindly in Roma’s direction. “Hey, can you and Kyle get us some more churros con chocolate? I have a craving.”

“Oh!” Immediately, Chester pushes his last churro towards her. “You can have the rest of mine, if you want. I didn’t bite into it yet, so??—?”

“That’s very sweet,” Ez says, “but I’m really just asking for a more tactful way to talk to Obie in private.”

Chester pauses. “Oh,” he repeats, sticking the churro into his cup of chocolate. “Um, okay.”

Sighing, Roma pushes herself to her feet. “Come on, Kyle,” she says, and with one last dubious glance at Obie and Ez, Chester follows her towards Churrería.

Ez waits until they’re out of earshot before speaking. “Okay, so what’s really going on with that boyfriend of yours? He seems way too calm about all of this, and the fact that he already knows about your mind-hacking ability is downright concerning.”

Obie fights back a flinch. “Well, that just sort of slipped out while we were talking to his friend. Kyle wanted to know if I could look into his memories without his consent, so I… told him.”

“Yeah, but you see,” Ez argues, “you never even told us that, Obie. You always just said it was impossible. Plus, you just admitted that you would’ve straight-up murdered three humans if you wouldn’t have had to listen to JJ complain about it, and Kyle barely even blinked. There’s something up with him, man.”

Obie’s stomach lurches. “There… is,” he hedges, frantically weighing his options to assuage Ez’s suspicions. “Because?—Ez, I’ve been on this planet for longer than I care to admit. You know that, right? ”

Ez looks thrown. “Well, yeah. You’re so ridiculously old that you refuse to even tell us how old you are.”

“Right,” Obie says. “So I’ve met a lot of humans over the years. In fact, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say I’ve met millions of humans over the course of my many millennia.”

“Okay?” Ez says, squinting at him. “What’s your point?”

“In light of that,” Obie says, “do you really think I’d be dating the rando from the bowling alley if he wasn’t at least a little unhinged?”

Ez opens and closes her mouth a few times. “Huh,” she says at last.

“And he already knows all of the most off-putting facts about me because I’ve been actively trying to scare him away,” Obie adds.

“If he can’t handle me at my ‘violence is always the answer,’ then he doesn’t deserve me at my ‘let me pay off your apartment for you,’ right?

But he refuses to be intimidated. He is, as the kids say these days, matching my freak.

So he’s been getting a lot of the uncensored Obadiah Smith experience. ”

Actually, Obie realizes, that last part is true. Since Chester already knows that Obie is Nostringvadha?—and since Obie doesn’t really care whether the hunter likes him or not??—he hasn’t been filtering himself at all around Chester.

In a sense, Chester really does know Obie better than even his friends do. The realization sends a strange feeling snaking through his belly.

Ez nods slowly. “So did you two really have a boring vanilla meet cute? Or was it a bit more, ah, unhinged than you let on?”

Obie snorts out a laugh. “Well, he came out swinging by asking what I knew about binding spells in the context of the human BDSM scene before even telling me his name, so I suppose that counts for something.”

Ez grins back at him. “Oh, he’s a keeper. Take care of him, yeah? The rest of us really do like him. We’d love to see him at family get-togethers more often.”

“You will,” Obie promises.

But, Obie realizes as Ez catches Roma’s attention and impatiently waves their humans back over, that’s not quite true. Once the binding spell is gone, Boyfriend Kyle will cease to exist.

Obie doesn’t want to admit that the thought bothers him far more than it should.