Page 30 of Take You Home (Redwater Demons #3)

C hester gets knocked on his ass for the fourth time in ten minutes and curses under his breath, scrambling back to his feet. Just across the sparring mat, Bryant hardly looks winded. “How are you still going?” he demands, trying to catch his breath. “Don’t you ever get tired?”

“It’s all in the training, Locke.” Bryant bursts forward, her fist flying for his jaw. He blocks it with his forearm, the bone-on-bone strike rattling up his arm, and barely manages to avoid her roundhouse kick to his ribcage. “You interrogators always need to brush up on your fighting skills.”

He takes the opportunity to aim a punch at her face while she’s distracted. She ducks away without blinking, getting two quick strikes concerningly close to his kidneys before dancing away. “Because we usually don’t need fighting skills, Nehemiah.”

She wrinkles her nose. “Well, what are you going to do during the next jailbreak, huh? We already saw what happened with the last two. ”

Chester snaps to attention, holding up his hands in surrender. He knows that Obie is probably listening to every word near the edge of the mat, but that can’t be helped right now. “Wait. Are there rumors about another potential jailbreak?”

Bryant eases out of her fight stance, frowning. “Not exactly. But we’ve been getting a lot of neophyte demons lately, and the more demons in the prison at any given time, the higher the overall likelihood of a jailbreak. It’s just basic math.”

The words make the tension in Chester’s shoulders ease a little bit, but not much. He has the nagging feeling that Obie is going to recruit Cass, Ez, and probably even Maggie to stage a jailbreak the moment they break the binding spell, and frankly, Chester isn’t looking forward to it.

Although he isn’t as sure nowadays that the jailbreak in question would end with Chester dead.

He wouldn’t quite describe him and Obie as friends at this point, but he thinks that Obie might be getting sort of fond of him, almost like he views Chester as a stray dog or something.

He’s fairly confident that Obie would hesitate for at least a few seconds before snapping Chester’s neck.

And as for Chester, well. Ever since Obie told him after bowling league a few days ago that the binding spell is loosening its grip, he’s slowly been coming to terms with the fact that he likes having Obie around.

Nowadays, with Obie bringing Chester into town whenever he’s off duty, letting him spend time with JJ and Roma or hang out at Redwater Bowl or watch Obie do repairs on his apartments??—

It’s fun. It’s messy. It’s complicated.

And Chester doesn’t think he’d be able to stomach the idea of killing Obie, even in self-defense.

Not anymore. “Makes sense,” he says eventually, nodding.

“More demons means more risks. Any word from the Council on why we’re getting all these neophytes, though?

A lot of them are being transferred to us from outside Redwater, even outside the state. ”

Obie sighs explosively from a few feet away.

Chester ignores him. Obie might be convinced that the Sanctum and the Chain are working together, but Chester thinks that says more about Obie’s distrust of the Chain than anything about the Sanctum.

And Bryant, being a purebred, might know the real story.

But she just shakes her head. “Not really my division. I guess we just have really good interrogators here.” She flashes him a smile. “Like you.”

Chester knows that Bryant means the words as a compliment, but they still make his stomach twist. “Not according to the Council,” he admits quietly. “They still haven’t said anything about putting me back on interrogation duty.”

Bryant’s eyebrows furrow. “Still nothing? It’s been over three weeks since the accident. And it was an honest mistake, right?”

No, it was the invisible demon god’s fault. I just fabricated some evidence afterward. “Right,” Chester lies, guilt swimming through him. “But Councilwoman Nasir seemed especially angry that it was a neophyte demon who I… accidentally killed. I don’t know, Bry. Everything is weird right now.”

“Yeah,” Bryant says, scowling. “You can say that again.”

Chester winces. “Still not used to Strike Team Zeta, huh?”

Her scowl deepens. “Not even a little bit. And it’s not even that I particularly dislike Long and Pedrosa, you know? They’re just not?—?” She cuts herself off, looking away.

Chester’s heart hurts. “They’re not JJ and Roma,” he says softly. “Yeah. I get that.”

“Yeah.” Bryant grimaces. “And we’ve been getting strange assignments, too.

Lots of transport jobs. All of those out-of-state demons need to get here somehow, and it looks like Zeta drew the short stick.

Hell, we’ve even picked up a handful of jobs from Kingsborough, and considering how much we do for them already, they should really be handling their own transfers. ”

Chester squints at her. “But transport isn’t even a strike team job. Don’t we have specific personnel for that?”

“Allegedly. But I think a lot of them have gotten reassigned lately, and there’s such an overflow that they’re making us pick up the slack.

And it?—?” She shakes her head sharply. “It sucks, man. I was trained to do a certain job, and now, they’re barely even letting me do that job.

Honestly, I’m surprised that my skills aren’t as rusty as yours. ”

Chester flicks her in the arm for the jibe, a suspicion snaking through him. “How long have strike teams been taking over other assignments? Since?—since the end of June? Or maybe the end of February?”

Bryant’s face shuts down. “Yep. Since almost six months ago?—right around when Jackson defected at the end of February. Back when Kappa still existed as a two-person team, we got sent on so few jobs that we didn’t see many transport gigs, but now, they’re almost all I see.”

Chester crosses his arms over his chest, unsettled. “But that doesn’t make any sense. There weren’t any reassignments back when Sawyer and Naomi disappeared?—why would JJ leaving make such a difference?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Bryant shrugs one shoulder. “But it’s probably just a coincidence. Or maybe it’s reverse causation?—the Sanctum could’ve changed their priorities, and that was when the demons decided they needed to pull one of us.”

It’s a very bad sign that Chester doesn’t immediately understand what she’s talking about, because right, right? ? —

Cassius Chin?—and the kid?—brainwashed JJ. They carefully orchestrated events to make him defect and have been keeping him in line with subliminal abuse tactics ever since. Esmeralda Laguerre did the same thing to Roma.

That’s the official story, at least. Bitterly, Chester wonders when he stopped believing it. “Right,” he says quietly. “It’s hard to say.”

“Yeah.” Bryant’s eyes flicker to the clock on the side of the Sanctum. Just after seven a.m. “All right, bud. Want to grab some breakfast?”

“Let’s,” Chester agrees, relieved to drop the subject as they jog towards the building. Bryant holds open the door for him, he nods his thanks at her, they walk to the dining hall side by side??—

The moment Bryant abandons him to get oatmeal instead of a prepackaged breakfast burrito, Chester feels a hand come down on his shoulder. He glances behind him and fights back a flinch when he realizes the person?— god? —in question is invisible.

Obie’s voice wafts through his mind. You know that’s not true, right? No one “pulled” anyone.

Chester stops dead. He’s heard that sentiment from Obie before, of course?—that JJ and Roma are in love with Cass and Ez, and that Cass and Ez are in love with JJ and Roma, and that Chester’s old friends abandoned him of their own free will and are happier now than they’ve ever been?—but??—

But this is the first time Obie has said it through their telepathic bond. And he and Chester both know that they can’t lie through the bond.

What other theories could they test through there? Obie’s claim about their neophyte demons coming from the Chain? His argument about the Sanctum and the Chain working together?

His insistence that the Sanctum put out the hit on Chester’s family?

Chester slams the brakes on those thoughts before he can follow them any further, his heart pounding. He’s not going to test those. He can’t test those.

If he found out they were true, they might break him entirely.

Hello? Obie’s voice in his head sounds impatient now. I know you heard me, Locke.

Chester swallows hard. Blindly chooses a breakfast burrito, puts it on his tray, and makes a beeline for his and Bryant’s usual table in the corner. Yeah, I heard you. And I?—I know. I get that.

Hm. Obie’s hand vanishes from Chester’s shoulder, and for a split second, Chester almost misses it.

And, with a sinking heart, he realizes that part of him also misses the bliss that came from not knowing any of this. From always being able to assume the worst about the demons and the Chain and his defected friends.

He’s never going to be able to get that ignorance back.

At some point, he’s going to have to deal with that. For now, though, he just forces a smile, sits down across from Bryant, and tries to ignore the ever-present demon god hovering just out of reach.

Chester still isn’t back on active interrogation duty.

Obie would be lying if he said he wasn’t relieved about it. Even though he doubts Chester would lift a weapon against one of Obie’s brethren, there’s still that nagging fear that Obie would need to intervene again, that he’d need to save one of his people from the hands of the hunters??—

That he’d have to see Chester in torturer mode.

Obie bites back a grimace as he follows Chester down the hallway, heading towards a dirty interrogation room.

After a month of being spellbound together, Obie has formed a certain mental image of Chester Locke: sometimes angry and combative, sometimes rash and impulsive??—