Page 42 of Take You Home (Redwater Demons #3)

C hester gapes at Nack Bar George, appalled. “What.”

Obie holds up his hands placatingly. “Listen, Kyle??—?”

“No?—?” Chester shushes him, smacking his arm for emphasis. “No, I do not want to hear from you right now. I want to hear from George. George, could you repeat that last part, please?”

Nack Bar George’s grin is maniacal. Obie takes back everything he’s ever said about the stupid fry cook being his favorite human. “I simply said that I didn’t join the rest of the bowlers out on the Strip because I was busy exchanging my wedding vows with Obie.”

Chester whirls around to face Obie. “You were married to George?”

“I thought you didn’t want to hear from me right now,” Obie says.

In response, Chester smacks him again. Obie rubs his arm, scowling.

Currently, he and “Boyfriend Kyle”—along with Trevor, Sasha, and Maggie?—are all gathered around the Nack Bar, listening raptly to one of George’s famous stories about his many years of tagging along to bowling nationals in Las Vegas.

Obie just wasn’t expecting this particular story to resurface tonight. He wouldn’t describe it as scandalous, but it’s generally not one that he tells in mixed company.

Especially when that company includes his fake boyfriend.

“I gotta agree with Kyle here, man,” Trevor says solemnly. “The fact that you and George got hitched should’ve been, like, third-date information.”

“Also, why were we never informed of this?” Sasha demands. “George, as Obie’s teammates, it’s our right to know every way in which he’s ever humiliated himself. That’s how the sacred laws of the bowling alley work.”

“You’re not helping,” Obie informs her.

“Who said I was trying to help?”

“Also,” Trevor adds, eyeing Obie and George warily, “was this, like, a real wedding? With, um. With a wedding night?”

Obie squints at him. “We both signed the marriage license, yes.”

“I think he’s trying to ask if the marriage was consummated,” Maggie says wearily. “Which I, for one, do not want to know.”

“Oh, it was a night to remember,” George says, waggling his eyebrows.

Chester chokes. Obie sputters indignantly. “No! No, it wasn’t! I spent the whole damn night holding your hair back while you threw up, because you insisted on taking a shot at every bar from the venue to the hotel!”

“Sounds like you do remember it pretty well,” Chester says pointedly.

“Kyle,” Obie says, exasperated. “Puppy. Come on.”

“You had hair?” Trevor asks George curiously.

George rubs a sad hand over his bald head. “In my youth, yes. Longer than Sasha’s, even. My poor head gets so cold in the winter now.”

Maggie massages her temples. “So is either of you going to explain the marriage thing? Or is it just going to be another one of those Redwater Bowl unsolved mysteries?”

Obie sighs, resigned. “So there’s this pancake house.”

Sasha’s jaw drops. “You got married at the pancake house?”

“We were the first to get married at the pancake house!” George says proudly. “They gave us a discount and everything!”

“They also promised us discounts on any of our future weddings,” Obie adds. “So they clearly had a deep understanding of their clientele from the start.”

“You hear that?” Trevor tells Chester. “You and Obie can have a discount wedding! That’s a huge deal in today’s economy.”

“Full offense,” Chester says, “but I don’t really want to marry my boyfriend at the same place he married someone else.”

Nack Bar George pats Chester’s arm sympathetically. “Don’t worry, Kyle. Obie and I were only married for about eighteen hours. No big deal.”

Obie wrinkles his nose. “No, we filed within eighteen hours. It took two weeks for the divorce to go through.”

George blinks at him. “Really? We were married for two whole weeks?”

“Yep.”

“Huh. I didn’t know that,” George says. “I just assumed that we filed the paperwork and the marriage disappeared.” He makes a “poof” gesture with his hands. “Like magic.”

“That’s?—that’s not how the legal system works, George.”

“Did you file the paperwork yourself?” Maggie asks. “Since you’re already a lawyer?”

Chester’s eyes widen. “You’re a lawyer? Do I even know you?”

He looks comically insulted. Obie squints back at him. “You know how long I’ve been alive, puppy. Before streaming services existed, there wasn’t anything better to do than collect Ph.D.s. ”

“I want to see your diplomas,” Chester says. “All of them.”

He’s ridiculous. Obie kind of wants to kiss him on the mouth. “Sure. We can make a night out of it tomorrow,” he says, and he frowns at Maggie. “Also, what other unsolved mysteries does Redwater Bowl have?”

“I mean, I’ve always kind of wondered what happened to the ‘s’ in ‘Snack Bar,’” she says.

“Oh, that’s not a mystery,” Obie says. “The neon lighting behind the ‘s’ malfunctioned during the alley’s grand opening, and the owner didn’t pony up the cash to fix it for almost half a year.

By then, though, calling it the ‘Nack Bar’ had become so much of a meme that someone vandalized the new sign within forty-eight hours, and that same someone threatened to quit if the owner ever tampered with it again.

” He raises his eyebrows at the culprit. “Right, George?”

Trevor’s jaw drops. “You’re the mastermind behind the Nack Bar?”

Nack Bar George sniffs imperiously. “I can neither confirm nor deny the allegations.”

“George,” Obie says, “you confessed to the crime. You bragged about the crime for months afterward.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny the allegations!” George insists.

“And was this before or after you got married?” Chester asks.

“You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?” Obie complains.

“Absolutely not.” Chester shoots Obie a crooked grin before turning back to Sasha and Trevor, who are predictably grilling Nack Bar George about the finer points of how to steal a letter from a neon sign.

Obie’s heart melts a little at the sight.

Chester fits in so well here?—he matches Trevor’s and Sasha’s snark like he’s been doing it for years, and he’s always so polite and respectful with Maggie and George, and he’s started introducing himself to other bowlers as Obie’s boyfriend with an expression bordering on pride? ? —

And Obie wants that. He wants it more than he cares to admit, wants it far more than he ever should. He wants this to be real, wants to strip away the glamours and the secrets and the lies, wants to be able to introduce Chester Locke as his actual boyfriend.

He just wishes he had any chance of that ever happening.

“Your heart eyes are showing,” Maggie notes.

Obie sighs, turning away from the strangely wholesome scene in front of him. “Putting the heart eyes away now.”

Maggie’s eyes, though, linger over Obie’s shoulder for a moment before focusing back on him. “You really care about this one, don’t you?”

Obie fights back a flinch. “Yeah,” he admits quietly. “I do.”

Her eyebrows furrow. “But…?”

It’s not like Obie can tell her that “Kyle” is actually a Sanctum interrogator?—or that they’re not actually dating, even though Obie kind of wants them to be.

Decisively, he chooses the obvious answer.

“But humans die. Even if I manage not to scare him away, he still has less than eighty years left. That’ll pass in the blink of an eye. ”

Maggie lets out a slow breath. “Yeah. That’s one of the reasons I’ve never really gotten close to humans. In the end, they’re all just… gone.”

Obie’s chest hurts. He knows that Maggie has more reasons than most not to trust humans?—five hundred years enslaved by them will do that?—but in the time he’s known her, she’s unfailingly kept everyone at a distance, demons included.

Frankly, Obie thinks that he, Cass, and Ez might just be her closest friends, and despite their best efforts, it’s rare that they can convince her to spend time with them outside of a professional setting.

Cass has been struggling to connect with her since World War I, Ez has futilely been trying to rekindle the rapport they developed during the rift-opening epidemic??—

Obie considers himself lucky that he somehow managed to get her into the bowling alley. “Well, Trevor and Sasha are fantastic,” he points out. “And so is George. Sometimes, it’s worth it. Even if it’s not forever, it’s?—it’s worth it.”

“I guess.” Maggie clears her throat. “In any case, I’ve actually been meaning to talk with you about a certain Chain demon. One who doesn’t exist in the standard sense of the word.”

A chill creeps down Obie’s spine. “Teresa Roz, you mean?”

“Exactly.” Maggie makes sure the humans are still distracted before leaning forward, lowering her voice.

“I’ve been keeping an eye on the demon from Central Office who ‘registered’ her.

Most of his emails are written in code, but he’s been communicating with a lot of other Chains in the tristate area?—especially those from jurisdictions with Sanctums that are transferring neophyte demons to Redwater in droves.

” Her jaw twitches. “And I’m having trouble locating most of the ‘demons’ he’s contacting.

I have a gut feeling that they’re actually Sanctum hunters with Chain email addresses, but I’ll need to do some more digging to know for sure. ”

Obie stares at her. “How could you have possibly found all that?”

Maggie hesitates.

Oh, no. “Mags??—?”

“I’m being careful, okay?” she cuts in. “Which is more than I can say for Central Office’s password security. But I’m not accessing the accounts from any computer that could be traced back to me.”

“This is a bad idea.” Obie tastes bile. “Maggie, you know this is a bad idea. If you get caught??—?”

Maggie’s lips twitch. “Please. Have you met me?”

“There’s a very large difference between accidentally starting a world war and conducting corporate espionage of the Chain,” Obie says. “And, ironically, I’m pretty sure the latter is a lot more dangerous. They won’t hesitate to come after you.”

“That’s why I have dozens of safe houses that aren’t on file with them. And I’m pretty sure my fellow Public Safety officers would at least give me a heads-up if Central Office put out a warrant for my arrest. We’re loyal to each other.”

Loyal enough to cover for treason? Obie bites back the words.

If Maggie’s three thousand years of experience tell her that she can make this gamble, then Obie will just have to trust her instincts.

“All right,” he says reluctantly. “Just be safe, okay? And don’t hesitate to call me if things go sideways. ”

“I will.”

“And don’t let your bowling game suffer,” he adds relentlessly. “We finally broke our losing streak, Khan. It’s time to buckle down so we’re ready for nationals next year.”

“Are you going to marry Kyle this time? Or just George again?”

“Okay, listen? ? —?”

His indignant protests are cut off by Sasha calling for their attention. “Yo, there are some normies threatening to steal our lane! We need to defend our territory!”

Trevor is already hustling over, clearly gearing up to politely tell the group of elderly women to get lost or suffer the consequences.

Maggie rolls her eyes and strides after him, ready to put her nonexistent diplomatic skills to good use, and Sasha nearly skips along in their wake, obviously very keen to enjoy the show.

Chester strolls back over to Obie’s side, holding a fresh carton of mozzarella sticks. “George gave me these as a consolation prize,” he informs Obie. “Since he got to marry you first.”

Obie groans, dropping his head into his hands. “Puppy, we only got married because his asexual ass wanted to have a no-strings-attached wedding for funsies. That’s it. ”

“Did you two kiss?”

“Why? Are you jealous?”

“I’m curious,” Chester says emphatically, but even with the glamour, a trace of color creeps into his cheeks.

Obie tries not to savor that too much. “I kissed his hand like some kind of courtly knight from medieval times.”

Chester looks outraged. “What? But that’s so romantic! Why don’t you ever kiss my hand like a medieval knight, Smith?”

“Well, I can.” Without breaking eye contact, Obie takes Chester’s hand, brings it up to his lips, and presses a chaste kiss to his knuckles. “See?”

This time, the flush in Chester’s face is more obvious. And this time, Obie does take a moment to savor it. “So George got that first, huh?”

“I just can’t win with you, can I?” Obie tries to imbue the words with his usual blend of snark and scoffing, but when his eyes catch on Maggie still attempting to referee between Trevor and the throng of retirees, his casual tone falters.

Obie would take Maggie by his side in a fight any day of the week?—hell, he’d even choose her over Cass sometimes?—but can she really deceive the Chain’s Central Office and come out unscathed?

Chester notices Obie’s hesitation. His eyebrows pull together. “You okay, baby?”

The endearment rolls off his tongue so easily. Obie forces a smile. “Yeah, I’m fine. But we should, uh, probably get back to??—?”

“Hey.” Chester wraps his hand loosely around Obie’s wrist, letting his voice wind through Obie’s head. You know that I’m messing with you, right? I actually think it’s really cool that you and George got married in Vegas.

The usual pang in Obie’s chest feels deeper than usual. Of course it doesn’t bother Chester that Obie and George got married at a pancake house in Las Vegas. Of course he just thinks it’s cool, and of course he’s going to take every opportunity to tease Obie about it.

It’s not like they’re actually dating, after all. I know, Obie pushes back through the bond. It’s something else. I’ll tell you later. I promise.

Chester searches Obie’s face before nodding once, releasing Obie’s wrist, and holding up his carton of food. “Mozzarella stick?”

Gratefully, Obie takes one. “Thanks, puppy,” he says, and impulsively, he wraps an arm around Chester’s waist. “Come on. We need to go rescue Trevor from the octogenarians. Maggie doesn’t have the mediation skills to save him, and Sasha?—well, I think Sasha might just welcome the opportunity to be an only child. ”

“Sounds like her,” Chester agrees, and he tucks himself against Obie’s side as they walk back towards their lane.

Giving Obie everything he wants and nothing at all at the exact same time.