Page 5 of Take You Home (Redwater Demons #3)
M aggie scowls as her bowling ball plunks into the gutter, crossing her arms over her chest. “Still batting zero tonight.”
“Wrong sport, but I get your meaning.” Obie picks up a ball for the first throw of his frame, striding up to take her place. A deep breath in, a slow breath out, and he sends the ball rolling down the lane, crossing his fingers.
It plods sadly into the gutter with more of a whimper than a bang.
One of the pins shivers tantalizingly, but ultimately stays upright.
His second throw doesn’t even make it halfway down the lane before veering sideways, and he heaves a sigh as he heads back to the sitting area where the rest of his Wednesday night team is gathered.
“Sorry, guys. Our bad luck streak continues.”
“Aw, it’s okay!” Sasha says, patting his arm sympathetically. “It looks like the whole alley is failing miserably tonight. We fit right in!”
“But can’t you just, like,” Trevor says, “whip out some of your mojo and make it so we don’t fail miserably? ”
Obie raises his eyebrows. “Are you suggesting that I use my demonic powers to cheat, young Trevor?”
His eyes widen in mock surprise. “Who, me? Never.”
“Besides,” Sasha adds, “he only does that during tournaments, not regular league.”
Trevor whips around to face her. “Really?”
Maggie arches an eyebrow at Obie. “Really?”
“Smooth, Sasha,” Obie says.
“What? You’re not exactly subtle about it!”
“Tell me everything,” Trevor demands, grabbing his twin sister’s arm and dragging her over to the approach for his frame. “When has he done this? How has he done this? Was it during…?”
“Do you seriously use your powers during tournaments?” Maggie asks, flagrantly stealing one of Trevor’s boneless wings.
“I might push the envelope a little bit when our team’s honor is on the line,” Obie says loftily, easing himself into a chair and grabbing a mozzarella stick. “So, Khan, how are you feeling about the sport? You’re almost at your one-year bowliversary.”
“Never use the word ‘bowliversary’ in my presence again.”
“Buzzkill.”
“And I’d call it more of a game than a sport.”
Obie whistles. “Oh, them’s fighting words, Khan. Don’t let Nack Bar George hear you say that.”
Maggie looks amused. Obie is glad. He’s not quite as close with her as he is with Cass and Ez, but they’ve both been on Earth for over three millennia, and, well??—
Maggie’s first few centuries in this dimension were rough. Obie likes to make her smile when he can. And it only took him a few years of begging?—and a fair amount of bribery with greasy alley food?—before she agreed to try out bowling with him .
He was surprised that she kept coming back, but he’s certainly not complaining about having another demon on his team.
“Sport or not,” Maggie says now, “I’m enjoying it. It’s relaxing. Meditative, almost.”
“Just last week, you cursed out the pins for not falling the way you wanted them to.”
“Meditative,” she insists, and she shoots him a sideways glance. “How’s everything on your end?”
Obie bites back a grimace. Do none of his friends know how to relax and tactically ignore the crisis looming over their heads? “Less meditative,” he admits. “But I’m hanging in there. You?”
Maggie’s jaw tightens. Obie’s chest hurts.
It’s only been two months since he and Ez told her that the Chain was sending neophyte demons to the Sanctum’s prison, and only around two weeks since he roped her into the larger conspiracy?—and made her their designated informant in the Chain, now that Micah and Gregorio have gone into hiding.
She’s taking her role just as seriously as Obie expected.
More seriously than he prefers, actually.
But Maggie has a long history of escorting neophyte demons to the Chain to be registered and allegedly set up with better lives, so learning that she was effectively ushering them to their deaths hit her particularly hard.
“Equally unmeditative. The moral distress is unpleasant, and trying to identify the Chain’s new scapegoat?—like Ricci used to be?—is even worse.
” She shrugs one shoulder. “But it’s tolerable.
The Chain is working everyone in Public Safety to death due to, you know. Reasons.”
“Reasons regarding certain fugitives, you mean?”
“Exactly. Demons and hunters both.” She leans towards him, lowering her voice. “But rumor has it that we might be dropping the Jackson case. ”
Obie jerks to attention. “What? Why?”
“Not sure. But I have to imagine?—?” Her voice drops even further, quiet enough that only a demon like Obie could hear it.
“I have to imagine that it means the Sanctum is dropping the Jackson case, too. Maybe it’s because they already lost Roma trying to get him back?
Or because they see Sawyer and Naomi as the greater threat now? ”
“Maybe,” Obie says, unconvinced. “But the Sanctum was willing to marry Roma off to a purebred if she could get JJ back. Considering their obsession with keeping their bloodlines ‘pure,’ that’s a huge deal.”
“A born hunter like Roma defecting is also a huge deal, though. Maybe the risks outweighed the benefits.” She solemnly returns Trevor’s high five as he and Sasha retreat towards the sitting area, signaling the end of their back-to-back turns. “Looks like I’m up. See you in a minute, Smitty.”
Obie forces a smile as she jogs away to grab a ball for her next throw. On the surface, the Chain dropping JJ’s case is a good development?—the fewer people hunting for him, the better?—but it reeks of an ulterior motive that Obie can’t quite see yet.
He’s going to have to tell Cass and JJ to stay vigilant. Ez and Roma, too.
Like they weren’t having enough trouble staying under the radar already.
Maggie’s frame ends without much fanfare, and Obie’s turn is similarly lackluster.
Sighing, he wanders back to their team’s table, where Sasha and Trevor are currently fighting over the last curly fry on their shared tray.
Decisively, Obie reaches between them, steals the fry, and pops it into his mouth. “I’ll take that.”
They shoot him matching betrayed looks. They might not be identical, but at times like this, the similarities between them are striking .
“Traitor,” Trevor says, lightly hitting Obie’s arm before walking to the approach for his own frame.
Obie promptly steals his seat, raising his eyebrows at Sasha. “So how’s the grad program?”
Sasha pouts down at the empty fry container. “It’s going okay. Rampantly disorganized with too much busywork. You know how it is.”
“I do, indeed.” Obie has a variety of master’s degrees and Ph.D.s from the past several centuries, although not all of them are still recognized?—especially not the medical degree from 1796, because that’s a field that has changed a lot since he graduated.
“Just let me know if you need any help, okay? My master’s in mathematics is from a few decades ago, but most of the principles are probably the same. ”
Sasha beams. “Thanks, Smitty. You’re the man,” she says, standing up to stretch as Trevor drags his feet back towards them, his pins as upright as ever. “Unlike this bum over here.”
“What? Like you can do any better!”
The two of them continue bickering while Sasha saunters over to the approach. Obie takes the reprieve to let his gaze drift around the alley, checking on all the people he knows.
And he knows pretty much everyone. He’s been coming to Redwater Bowl ever since it first opened sixty-odd years ago, and at this point, he’s bowling with the grandchildren of some of his original teammates. Not many people from the old guard are left.
Except for Nack Bar George. Nack Bar George started frying everyone’s greasy snacks as a pimply teenager, and he’s still frying away as a wrinkled senior citizen.
Even though he’s well aware that Obie is a demon, he still often asks him to “drop that skincare routine, Smitty; you don’t look a day over twenty-five. ”
If Obie had the opportunity to make one human immortal, it would honestly be George. RIP to JJ and Roma and all that .
The rest of the night passes in its usual blur of Obie missing every shot he takes, making his rounds to chat with everyone, and listening to Trevor and Sasha argue about whether Water Wars can be considered a cult classic.
By the time nine-thirty p.m. rolls around, most of his fellow bowlers have already left for the night, leaving him and Maggie to stroll out to the empty parking lot side by side.
“So do you think you’ll be able to make it to nationals next year?
” he asks. “It’ll be in Vegas. We can teach the twins how to count cards and get kicked out of every casino. ”
“I’m shocked they haven’t all blacklisted you already.”
“I glamour myself differently every year.”
Maggie’s lips twitch. “I’ll try. But with everything going on in Redwater right now…” She trails off. “Might not be the smartest idea for me to leave. Not without someone else to keep an eye on the Chain.”
Obie winces. “Look, I appreciate that you’re taking this so seriously,” he says quietly, “but don’t let it stop you from living, okay? You know as well as I do that revolutions don’t happen overnight. Taking a week off won’t set us back.”
“Maybe,” Maggie concedes. “And I guess I could always bribe Gregorio into glamouring himself as me. I doubt anyone would notice the difference.”
Obie grins. “That’s the spirit. Just make sure to let Trevor know one way or another?—he’s handling all the travel logistics. And get home safe, yeah?”
Maggie shoots him an amused smile. “Will do,” she says, and she peels open a rift to the home in question, steps through it, and waves goodbye before snapping it shut.
Obie is just about to follow her lead when a voice behind him?—specifically, a name behind him?—makes his blood run cold.
“Nostringvadha.”
Smith stops dead. Slowly, he turns around to face Chester, his eyebrows raised innocently. “Nostringvadha… what?”
Chester scowls. “What do you mean, ‘what’?”