Page 77 of Take You Home (Redwater Demons #3)

Two Weeks Later

C hester’s bowling ball whizzes down the lane, crashes into the pins, and knocks just fewer than half of them down. He thrusts his fists triumphantly into the air. “Gooooooal!”

Obie buries his face in his hands. “You take pleasure in humiliating me, don’t you?”

Chester leans over to press a self-satisfied kiss to his cheek. “You love it.”

“No, I love you,” Obie grumbles, fighting back a smile when a grin jumps onto Chester’s face at the words. “All right, puppy. Want me to see if I can knock down the rest of your pins for you?”

Chester gestures towards the lane with a flourish. “Be my guest.”

Obie grabs the next ball from the rack, centers himself on a deep breath, and strides forward, letting the ball slide off his fingers. It rolls sadly into the gutter just before hitting any of the pins, and Obie drops his head back with a groan .

“Bummer, man,” Trevor says solemnly, patting Obie’s shoulder. “Our bad luck streak has returned.”

“It’s all your fault,” Sasha says, scowling at Chester. “Once you, like, changed your name and everything, we lost all our mojo. We need Kyle back.”

Chester sputters indignantly. “But Kyle never even existed! Kyle was just me in a cheap costume!”

“Are you calling my glamours cheap?” Obie demands.

“You said that you based mine on a Water Wars character who dies,” Chester says, “so yeah, probably.”

Trevor’s eyes light up. “From the fourth movie! I knew Kyle looked familiar!”

While Chester sets about lightheartedly bickering with the twins over the Water Wars franchise in general and this one-scene-wonder character in particular, Obie strolls back to their table to grab a few boneless wings, feeling more content than he has in a very long time.

But he’s been getting these days more often ever since he and Chester officially left the Sanctum.

After his and Chester’s mutual near-death experiences two weeks ago, Obie gave Chester the dime tour of his home, cooked them omelets for dinner, and brought Chester straight into the bedroom, where they both passed out for a full twelve hours?—Chester, to recover from the day’s excitement, and Obie, to turn off his brain and not have to deal with everything they learned.

Unfortunately, they did have to deal with it eventually.

The first thing on their to-do list the next morning was breaking the binding spell, which was an unexpectedly somber occasion for both of them.

True, they didn’t need the telepathic link to stay under the Sanctum’s radar anymore, and true, it would be safer for everyone if they could rift-hop to separate continents in an emergency, but?? —

But the binding spell was what brought them together. Feeling that connection fade was bittersweet.

On the bright side, Ez and Roma are already working on creating a long-distance telepathic connection for them, with the sole stipulation that they do not want to know what Obie and Chester use it for.

Obie is happy to oblige, although he has the nagging feeling that Chester has already told Roma far more than she needs to know about their sex life.

But most of that is getting put on the back burner for now in favor of the objectively more important matter of researching how to fix Cass and JJ’s soul exchange. Unfortunately, they’ve already crossed one potential solution off their list.

Namely, the Blessings.

Obie never suspected that the Blessings could put Cass’s and JJ’s souls back in their proper places?—its powers lie in healing wounds and breaking curses, not soul magic?—but when Chester mentioned that both Bryant and JJ brought Blessings back to Earth, Obie was hopeful that they could at least treat the headaches and nausea and fatigue.

No such luck, though. Apparently, Cass is enough of a demon not to be let back into Tamaros, but not enough of a demon for the Blessings to recognize him as one. JJ’s half-demon soul didn’t help much, either.

Back to square one.

After that, Obie reluctantly rifted Chester to the Conspiracy Fam’s house to explain his god-killing theory, which left everyone visibly shell-shocked. Obie couldn’t blame them. Knowing why the Chain ruthlessly sent so many neophyte demons to their deaths almost makes it feel worse.

Not to mention that Naomi and Sawyer’s hunch about the power signatures was right: the energy spike from Maggie and Bryant’s soul exchange was a perfect match for dozens of other data points they’ve collected over the years.

Even more disturbingly, there were some signatures with even higher levels of energy?—more powerful than the magic created by blending two souls together, apparently.

Obie doesn’t even want to think about what might’ve caused those. Based on Sawyer’s and Naomi’s nauseated expressions, he thinks they probably don’t, either. He knows that they feel particularly responsible for their roles in everything the Sanctum has done.

Chester, too. Honestly, Obie thinks they’ve only scratched the surface of all the trauma the Sanctum put Chester through.

Simple tasks like chopping vegetables for a salad will sometimes leave Chester flinching with every stroke of the knife, funny stories over breakfast about Bryant almost getting kicked out of Yamamoto Sushi Restaurant will devolve into his overwhelming guilt about getting her branded as a dissident??—

Half-remembered anecdotes about Chester’s little brothers will leave him shaking in Obie’s arms for an hour afterward.

Obie is trying to be there for Chester as best he can, but much as he wants to just snap his fingers and make Chester’s pain vanish, he’s been around for enough millennia to know that it doesn’t work like that.

Processing everything that was done to him is something Chester is going to have to do on his own, but??—

But it makes Obie really happy whenever Chester talks to him about it. Even the bad parts. Especially the bad parts.

Every memory they exchange is a new layer in the painstaking trust they’ve built over the past few months, and Obie wants to know every part of his boyfriend, scars and darkness and all.

And Chester, he knows, is aggressively trying to do the same thing for Obie. While Obie didn’t tap into his godly nature very often, it was still always there, always present, always humming just beneath the surface. Strong, steady, and reliable, as constant and soothing as a second heartbeat.

And sometimes, when Chester is especially excited about something or Obie is standing particularly close to him, Obie will feel a sudden rush of that god power?—what used to be his god power?—emanating from Chester’s soul instead of his own.

If Obie could go back in time, he would still make the exact same decision to save Chester’s life. That’s not even a question. But it doesn’t keep him from feeling sad and hollow and empty every time he senses that crackle of energy and remembers that he’s never going to be able to wield it again.

Chester notices every time. Obie doesn’t know how, but he does.

And those are always the moments when Chester will hug Obie extra tightly or unexpectedly bring him a mug of hot cocoa or even just sit close next to Obie on the couch, resting his temple on Obie’s shoulder and letting the silence say everything that words can’t.

Trying to take care of Obie just as much as Obie tries to take care of Chester.

But they’ve had their fun moments, too. Frequent dinners with Cass, JJ, Desi, Ez, and Roma, with Roma dragging Bryant along whenever she can.

Walking along Lakeside or eating lunch in the Courtyard, properly glamoured but still daring the Sanctum and the Chain to try and stop them.

Christening every piece of furniture in Obie’s house in the best way they know how.

And, of course, the inevitable explanations at Redwater Bowl.

Obie thinks he gave the entire alley a collective heart attack when he walked in with an un-glamoured Chester on his arm, but after enough vague explanations about having to protect Chester’s identity?—and an amusingly long interrogation session by Sasha after which she definitively decreed that Chester is, in fact, the same person as Kyle?—they all seemed to accept Chester as graciously as they always have .

Including a certain demon who Chester risked his life to save. “He’s getting better,” Maggie says now, stealing a curly fry from Obie’s container and popping it into her mouth.

Obie grins. As far as he’s concerned, any compliment to his boyfriend is also a compliment directly to him, and he’s so proud of how far Chester has come.

In everything. “Slowly but surely, yeah,” Obie agrees.

“Does he actually like bowling? Or does he mainly come because you do?”

“The latter, I think,” Obie admits. “But he does enjoy the company.”

“Clearly,” Maggie says, watching as Chester and Trevor drag a protesting Sasha over to the front desk to talk with Harper. Her eyes flicker back to Obie. “Any news from the war front?”

Obie’s smile wavers. Much as he enjoys having Maggie out from under the Chain’s thumb, he hates how it happened?—and that she’s a fugitive like the rest of them now.

“Nothing yet. The Conspiracy Fam is reanalyzing all of their data from this new perspective, and apparently, a lot of things are falling into place.”

Maggie’s lips press together. “Frankly, I’d almost hoped things wouldn’t fall into place, but…”

“Yeah. You’re telling me.” Obie shoots Maggie a sideways glance. “Have you talked to Bryant at all?”

Almost imperceptibly, Maggie flinches. “Not really,” she says shortly, which Obie takes to mean that Maggie is avoiding her soul-exchanged ex-hunter at all costs. “There’s really no reason to.”

“Not if you don’t want to,” Obie agrees quietly. “But you two went through something really traumatic together. It might help to talk to someone who had the same experience, you know?”