For a long moment, they stare each other down. Cassius’s dark eyes are deep and foreboding, ageless as a black hole and inevitable as the grave, and JJ does his best not to flinch away, to maintain eye contact, to clench his fists tighter to keep them from shaking?—
And then, with a dramatic sigh, Cassius lounges back in his chair again. “Look, are you pissy because I have ice cream and you don’t? Iaskedif you wanted anything, but?—”
“No, I’m pissy because youtook my kid,”JJ bites out. “You break into the Sanctum?—”
“What, like it’s hard?”
“—sneak into my room?—”
“You call that a room? Looked more like a jail cell.”
“—andkidnap Desi?—”
“Who, shockingly enough, wasn’t being tortured,” Cassius says. “So thanks for that.”
“I—” The gears in JJ’s head screech to a halt. “What?”
Cassius rests his forearms on the table, eyes narrowed. “Look, JJ—may I call you ‘JJ’?”
“No.”
“All right,pissant,so I’m a simple demon, okay? I find neophyte demons, I bring them back to the Chain. I find Sanctum hunters, I presume they’re bad guys. This ‘shades of gray’ bit is fairly new to me.”
JJ squints at him. “What are you?—?”
“She won’t stop talking aboutWyvern Academy,”Cassius interrupts. His jaw twitches. “And you. She wouldn’t stop crying until I promised I’d reach out to you.”
“You—” The gears in JJ’s head are grinding against each other now. Is this still a ransom negotiation? “What?”
“And I didn’t tell the Chain about her,” Cassius adds, looking like he recently tasted something much more bitter than coffee-flavored ice cream. “If I did, they would register her and find alternate placement for her, which obviously wouldn’t be conducive to a Sanctum lackey—” He wrinkles his nose distastefully. “Visiting. Or whatever.”
Suddenly, JJ starts to see where Cassius is going with this. And suddenly, the choice of an ice cream parlor for this conversation makes a lot more sense. “What are you suggesting?” he asks slowly.
“I was—” Abruptly, Cassius looks embarrassed. “I was thinking joint custody? Weekend visitation? Something like that?”
Cass is inwayover his head here.
Through their hissed argument over Cass’s steadily melting ice cream, he and the hunter agreed that the safest place for Desi would be Cass’s house. Cass felt an immense sense of satisfaction at this decision, and evenmoresatisfaction at the sour expression on said hunter’s face afterward.
But that, of course, means Cass needs to let said hunter into hishousenow—or, at the very least, one of his safe houses—which he’s not quite as satisfied with. “Desi!” he calls down the hall, checking the time on his new burner phone. “You almost ready?”
“Yes!” Desi shouts back, and she barrels down the hall, barely managing to skid to a stop before slamming directly into him. Proudly, she lifts her arms up high. “How doesthisone look?”
“You look great,” Cass assures her. And shedoeslook nice—she’s wearing one of the many outfits he bought her at the mall a few days ago, plus a tiny denim jacket—but the last five outfits she tried on also looked equally nice. Frankly, Cass is starting to run out of compliments. “I think that one’s the winner.”
Her eyes go huge. “Are you sure? I want it to be thebestone for my field trip with JJ!”
Cass bites back a grimace. “I’m sure he’ll think you look very nice, too,” he says, and he waggles his fingers. “You ready to go?”
She hesitates briefly before slipping her hand into his. “Well, if you’resure.”
“I’m sure,” he says firmly, and he snaps open a rift. Obviously, there was no way he was inviting JJ to hisrealhouse—he doesn’t want to be forced to move if this little co-parenting scheme goes south—but he did grudgingly give him the address for his second-favorite safe house. There was also no way he was giving JJ his real phone number—he wouldn’t put it past the hunter to try and trace it—but he just as grudgingly accompanied him to the corner store to buy matching burner phones.
There’s a lot of grudgingness involved in their interactions, really. His only comfort is that JJ seems just as annoyed by the proceedings as Cass is.
Hopefully, though, Desi won’t see him and JJ together for long enough to notice. “Let’s go,” he says, and he guides her through the rift to his safe house’s foyer. It’s not as nice as his regular home—it features much less natural light in a decidedly smaller space—but it’ll suit his purposes for the Desi Handoff.
“Ooh!”Desi spins in a circle, fascinated. “This is so pretty! Can I go see all the rooms, Cass?”
