The house is a wreck.
It feels like there’s a gaping hole in JJ’s chest as he numbly looks around, trying to process the damage. Cass’s second-favorite safe house is nearly destroyed: windows and doors broken, furniture overturned or shredded, glass and splintered wood strewn across the floor. There was clearly a struggle—a struggle where Cass gothurt,judging by the bloodstains—and now, the house is just ruined and bare and horribly silent.
Now, Cass is in the Sanctum. He’s in the Sanctum’sprison.
And JJ knows exactly what they do to demons down there. “No,” he stammers, fear taking up a stranglehold around his lungs. “No, they can’t have him—they can’t?—”
“Well, theydo,”Ez snarls. She’s visibly shaking, her hands curled into fists. “You led the hunters straight to him. Youleft him alone,and?—”
Obie’s voice, smooth and methodical, cuts through Ez’s anger. Somehow, it’s even more chilling. “How do we even know we can trustyou,Jackson?”
Desi hugs JJ’s neck tightly. “JJ,” she whispers, her voice trembling. “JJ, are the bad people going to come back?”
Tears burn behind JJ’s eyes. He opens his mouth to answer.
“Of course not, sweetie,” Ez interrupts, and she snaps her fingers. JJ feels a cool rush of magic settle into place around them. “I just put up a shield spell, see? Now, the bad peoplecan’tcome back.”
She doesn’t recommend that they rift to one of Obie’s many safe houses. That, more than anything else, tells JJ just how little she and Obie trust him right now.
Just how quickly he managed to betray all the kindness they showed him. Heart cracking, JJ sets Desi down on the ripped couch, gives her Kira the Wyvern to hug, and turns to Obie. “Search my memories. As far back as you want. Just—” He winces. “Just maybe don’t focus too much on this morning. There were, um. Some things with me and Cass that you might not want to see.”
Obie’s eyebrows shoot up. “Ah,” he says, and deliberately, he reaches out, grabs JJ’s wrist, and closes his eyes.
A faint, tingling pressure builds up between JJ’s temples. Obie sifting through his memories, probably, searching for anything relevant and disregarding the rest. JJ squeezes his eyes shut, tries to relax his shoulders, prays that Obie is finding what he needs to prove JJ’s loyalty?—
The faster he can do that, the faster they can get Cass back.
And clean up JJ’s mess. He swallows hard, guilt and nausea clawing their way up his throat. Because he trusted the wrong person, and compromised the safety of his and Cass’s home, and brought the Sanctum straight to their doorstep.
Because he decided—albeit briefly—that retreating into his old life was more important than building a new life with Cass. That it wassafer,even.
He was such an idiot.
“You are,” Obie says absently, and JJ starts with surprise when Obie releases his wrist. “An idiot, I mean. But not a traitor.” He meets Ez’s eyes. “He’s clean. Just made a very large, very stupid mistake at the worst possible time.”
Ez’s jaw works. “Yeah, okay,” she says eventually, and she crosses her arms over her chest. “Just one more human shield for the jailbreak.”
And Ez and Obie might not be Strike Team Kappa, but JJ feels the calming, familiar sensation of planning for a mission wash over him anyway. “If Roma was never on our side to begin with,” he says, “then there probably isn’t a way to counteract the anti-rifting spell work in the prison—she must’ve just gotten the Sanctum to deactivate it for a few minutes. That means we’ll have to get in and out the old-fashioned way.”
Obie drums his fingers against his leg, considering. “Into the prison proper, at least. If your escape was engineered from the beginning, JJ, then the Sanctum might not have patched the loophole Cass always used to get into the building itself. We’ll just have to rift inside, sneak into the prison, find out where Cass is?—”
“Just,”Ez repeats scornfully. “That prison is a labyrinth, Obie. And we still don’t know anything about its layout.”
“I do,” JJ says immediately, leaning forward. “My best friend is an interrogator down there. I might not be able to draw full blueprints, but I can give us a good idea of where to start.” He glances at Obie. “Or can you just… pull the memories out of my head and download them into your heads? Can you do that?”
Ez frowns at Obie. “Actually, can you? Because that would be very convenient, and also kind of awesome.”
Obie shoots her a long-suffering look. “Yes. Yes, I can do that. But that’s ignoring the fact that, since the Sanctum got Cass but not JJ, they’re going to be expecting a jailbreak. They’re going to beexpectingopposition.”
“Can we outgun them?” JJ asks desperately. “Bring it to the Chain or something?”
Ez’s scowl deepens. “Cass is a fugitive from the Chain, remember? Because of you.” She hesitates. “You and Desi. Theymightagree to a jailbreak, but they’d want to question him themselves afterward. And, above all, bureaucracies move slowly. It could take days.”
They don’t have days. If JJ knows the Sanctum at all, they’re probably torturing Cass right now. “Do we have any allies? Like—like Maggie Khan? Or Micah and Gregorio? They’ve all helped him in the past, right?”
Obie shakes his head. “Maggie might be willing to bend the rules for Cass, but at the end of the day, she’s loyal to the Chain. As for Micah and Gregorio…” He lets out his breath in a hiss. “I don’t even know whose side they’re on nowadays. And I don’t want to find out the hard way.”
“So it’s just the three of us,” Ez says flatly. “Great. Obie and I can hold our own, but you’re basically useless, Jackson.”