JJ flinches, remembering how easily Roma got the upper hand earlier. “I know,” he admits. “But I have a working knowledge of the prison’s layout, and I know most of their spells, and—and if worst comes to worst, I have my escrima sticks. I can hold them off long enough for you two to get Cass out.”
Obie’s eyes narrow. “No. No sacrifice plays tonight. We all go in, and we all come back out. It’d be helpful if we had more people, but?—”
“I can grow up, you know.”
JJ goes still. So do Ez and Obie.
Desi is still curled up on the couch’s middle cushion with Kira hugged to her chest. Neatly, she sets the plushie down next to her. “I can grow up,” she repeats, and there’s something about the calm, rational,adulttone of her voice that makes a chill run down JJ’s spine. “I might not be as experienced as Ez and Obie, but in terms of power, I come close to matching them. I can grow up, and the four of us can storm the Sanctum, and we can get Cass back. Because that’s how this ends with demons, right? That’s how thisalwaysends.”
Obie bites out a curse, looking away. “Oh, Cass is going to belivid.”
“But it could work.” Ez sounds reluctant. “We all know that Desi is powerful. And having a wyvern on our side would make it easier to storm the prison.”
The words sound far away past the sudden roaring in JJ’s ears. He stares at Desi, at her stiff posture and grim expression and flat eyes, and this?—
This is exactly what Cass feared most, wasn’t it? This is exactly what he wanted to avoid. He wanted Desi to have the opportunity to be a little girl, to be sheltered and protected and loved, to have achildhood?—
Because Cass didn’t get that chance. Neither did Ez. Obie probably didn’t, either.
Hell. JJ had that chance taken away from him at ten years old, and even over a decade later, that loss still feels raw sometimes.
This was important to Cass. This wasthemost important thing.
And it’s important to JJ, too. “Can I have a few minutes alone with my daughter?” he asks abruptly.
Ez’s eyes narrow. “Jackson?—”
Obie wraps a hand around her elbow. “Come on, Ez,” he says quietly, and with one last suspicious look, Ez follows him down the hallway.
Swallowing hard, JJ turns around to face Desi. Walks over to the couch and crouches down in front of it, putting himself a little lower than her. “Hey, sweetheart.”
Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. It looks older than she is, tight and mirthless and justwrongon her face. JJ thinks that this moment—this decision—is Desi hovering in the space between the little girl she is now and the adult she could become in the blink of an eye, one foot in either world until she fully commits. “Hi, JJ.”
Taking a deep breath, JJ grabs her hands. “I love you,” he says. “And Cass loves you, too. You know that, right?”
She squeezes his hands. “And I love you and Cass. So we have to save him.”
“We do,” JJ says, and gently, he reaches up to smooth her hair back. “Desi, I’m so proud of you. I’m so proud of the person you are and the person I can already see you becoming. You’ve always been so kind and caring andgood,and I know you’re going to carry that with you for the rest of your life. That you’re going to do great things someday.”
Desi lifts her chin. “So that’s a yes? I should grow up?”
JJ’s heart hurts. “I know that you love Cass just as much as I do,” he whispers. “And if you really want to help save him, then I won’t stop you from making that decision. It wouldn’t be fair.” Carefully, he frames her little face between his palms. “But it was always important to Cass that you had the chance to just be a little girl—just beourlittle girl—for as long as possible. That you weren’t forced to grow up too quickly like he was. Like I was, too.
“Desi, I want you to always feel safe and cared for and loved. I want you to never have to feel afraid, to never have to fight for your life. To never have to hurt anyone else. I—I want you to learn about the world, and to make new friends, and to take ice-skating lessons. And between me, Ez, and Obie, we can handle this. We can save Cass. I’m not going to stop until I bring him home, and I know they won’t, either.” He meets her eyes. “If you want to grow up and come with us, I won’t stop you. But I’d be really happy if we could give you the childhood that none of us had. And I think that would make Cass really happy, too.”
For a few long, breathless seconds, Desi searches his face, her eyes dark and bottomless and ancient.
And then, suddenly, it’s like a switch gets flipped. Her eyes lighten back to their usual softness, and her chin trembles as she crawls forward and throws her arms around JJ’s neck. “I think I want that, too,” she whispers, her voice back to its usual cadence. “I like being your and Cass’s little girl. It feels safe. Because you’re bigger than all the bad guys and the nightmares, right?”
JJ’s eyes burn. “Right,” he manages, and he pulls away just enough to press a kiss to her forehead. “We’re going to get him back, okay? I’m going to bring Cass home for you. I promise.”
Desi hugs him again. “Okay. I love you.”
She’s still so small—small enough to balance on JJ’s shoulders, fit snugly on his hip, or curl up in his arms. Someday, though, she’s not going to be that small anymore. For the first time, JJ wonders how his own parents felt when he started to crawl and wobbled away from them instead of towards them, or when they sent him off to school on his own and were left waving from the driveway while his bus drove away.
He wonders how they felt the first time he stepped out of their arms and started to walk towards something else.
But, at least for now, JJ gets to delay knowing how that feels for a few more years. “I love you, too,” he whispers into Desi’s hair, tightening his arms around her.
