“Okay, nerd,” JJ teases, and he dodges Roma’s second punch. “How about Bryant? Has she made contact yet?”
“She got banished all the way into Mexico, apparently,” Roma says. “And the spellcaster actually blasted her a few days forward in the calendar, so she only just woke up in a dumpster in Tijuana. The local Sanctum down there is setting her up with a plane ticket back to Redwater now.” She raises her eyebrows expectantly. “So what happened back here?”
“Killed the summoner,” he says, and he forces down a twinge of guilt at his next words. “Lost the demon.”
“Youlostit?” Roma repeats, appalled. “JJ!”
A sharp jolt of defensiveness rises up in him. Valiantly, he tries to beat it down. “Roma, there was amilitia.They hadguns.I was lucky to make it out of there alive, much less take down the summoner.”And at least I didn’t get banished across the state,he thinks spitefully.
A split second later, guilt snaps through him. JJ’s status as a former civilian might make him a third-class citizen in the Sanctum, but Roma isn’t exactly sitting pretty, either. The mixed-breed Gutierrez family used to have a solid standing in the bloodlines hierarchy—nowhere near as powerful as a purebred lineage like Bryant’s, but still known and respected—but Roma’s older sister defecting six years ago changed all that. JJ knows that Roma has been especially sensitive to criticism—and failure—ever since.
His suspicions are confirmed when Roma looks away. “No, you’re right. I just—I just don’t like losing. And Nasir is definitely going to ream us out.”
JJ grimaces. He hasn’t had manygoodexperiences in Councilwoman Nasir’s foreboding office, but facing her after a mission gone sideways is especially harrowing. “Yeah. I’m really not looking forward to it.”
“But it wasn’t your fault,” Roma continues, and she turns around to walk back down the trail, motioning for JJ to fall into step beside her. “After all, you were sizably outnumbered, and Bryant and I weren’t there to back you up. Hopefully, Nasir will take that into consideration.” Her lips twitch. “Plus, the demon was a dragon. I don’t think any of us were prepared for the demon to be a dragon.”
“Wyvern,” JJ corrects automatically.
Roma blinks slowly at him. “What’s the difference?”
“Wyverns have two legs instead of four,” JJ says, and he squints back at her. “Didn’t you ever watchWyvern Academy?”
She looks flummoxed. “Did I ever watchwhat?”
JJ fights back a wince. Right. Hunters who were born in the Sanctum—hunters like Roma and Bryant—didn’t have much exposure to regular childhood activities. No sports teams, no instruments, no after-school TV. Just self-defense, weapons training, and spellcasting.
While JJ was busy watching cartoons, Roma was probably busy honing her survival skills. “Never mind,” he says, looking away. “Just, um. A stupid civilian TV show. You probably wouldn’t even like it.”
After a moment, Roma shrugs. It’s not necessarily a dismissive gesture, but JJ feels the sting of it anyway. “All right. In any case, we can figure out a way to put a positive spin on this debacle. Want to walk me through what happened?”
“Sure,” JJ says, and as he launches into his carefully edited account of killing the summoner and “losing” the demon, he tries his best not to look down when a small, invisible hand wraps firmly around two of his fingers.
2
Cass scowls at the wreckage surrounding the rotting barn. “Well, this blows.”
“Hard,” Ez agrees, her eyes sweeping around as she picks her way past the bodies. Checking for threats, Cass knows, even though he already scoped out the area before letting his best friends approach. “Looks like the summoner’s dead, at least. We’ve already had way too many of those idiot humans mucking around Redwater over the past few months. Obie, are you sensing anything?”
Obie is crouched next to one of the bodies, his eyes unfocused as he tunes in to the woman’s last memories. At Ez’s question, though, he glances up with raised eyebrows. “I’msensingthat I left my bowling team alone on New Year’s Day for nothing. And, even worse, I left them alone with Maggie Khan.”
“What’s wrong with Maggie Khan?” Cass asks defensively. “Maggie is great. We love Maggie.”
“We do love Maggie,” Obie says, pushing himself to his feet. “But she’s also the least sociable demon we know, Cass. And the fact that you two accidentally started World War I together isn’t the best conversation topic.”
Ez casts her eyes to the sky like she’s praying to Nostringvadha for patience. It’s a very familiar look on her. “The neophyte demon, Obie. Are you sensing anything about the neophyte demon?”
“Loads of things,” Obie says. “Nothing that’ll help us find her, though. I’m getting a few flashes of what looks like a Sanctum strike team from a few days ago, but…” His lips thin out. “But it looks like they’re a fairlyefficientstrike team. They cut through the militia quickly enough that no one got a good look at them.”
Cass bites back a grimace of distaste. Even though demons and demon hunters technically agree on the virtues of taking down summoners, there’s a large part of Cass that would be happiest if the hunters and the summoners just annihilated each other altogether. “And there’s no one else here—no one breathing, at least. So if our neophyte demon is still alive, she’s not in that barn.”
Ez shoots him an amused smile. “Let’s go test that claim, shall we?” she says, and she strides towards the crumbling structure, leaving Cass and Obie to trail along behind her.
Cass isn’t worried about being wrong. He has a knack for noticing things that other people don’t—the quickened heartbeat of someone trying to hide, the hushed breathing of a hunter lying in wait. His instincts have never failed him.
There’s a reason why the Redwater Chain—the local demons’ governing body, second only to Redwater’s actual government—contacted Cass once they realized this summoner posed a particular danger to demons and humans alike. That little snafu with World War I notwithstanding, he’s ended far more wars than he’s started, and he has a proven track record of winning against impossible odds.
It’s a pity that the hunters got here first. It’s been far too long since Cass went up against an army.
