Chester desperately hopes for the warmth of a palm settling onto his shoulder and Obie’s steady voice winding through his head, but it doesn’t come. Right now, Obie is probably licking his wounds as far away from Chester as possible, and Chester hurt him so badly that he’s not going to come back until long after the interrogators have already done their worst.
And that’s a huge problem, because over two hours into Chester’s shift, he still doesn’t have a plan. He stumbles back into the hallway and marks that the room is clean on the nearest computer, trying to keep his breathing even. No one has started interrogating Maggie yet, but he doesn’t know how long that reprieve is going to last. He needsto get her out of here before they hurt her, before they do irreversible damage?—
Before they sic one of the purebred spellcasters on her and rip apart her soul. Chester shudders at the thought. He hasn’t seen much of the testing process in person, but he knows from Obie that it took less than an hour for the spellcasters to shred Cass’s soul.
And Chester can’t let that happen. He retreats back towards the break room, frantically flipping through his options again. Maggie is already strapped to the table in the first spare interrogation room, and when Chester furtively walked past the one-way mirror earlier, she was still unconscious.
They probably used the same modulated corrosion on her that they used on Cass. It didn’t incapacitate him for more than an hour or so, but during that time, he was fully unresponsive.
And that vastly limits Chester’s already-limited options for breaking Maggie out by himself. Nausea licks up his throat, and he swallows it down hard. Turning off the interrogation room’s camera and microphone wouldn’t be difficult, but it also wouldn’t take long for someone to notice that the room wasn’t being monitored and come to investigate. Even if he worked quickly, he’d have to maintain cloaking spells for both himselfandMaggie the entire time, and with his lackluster magic abilities, he doesn’t think he could hold the spells for longer than ten or fifteen minutes.
He doesn’t even know if he could get out of the Sanctum that quickly. Not if he had to carry—or drag—Maggie with him. And someone would surely realize a demon was missing and sound the alarm before he even made it out of the prison.
And that’s only if his cloaking spells didn’t fail first.
What else can he do? Stall her interrogator? He could, but not for the twelve hours until Obie gets back.Incapacitateher interrogator? Even if he managed it, someone else would just be assigned to tortureher. Block the entrance to her interrogation room? Fake an emergency and activate the alarm spell network?
Shake Maggie awake and see if she has any better ideas?
He needs Obie. Chester’s throat tightens at the thought, tears burning behind his eyes. Even if the prison’s new anti-rifting spell work actually holds and Obie couldn’t rift the three of them to safety, they’d still have other options. Obie could make them invisible or glamour them; he could cast the spells they needed to cover their tracks; if all else failed, they could always fight their way out side by side.
With Obie, it would be almost laughably easy to stage a jailbreak.
Without him, Chester has nothing.
The door to the break room swings open. Chester whirls around to see Nostrand striding inside, absorbed in a file and not even glancing in Chester’s direction. Automatically, Chester tilts his head to read the prisoner’s name on the folder, checking if Nostrand is going to be interrogating in Chester’s halls.
His stomach bottoms out.
No.
Not Nostrand.
Anyonebut Nostrand.
His worst fears are confirmed when Nostrand snaps the file shut a second later, finally turning his cold eyes on Chester. “Everything’s set for the Khan case?”
“Yeah,” Chester croaks, his thoughts screaming ahead of him.What can I do? What can I do? What can I—?“How did we, uh, even get her? I mean, that’s—that’s Magdalena Khan, right? One of the demons who started World War I? I thought she was, um, under the Redwater Chain’s protection. Couldn’t having her here start a war?”
“According to Nasir,” Nostrand says dismissively, “the Chain firedher yesterday. Once our people found out, they were mobilized to take her down. She never saw it coming.”
So the Chain caught her snooping, just like Obie feared they would. That must’ve been why she wasn’t at the proposal last night. Chester feels sick. “Oh,” he says, trying to inject some false cheer into his voice. “Well, that’s, uh. Good.”
“Uh-huh.” Nostrand tucks the folder under one arm, turning towards the seventh hallway. “Make sure you’re available to clean up her room afterward. The spellcasters are going to be there for testing at noon.”
Less than two hours from now? Panic jolts through Chester. “Wait—wait!”he blurts out.
Nostrand looks over his shoulder sharply, his eyes narrowed. “What, Locke?”
“Can I—?”Think, Chester. Think, think, think—“Let me trade places with you.”
Apparently, Nostrand is just as surprised to hear the words as Chester is that he said them. “Excuse me?”
“Let me—” Chester’s throat feels dry. It’s probably his weakest plan yet, but right now, it’s the only one he has. “Let me switch out with you. For interrogation duty. Let me interrogate Khan.”
“Absolutely not. The Council hasn’t reapproved you for interrogation duty yet.” He scowls. “If I were in charge, you’dneverget reapproved, but that’s another matter entirely.”
“Just—” Chester takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Just hear me out, okay? It’ll be like a second final exam. You can micromanage me, bark orders at me, whatever you want. But Ineeda chance to prove myself to the Council again, and they’re not giving me that chance. This—this could be my only shot. The only assignment that’s high-priority enough for them to take me seriously.” He forces himself to meet Nostrand’s eyes. “Come on, Nostrand. Please.”
