And Obie would gladly start a war to save them—gladly andenthusiastically. But he knows even better than the rest of them just how long and vicious this cycle of revenge has already been.
“Okay, look,” JJ says suddenly, and to Obie’s surprise, he turns to Gregorio. “Ez said that you have more combat experience than her and Cass combined, and Cass in particular is one of the most brilliant tacticians I’ve ever met. If anyone is going to figure out a solution, it’s probably going to be you. So—so how do you get into a place that’s impossible to get into?”
For a long moment, Gregorio is quiet. His eyes flit over the members of their group, analyzing them each in turn, before sliding back to the Sanctum’s impenetrable boundary wall.
And then, abruptly, he says, “Open a rift. You need to open a rift.”
“What the hell do you think we’ve been trying to do, Ricci?” Ez demands.
“I’m not talking to you,” Gregorio says, and he turns to Roma. “I’m talking toyou,Gutierrez the Younger.”
Roma stops dead. “What?”
Obie’s heart stutters. “Wait, that’s—that’s right,” he says, his eyes widening. “Roma, you’ve been working on human-magic rifts, right? By definition, the Sanctum can’t counter human-magic rifts because anti-rifting spell work is specific to demon magic. That means one ofyourrifts can get us inside.”
“No, they can’t,” Roma says, her voice strained. “Because, by definition, the Sanctum can’t counter human-magic rifts becausethey don’t exist yet.I still can’t get them to work.”
“Look, I know very little about spellcasting beyond the basics,” Gregorio says, “but Naomi seems to think you’re the best there is. Figure it out.”
Roma’s eyes flicker to Naomi. She doesn’t answer.
Gregorio leans forward. “Figure it out,” he repeats, slowly and clearly, “or your friend is going to die.”
“Gregorio!”Micah hisses.
For a split second, Roma’s face crumples.
And then, just as quickly, something hard creeps into her expression. “Ez,” she says, setting her feet shoulder-width apart and positioning her hands precisely in front of her, “the interdimensional approach wasn’t working, right?”
“Not with human magic, no,” Ez says, glaring at Gregorio like she’s personally planning to make him pay for upsetting her girlfriend. “But demon magic relies on it for rifts, even rifts within the same dimension—it’s demons’ inherent interdimensionality that allows us to manipulate the spacetime continuum to such an exact degree in the first place.”
“But summoners can open rifts to Tamaros because?—”
“—because they’re basically punching a hole through spacetime,” Ez finishes. “But it’s an arbitrary hole. Nothing like the precision you’d need to open a rift to a specific location.”
“So maybe we need to forget about interdimensionality,” Roma says, moving her hands through the air like she’s trying to feel the wrinkles in the fabric of reality, “and focus on punching better.”
“Aim beforehand and follow through afterward,” Obie says, nodding. “Like bowling or archery or?—”
“—or throwing an ax,” JJ says, his eyes gleaming. “Don’t punch the target—punchthroughthe target.”
Roma takes a deep breath. Lets it out slowly.
Whispers an incantation under her breath, making magic light up around her palms.
But, instead of using one of the standard spellcasting gestures Obie knows, Roma reaches forward, closes her fingers like she’s fisting her hands in a curtain, and deliberately starts to drag them apart.
A gleam of purple-gold light swirls to life between her hands, growing larger inch by painful inch.
“Holy shit,” Cass says, his jaw hanging slightly agape.
“Whoa,”Naomi breathes.
“See?” Gregorio says to Micah. “Being bad cop really does work sometimes.”
“I do so hate it when you’re right about things like that,” Micah says.
Ez rests her hand on Roma’s lower back, leans in, and whispers something that Obie doesn’t catch. In response, Roma shifts her stance, changes her hand positioning, and yanks the rift the rest of the way open.
