Chester immediately pulls out the front-facing camera on his phone, peering at himself with interest. Obie tried to match his basic features as closely as possible, so his skin is still pale and his height is still the same, but his hair is light brown instead of its usual blond and his eyes are blue instead of hazel. “Huh. Nice. Who am I?”
“A minor character fromWater Wars,”Obie says. “One who dies.”
Chester shoots him a look. “Gee, thanks.”
“No problem,” Obie says, peeling off his own invisibility spell. “Do you want to rift to the Courtyard? Or go on foot?”
“It’s only a twenty-minute walk. Might be nice to stretch our legs.”
Belatedly, Obie realizes that Chester hasn’t voluntarily left the Sanctum’s property at all since they’ve been bound together. Sure, Obie has taken him to bowling a few times, but beyond that, Chester has barely breathed fresh air outside of his early-morning training sessions with Bryant.
Probably because he’s spent all of his spare time researching how to break the binding spell. Obie’s heart twinges at the thought. Sure, this entire situation is Chester’s fault, but he doesn’t want the stupid hunter to never see sunlight again. “On foot it is, then,” he says, leading the way back to the trail. “And we’re clear on the rules, right? No trying to pry sensitive intel out of JJ and Roma?”
Chester actually looks a bit stung. “I wouldn’t do that.”
Obie’s eyes narrow. “Really.”
“Yes, really,” Chester says defensively. “I do have basic human decency, okay? And I—” He looks away. “I’ve missed them. It’ll be… good to see them again. Even if I can’t tell them who I am.”
And that’s another reason why Obie thinks the benefits outweigh the risks of bringing Chester today: if he sees that JJ and Roma are truly happy outside the Sanctum—and not brainwashed by the evil demons—then it’ll make this entire situation more bearable. “And you’ll play nice with Cass and Ez?” Obie presses.
Chester’s jaw works. “I mean, I’ll try. I’ll shake their hands and—” Abruptly, he stops dead. “Wait. I can’t actually touch them—themorJJ. Corrosion spell, remember?”
Right. It’s been so long since Obie was affected by the enchantment baked into Chester’s skin that he almost forgot about it. “Well, I can deactivate it for twelve hours—Ez created the spell. It’ll block all of the Sanctum enchantments, though, not just the corrosion spell.”
Chester hesitates. “For twelve hours?”
“Yep.” Obie checks his watch. “It’s eleven-thirty a.m. now, so you’ll be back in business by midnight.”
After a long moment, Chester nods. “Okay. Do it.”
Pleasantly surprised, Obie claps a hand onto Chester’s shoulder, murmuring the incantation under his breath. Within seconds, the potent magic sewn into Chester’s bones seems to vanish, forced down like it was never there in the first place.
It makes Chester’s entire presence feel different. Obie is somewhat confused to find that he doesn’t like it. Fighting back a scowl, he turns away. “All good,” he says briskly, starting to walk towards town again. “Let’s go.”
Chester falls into step beside him, occasionally looking down at his hands like he’s fascinated by the glamour—or like he can physically feel the lack of Sanctum enchantments. The silence is almost companionable as the neat dirt trail gives way to cement and asphalt, andtwenty minutes seem to fly by in a flash, both of them content to lose themselves in thought as they make the well-worn trek on autopilot.
They’ve almost reached the familiar cobblestone pavement when Chester finally speaks again. “So what’s my cover story?”
The opening to the Courtyard looms large ahead of them, the sloshing of the tiered fountain and the delicious scents from the food trucks beckoning them forward. If Obie squints, he can see the table where he and his friends usually set up shop, occupied by five ostensibly unfamiliar faces.
But the little girl sitting on a man’s shoulders is unmistakably Desi, even with her glamour. Time for action. Decisively, Obie wraps an arm around Chester’s waist and pulls him against his side. “Your name is Kyle Chad. We met at bowling a month ago, and we’ve been dating for two weeks.”
Chester jerks around to face him, horrified.“What?”
“Play along or you won’t get your cachapas,” Obie says, and, feeling extraordinarily pleased with himself, he drags Chester over to the table where his friends are waiting.
11
Chester doesn’t care that Obie is an actual god. He’s going tofinda way to kill him.
He doesn’t have enough time to turn tail and bolt after Obie tells him their pitiful excuse for a cover story—hell, he doesn’t even have time to argue, because within seconds of the unexpected fake-dating announcement, they’re already within earshot of Obie’s crew. Even with the glamours, it’s easy to identify the two fugitive defectors and three fugitive demons, and Chester swallows hard as Obie waves cheerfully. “Hey, guys.”
Cassius Chin blinks slowly at them, looking utterly befuddled. It’s a bizarre expression to see on one of the demons who almost singlehandedly started World War I. “Hey, uh, Obie.”
“Andfriendof Obie’s,” Esmeralda Laguerre purrs, lacing her fingers together underneath her chin. Her smile is unsettlingly reminiscent of Bryant’s right when she’s about to go in for the kill, and Chester fights back the urge to squirm. “Obie, would you care to introduce us?”
“This,”Obie says proudly, squeezing Chester tight enough against his side that Chester thinks his ribs might crack, “is my boyfriend, Kyle. Kyle, this is Cass, Ez, JJ, Roma, and Desi.”
