Only for them to end up tortured and killed in the Sanctum’s prison. Obie tastes bile. “Yeah. I know.”
And he knows Maggie feels the plight of neophyte demons—and the guilt of following corrupt orders—more acutely than most. Whereas the majority of neophytes end up under a summoner’s control for a few decades at most, Maggie was subjected to multiple binding spells over the course ofcenturies,forced to fight in a relentless onslaught of humanity’s worst wars. Even once a rival spellcaster broke the binding after a few hundred years, well?—
Maggie didn’t know anything in this dimension besides war and pain and servitude. She didn’t even realize she could leave the bloodshed behind.
She stayed as a soldier to the very humans who kept her imprisonedfor almost another century before Obie finally found her and got her out.
He wishes he’d sensed her sooner. He doesn’t always notice newly summoned demons when they arrive in this dimension—only when they’re fairly close to him geographically—and he just happened to be on another continent at the time. Hell, he didn’t even do anything important during that particular half a millennium. It was sheer chance that he missed her for centuries, and it was sheer chance that he finally found her five hundred years too late.
He thinks he’ll always regret that.
Now, Maggie lets out a slow breath, her eyes drifting down the lanes. She pauses at the far corner, her lips twitching. “Looks like the McGuire brothers got their hands on Kyle.”
“Great,” Obie groans, following her gaze. “They’ll be trying to invite him to go kayaking and paintballing with them in five minutes flat, and?—”
The rest of his sentence dies in his throat, his eyes widening.
Chester is currently standing across the bowling alley, deep in conversation with Sean, Mark, and Jonah. All three of the college boys are gesturing meaningfully as they talk, and Chester seems utterly absorbed by the discussion, the tray of food in his arms all but forgotten.
But that’s not the bizarre part. The bizarre part is that he’s standingacross the bowling alley—a distance of at least sixty feet, more than three times their usual limit.
Obie didn’t even notice. In fact, he doesn’t feel the slightest trace of a headache, and Chester doesn’t look like he’s about to double over in pain, either.
What the hell?
“Obie?” Maggie is frowning at him. “Obie, you good?”
“Yeah,” Obie says eventually, forcing his eyes back to Maggie. “Yeah, I’m, uh. I’m good. Just remembered something I need to ask Kyle later. Anyway, let me know what you find, okay? I can pass it along to my people, and we’ll see what we can do.”
Maggie regards him with furrowed eyebrows before nodding. “Sure. Sounds like a plan.”
Luckily, Sasha finishes her second throw right then, signaling the start of Obie’s next frame. He waves at Maggie before quickly retreating towards the ball return, his eyes drifting back over to where Chester is still obliviously chatting with the McGuire brothers.
So the binding spell is giving them a longer leash now, huh? But if the spell’s goal is to keep them in close proximity and it’s apparently decided that it doesn’t need to expend as much energy to do that, then?—
Then Obie really doesn’t want to dwell on what must’ve shifted in his relationship with Chester to make that happen.
17
Chester gets knocked on his ass for the fourth time in ten minutes and curses under his breath, scrambling back to his feet. Just across the sparring mat, Bryant hardly looks winded. “How are you still going?” he demands, trying to catch his breath. “Don’t youeverget tired?”
“It’s all in the training, Locke.” Bryant bursts forward, her fist flying for his jaw. He blocks it with his forearm, the bone-on-bone strike rattling up his arm, and barely manages to avoid her roundhouse kick to his ribcage. “You interrogators always need to brush up on your fighting skills.”
He takes the opportunity to aim a punch at her face while she’s distracted. She ducks away without blinking, getting two quick strikes concerningly close to his kidneys before dancing away. “Because we usually don’tneedfighting skills, Nehemiah.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Well, what are you going to do during the next jailbreak, huh? We already saw what happened with the last two.”
Chester snaps to attention, holding up his hands in surrender. He knows that Obie is probably listening to every word near the edge of the mat, but that can’t be helped right now. “Wait. Are there rumors about another potential jailbreak?”
Bryant eases out of her fight stance, frowning. “Not exactly. But we’ve been getting a lot of neophyte demons lately, and the more demons in the prison at any given time, the higher the overall likelihood of a jailbreak. It’s just basic math.”
The words make the tension in Chester’s shoulders ease a little bit, but not much. He has the nagging feeling that Obie is going to recruit Cass, Ez, and probably even Maggie to stage a jailbreak the moment they break the binding spell, and frankly, Chester isn’t looking forward to it.
Although he isn’t as sure nowadays that the jailbreak in question would end with Chester dead. He wouldn’t quite describe him and Obie as friends at this point, but he thinks that Obie might be getting sort of fond of him, almost like he views Chester as a stray dog or something. He’s fairly confident that Obie would hesitate for at least a few seconds before snapping Chester’s neck.
And as for Chester, well. Ever since Obie told him after bowling league a few days ago that the binding spell is loosening its grip, he’s slowly been coming to terms with the fact that helikeshaving Obie around. Nowadays, with Obie bringing Chester into town whenever he’s off duty, letting him spend time with JJ and Roma or hang out at Redwater Bowl or watch Obie do repairs on his apartments?—
It’s fun. It’s messy. It’scomplicated.
