“What, you don’t?”
“I’m gay, not desperate.”
“So? I’m gay in the opposite direction, but I’m not blind.” She waggles her eyebrows. “Is Smith more your type? Laguerre is obviously the hottest of them, but…”
Chester isn’t about to touch that comment with a ten-foot pole—or to admit that, mortifyingly enough, Obadiah Smith isexactlyChester’s type. Between his smooth brown skin, close-cropped black hair, and piercing brown eyes, he looks like?—
Well. Like a god among men. Nostringvadha himself walking among them in an infuriatingly handsome human façade. “Weren’t we discussing something else?” Chester asks, hoping Bryant doesn’t notice him fidgeting. “Something that’s actually important?”
Bryant’s smile wavers. A pang of guilt stabs through Chester. He knows that humor is one of her coping mechanisms, and frankly, neither of them has had much cause to laugh lately. “Yeah,” she agrees quietly. “In any case, there were a lot of factors working against JJ. We both know that he has a soft spot for kids, and also that he gets hopelessly tongue-tied around cute guys. But Roma…” She purses her lips. “I know everyone thinks that she and Laguerre hooked up, but—but that can’t be the whole story. I can’t see Roma believing a ridiculous conspiracy theory like that, even if a face like Laguerre’s was the one delivering it.”
Bitterness winds through Chester. “I feel like JJ, Sawyer, and Naomi probably did most of the convincing,” he says softly. “With three hunters she should’ve been able to trust saying the same thing, it might’ve been easier for her to overlook the holes in their story.” He shoots Bryant a sideways glance. “And then she got pulled in by the walking thirst trap that is Esmeralda Laguerre, like you said.”
Bryant’s smile is grim, but at least it’s there. “I wish we could save them. I wish—I wish things were different. You know?”
Chester’s heart stutters. “Let’s just hope they see through the lies and come back to us,” he hedges, keeping his expression carefully neutral. “Like Nasir said, anything is possible.”
“Yeah. I guess.” Bryant claps Chester on the shoulder. “All right,Locke. I’m heading to a meeting with Strike Team Zeta. See you on the training grounds tomorrow morning?”
Chester smiles. Ever since Roma defected, he and Bryant have been meeting outside every day before breakfast to train together, honing their skills side by side—and publicly showing the other hunters that JJ’s and Roma’s defections didn’t break them. Honestly, it’s become his favorite part of the day. “Bet your life on it, Nehemiah.”
Bryant gives him the ghost of a grin before jogging away. Chester heads up the staircase to his own bedroom more slowly, his thoughts drifting back to a certain spell book in the restricted spellcasting library.
He paged through it a few days ago. The binding spell was easy enough to find. And even though Chester might not be an advanced spellcaster, hehascast fromThe Magic-Weaver’s Companiononce before—a rift-opening spell for Roma’s false flag operation.
Granted, that spell went horribly wrong, destabilized the Deep, and plunged Redwater into a monthlong crisis, but the odds of that happening a second time are slim to none. The spells were developed by different spellcasters in different locations during different time periods, so it’s incredibly unlikely that they would have the same effect on Redwater’s notoriously quirky magic reservoir.
And while the binding spellistoo complex for him to cast on the fly, he has another option: pre-casting. While there’s usually only a split-second difference between a spell’s casting and its activation, he can artificially introduce a delay between them, letting him cast the spell in a controlled environment and trigger the activation at a later time—namely, once he’s face to face with Obadiah Smith.
Hypothetically, at least. While he learned the principles of pre-casting in his basic spellcasting class, he hasn’t actually tried it with a real spell before. And Roma, their group’s best spellcaster, was nevera fan of the pre-casting process—too much risk of introducing new errors.
But Sawyer and Naomi, who were closer to Chester in spellcasting knowledge, pre-cast offensive spells for him countless times when he was a teenager, giving him an edge as the “demon” adversary in Strike Team Kappa’s simulated training scenarios. They even put the activation triggers directly onto his forearm, giving him easy access to the spell work whenever he needed it.
And once he finishes the pre-casting, all he has to do is track down Nostringvadha, activate the binding spell, and coerce him into telling Chester where JJ and Roma are. With those addresses in hand, he can go straight to Councilwoman Nasir and beg her to send out a strike force to bring their captive hunters home—or even sneak into the locations himself.
He’s not ready to give up on his friends just yet. Not without a fight.
3
Maggie scowls as her bowling ball plunks into the gutter, crossing her arms over her chest. “Still batting zero tonight.”
“Wrong sport, but I get your meaning.” Obie picks up a ball for the first throw of his frame, striding up to take her place. A deep breath in, a slow breath out, and he sends the ball rolling down the lane, crossing his fingers.
It plods sadly into the gutter with more of a whimper than a bang. One of the pins shivers tantalizingly, but ultimately stays upright. His second throw doesn’t even make it halfway down the lane before veering sideways, and he heaves a sigh as he heads back to the sitting area where the rest of his Wednesday night team is gathered. “Sorry, guys. Our bad luck streak continues.”
“Aw, it’s okay!” Sasha says, patting his arm sympathetically. “It looks like the whole alley is failing miserably tonight. We fit right in!”
“But can’t you just, like,” Trevor says, “whip out some of your mojo and make it so wedon’tfail miserably?”
Obie raises his eyebrows. “Are you suggesting that I use my demonic powers tocheat,young Trevor?”
His eyes widen in mock surprise. “Who, me? Never.”
“Besides,” Sasha adds, “he only does that during tournaments, not regular league.”
Trevor whips around to face her.“Really?”
Maggie arches an eyebrow at Obie. “Really?”
