Sighing, he steps out of his—once more, for emphasis—non-communalshower, dries himself off, and pulls on his clothes, padding out into the living room. It’s been almost two months since he’s been in his safest of safe houses, his actualhome,and even though a quick cleaning spell took care of the dust that’s gathered since then, he can’tshake the feeling that there’s still something off about the space. It feels almost…
Lonely.
He’s not analyzing that sensation too deeply, either. Grimacing, he snaps open a pocket dimension, grabs a folder of research from inside, and collapses onto his couch, flipping through the pages. He and Chester have spent the past few days doing a deep dive into documents from six years ago—when the Chain lured the demons responsible for the Jackson–Locke murders back to Redwater just in time for Strike Team Kappa’s final exam—but so far, they haven’t found anything that the Conspiracy Fam doesn’t already know.
Obie hasn’t come across anything about Chester’s final exam, either. For the purposes of their investigation, he knows that Kappa’s was more important, but he can’t help wondering what the Council chose for their other neophyte hunter.
Right on cue, his cell phone buzzes on the end table. Hope flashes through him before he remembers that he and Chester have never exchanged numbers—between the binding spell’s distance limitations and its still-bizarre telepathic link, getting Chester’s contact information never really seemed necessary.
And it’sdefinitelynot necessary for Obie to be wishing for a text from Chester like a teenage human with a crush. Scowling, he plucks the phone off its charger and swipes into the screen, skimming over the message.
His eyes widen.
ESMERALDA:Hey, so does Kyle’s idiot friend still need that counterspell? Come on down, we found a winner
“Holy crap,” he breathes, and without bothering to send a reply, he pushes himself to his feet, snaps open a rift to Ez’s house, and strides through it. “Seriously? It was that easy?”
Ez sputters indignantly from the couch.“Easy?We’ve beenworking on it for almost six weeks, Obadiah! Meals were skipped! Sleep was lost! Eyebrows were burned off!”
“Eyebrows?” Obie repeats, glancing at Roma next to her as he sits down in the armchair across from them.
Roma looks amused. With a start, Obie realizes that he hasn’t actually been here since before Chester cast the binding spell, and the little changes that have accumulated since then are striking: the piles of spell books stacked around the couch, the notebooks and loose pieces of paper strewn over the coffee table, the twin mugs of tea on the end tables. To Obie’s surprise, they all make the space feel more cozy, more lived-in, morecomplete.
And Roma looks at home here, too. Like she—and her thankfully intact eyebrows—really belongs. “There are spells to grow them back. Not a big deal. And it bears mentioning that the skipped meals and lost sleep were mostly on Ez’s end, and she doesn’t actually need either of them.”
“It’s theprincipleof the thing,” Ez stresses, and she turns back to Obie with a sigh. “But yes. It was ‘that easy,’ quote-unquote. We just had to take your description of the bidirectional binding spell’s effects and reverse engineer probable mistakes in the pre-casting process that would’ve led to the original incantation having the effects in question.”
Obie opens his mouth, closes it, and says, “All right, I take it back. That doesn’t sound easy at all.”
“Oh, you noticed?”
Roma rolls her eyes, handing Obie a piece of paper off the table. “Here’s the counterspell. The only catch is that it requires both affected parties to cast it simultaneously, so they’ll definitely want to do a few dry runs first.”
“No preferred magic stance,” Ez adds, “although they should both use thesamestance, and they should be within a few feet of each other.Also, they’ll want to make this gesture at the end, just to facilitate the magic.” She raises a hand to chest height, her palm facing the ceiling.
Dutifully, Obie copies the motion. “How many rough drafts did you have to go through?”
“A lot,” Roma admits, holding up a well-worn notebook as evidence. “Most of these were just trial and error to find the mistake in the pre-casting process, but we worked through a lot of different magic bases for the counterspell itself, too.”
“I still think we should’ve gone with Blakeman,” Ez says.
“You always think we should go with Blakeman.”
“Because we always should! It’s by far the most versatile neutral base!”
“And this is…” Obie squints at the reversal. “Malachi?”
Roma looks pleased. “Yep.”
“It’s a very human-lite base,” Obie says.
Ez jabs a finger at him. “That’s what I said!”
“But it’stechnicallyneutral,” Roma says emphatically, “and the people involvedarehuman, so it works.” Abruptly, she frowns. “Actually, I shouldn’t have assumed—are either of Kyle’s friends demons? They’ll still be able to cast the counterspell, but…”
“Not that I know of,” Obie says evasively, folding the paper neatly in half and tucking it in his pocket. “And I feel like that’s something Kyle would’ve mentioned.”
“Probably,” Ez agrees, and she hesitates. “But while we were crafting that counterspell, we spent a lot of time researching binding spells in general, too. And we actually think we might be getting close to a reversal for unidirectional binding spells—as in, the ones that summoners use on neophyte demons.”
