Chapter 47
47
R oma almost staggers when the door swings inward, not prepared for it to open so abruptly.
And she’s definitely not prepared to face the woman on the other side. “Ez?” she gasps, horror flooding through her. “What are you??—??”
Ez stalks forward, forcing Roma to stumble back onto the driveway. The door slams shut behind her with a final-sounding thud. “Answer the question,” Ez snarls, the cold fury in her eyes a sharp contrast to the softness that Roma saw there less than two weeks ago. “What do you want, Gutierrez? How did you even find us?”
“Us?” Terror rattles through Roma’s bones. “No, I thought it was just Naomi and Sawyer in there, and I?—is JJ there?”
Ez scoffs. “Like I’m going to tell you??—?”
“The Sanctum is coming, Ez!” Roma yells.
Ez stops dead. “What?”
Roma’s hands are trembling. “They used their connections to monitor when Obie rented a new property,” she says frantically. “They’re sending a strike force to this address?—probably soon, once they realize I left. And if JJ is in there??—”
“Once they realize you left?” Ez repeats, squinting at her. “What does that??—??”
“Focus, Ez!” Roma snaps. “This isn’t about me, okay? It’s about JJ. JJ is the one they’re after. They sent me to trap him both times, and they’re trying it for a third time now. If he’s in there, then you need to get him out. Get everyone out. You’ll all be in danger if the Sanctum finds you here, and??—?”
The door jerks open again. JJ is standing in the threshold, ignoring Cass’s hissed orders to fall back. “Why are they after me?” JJ demands, his voice shaking with mingled anger and pain. “Why can’t?—why can’t they just write me off and leave me alone? Like they did to Naomi and Sawyer?”
Roma’s heart cracks. “I don’t know,” she admits haltingly. “I really don’t know, JJ, but Nasir is adamant that they want you back. You, specifically.” She meets Cass’s hard eyes over JJ’s shoulder. “You need to get him out of here. Now.”
“No arguments here,” Cass says curtly, and he drops a hand onto JJ’s arm. “JJ??—?”
JJ shrugs him off. “Why are you telling us this?” he asks, his eyes narrowing. “How do we know this isn’t just another trick?”
Roma almost stomps her foot with frustration. “If it was another trick, I would’ve brought the strike force with me. And if I’m lying, the worst that’ll happen is that you’ll lose a safe house. Better that than what the Sanctum will do to you if you stay.”
“They’ll kill you for this.” Ez’s eyes are locked on Roma’s face. “Roma??—?”
“I’m dead already,” Roma says, and she hefts her duffel bag. “I defected. At this point, they’ll kill me no matter what I do. But you?—you guys deserve to live. You don’t deserve to be hurt for my mistakes. And I?—?” The words stick in her throat. She swallows hard and tries again. “I’m sorry. For everything. I know you probably don’t believe me, but?—but I’m sorry.”
For a tense moment, silence reigns. And then??—
“Good enough for me,” Obie says flatly, and he snaps open a rift. “Let’s leave North America altogether this time, shall we? Scotland is nice this time of year.”
Naomi shakes her head. “The Sanctum can reopen freshly closed rifts. They’ll be able to follow us.”
“Then we’ll all use different ones,” Micah says. “And we’ll rift-hop for long enough to throw them off the scent.”
Roma’s throat feels dry. “They can only reopen rifts for about twenty-eight minutes afterward,” she says, and she squares her shoulders. “You guys go. I’ll see how long I can hold them off.”
JJ’s eyes widen. “What? Roma??—?”
“It’s not like any of you were about to invite me along,” Roma says briskly. Tries to ignore the way her heart is squeezing in her chest, from fear and grief and a thousand other emotions she doesn’t have time to name. “And even with cloaking spells and anti-tracking spells, I doubt I’d last more than a week on the outside. Might as well go down swinging.” She gives him a small smile. “Maybe I can actually save you for once.”
JJ’s face crumples. “Roma.”
“She’s right, JJ.” Sawyer’s voice is quiet. “You know she is.”
“And look at it this way,” Gregorio says, his smile tight. “Whether she’s telling the truth or not, we’ll never have to deal with her again after today. Problem solved.”
Ez whirls around to glare at him. “Really, Ricci?”
Roma checks her watch, trying to fight back the panic rising in her throat. “Every minute we waste arguing is another minute the Sanctum is getting closer,” she says, and right on cue, she feels a faint tingling on the back of her neck. A soul-tracking spell. “I missed my mission briefing with Nasir, so they know I’m gone?—and they’re about to track me straight to here. They can scramble a strike force in less than ten minutes, so you all need to move now.”
“Everyone, look this way. Everyone,” Obie snaps, and suddenly, it’s like an invisible force sweeps through the room, drawing everyone’s eyes towards him. His jaw is set in a hard line. “My safe house, my rules. We’re leaving. Ez, with me; Cass, you and JJ grab Desi and get to a secondary location; Gregorio and Micah, take Naomi and Sawyer with you; Roma, try not to double-cross us again. Clear?”
Roma winces at the curt reprimand. The rest of them hesitate in taut silence for a beat, avoiding each other’s eyes, avoiding Roma’s eyes??—
Except for Ez, who’s staring directly at Roma with an unreadable expression on her face.
“Clear?” Obie repeats.
Roma takes a quick step away from Ez’s piercing gaze. “I know my assignment,” she says brusquely, dropping her duffel bag on the porch.
“Same,” Sawyer says, and she gently takes Naomi’s hand. “Come on, love. There’s nothing more for us here.”
“I?—?” Naomi stares at Roma for a few seconds, tense like she’s grappling with a decision, before looking away. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
Gregorio flicks open a rift. “We’ll reach out in a few days. Later,” he says, and he strides through without a backwards glance. Micah lets Naomi and Sawyer go in front of him before bringing up the rear, closing the rift behind them.
Cass wraps his fingers around JJ’s arm. “JJ?—JJ, come on,” he says, and with one last guilty glance at Roma, JJ lets Cass pull him back into the house and guide him through a rift.
“Ez?” There’s an edge to Obie’s voice. “Ez??—?”
“The counterspell to stabilize the Deep,” Ez says, and she steps into Roma’s line of sight, forcing Roma to meet her gaze. “This isn’t just about us, Obie?—Redwater is still in danger from the mega-rift epidemic. We can’t just leave all the humans, all the civilians? ? —?”
Roma’s heart hurts. “I gave the Sanctum our counterspell and all our notes,” she says quietly, and Ez snaps her mouth shut, her jaw tightening. “They’ll probably reach out to the Chain for a demon spellcaster. It’s being handled.” She attempts a smile. “Not as efficiently as we would’ve done it, but?—but it’s being handled.”
Ez lets out a shaky breath. “Roma??—?”
“Ez.” Obie’s voice has a note of steel in it now. “I’m not leaving you behind, okay? So we’re either getting out of here and meeting up with Cass and JJ, or we’re staying behind to fight. Which is it?”
For a long moment, Ez searches Roma’s face. Roma holds her breath, hoping against hope that maybe?—just maybe? —Ez will stay to fight with her, that she trusts Roma enough to believe her this time, that she forgives her??—
That maybe the two of them still have a chance.
A chance to defy the Sanctum, and a chance to try again.
And then Ez turns away, and the little bubble of hope shatters. “Let’s get out of here,” she says tiredly, and she strides through Obie’s rift with her head bowed and her shoulders hunched.
Roma’s heart feels like it’s splintering. Swallowing hard, she nods at Obie. “Later, Obie.”
Obie hesitates before waving open a second rift?—one to a pocket dimension. He reaches into it, grabs whatever is inside, and pulls out his hand to reveal??—
An ax. Roma’s favorite ax, she realizes with a start?—the one she left behind when she betrayed JJ all those months ago. “Here,” Obie says, holding it out. “Ez stripped off the corrosion spell, but it’s still as sharp as ever. You want it back?”
Roma’s throat feels tight. Gingerly, she takes the weapon. “Thank you.”
“Good luck,” Obie says, and without another word, he steps through the rift and snaps it shut behind him.
Leaving Roma alone on the porch of an abandoned safe house with nothing but a duffel bag of clothes, the weapons in her holding space, and a hollowness in her chest that she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to fill again.
But that’s okay. She probably won’t live for long enough to worry about it, anyway. Carefully, she eases herself down on the porch step, digs out her cell phone, and taps open the stopwatch app. Takes stock of her weapons, decides against pulling them out in advance, and sets just her favorite ax next to her, instead.
Rests her forearms on her knees, fixes her eyes on the street in front of her, and counts down the minutes until the Sanctum arrives.
Rift-hopping is a tried-and-true method of shaking off Sanctum trackers that Ez has mastered over the years. Having another demon with her?—namely, Obie?—makes it even easier, letting them take turns opening rifts to avoid fatigue and maximize their spellcasting stability.
Which is good, because Ez’s mind is spiraling and her heart feels like it’s shattering into pieces. “Stable” is the last word she would use to describe her magic?—or herself?—right now.
“You good?” Obie asks the moment they step out of the first rift from Redwater, striding towards a spot twenty feet away.
Ez doesn’t even bother looking around. It’s an abandoned clearing somewhere, a place that Obie knows but Ez is probably never going to see again. “Yeah, I’m good,” Ez says shortly, and she peels open a rift to Thailand, leading the way through it.
Obie impatiently waves it shut behind them. “Are you sure? Because you sort of look like a wreck,” he says, casting a cursory glance around before walking across the street and flicking open another rift.
Ez’s hackles rise. “I’m fine, Obie,” she snaps, stalking through the rift after him and getting slammed by a blast of cold air. Antarctica? The Arctic? Ez can’t even bring herself to care. “In case you didn’t notice, we just went through a very emotionally traumatizing ten minutes to top off a very emotionally traumatizing two weeks. It’s a lot. I’m entitled to sort of look like a wreck.”
She snaps open her own rift?—to somewhere warm this time?—and pointedly motions for Obie to go ahead of her. He complies with a scoff, but the second they’re both on solid ground in Ecuador, he starts talking again. “And Roma?”
Pain lances through Ez’s chest. “Roma made her choices,” she says haltingly, and she clears her throat, gesturing for Obie to keep moving. “Next?”
Obie gives her a calculating glance, but thankfully, he falls into blessed silence after that, jogging twenty feet away before peeling open a new rift. Back and forth, forth and back, taking turns with the rifts, hopping between continents, tracing a dizzying pattern that only the most skilled of hunters could track??—
They’ve just rifted to the middle of Siberia when Ez’s cell phone rings. Frowning, she tugs it out, sees Cass’s name on the screen, and taps into the call. “You good, Cass?” she asks, putting the phone on speaker.
Cass’s voice is staticky with bad reception. “Yeah, we’re good.”
“Hi, Auntie Ez!” Desi chirps.
“Hi, sweetie. You guys want to meet up with us? We’re in Siberia.”
Cass scoffs. “Siberia? With the polar bears? No, thank you. How about you join us in Normandy?”
Obie’s eyebrows shoot up. “Normandy? Not for nothing, Cass, but none of us have great memories from that place.”
“Hi, Uncle Obie!”
“Hi, pumpkin.”
“But JJ has never been here,” Cass argues. “I’m trying to educate him. We’re in the town square in Sainte-Mère-église, right by the church. You coming?”
Ez raises her eyebrows at Obie.
Obie shrugs back.
“Yeah,” Ez says, and she snaps open an invisible rift. “Yeah, we’re coming.”
When she and Obie step into the quiet courtyard, it’s to find Cass, JJ, and Desi waiting for them at a picnic table with a clear view of the town church?—complete with a dummy paratrooper hanging from the spire, commemorating the actual paratrooper who got tangled there during D-Day.
It’s one of JJ’s favorite stories. Ez thinks Roma would’ve liked it, too.
Just one more thing Ez is never going to get the chance to tell her.
Oblivious to Ez’s inner turmoil, Obie strolls over to the table. “You like the church, JJ?”
“I love the church,” he says, and his eyes flicker to Ez. “You good, Ez?”
Ez grits her teeth. “I’m fine. Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
“Well, I’m not,” JJ says bluntly, and before Ez can react, he turns back to Cass. “We have to go back. Roma needs our help?—she won’t survive facing the Sanctum’s strike force alone, and??—?”
“No,” Cass snaps, and suddenly, Ez realizes that they’ve probably been having this argument since the moment they left Redwater. “Roma knew this was going to be her last stand. She knew what she was getting herself into. She??—?”
“Yeah, and she did it for us!” JJ hisses. “If she dies, that’s on us!”
“No, it’s not,” Obie says evenly, and JJ turns his glare on him. “She made her choices. It was her decision to defect, her decision to warn us, her decision to stay behind. That’s not our responsibility.”
And, even though the words are an echo of what Ez just told Obie, her stomach twists with them anyway. “But she made those decisions for us,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. “To save us.”
“Yeah, and how would you feel if you made a sacrifice to keep the people you love safe, and those same people went right ahead and put themselves in danger for you anyway?” Cass bites out. “Wouldn’t that just feel like a slap in the face?”
Ez opens her mouth to respond.
“No, not at all.”
Ez stops dead. So does Cass. Slowly, they turn to face JJ, who’s meeting Cass’s gaze head-on. “JJ,” Cass begins, his voice wavering, “I didn’t??—?”
JJ cuts him off. “That’s exactly what I did back in February, remember? When the Sanctum cornered us, I stayed behind to give you and Desi time to escape. And I never regretted that decision, not even when the interrogators had me. As long as I knew you two were safe, I was okay. But…” His smile looks watery. “But when the door to my cell opened and you were the one on the other side, I?—I was so happy, Cass. Because I loved you, even then. Even though I didn’t know how to admit it to myself yet. And if I was going to die at your side, it would’ve been worth every second I got to spend with you.”
Ez’s heartbeat feels almost painful in her chest. She takes a deep breath, closing her eyes.
Imagining Roma back at the safe house. What is she doing right now? Has the Sanctum caught up with her yet? Is she fighting for her life even as they argue? Is she using her ax, her magic, another weapon entirely?
Or is she still waiting? Is she pacing the property, guarding the vestiges of their rifts, counting down the minutes until they’re in the clear? Is she sitting in silence on the front step, watching the road and listening for the distant sound of Sanctum vehicles?
Is she glad that Ez and JJ and the rest of them are safe, but still wishing she weren’t so alone?
Because she’s facing down death just like JJ was. JJ was waiting to be burned as a dissident; Roma is expecting to die in combat, but if she survives, the same fate will be waiting for her. Is she scared? Angry? Resigned?
She knows this is going to be a losing battle. She said as much. But??—
But is she sitting on the porch right now, wondering if they could’ve won if they all worked together?
All at once, the tight vise of shame and guilt relaxes from around Ez’s lungs. “JJ, you can’t go back there,” she says, and JJ jerks around to face her, his eyes wide and betrayed. “Roma said that the Sanctum is after you specifically, remember? We can’t risk delivering you straight into their hands.”
JJ sets his jaw. “Ez??—?”
“Besides,” Ez continues relentlessly, “you don’t have your Sanctum enchantments anymore, remember? Half-demon or not, you’d be more of a liability than anything else. Roma and I can’t be worried about saving your ass if we’re trying to fend off a full strike force.”
Cass goes still. “What?”
Ez glances at Obie. He doesn’t look surprised. “You’re going back?”
“I’m going back,” Ez confirms, and she lifts her chin. “I know that Roma has double-crossed us twice. Hell, she could be gearing up to double-cross us a third time. But?—but if she’s about to face down the firing squad, I’m not going to let her do it alone. And she and I?—?” Her throat feels tight. She swallows hard and tries again. “We were better together. I don’t think that’s changed.”
JJ presses his lips together tightly. “Ez??—?”
Without warning, Desi swings her legs around, popping off the bench seat to trot over and hug Ez around the middle. “Okay, Auntie Ez. Be safe, okay?”
And Desi doesn’t know about Ez’s history with Roma. Cass and JJ have always shielded her from the nastier parts of this conflict, and with good reason. So Desi doesn’t know about Roma betraying them the first time, and she doesn’t know about Roma betraying them the second time, and she doesn’t know that?—despite everything?—Ez is still wrestling with feelings for Roma that she’s not sure will ever completely be resolved.
Desi just knows what’s right and what’s wrong, and in this moment, she knows that her Auntie Ez is doing what’s right. “I will be, kiddo,” Ez says, and she looks up at Obie, Cass, and JJ. “I promise.”
“You’d better,” Obie says, and he snaps open a rift. “Here. One ticket back to Redwater.”
“Come back alive, understand?” Cass orders, his voice catching on the last word.
“Please,” JJ adds softly.
“I will,” Ez says, and when she turns around to stride through the rift, she feels at peace for the first time in what seems like years.