Chapter 49
49
T hirty minutes later, Ez unceremoniously flops down on her usual cushion at Cass and JJ’s house. “Well?” she demands, squinting suspiciously at JJ. “Where are my promised tacos, human?”
Rolling his eyes, JJ digs around in one of the many takeout bags on the kitchen table and hands her a few. “Here. Lucia said to tell you that their fish tacos are officially back in stock.”
“Nostringvadha alive, my day is saved,” Ez says, peeling off a wrapper and tearing into one. “Where’s Desi?”
“Playing in her bedroom,” JJ says. “We think she’s trying to recreate the paratrooper on the church spire using her blanket fort and some wyvern plushies. I’m kind of excited to see how it looks.”
“That’s actually a good homeschooling activity,” Obie says. “I wonder if she has enough plushies to reenact the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
Ez snorts out a laugh. Just next to her, Roma gives them all what looks like a strained smile before clearing her throat. “So, um??—?”
“Here,” Cass says brusquely, holding a second trio of tacos in her direction. “JJ said you like chicken. Hope he was right.”
Gratitude flashes across Roma’s face. “Thank you,” she says sincerely, taking them from him.
“Yep.” Cass gives her a tight smile?—not unfriendly, but definitely wary.
Ez’s heart twinges. The last time he invited Roma into his home, it ended with her almost kidnapping JJ and siccing the Sanctum on Cass himself, and they both almost died from the fallout. Ez can only imagine how difficult it is for him to extend even the most cautious of trust towards her right now.
Luckily for him, though, Ez isn’t planning on letting Roma out of her sight anytime soon. Hell, she’s barely even planning on letting Roma out of arm’s reach. The woman gets into too much trouble when left to her own devices. “Here,” she says, scooching over to make room for Roma between herself and the armrest. “Sit with me.”
Roma’s shoulders relax. “Thanks, Ez,” she says, and she eases herself down on the couch, starting to unwrap one of her tacos. “You good?”
Ez shoots her a smile. “I am now.”
And she is. After all those weeks of slowly building a real relationship with Roma, after that one fragile night they spent together, after all the betrayals and all the sacrifices??—
After everything, she’s beyond grateful that they made it here.
Roma ducks her head, a smile twitching on her lips. “Before, you said that you still don’t trust me.”
“I don’t,” Ez admits, leaning back against the cushion. “Not completely. It’s probably going to take a long time to repair what we had, but?—but I want to try.”
Roma’s eyes are soft. “Me, too,” she whispers. “Ez, I??—?”
Unfortunately for Ez, whatever Roma was about to say next is cut off by a burst of purple-gold swirling through the air. “Well, well, well,” Sawyer says, her eyebrows approaching her hairline as she steps out of the rift. “Nice place you’ve got here.”
Cass scoffs. “I don’t slack off.”
Obie squints at him. “Excuse me. You don’t slack off? I own this place, Cassius.”
“Yeah, but JJ and Desi and I made it a home,” Cass stresses, and he extends the last takeout bag towards Micah. “Here. We made some educated guesses for your orders.”
“Well, Tacos Near Me doesn’t really make anything bad,” Sawyer says, peeking over Micah’s shoulder as he rifles through the bag. “Ooh, churros! I love churros.”
“I remembered that much, at least,” JJ says, settling himself in the armchair. Cass perches on the armrest next to him, his protective streak clearly still in full swing. “And that was a clever bluff, by the way. I almost believed you.”
“I think all of us did,” Obie says.
Gregorio rolls his eyes. “I didn’t.”
“That’s because you came up with the idea, babe,” Micah says.
“Still.”
“I think trust is in short supply for all of us nowadays,” Naomi says, and her eyes find Roma. “So. What made you defect?”
Roma flinches. Ez shoots a glare at Naomi. “Can’t you at least let her finish a taco first?”
“Actually, no,” Cass says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Because I want to hear this, too.”
Carefully, Roma puts her half-eaten taco back into its wrapper. “I think part of me has wanted to defect for a while now,” she says softly. “For a few weeks, at least. Maybe even longer. And then, after everything that happened with the counterspell, I’d almost convinced myself that I could leave, but…” Her awkward smile looks more like a grimace. “Things went wrong exactly when I wanted them to go right.”
“Meaning that we found out you were under orders to betray us,” Obie says. “Again.”
“Obie,” Ez says, exasperated.
“No, that’s?—that’s fair,” Roma says, and when Ez glances at her, she’s meeting Obie’s gaze head-on. “You’re right. That was my original mission from the Council. It was to get close to all of you?—to JJ, specifically?—and bring you down from the inside. But then…” Unexpectedly, she leans her shoulder against Ez’s. “But then Ez happened. And then Naomi happened, and JJ happened. And I realized that I didn’t want to complete my assignment anymore. I didn’t want the life that the Sanctum had for me, no matter how stable or safe it seemed. I?—I wanted to be here. With all of you.”
JJ’s smile is warm. “Good. Because we want you here, too,” he says, and he glances at Cass’s tense shoulders. “Well. I do, at least.”
“Hey!” Ez protests. “Don’t forget about me, Jackson!”
Roma grins. It’s lighter and more carefree than any of her smiles in the past, and with a swell of pride, Ez thinks that defection looks damn good on her. “The only reason I didn’t leave sooner is because I didn’t think I had anywhere to go,” Roma continues, her eyes shifting back to Naomi. “And lone defectors don’t tend to last long on the outside?—not unless they have resources or, you know, demon sugar daddies.”
Ez chokes on a laugh. Cass looks appalled. “Ex cuse you?”
JJ gives Cass an appraising look. “I mean, she’s not wrong.”
“Okay, listen? ? —?”
“But then today,” Roma finishes, “Bryant told me they found JJ by monitoring Obie’s property records. From the context, it was obvious that they’d actually found Naomi and Sawyer’s place, instead.” She looks away. “And the Council wanted me to lead the mission. They knew I was hiding something, so I realized it was just their ploy to catch me in a lie. To force my hand so they could throw me in prison as a dissident.” She lifts her chin defiantly. “And if I was going down, I was going down fighting.”
“Well, luckily for you,” Obie says evenly, “we decided to make sure that didn’t happen.”
“And I appreciate that,” Roma says, her eyes sweeping around the room. “Thank you. All of you. I’d?—I’d probably be dead or imprisoned right now if you hadn’t come back for me.” Her gaze lingers on Naomi, a frown creasing her brow. “But you two exposed yourselves to the Sanctum. All four of you exposed yourselves. What does that mean for you?”
Naomi smiles mirthlessly. “It means that we’re officially targets again. Good times.”
“It also means that the Sanctum?—and the Chain?—are about to realize that we know about the conspiracy,” Gregorio says, his jaw set in a grim line. “And that we told the rest of you about it, too. After all, why else would demons and hunters work together?”
“Unless they assume the four of us are in a really hot polyamorous relationship,” Micah adds. “Which I feel like isn’t too far outside the realm of possibility nowadays.”
Ez snorts. Gregorio casts his eyes to the ceiling like he’s praying for patience. “Babe.”
“All right, all right,” Micah says, and he digs out his cell phone, tapping into the screen. “I’ve actually had official resignation letters to the Chain written for both of us for a few years now. I just need to add a few finishing touches, and then we can send them off and go into hiding.”
“Aw, your first time being fugitives,” Sawyer says, pretending to sniffle. “They grow up so fast.”
“Shut up, Solomon.”
“Wait,” Ez says, frowning at them. “You’re quitting your jobs?”
Micah throws her a confused look as he types. “Well, yeah. We can’t exactly go into work if we’re on wanted posters, right?”
“We could figure something out.” Obie’s voice is quiet. “Find a way to imply that your appearances at that little standoff were just glamours. We know how much you love your jobs.”
“No, Micah loved his job,” Gregorio corrects. “I tolerated mine. Gave me something to do during the day. But I’ve been reliably informed that there are TV shows and video games to fill that void in my life, so I’m sure I’ll survive.”
“Did you hear that they’re releasing a Water Wars video game?” Naomi asks.
Gregorio buries his face in his hands. “You humans keep getting worse and worse.”
“And we are going to need a new inside demon in the Chain,” Sawyer muses, tilting her head contemplatively to one side. “Someone who can keep an eye on the bureaucrats on the highway and let us know if they make any significant moves. Any suggestions?”
“I’ll handle that,” Obie says. “Maggie Khan will be?—well, ‘delighted’ isn’t the right word, but I’m sure she’ll derive immense satisfaction from burning the Sanctum and the Chain to the ground.”
“As she should,” Micah says firmly, and he taps his screen one more time before handing his phone to Gregorio. “Here we are?—the final version of our resignations. Tell me what you think?”
Gregorio skims over it. “It’s good,” he says, “besides the fact that your phone autocorrected ‘sincerely’ to ‘suck it.’”
“No, no,” Micah says. “That was on purpose.”
“Ah,” Gregorio says, passing it back to him. “In that case, carry on.”
Roma laughs as Micah sends the emails with a flourish. “Looks like life is about to get a lot more interesting around here,” she says, smiling at Ez.
“I could do for some less interesting right around now,” Ez admits, and she turns to face Roma fully. “But we still have one last job on our end, too: casting that counterspell. The epidemic hasn’t slowed down at all, and the longer we leave the Deep destabilized, the higher the likelihood of something else going wrong.”
“Agreed,” Roma says, and she pushes herself to her feet. “But that’ll be a project for sunset at the earliest. For now, I want more food. JJ, did you get me any churros?”
“What kind of question is that?”
Grinning, Roma goes to clap him on the shoulder as she walks past.
And then, hastily, she snatches her hand back. “Sorry,” she mumbles, retreating to the bag and fishing around for her churros. “Corrosion spell.”
JJ’s smile wavers. “Right.”
Ez’s chest hurts. “Do you want a twelve-hour deactivation?” she asks, holding up a hand. “To get you through the rest of the night?”
Roma pauses. Takes a deep breath. Turns around to face Ez directly. “Actually, how about the sixty-eight-year deactivation you mentioned?”
The words jolt through Ez. Cass straightens in his seat, his eyes snapping to Roma. “You want to get rid of the Sanctum’s enchantments?” he asks. “Permanently?”
Roma doesn’t drop his gaze. “As permanent as Ez can make it, at least.”
For a long moment, Cass considers her.
And then he smiles. “You know,” he says, “I think we’re going to get along just fine.”
Roma smiles tentatively back as she returns to the couch, meeting Ez’s eyes. “Right now?”
Ez hovers her hand over Roma’s shoulder, heart twirling. “Last chance to back out.”
“Not happening.”
“Good,” Ez says, and she launches into the incantation. As she flows through the familiar words, she lets her eyes drift around the room, taking in the full picture: Gregorio, Micah, Naomi, and Sawyer arguing over the pros and cons of Water Wars by the back door; Cass hovering next to JJ on the armchair, both of them chatting with low voices and relaxed shoulders; Obie settling into his own chair with a fond half-smile??—
And Roma, sitting close next to Ez with her eyes fixed on Ez’s face. Ez finishes the spell, grabs Roma’s hand, and squeezes it once. “There we go. We can renew it again when you’re ninety.”
“Perfect,” Roma says, and she cups Ez’s cheek against her palm, leans in, and kisses her.
And, as the voices of their friends rise and fall around them, Ez knows that she’s found exactly what she’s always been fighting for.