Chapter 3
3
W hat, exactly, is the best way to ensure a small demon toddler lives a long and happy life without handing her over to humanity’s worst enemies?
That is the question that JJ has been pondering for the past three days, and he’s continuing to ponder it as he strides back to his bedroom with his double portion of lunch from the Sanctum’s dining hall. There’s no way he’s handing Desi over for testing, not at this point. She’s already roped him into promises to watch all eight seasons of Wyvern Academy and read every dragon-themed picture book from the library, and also to go horseback riding in Paris or something extravagant like that. He adores this little girl too much to even think about the interrogators down in the basement prison cutting her open for research purposes.
Especially if Chester is on duty. Chester Locke is JJ’s best friend, and JJ would die for him in a heartbeat, but he also knows firsthand what Chester can do with a blade. The thought of Desi being strapped to his interrogation table makes JJ want to throw up, and he’s determined to do everything he can to prevent it.
At the same time, though, Desi can’t just hang out in JJ’s room forever. As much as JJ enjoys her enthusiastic curiosity and unadorned affection, sleeping on the floor so she can take the bed and getting double portions at every meal isn’t a sustainable situation?—not without arousing suspicion, at least. And even though the concerning uptick in summonings and demonic activity lately is enough to distract most of the Sanctum from his unusual behavior, he can’t say the same about his strike team.
“Yo, Jayj!”
Speak of the devil. Hastily, JJ slaps a neutral expression onto his face and turns around to face Bryant. “Hey, Bry. What’s up?”
She breaks into a jog to catch up with him, her bow and quiver settled comfortably across her back. JJ is Strike Team Kappa’s best close-quarters fighter and Roma is their best spellcaster, but Bryant Nehemiah is death raining down from the heavens. “Double lunch again?” she asks, raising her eyebrows at the two bags as she falls into step next to him.
JJ’s stomach lurches. “What?” he says defensively. “I’m a growing boy.”
Bryant rolls her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Walk with me, JJ,” she says, and without waiting for a response, she grabs his arm and drags him down a side hallway.
JJ steels himself as they head towards a quiet stairwell. Roma definitely noticed that he was off his game during training yesterday, courtesy of his nights on the floor messing up his back, and Bryant definitely noticed that he’s been eating meals in his room instead of at their customary table in the dining hall. Neither of them suspects the truth, obviously, but both of them clearly suspect something.
He just has to figure out how to assuage those suspicions.
When they finally reach the little nook next to the window and Bryant turns around to face him, her eyes are serious. “Listen, we’ve been friends for a long time, right?”
“Unfortunately.”
She punches his arm. “Shut up. Anyway, we’ve been friends for a long time, and you know that Roma and I will always keep your secrets, right?”
JJ fights back a flinch. “I don’t have any secrets, Bryant. I’m much less interesting than you give me credit for.”
“Uh-huh. Who’s the boy, JJ?”
And that??—
That catches JJ off guard. “What?”
Bryant seems to take his wide-eyed confusion as an admission of guilt, because she nods knowingly and braces one hand on his shoulder. “Look, we all know that the Sanctum is reserving us for carefully constructed political marriages and such, but I’m a bit of a hopeless romantic myself. If there’s a cute boy in Redwater that you’re having a roll in the metaphorical hay with??—?”
JJ buries his head in his hands, mortified. “Please stop talking. I’m begging you.”
“?—?then Roma and I aren’t going to snitch on you,” she finishes, shooting him a crooked grin. “We’d like to meet this cute boy at some point, but??—?”
“There’s no boy,” JJ stresses. “No metaphorical hay, either. Sorry to disappoint you.”
Her eyes narrow. “You’ve been doubling up on every meal, JJ?—like you’re taking an extra portion to share. You’re sneaking away all the time, getting distracted during training, and?—?” She purses her lips. “How do I say this politely? You’re walking kind of funny, dude.”
He gapes at her, appalled. “Seriously? Seriously?”
She spreads her arms out wide. “What? We’re all thinking it!”
This time, JJ’s stomach drops for an entirely different reason. “Wait. When you say ‘all’?—?”
Bryant is shaking her head before he even finishes. “No, the Council hasn’t mentioned anything. And I doubt many other hunters pay enough attention to you to notice.” She smirks. “But me and Roma, on the other hand…”
JJ scoffs. “Lies and slander. Roma hasn’t said anything to me.”
“Well, you see,” Bryant drawls, “that’s because Roma suffers from this unfortunate condition known as ‘tact.’ Luckily, I’ve never been affected by that particular affliction.”
Mostly because she’s never needed to be, JJ knows. As a purebred?—someone descended from the original hunters who briefly captured the demon god Nostringvadha millennia ago?—she enjoys the highest status the Sanctum has to offer, with all of the perks and none of the drawbacks. To a neophyte hunter like JJ and even to a mixed-breed hunter like Roma, that amount of power is dizzying?—and unattainable.
To her credit, though, Bryant actively uses her status to help JJ, Roma, and even Chester whenever she can. That counts for something. Counts for a lot of somethings, actually.
It does not, however, count enough for JJ to forgive her for this trainwreck of a conversation. “I’m getting double portions because I’m hungry,” he says emphatically. “I’m getting distracted during training because I’m tired, and I’m sneaking away to nap most of the time. And as for ‘walking funny’?—?” He scowls. “First of all, really? How athletic is this hypothetical sex you think I’m having?”
She raises her eyebrows, predictably unrepentant.
“And secondly,” he continues, ignoring a stab of guilt, “did you miss the part where I fought my way through an entire militia last week? I messed up my back, Bry. That’s it.”
Bryant’s eyebrows pinch together. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Oh.” She seems briefly disappointed by the lack of subterfuge before punching his arm again, lighter this time. “Then why didn’t you say something, stupid? Or just use a healing spell?”
JJ arches an eyebrow. “I’m sorry. Were we not in the same spellcasting class?”
Bryant grins. “Point taken. We’re both more likely to accidentally break bones than heal them.” The smile morphs into a theatric scowl. “Get Roma to do it, then. Or go to the infirmary. You’re useless enough without chronic back issues.”
“Really feeling the love here, Nehemiah.”
“Shut up. You know I love you.”
“Yeah, I know.” JJ lets out a slow breath, looking away. “If I don’t feel better by Monday, I’ll go to the infirmary. I promise.”
“Hm.” Bryant looks him up and down. “You’d better. And tell me if you ever get any metaphorical hay, yeah? You need to get out more in general.”
He sputters indignantly as she pats his shoulder and saunters off. “I don’t need any metaphorical hay!” he yells after her.
She flips him off over her shoulder. Lips twitching in a smile, JJ adjusts his grip on his lunch bags and slips up the stairs, heading towards his room on the second floor.
So Bryant and Roma are a problem. If they’re already starting to invent stories about boys and “metaphorical hay,” then they’re clearly more observant than JJ thought?—and as inescapably indecent as always. He needs to come up with a plan before they decide to bust into his room and stage an intervention.
But his only real option at this point is to hand Desi over to the enemy?—either a suitably non-threatening local demon, of which there are very few, or to the Redwater branch of the Chain. JJ grimaces at the thought. Located in an ostentatious office building right where the regional highway enters town?—and with a dozen or so smaller Outpost Offices littered across Redwater?—the Chain is part governing body, part consulate, and part union. It provides dues-paying demons with a wide variety of services, ranging from legal aid and travel assistance to taking down summoners and holding rogue demons accountable.
While JJ doesn’t love the idea of cooperating with the Chain, he can grudgingly admit that many of its goals line up with the Sanctum’s?—while the organizations are technically opposed, they both prioritize keeping the peace as much as possible. And, most importantly, the Chain’s Education Department is known to help neophyte demons assimilate into the human world. If JJ can’t find another solution, it’s a service he might have to take advantage of sooner rather than later.
But, for now, all of those worries can wait. For now, his only concern is watching the next few episodes of Wyvern Academy with Desi while they munch on tacos. Smiling just a bit, he pulls out his bedroom key, twists it in the lock, and shoulders open his door. “Desi, I brought tacos! I think you’re really going to like??—?”
There’s a blur of motion from inside his room. JJ jolts to attention, drops the two lunch bags, summons his escrima sticks into his hands??—
The man next to his desk chair arches an eyebrow. Straight black hair, bronze-gold skin, ancient brown eyes??—
Demon.
And he’s holding Desi in his arms.
Fear spikes through JJ. “Let her go,” he snarls, taking a sharp step forward.
The demon’s smirk widens. Without warning, without even a movement, a purple-gold rift suddenly splits open on the wall behind him, and JJ almost jerks away on instinct.
Opening a rift without so much as a gesture is a sign of a powerful demon. And opening a rift inside the Sanctum, where there are layers upon layers of anti-rifting spell work to prevent any security breaches??—
Who the hell is this thing?
“Later, Jackson,” the demon says, and he steps through the rift.
JJ’s stomach drops. He bolts forward, reaching out, trying to grab the demon before he gets away. “No?— Desi? ? —?!”
The rift disappears. JJ’s fingers close on empty air, his knuckles slamming into the wall. Heart pounding, he stumbles backward, frantically looks around, tries to find any hint of who the demon was, of where he could’ve taken Desi??—
Nothing. Just JJ’s barebones room with its carefully made bed, meticulously organized closet, and pristine desk, the stack of picture books on the rolling chair the only sign that Desi was ever here at all.
She’s officially gone.
Dazedly, JJ realizes he should probably feel relieved. After all, the situation is officially out of his hands. Desi is with another demon, with her own kind, and in the long run, that’s probably the best thing for her.
And for JJ, too. Realistically, how long would he have been able to keep her hidden? Bryant and Roma were already getting suspicious, and his back has already been hurting from letting Desi take the bed, and the chefs in the dining hall were already starting to give him strange looks.
It’s better this way. Really, it is. And he should probably feel relieved, but instead, he just feels guilt and anxiety eating away at his insides. Stomach roiling, he sits down heavily on his bed, burying his head in his hands.
What is he supposed to do now?
“Why won’t she stop crying?” Cass asks Ez desperately, rocking the sobbing demon toddler in his arms in what he hopes is a soothing rhythm. “Please make her stop crying.”
Ez shoots him a sour look. Personally, Cass thinks it’s entirely unwarranted. After all, it’s not his fault that December started bawling the moment he carried her through the rift from the hunter’s room to Cass’s house.
“No!” December yells, and she smacks him in the chest a few times. She’s surprisingly strong for such a tiny child, and Cass cranes his neck back to keep his face out of range, wincing. “No, no, no, no, no? ? —?!”
“What did you do to her?” Ez demands, eyes narrowed.
Cass sputters indignantly back. “I saved her, Ez! I risked life and limb breaking her out of that hellhole! I didn’t?—?” He ducks out of the way of a particularly well-aimed slap. “I didn’t expect the hardest part of the rescue mission to happen after the actual rescue!”
Honestly, avoiding December’s tantrum has been the most unforeseen complication so far. The Redwater Sanctum still hasn’t patched the loophole in their anti-rifting spell work that Cass used the last time he broke in, so it was child’s play to open a rift into the imposing building, cast a quick tracking spell to locate the neophyte demon in question, convince her to put down her picture book long enough to come with him??—
He didn’t even have to pick a fight with Jackson, which was almost anticlimactic. If the stupid hunter had come back to his room just a few minutes earlier, Cass would’ve welcomed the opportunity to break his nose.
Right now, though, Julian Jackson isn’t his problem. Right now, his problem is the sobbing four-year-old and the fact that his supposed best friend is just standing there watching the trainwreck. “Help me,” he begs.
Ez looks apprehensive. Cass doesn’t really blame her. Neither of them has any appreciable experience with children in general, much less inconsolable toddlers who apparently dislike being saved from their kidnappers.
“How about?—how about a lullaby?” Ez asks hopelessly, and she carefully cups one of December’s tiny fists between her hands, singing a soft melody in Haitian Creole, one that Cass is pretty sure hasn’t been sung since the nineteenth century??—
“I don’t know what you’re saying!” December bawls, and she immediately goes back to crying.
Cass grimaces. Right. Demons don’t learn languages the same way humans do, but they do still need to be exposed repeatedly to one before they can understand it. “Any chance you know some English lullabies?”
This time, Cass feels that Ez’s withering look is slightly more appropriate. “I’m quite sure that you know some English lullabies, Cassius.”
“But your singing voice is objectively better than mine,” Cass says, hastily adjusting December in his arms when she tries to wriggle away from him. “When’s Obie getting here? He’ll know what to do, right?”
“He’d better,” Ez grumbles. “He’s, like, a million years old.”
“He’s not a million years old, Esmeralda.”
“How would you know? He barely talks about anything before 1812!”
Reluctantly, Cass concedes the point. Cass himself was dragged from Tamaros to Earth just before the American Revolution and Ez was summoned a few decades later during the Haitian Revolution, but Obie always tactically avoids the question of when he arrived in this dimension. At the very least, they know that he’s older than Maggie Khan, and considering that Maggie is over three thousand years old??—
Hypothetically, Obie could be a million years old. Hell, for all Cass knows, he could’ve been summoned to Earth right after Nostringvadha himself was banished here.
Right on cue, the purple-gold of a rift swirls to life in the middle of Cass’s living room. He almost sobs with relief when Obie steps out, looking thoroughly nonplussed. “What’s, uh,” Obie says. “What seems to be the trouble?”
“She won’t stop crying,” Cass informs him resignedly.
“I can see that,” Obie says, and he reaches out. “Hand her over. I’ll take it from here.”
Feeling strangely reluctant, Cass passes her to Obie. “Don’t drop her.”
Obie looks duly unimpressed. “Uh-huh,” he says, and he expertly situates December on his hip, grabbing one of her little hands and squeezing. “Hi there, little one. What’s your name?”
To Cass’s utter indignation, December immediately turns her big puppy dog eyes on Obie, sniffling. “Desi.”
And that’s one of the few coherent answers they’ve gotten out of this demon toddler since they left Jackson’s room. Cass immediately pounces. “Desi?” he repeats, waving his hand to get her attention. “Your name is Desi?”
Her lower lip trembles threateningly. “Uh-huh. JJ calls me ‘Desi.’ I like it. When are we gonna go back for JJ?”
“When are we gonna?—??” Ez turns to Cass, thunderstruck. “Did you tell her you were going to bring the lackey with you?”
“Absolutely not,” Cass argues. “I just??—?”
And then, abruptly, Cass remembers how scared Desi was when he first sauntered into Jackson’s room. He remembers quickly going into “talk down the frightened animal” mode, sort of half-listening as she rambled and making approving noises whenever they were warranted, until she let him pick her up. He hastily plays back the conversation in his head, searching for the relevant information??—
“Ah,” he says. “So maybe that’s not an ‘absolutely’ not. Maybe it’s more like a ‘probably’ not.”
Ez and Obie give him matching aghast looks.
“It was an ‘I didn’t quite realize what I was agreeing to’ not,” Cass admits, and he throws up his hands in defeat. “Look, it was a stressful situation! I had to move quickly! What else was I supposed to do?”
“I want JJ,” the demon toddler sniffles, and then, louder: “I want JJ!”
All of the lights in Cass’s house blow out at the same time. The sudden darkness makes Desi squeak and cry even harder, and Cass blinks at her, surprised. Powerful demon toddler, apparently. It makes sense—neophyte demons tend to have higher soul energy—but he didn’t quite consider the ramifications of bringing a small nuke into his house until now.
“Don’t worry, honey,” Ez says helplessly, repairing the lights with a flick of her wrist. “It’s okay, see? The lights are back on now, and everything is?—?” She looks despairingly at Cass and Obie. “Okay, so everything is not fine. Should we just bring her to the Chain? Their Education Department helps neophyte demons assimilate, right?”
Cass scowls. There’s a reason why humans and demons alike call Redwater’s branch of the Chain “the bureaucrats on the highway,” and it’s not because they’re known for being efficient?—or compassionate. “No way. They’re already overloaded with new cases from all the summonings recently, and I don’t think ‘comforting crying children’ is part of their job description.”
“What, like it’s part of ours?”
Obie looks infuriatingly unperturbed. “She’ll stop crying eventually,” he says, rocking her gently back and forth. “Toddlers have a lot of emotions packed into their tiny bodies. She just needs to get it out of her system.”
“Not for nothing, Obie,” Ez says, “but your babysitting experiences lie strictly in the realm of human toddlers. Human toddlers need to stop crying to eat and sleep and, like, breathe. Demon toddlers don’t.”
Obie pauses his rocking. “You bring up a valid point,” he says, and his eyes cut to Cass. “Did something traumatic happen to her at the Sanctum?”
“I don’t?—?” Cass scrapes a hand through his hair, frustrated. “I don’t think so? I mean, I found her in the lackey’s bedroom, not the prison. She was sitting at his desk with a carton of apple juice and a picture book from the library. It was almost like??—?”
Almost like Jackson was trying to keep her happy. Almost like he was trying to take care of her.
Which is an absolutely ludicrous concept, considering what demons did to his family. Cass can only assume that the hunter was holding her for some kind of nefarious ulterior motive.
But maybe they can figure that out. “Any chance you can sift through her memories for us, Obie? That might show us what’s wrong.”
“You know I can’t just rifle around in her head without permission,” Obie says, and he looks pointedly at the inconsolable child in his arms. “And she doesn’t look to be in a very consenting mood right now.”
“Understatement,” Ez says.
Cass bites back a grimace. Cautiously, he approaches the demon toddler. “Hey, um, Desi?”
She sniffles, peering up at him. “You lied,” she says reproachfully. “You lied to me. JJ never lied to me.”
Irritation slices through Cass. Don’t compare me with a hunter. “Yeah, I’m, uh. I’m sorry about that. It was sort of an accident.” He gives her his best smile. “But I know how I can make it up to you! My friend Obie here can see people’s memories. Pretty cool, right?”
She wipes her nose on her sleeve. “I guess.”
“Right,” Cass confirms. “Do you mind if he takes a look at your memories? So he can?—?” Inspiration strikes. “So we can see what JJ is like?” he finishes carefully.
Desi immediately brightens. Cass fights back a scowl. “Okay,” she says, and she wriggles around to face Obie again. “Hi! I’m Desi.”
“I’m Obie,” he says, throwing Cass a faintly impressed look before holding out his hand. “Can I see your hand, sweetie?”
She obediently puts her little fist in Obie’s big palm, and Obie squeezes it gently. For a brief moment, silence reigns.
And then, all at once, a dozen scenes start playing out in the air around them, projected straight from Desi’s head like movies on a screen??—
—?curling up in the makeshift tent in the forest next to JJ while he shows her videos about wyverns and dragons on his cell phone? ? —
—?sitting on JJ’s shoulders while he carries her for hours at a time, listening closely and answering all of her questions? ? —
—?munching on the warm food that JJ brings back for them to share while he reads picture books to her, doing the funny voices and smiling whenever she laughs? ? —
—?learning how to sleep in JJ’s cozy bed while he dozes in a sleeping bag on the floor, so unlike the cold barn where she lived before? ? —
“Oh,” Cass says weakly. “Oh, crap.”
Jackson’s soft smile hovers in the air for a few more seconds before vanishing. Sniffling, Desi points at where it disappeared. “That’s JJ.”
Ez and Obie look just as stunned as Cass feels. The hunter actually cared about her? He was actually trying to do right by her?
He was actually treating her like a little girl, not a subhuman demon?
No wonder he reacted so violently when he walked in on Cass’s heroic rescue mission. He probably felt like Cass was kidnapping his child. Discomfort swirling in Cass’s gut, he taps Desi’s shoulder. “Uh. Desi?”
She blinks mournfully at him. “Uh-huh?”
“Will you, um. Will you stop crying if I get JJ for you?”
Instantly, her eyes light up. “JJ! Yay!”
Ez and Obie both shoot Cass scandalized looks.
And Cass fervently regrets every life decision that’s led him to this point.