Chapter 15
15
I t’s a sunny day in early February when Cass strolls into the esteemed Outpost Office of Gregorio Ricci, Personnel Department. “Gregorio! Fancy meeting you here.”
Gregorio blinks slowly at him from behind his desk. His Outpost is small and cramped, barely larger than a walk-in closet, but Cass knows that Gregorio likes it that way. Fewer demons dropping in to visit. “Yes. Fancy meeting me at the Outpost where I’ve worked every weekday for the past two centuries. Incredible.”
Cass snorts, strolling up to his desk. “Yeah, yeah. What’s good, man? How’s Micah?”
“Micah’s fine. Everything’s fine.” Gregorio shrugs one shoulder. “You know Redwater. Nothing ever happens.”
Vividly, Cass thinks about Desi and JJ steamrolling their way into his life. “Don’t I know it,” he lies.
“So I presume you’re here to make life more interesting, then?” Gregorio asks, pulling a familiar form out of a drawer. “Where are you headed this time?”
“Actually…” Cass hesitates, considering.
Cass has known Gregorio Ricci for almost two hundred years now?—it’d be difficult to avoid him, since he’s in charge of tracking Redwater Chain members who go abroad. Usually, Cass is in his Outpost with predictable frequency, filling out the paperwork to hop over to a different country every time there’s a revolution to join or a tyrant to be overthrown.
Today, though, he’s looking for something else?—something he’ll need a bit more finesse to acquire. “No campaign for me this time. I’m, uh, actually in the market for a new identity package. Birth certificate, driver’s license, passport. You know. The works.”
Gregorio pauses. “Well, that’s not my division,” he says, eyebrows furrowing. “You’ll want Nathaniel’s Outpost over by Lakeside.”
Cass arches an eyebrow. “Have you ever seen Nathaniel complete his paperwork correctly? Even if those forms are his specialty, I figured I’d have better luck with you.”
Gregorio’s lips twitch. “Fair,” he says, and he clicks onto his computer. “All right. I can print out a new identity package for you. Are you?—??” Abruptly, he turns back to Cass, his eyes dark with concern. “Is there a rush? Are you in trouble?”
“No, no,” Cass says hastily. “Just, um??—?”
And those are two of the many questions he was hoping to avoid?—and the main reason he didn’t go to notoriously chatty Nathaniel for this.
Traditionally, demons registered with their local Chain get certain benefits from that membership. Among those benefits are new identities, international safe houses, and assistance when traveling abroad. It’s almost like having a demon-specific consulate in every country on Earth.
And that’s great, of course, except when it’s not. Besides the fact that bureaucracies move slowly, Cass isn’t the only demon who doesn’t necessarily want the Chain to know his every move. It’s one of the many reasons why he maintains roughly a dozen safe houses worldwide, not just his extra two here in Redwater, and one of the many reasons why he painstakingly set up a secret identity at the beginning of the twentieth century, making sure he could disappear in a hurry if the occasion arose.
But he has a second person to consider now: Desi. While he still doesn’t want the Chain to know she exists?—it’s safer for everyone, especially Desi and JJ, that way?—he can use Gregorio’s blank templates to do the legwork on his own, ensuring that Desi has a birth certificate and other legal documents.
Particularly after what JJ mentioned over the phone last week about the Sanctum building a demonic soul-tracking spell. If Cass needs to grab Desi and vacate Redwater for a few weeks to throw them off the scent, then he’ll want her to have an “official”—if secret?—identity locked and loaded.
And all that means he has to get through this conversation without alerting Gregorio to Desi’s existence, too. “I’m just looking for some extra security,” Cass says eventually. “The world is crazy nowadays, you know? Even though not much happens in Redwater, we still had the Jackson–Locke murders a few years ago. Frankly, it feels like we’re due for another catastrophe.”
“Do you really have to tempt fate like that?” Gregorio complains, and he pushes himself to his feet, stretching. “You sure you’re not in a rush?”
“Positive.”
“All right. I’ll go grab the paperwork from Micah. He’ll have the forms available.”
Cass frowns. “They’re not online? I thought the Chain digitized all their forms nowadays.”
“They do,” Gregorio says, “but I was looking for an excuse to visit Micah, anyway.”
“You’re literally married. You see each other every day.”
“You’re missing the point.” Gregorio considers him. “So is this going through official channels?”
Cass fights back a flinch. “Of course. If I go through with it at all, at least. Right now, I’m just… considering my options. Like I said, there’s no hurry.”
Gregorio doesn’t look convinced. “Uh-huh. Well, I won’t make you sign for the paperwork now, since I’m not technically giving it to you. And I’ll just have Micah drop by your house with it sometime in the next week, so if he forgets his logbook…” He shrugs. “No paper trail.”
Relief floods through Cass. “Oh, you are speaking my language, Ricci,” he says, and he nods towards the empty coffee cup on Gregorio’s desk. “What are you drinking? I’ll get you a refill and leave it here. Should be the perfect temperature by the time you get back.”
Gregorio’s lips twitch. “Hot black and white mocha with almond milk.”
Cass opens his mouth, closes it, and digs out his phone, tapping into his notes app. “Repeat that? Slower?”
Gregorio dutifully complies. “And you just need one identity package, right? Or did you want extra for Ez and Obie?”
“I?—?” Cass’s throat suddenly feels dry. “Actually, two would be better. Thanks.”
Gregorio’s eyebrows pull together. “Only two?” he repeats, but just as quickly, his expression clears. “Right. Obie’s been around for millennia. He probably has enough fake identities to fill a small city by now.”
“Probably,” Cass agrees. “Thanks again, Gregorio. You’re the man.”
“Don’t forget my coffee,” Gregorio replies, and he strolls out the door.
Shaking his head in amusement, Cass walks out behind him, making a quick right into the coffee shop next door. The line is long enough to curve all the way around the room, and he pulls out his phone while he waits, staring down at it without really seeing anything.
Two fake identities. It wasn’t something he consciously considered when he first left Ez and Obie on babysitting duty this morning, but if he’s being honest with himself, he thinks that was probably his plan from the start.
After all, Cass already has a fake identity that the Chain doesn’t know about. It’ll be child’s play to make a matching one for Desi.
And if he creates a third for JJ, well. It’ll make all of their lives easier if something goes wrong.
He shakes his head sharply, scowling down at his screen. No. No, that would never happen. He can’t imagine JJ leaving the Sanctum, not even for Desi. So if the worst ever happened and Cass had to leave Redwater, then??—
Then that would be goodbye. Desi couldn’t stay with JJ, obviously, so she’d have to move with Cass. And that would probably be the last time he ever saw his co-parent.
Somehow, the thought isn’t as satisfying as he thought it would be.
Regardless, he’ll make a fake identity for JJ, just in case. They can deal with the future whenever it comes their way.
JJ is already drenched from the raging thunderstorm outside by the time he skids to a stop on Cass’s front porch and bangs on the safe house’s door. His ribs are still sore from his long-haul mission and he’s shivering in the wet midwinter chill, but damn it, it’s been a solid week since he last saw Desi. He doesn’t want to be away from her any longer than necessary.
For her sake and his. Her unpretentious love for everyone and everything makes the constant tightness in his chest finally start to relax, and his days with her sometimes feel like the only times he can really breathe outside of the stifling confines of the Sanctum.
There’s something about Cass that makes him want to keep coming back, too. But he’s not thinking about those feelings quite as much. In fact, he’s trying his hardest to ignore them altogether.
Just like he’s been trying his hardest to ignore the live wire of tension stretched taut between them lately.
Fortunately, it only takes a few seconds for the door to swing open and a Desi-shaped distraction to collide with him. “JJ!”
“Desi!” JJ catches her with a grunt, trying not to wince when she jostles his bruised ribs. “How are you, sweetie? I missed you!”
“I missed you, too!” Desi says, throwing her arms around his neck and hugging him tightly.
Cass’s impatient voice floats out from the living room. “Yes, yes, we all missed each other. Now can you get inside? It took ages to braid Desi’s hair like that this morning.”
Rolling his eyes, JJ steps over the threshold and pushes the door shut with his hip. “Can’t you just use magic to style her hair?”
“Not the same.” Cass glowers at JJ’s dripping jacket before sighing explosively, snapping open a pocket dimension, and pulling out a towel. “Haven’t you ever heard of an umbrella, lackey?”
“Too windy. Blew inside out within seconds,” JJ says, and he sets Desi on the floor to pat her admittedly adorable braids dry before scrubbing the water off his face. “Thanks.”
“Yep.” When JJ is finished, Cass snaps his fingers again; the towel disappears, presumably to Cass’s laundry room. “You didn’t have to come over today, Jackson. The rain is supposed to stop by tomorrow.”
Guilt twinges through JJ. “I had to cancel last time. Didn’t want to do it again.”
“Hm.” Cass looks away. “Well, all the outdoor activities at the aquarium are closed, and frankly, there’s no sense in going if we can’t even see the otters. Did you have any other plans for today?”
Disappointment seeps through JJ. Over the past few weeks, he thought that he was starting to notice a shift in his relationship with his co-parent, that they were starting to have conversations instead of defaulting to thorny silence??—
That they were starting to open up to each other. JJ doesn’t want to analyze too closely why that’s important to him. He doesn’t want to analyze why he’s been cataloging all of Cass’s stories and preferences and offhand comments, why he’s been memorizing all of Cass’s mannerisms and gestures and expressions, why he’s been savoring every minute he gets to spend with the demon.
Part of him was even starting to hope Cass felt the same way.
But it looks like he was imagining it. Apparently, Cass is just as uncomfortable with JJ’s existence as ever. “I don’t,” he admits quietly. “I can make it a short visit, if you want. We can just??—?”
Desi interrupts by grabbing both of his hands, looking up at him intently. “JJ.”
JJ immediately cuts himself off, crouching down to her level. “Desi.”
“Did I tell you,” she asks in a dramatic stage whisper, “that Kira and Hana had babies?”
JJ’s eyes widen. “They had babies? But I thought Kira and Hana were both girl dragons, and also inanimate objects.”
Above them, Cass snorts. Desi doesn’t seem to notice. “Girl dragons can have babies, too!” she protests, and before JJ can go down the rabbit hole of trying to remember if that ever happened in Wyvern Academy, she continues, “Me and Cass went back to Nikolai’s last week, and we got a bunch of baby dragons for them! Do you wanna see?”
“Of course I want to see. Did you bring them with you?”
Desi laughs. “No, silly. They’re in their blanket fort in my room! Ooh, you haven’t seen my blanket fort yet, right? JJ, we should go there!”
“I?—?” JJ’s smile wavers. “Desi, your room is back in Cass’s house, remember? I don’t usually go to Cass’s house?—that’s why we always meet here, and??—?”
“No, that’s fine.”
The words are so unexpected that it takes JJ a minute to process them. Frowning, he glances up at Cass. “What?”
Cass looks just as surprised that he said the words as JJ was to hear them. “Well, I mainly have us meet here so no one can connect you back to me or Desi,” he says, his shoulders hunching. “But I can, um. I can rift us all back to my house. If you want. Desi can show you the baby dragons, and then?—and then we can watch a movie? I’ll make lunch.”
Desi gasps, clapping her hands excitedly. “Movie day! Movie day, movie day, movie day!”
JJ’s stomach flip-flops in a decidedly embarrassing way. Carefully, he pulls Desi into his arms, pushing himself to his feet. “Well, I?—I wouldn’t want to impose, but if you’re okay with it??—?”
“I’m the one who offered, wasn’t I?” Cass says briskly, and with a snap of his fingers, a hazy purple-gold rift blossoms between them. “Let’s go. I hope you like grilled cheese, because I’m not changing my lunch plans for you.”
“Grilled cheese is fine,” JJ says, eyeing the rift apprehensively. Obviously, he’s been through rifts before, and obviously, he’s even been in Cass’s house before, but??—
But those were extenuating circumstances. JJ didn’t even see any of the rooms beyond Desi’s bedroom and a small portion of the hallway. Going there for lunch and a movie will involve a lot more time, a lot more exposure??—
A lot more risk. Specifically, a lot more risk to Cass. “Do you want me to, uh, leave my phone here?”
After a long moment, Cass shrugs. “If you want. But?—but it’s fine with me if you want to keep it with you. Like you said, you’d never risk Desi.”
Or you. JJ bites back the words. “Okay,” he says, and he steps up to the rift. “Can I, um. Can I go through alone? Or should you be with me?”
Cass hesitates before stepping up next to JJ, wrapping his fingers around JJ’s elbow. It’s something he’s done a thousand times before in public, when they’re just Julian and Cass instead of the hunter and the demon, but JJ’s heart stutters at how casually intimate the gesture feels in private. “Just walk with me, Jackson.”
Taking a deep breath, JJ obeys.