Page 21 of Fool Me Twice (Redwater Demons #2)
21
G enerally speaking, Roma and Ez talk a lot during their rift-closing shifts.
What else are they going to do? Shutter mega-rift after mega-rift in stony silence? Besides being unrealistic?—and boring?—it’s also impractical for what Roma considers to be their greatest asset: utilizing their combined knowledge of magic to better understand the epidemic?—and how to stop it.
Mainly, they discuss the intricacies of spellcasting. Roma is stunned by how much she’s learning just by chatting with Ez, and most days leave her taking frantic mental notes on concepts that Ez mentions, ready to be researched in further detail in the Sanctum’s library later.
Even demon magic is fair game. Roma has taken to poring over the same spell books that Chester was studying, coaxing out unexpected nuggets of information about demon spellcasting. Different magic bases, different stances, different theoretical underpinnings??—
The most startling part, though, is how similar demon magic really is to human magic. Roma gave the topic some consideration back when she faked her defection, aggressively trying to figure out human-magic glamours and human-magic rifts to pass the time, but lately, she’s starting to realize that those spells might actually be possible.
They wouldn’t be easy, of course. But she’s pretty sure they’re possible.
And she and Ez talk about lighter topics, too. Mainly food, since they stop at the food trucks in the Courtyard or at Lakeside at least twice a day. Sometimes, they’ll even partake in the legendary gossip mill that powers the Redwater Food Truck Association, eavesdropping on the thrilling sagas of Nick’s unsuccessful attempts to woo Esteban and Javier’s and Viktor’s unsuccessful attempts to woo Mina.
Always light. Never personal.
Never personal, at least, until the day when Ez asks out of the blue, “So what’s the deal with Naomi and Sawyer?”
Roma nearly trips over the cracked pavement, her heart stuttering. “Excuse me?”
Ez raises her eyebrows like this is a perfectly normal topic of conversation. “You know. Naomi Gutierrez and Sawyer Solomon. I have it on good authority that at least one of them is related to you. Probably both, considering the inbreeding.”
Roma scowls. “We have geneticists to prevent that.”
“Uh-huh. And how many generations are you removed from the Solomons?”
Roma doesn’t want to admit that she does have some Solomon blood in her. “Why do you even care?” she asks curtly, stepping up to their next mega-rift and extending her hands. “They left Redwater a long time ago. One, two, three?—ages upon ages??—?”
“In the name of Nostringvadha??—?”
Roma hopes that Ez has enough tact to realize that this is a sensitive subject and drop it. Unfortunately, Ez apparently has even less tact than Bryant Nehemiah, because the mega-rift has barely fizzled out before she’s speaking again. “I know a few demons who might have a secret obsession with them. So what happened? Why’d they defect?”
A warm rush of power breezes past Roma’s neck. She’s never been so happy for the distraction. “Next mega-rift,” she says, pointing towards the surge. “That way, I think. Rift us there?”
Rolling her eyes, Ez snaps open a rift. Roma strides through first, keeping her gaze fixed straight ahead, and Ez waves it closed behind them before starting in again. “Wow. Touchy, much?”
“You get pissy if I so much as mention JJ’s name,” Roma snaps back, stalking over to the mega-rift. “I don’t like mentioning theirs. One, two, three?—ages upon ages??—?”
“In the name of Nostringvadha??—?”
This time, Ez is quiet after they finish their incantations. Roma is grateful. Just thinking about Sawyer and especially Naomi is enough to put her in a bad mood, much less talking about them.
Much less talking about them with Esmeralda Laguerre. Another burst of magic sweeps past them, and Ez snaps open a rift to the location. They close that mega-rift, and then two more, lapsing into one of the contemplative silences they occasionally find themselves sharing.
“?—?command you to close!”
“?—??close what once was opened!”
Their latest mega-rift teeters drunkenly before collapsing in on itself. Roma holds her breath for the next power surge, but it doesn’t arrive. Too soon for one of their longer breaks, so it must be a short one.
That’s fine by Roma. She needs a quick recharge. Yawning, she takes a sip from her water bottle, cracks her neck, rolls out her shoulders??—
“JJ is doing well.”
Roma’s heart slams against her ribcage. Slowly, she turns around to face Ez. “What?”
“JJ.” Ez shrugs one shoulder. “He’s doing well. Cass is teaching him how to cook, and he’s actually not half bad?—his macaroni and cheese is Desi’s favorite meal. He and Cass are homeschooling her together, but since she’s still a preschooler, they’re spending more time on spellcasting and socialization than actual academics. And JJ is learning Spanish, because he’s always wanted to speak another language. It’s taking a while, though, because he’s too embarrassed to practice with us, even though Cass, Obie, and I are all fluent.”
Roma’s throat feels tight. She swallows hard, unsure of how to react to the words.
It’s been months since she’s gotten any meaningful scrap of news about JJ. She’s seen him once or twice?—usually glamoured?—but hasn’t been close enough to talk to him. It’s been months since she heard anything about one of her best friends, and??—
And he knows how to cook now. He’s homeschooling his adopted daughter. He’s learning Spanish, a language that Roma has always wanted to speak, too.
He’s doing well. Doing well outside of the Sanctum, doing well without Roma and Chester and Bryant.
Doing well somewhere that Roma isn’t around to see it. “Oh,” she says haltingly. “That’s, um. That’s good.”
“Yeah.” Ez arches an eyebrow. “So that’s the JJ update. How about Naomi and Sawyer? What happened with them?”
A breeze of power wafts past Roma. She sucks in a quick breath. “There’s??—?”
“?—?a mega-rift. I’m aware,” Ez says, and she snaps open a rift of her own. “Let’s go.”
Roma steps through first, leading the way. Ez falls into place next to her as they approach the mega-rift, both of them shifting into their spellcasting stances as easily as breathing. “One, two, three?—ages upon ages??—?”
“In the name of Nostringvadha??—?”
The mega-rift closes as quickly as it opened. Roma expects another question, but this time, Ez doesn’t follow up. Another surge of magic, another transport rift to get there??—
“I don’t know, either.”
Ez pauses, her eyes flickering to Roma. “What?”
“I?—?” Roma takes a deep breath. “I don’t know what happened with them, either. Not why they defected, not where they are now. Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Not disappointed. It’s just weird,” Ez says, and this time, she raises her hands first. “One, two, three?—in the name of Nostringvadha…”
Roma waits until the mega-rift shudders closed before picking up the thread of their conversation. “Why is it weird?”
Another rush of warmth. Ez peels open another rift. “Because they basically made local headlines when they defected six years ago?—the food truck crowd went wild with speculation?—but no one seems to actually know what happened. JJ had no idea when we asked him, either. But two loyal Sanctum lackeys wouldn’t just disappear into the night without any warning, and?—and didn’t they both mentor you guys?”
“Not exactly,” Roma says, and she spreads her arms. “One, two, three?—ages upon ages…”
The mega-rift shivers closed. Ez frowns at Roma. “‘Not exactly’? What does that mean?”
“They both mentored JJ,” Roma says, bracing herself for the next whisper of magic. “Usually, hunters-in-training only get one mentor?—the one who trains them for their future vocation. For me, JJ, and Bryant, that was Naomi?—she taught us how to function as a strike team. For Chester, it was an interrogator. But JJ and Chester also had Sawyer Solomon to teach them how to be hunters, since they weren’t raised in the Sanctum.”
The expected surge doesn’t come. Looks like another short break. Ez leans against a nearby streetlamp, eyeing Roma curiously. “So you didn’t really interact with Sawyer?”
Roma grimaces. “Hypothetically, I wasn’t supposed to, but?—but I did. Sawyer was very involved with JJ and Chester, and that meant she was also involved in our strike team training. Naomi hated that. It was considered a great honor when Sawyer was chosen to mentor JJ and Chester, and it was an honor that Naomi probably would’ve gotten if she were a purebred. She hated that Sawyer would butt into our strike team lessons, too.”
Ez’s eyebrows knit together. “Sounds like they didn’t ride off into the sunset together like everyone thinks.”
“I mean?—?” Roma lets out her breath in a hiss. “I don’t think so. They started getting along marginally better by the time Strike Team Kappa’s final exam happened, but I think that was mostly out of necessity?—they were both in charge of grading us, so they had to spend a lot of time together. But I don’t think that equates to ‘riding off into the sunset,’ no.” Bitterness snakes through her. “And Naomi was always very strict about the bloodlines hierarchy. Sawyer obviously was, too, but Naomi was militant. From the time I could talk, she drilled into me to never trust a purebred. Unless she had a massive change of heart, I can’t see her pursuing a relationship with Sawyer.”
“And you and Naomi were… close?”
Roma doesn’t know why she keeps talking. Maybe it’s because there’s nothing else to fill the space between mega-rifts, or maybe it’s because she’s never really spoken about this out loud before, or??—
Or maybe it’s just because of the honest interest in Ez’s eyes. Not calculating or judging.
Just trying to understand.
“She basically raised me,” Roma says. “Our parents were always gone on overseas assignments, so Naomi took over most of my education. She taught me how to be a hunter the same way Sawyer taught JJ and Chester. And she?—?” The bitterness deepens. “She was actually the one who got me into spellcasting. I showed an aptitude for it, so she kept pushing me. Pulled strings to enroll me in advanced classes, brought me obscure spell books to study. Called in favors to get me sessions with purebred spellcasters.”
And Roma hates that. She hates the fact that the one thing she’s talented at, the one thing that earns her respect, the one thing she truly considers her own??—
Even as one of the Redwater Sanctum’s best spellcasters, she’s still living under the shadow of Naomi’s decisions. The way Naomi shaped and molded Roma’s life.
The skill that Roma originally learned to make Naomi proud of her.
“So she was a… good sister?” Ez ends the statement as a question, her eyebrows furrowing.
Roma scowls. “I guess. Or a good parent, maybe. She was there for all my milestones, but?—?” She laughs hollowly. “But she and Sawyer literally disappeared on the night of Strike Team Kappa’s commencement ceremony?—the one that happened after we passed our final exam. That was the last time I ever saw them.”
Ez is quiet.
“They didn’t stick around for Chester’s final exam at all,” Roma adds spitefully. “And Chester needed them after that?—him and JJ both. And?—and Naomi promised she would be there for me after Strike Team Kappa’s first official mission. She wasn’t.” She looks away. “So yeah. I don’t really like talking about them.”
“I can see that,” Ez says, pursing her lips. “I can honestly say that I’m even more confused about them than I was before.”
“Yeah. Join the club.”
“But I do understand why you’re so good at spellcasting now,” Ez says, and she arches an eyebrow. “You did it out of spite, right?”
Roma snorts out a surprised laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess you could say that.”
“I did the same thing,” Ez says. “My summoner forced me into spellcasting, too.”
The words jolt through Roma. “Oh. I?—I didn’t know that.”
Ez shrugs. “I don’t exactly talk about it. But he was a military general during the Haitian Revolution, and he had me cast offensive spells for him with a frequency verging on psychotic.” Her jaw tightens. “Against enemies and innocents alike. After he died, I kept honing my craft to make it mine, not his. To become more than the human who dragged me to this dimension could ever fathom.”
Roma’s chest feels unsteady. Almost like she’s seeing a part of Ez that she wasn’t quite prepared to know about?—not yet, anyway.
Just like Ez has glimpsed parts of Roma today that Roma wasn’t altogether ready for her to see, either. Strangely, she doesn’t mind as much as she thought she would.
It’s almost nice to have someone who truly understands Roma’s complex relationship with spellcasting. Cautiously, she lifts her water bottle. “To spite.”
Ez throws back her head and laughs. “To spite,” she agrees, her eyes dancing.
Before Roma can get too caught up in the sound of Ez’s laugh?—or the particular shape of her fond smile?—a warm breeze trails over the back of her neck. Her shoulders almost sag with relief. “Next mega-rift?” she blurts out.
“Next mega-rift,” Ez confirms, snapping open a transport rift, and thankfully, they lapse into silence after that.