Chapter 35
35
R oma shouldn’t feel this sick to her stomach about casting a spell.
Granted, it’s normal for her to be nervous. After all, this is an untested and unproven spell that she and Ez created from scratch, and even though they had humans and demons alike check their work, they could still be wrong. It could still go sideways.
It could still end with one of them?—or both of them?—getting killed.
Honestly, though, Roma isn’t too worried about that. It’s just like she told Ez: either they cast the spell properly, the Deep activates it without a hitch, and it’s no longer their problem, or they cast it in correctly, the Deep snuffs them out like cheap birthday candles, and it’s also no longer their problem.
Either way, Roma won’t have to worry about it after tonight.
But the spell is actually the least of her concerns. “So, uh,” she begins, and she clears her throat, squinting as her eyes adjust to the outside light. The far side of the lake is just as calm and peaceful as the last time she was here with Ez, dappled sunlight threading through the tree branches and snatches of colorful wildflowers blooming in every direction. It hurts to think that their last spell together might be somewhere so beautiful. “Same spot as before? That little clearing?”
Ez brushes past her, letting the rift fade behind them. “Sure. Two or three dry runs before we cast it for real?”
Roma’s heart twists. Ez is as distant and professional as she used to be, all business and no affection, and the loss of their easy camaraderie from the past few weeks feels like a physical weight.
Is their inevitable separation going to faze Ez at all? Or is Roma going to be the only one nursing a raw hole inside her chest? “Okay,” she whispers, and she follows Ez over to their patch of grass, easing herself down cross-legged across from her. “On three?”
“Yep. One, two, three?—from the depths to the sky…”
“From the depths to the sky…”
Their incantations sound clumsy together. Almost jarring, like two mismatched pieces. Roma starts too quickly, overcompensates trying to slow down, stumbles over more than one line??—
By the time they finish, Ez’s eyebrows are furrowed. “We’ve had better first passes,” she says neutrally. “Where’s your head at, Gutierrez?”
A few miles away, eating pizza on your couch and laughing about nothing. “Here,” Roma lies. “Just nervous. One hundred percent mortality rate for hunters, remember?”
Ez winces. “Don’t remind me,” she says, and she straightens. “But that’s why we do these dry runs, right? To work out the kinks. Again?”
“Again,” Roma says quietly. “One, two, three?—from the depths to the sky…”
“From the depths to the sky…”
Roma’s nerves start to fade as the first lines of their incantations match up, smoother and cleaner than before. The knot of anxiety in her stomach loosens until it vanishes entirely, giving way to the peace she always feels when she’s spellcasting with Ez.
This is what they do best. This is what they were made for.
This is two masters of their craft at work, making magic out of thin air. By the time they finish in perfect unison, Ez is smirking at Roma. “Better. One more time?”
“One more time. One, two, three?—from the depths…”
“… to the sky…”
The spell flows easily this time. Roma watches Ez’s lips and her body language, staying in tune with the pitch of her voice and the rise and fall of her cadence. They breeze their way through the incantation, in sync from beginning to end, and Roma’s heart swells as they finish. “Perfect. Or as close to perfect as spellcasting can ever be.”
“Well, we’ll need perfect for this,” Ez says, peering at the sun through the trees. Nearly at the horizon?—the ideal time for spellcasting. Delicately, she places her fingertips on the ground. “For real this time?”
A thread of apprehension shivers through Roma. She takes a deep breath to force it down. “For real this time,” she agrees, and she mimics Ez’s pose, the grass sifting between her fingers. “Count us off?”
“One, two, three?—from the depths…”
“… to the sky…”
Power swells in Roma’s bones as she works through the spell, closing her eyes and trusting Ez to be on the same page. Warm magic vibrates down her arms, flowing into the earth beneath her, whispering to the Deep???—
Without warning, pain splits through her skull. She finishes the incantation on a stifled shriek, her hands flying up to her head as white-hot claws sink into her brain and shake. Teeth chattering, ears ringing, vision blurring??—
“Roma?— Roma!” Tight hands grab either side of Roma’s face, and suddenly, power surges through her?—Ez’s magic, trying to stabilize Roma’s. “Roma, stay with me! Stay??—?”
Darkness rattles behind Roma’s eyes. She barely smothers another scream, thrashing forward, and in a flash, strong arms are wrapping around her, pulling her close as her muscles seize and excruciating pressure builds up behind her eyes.
“Roma?—damn it, in the name of Nostringvadha?—?!” Another spell, faster and more desperate this time, the words bleeding into each other so quickly that Roma can hardly understand them, and then??—
The world crashes back down around her like a bucket of water over her head. Gasping for air, she flops sideways and retches on the ground, Ez scrambling to steady her. “Hey, hey?— you’re okay now, you’re okay, Roma, just breathe, just??—?”
“Trying,” Roma manages, and she dry heaves again, cold sweat beading on her skin as her empty stomach clenches and spasms.
“Probably a good thing we waited on the pizza,” Ez says.
The words are so unexpected that Roma chokes on a laugh, letting herself collapse on her side to catch her breath. Ez huddles in close, looking down at her with worried eyes. “Come on, lackey. Talk to me.”
Roma swallows down the last of her nausea. The fading light of sunset still seems too bright, the warm air inexplicably cool against her sweaty skin, but Ez’s presence is as grounding as it’s always been. “Did it?—did it work?”
Ez hesitates. “I don’t think so. I can still feel the echoes of mega-rifts opening around Redwater.” Frustration winds through her voice. “What did we do wrong, though? It doesn’t make any sense.”
It feels like Roma took a thousand volts of electricity straight to her brain, but a few bleary thoughts rise to the surface. “What did I do wrong, you mean,” she croaks, and she cracks open her eyes to look at Ez’s frown. “You were fine, right? Nothing happened to you?”
Ez shakes her head. “Everything felt normal on my end. But the second we finished the incantation, you just?—?” She cuts herself off. “I thought you were dying.”
Roma attempts a smile. “Not getting rid of me that easily,” she says, and carefully, she pushes herself up to sitting. “But?—but why am I not dead? If we cast the spell incorrectly, then the Deep should’ve killed me, not just sent me into a seizure or whatever that was. It’s killed at least a dozen Sanctum spellcasters before me; why did it make an exception this time?”
Ez purses her lips. “Maybe we only got a small detail wrong? So the Deep decided to be merciful?”
“Maybe,” Roma says, unconvinced. “But it didn’t happen until after we finished the spell, right? If we got a detail wrong, then it should’ve affected us at that point in the incantation, not afterward.”
“I really don’t know, Roma,” Ez says, raking a hand through her hair??—
And then snatching it away with a curse, glaring down at her palm.
Roma snaps to attention. “Ez? Ez, what??—??”
“Nothing,” Ez says shortly, and she settles her hands back in her lap. “Anyway, we missed our window for sunset, so we’ll have to??—?”
All at once, Roma remembers warm hands?— bare hands?—on either side of her face, trying to keep her conscious and stabilize her magic. Horror jolts through her. “Wait. Your?—your hands.”
Ez’s face shuts down. “It’s nothing. Gutierrez??—?”
“Let me see?” There’s a roaring in Roma’s ears, something long past dread and approaching sheer panic. “Let me?—let me see?”
Ez’s jaw works. Eventually, she holds her hands out in front of her. Her palms are covered with angry red burns, the skin already peeling and blistering along her thumbs and fingers.
Corrosion burns. Injuries from the corrosion spell baked into Roma’s bones, the one that makes her skin physically caustic to demons.
Roma did that. It’s her fault. She presses her fist to her mouth, feeling like she might just throw up for real this time.
“It’s fine,” Ez says warily, looking a bit disconcerted by Roma’s reaction. “I’ve had worse with other hunters, trust me. They’ll heal.”
“I’m sorry.” Roma’s voice sounds strained in her own ears, and to her mortification, she feels tears burning behind her eyes. “I’m sorry, I?—I didn’t mean to hurt you, I would never??—?”
“Hey, hey?—?” Ez reaches out like she’s going to touch Roma’s hand, stops herself at the last second, and grabs her forearm?—her clothed forearm?—instead. “I know you can’t control it, okay? Cass and JJ had the same problem with the Sanctum enchantments. Honestly, we got lucky that they stripped his powers away when he was in prison?—he’s having enough trouble relearning his spellcasting without those enchantments getting in the way, and?—?” Abruptly, Ez stops dead. “Wait.”
Roma catches on at the same time. “It’s the enchantments,” she breathes, sitting up straighter. “That’s why the spell didn’t work. That’s why Sanctum hunters never survive tapping into the Deep, but humans in general do. And that’s why the spell didn’t kill me?—we did everything correctly, but the Deep reacted with my enchantments at the last minute. It only rejected our spell because of that.”
Ez’s eyes narrow. “So what does that mean? I doubt many civilian humans would have your spellcasting proficiency, and frankly, I wouldn’t trust any of them to have my back.”
“Maybe I could modify the spell?” Roma says, mentally working through the possibilities. “Hypothetically, I could layer in a second spell to prevent the Deep from reacting to my enchantments, but combining two spells like that would be dicey. Or I could try to cast the spell without directly activating the Deep?—after all, we were able to check whether it was stable last week, so as long as my magic doesn’t touch it??—?”
“Or?—?” Ez lifts her hand, hovering it a few inches away from Roma’s collarbone. “Or I could just deactivate the enchantments.”
Suddenly, the world goes very quiet around Roma. “What?”
“Yeah.” Ez shrugs one shoulder. “I’ve been working on the spell for a few decades now, but I finally cracked the code once I got my hands on JJ’s escrima sticks and figured out how to block the corrosion spell attached to them. After that, it was fairly easy to extrapolate those results to the rest of the Sanctum enchantments. Technically, I can’t strip them away entirely, but I can deactivate them for a certain period of time?—based on my calculations, my longest stretch is sixty-eight years.” She raises her eyebrows. “Do you want to try it?”
Roma’s throat feels unbearably dry. “I…”
Is this it? Is this her choice, right here and right now? Is this when she decides, once and for all, whether to stay in the suffocating safety of the Sanctum or??—
Or to step out into the terrifying vulnerability of life on the outside? Of truly trusting Ez and JJ and Cass and Obie to take care of her?
Of leaving behind everything she’s ever known for the hope of something better, something more?
“It doesn’t have to be for sixty-eight years, of course,” Ez says quickly. Her shoulders are hunched. “My minimum is twelve hours. I could?—I could deactivate your enchantments for twelve hours.”
Relief?—mixed with a heady rush of disappointment?—floods through Roma. “All right,” she says, and she squares her shoulders, looking towards the sky. The sun has already disappeared behind the horizon, taking their preferred spellcasting window with it. “So if you deactivated my enchantments now, then we could cast the spell at sunrise tomorrow?”
“If you think you can get out here that early,” Ez says. “Otherwise, I can deactivate them right before sunset tomorrow.”
Hastily, Roma weighs her options. “Technically, we have a curfew, but it’s been relaxed during the epidemic,” she says, digging out her cell phone and starting to type a text message. “I’ll let Bryant know that I won’t be home tonight, and then I can just crash on your couch?—or in one of Obie’s spare apartments, if he’ll let me. We’ll cast the counterspell at sunrise, and by then, I’ll only have to wait an hour or so before the deactivation wears off.” She taps the button to send the text, raising her eyebrows at Ez. “Yeah?”
Slowly, Ez nods. “Yeah,” she says, and deliberately, she raises her fingertips to a hair’s breadth away from the notch of Roma’s collarbone. “Right now?”
Roma’s heart stutters. “Yeah,” she says hoarsely. “Right now.”
“Okay,” Ez says, and all at once, her eyes go unfocused. Like she’s seeing the enchantments themselves swirling through the air around Roma. “In the name of Nostringvadha…”
Roma watches Ez’s face as she works through the incantation, fascinated. Even after all these weeks, she’s never really had the opportunity to appreciate Ez in her element, always too preoccupied by her own spellcasting to take much notice.
Now, though, she memorizes all the little details: the way Ez dips her head the slightest bit when she’s concentrating, the way her posture unconsciously straightens, the way her lips form perfectly around every syllable??—
The way she becomes wholly consumed by her task, driven and focused in a way that almost takes Roma’s breath away.
As Ez’s spell winds to a close, Roma feels a smooth coolness settle over her skin, like water washing away the sweat and dirt from a long day. “There,” Ez says, glancing up to meet Roma’s eyes. “One twelve-hour deactivation of your Sanctum enchantments, starting now.”
Roma swallows hard. “How do we know it worked?”
For a long moment, Ez is quiet.
And then, purposefully, she raises her hand from its spot by Roma’s collarbone, brushing the backs of her fingers over Roma’s cheek.
Roma’s breath catches. Ez’s touch is gentle but deliberate, her knuckles sliding over Roma’s skin and lighting Roma’s nerves on fire in every place they touch??—
“Yeah,” Ez says matter-of-factly, not lowering her hand. “Yeah, it worked.”
Roma feels like her very soul is shivering with the warmth of Ez’s skin. Carefully, she reaches up to wrap her hand around Ez’s bare wrist, feeling Ez’s pulse?—slow like a demon’s, but a touch faster than Roma expected?—underneath her fingers.
And Roma can touch Ez now. Roma can touch Ez now, can touch her without burning her, can touch her without hurting her. She has twelve hours where she’s not a Sanctum hunter, not an enemy to demons everywhere, not a soldier for a cause that she doesn’t even think she still believes in??—
For the next twelve hours, Roma is just a human. Just a human who, somewhere along the line, started falling for the demon she was supposed to be betraying.
“Good,” she whispers, and she fits her palm against Ez’s cheek, leans forward, and kisses her.