Chapter 37
37
W ell,” Ez says. “That was unexpected.”
Roma cracks open her eyes to squint at Ez. “You said that already. Do you seriously not have any other reactions?”
Ez tightens her arm around Roma’s shoulders, tugging her closer. Right now, Roma is curled up against Ez’s side with her head resting on Ez’s chest, and right now, Roma is determined to never admit how cozy she is. “My higher brain functions are still blessedly offline, so no, I don’t. And I’m honestly just… enjoying the moment.”
“Mm.” Slowly, Roma lets her eyes slide closed again, unabashedly snuggling into Ez’s side. “It’s a good moment.”
And it is. Roma is drowsy and loose-limbed and content in a way she’s never quite felt before, and Ez’s mattress is comfortable and her sheets are silky and her heartbeat is steady under Roma’s ear, and it’s just??—
It’s nice. It’s calm. It’s peaceful.
Honestly, Roma could get used to this.
“So are we going to, you know,” Ez says. “Talk about it?”
“I thought we were enjoying the moment.”
“Yeah, well, I’d be able to enjoy the moment more if I didn’t think this was a one-time thing,” Ez says, an edge creeping into her voice.
Roma’s heart twists. Carefully, she pushes herself up on one elbow to look down at Ez. “You want this to happen again?”
Ez doesn’t drop Roma’s gaze. “Yes. And that’s a huge problem, because in less than twelve hours, I’m not going to be able to touch you again. And in less than twelve hours, we’ll hopefully have cast our counterspell and stabilized the Deep, and that means?—that means we won’t even have an excuse to talk anymore. Not without invoking the Sanctum’s wrath, at least.”
Roma’s chest hurts. Days ago, weeks ago, months ago, her life was so simple, so easy, so straightforward? ? —
Hunters were good. Demons were bad. No shades of gray.
And then JJ defected, and Roma was assigned to trap him and Cass and Desi. She saw how content he was, how fulfilled he was, and vehemently denied it, convincing herself that Cass had somehow brainwashed him into leaving them.
Not letting herself see that JJ was the happiest he’d ever been.
And then she was sent out to trap him again, and she somehow stumbled into this entire mess with Ez. Ez, who’s always had Roma’s back with spellcasting; Ez, who goes to bat for Roma when it really counts??—
Ez, who apparently wants Roma just as much as Roma wants her. She swallows hard. “This is complicated for me. You get that, right?”
Ez looks away, her expression closing off. “Yeah. I get that. A lifetime of brainwashing is hard to forget.”
There’s the barest hint of an edge to Ez’s voice, and instinctive defensiveness jolts through Roma. Taking a deep breath, she forces it down. This conversation probably feels just as fragile to Ez as it does to Roma. “It is hard to forget,” she admits quietly, and Ez’s eyes snap back to her, startled. “I think?—I think I can call it what it was now. Brainwashing. And between everything Naomi said and everything I’ve seen the Sanctum do, it’s?—?” She shakes her head. “It’s just a lot.”
“But not enough to defect over.”
Pain scrapes through Roma’s chest. “I don’t know yet, Ez. I haven’t had a chance to really sit down and think about it. Haven’t had a chance to really breathe yet.”
She expects Ez to be derisive or scathing, but to her surprise, Ez just nods. “Because it’s familiar, and familiar feels safe?—no matter what the actual reality is. JJ was the same way at first.”
JJ. Nausea licks up Roma’s throat at the sheer thought of what she was supposed to do to him, at the sheer thought of dragging him back to the Sanctum and letting them hurt him. “How’d he get over it?” she whispers.
Ez’s eyes soften. “He’s still working on it, I think. But it helps that he has support, you know? Helps that he has Cass and Desi, especially. They take care of him, and they keep him grounded, and?—and they show him how to value himself. Like he was never taught to value himself in the Sanctum.”
Roma looks away. “And JJ has a home with Cass,” she adds haltingly. “He had a place to run towards, not just a place to run away from. I don’t have anything on the outside.”
Ez frowns. “Of course you do. Obie has plenty of apartments he could set up for you, or alternatively…” She sweeps an arm around the room. “Like what you see?”
Roma’s heart flutters. “I mean, it’s a nice bedroom,” she says, peering around. It’s fairly dark, only the glow of the streetlamps and the moon shining through the window now, but she can still see the tiny details: the jewel-toned walls, the shelves full of spell books and worn paperbacks, the little knickknacks on the nightstand. “I presume it’s attached to an equally nice house?”
Ez’s lips twitch. “I like to think so, yeah.”
Roma’s throat feels dry. And for just a moment, just a split second, just the barest sliver of time??—
Just for now, she lets herself believe she can have this. “Tell me, then,” she says, meeting Ez’s gaze. “If I left the Sanctum and?—and stayed here with you. What would our lives be like?”
A grin jumps onto Ez’s face. “Well,” she says, trailing her fingertips over Roma’s side, “there would be plenty of repeat performances of this evening, of course. I really like those noises you make when I touch you just right.”
Heat spikes low past Roma’s belly. With a great effort of will, she ignores it. “The sex is definitely a contributing factor,” she says diplomatically, and Ez snorts. “What else?”
Decisively, Ez pushes herself up to sitting. “Well,” she repeats, and she snaps her fingers. In a flash, Roma’s and Ez’s clothes reappear on their bodies, perfectly clean and unwrinkled after being thrown in every direction. “I know that you humans need to sleep, so we’d have our quiet hours at night. You could sleep, and maybe I could sleep with you, or maybe I could read a book while you rest. I could tell you all about it over breakfast in the morning.”
Roma can’t fight back a smile. “Breakfast?”
“Obviously. I do know how to cook, after all,” Ez says, and she grabs Roma’s hand, pulling her out of the bedroom. A quick walk down the hallway, and then Roma is stepping into a spacious kitchen, large enough for a few people to work side by side. “I’m partial to bacon, personally, but we could make whatever you like. I’ll stock the fridge and the pantry so we can experiment.”
“Could you teach me?” Roma asks. “How to cook, I mean?”
Ez smiles. “Sure,” she says, and she tugs Roma towards the kitchen table. “We could sit right here while we eat, and we could catch up on the news from overnight. After that, we’d have the entire morning to ourselves.” She raises her eyebrows. “What do you like to do?”
“I…” In all of Roma’s years, she’s never really thought about that. She knows what she’s good at, of course, knows what she has to do. But what she likes to do? “I like training?—you know, sparring and weapons training. And I like spellcasting, but I think you already know that.”
Ez’s lips curve up. “We could set up a punching bag for you right there,” she says, gesturing to a corner of the living room just past the kitchen. “Cass has a similar setup for JJ in their house, too. And maybe we could train together, yeah? Spar together?”
Roma grins. “Sure. I’ve seen you fight?—you’d be a great sparring partner.”
“Oh, lackey, you don’t know the half of it.” Ez pulls Roma over to the couch and sits down, but before Roma can take a seat on the cushion next to her, Ez drags Roma directly into her lap. “And we could study magic together, too. Right on this couch.”
Roma wriggles around until she’s sprawled sideways across Ez’s lap, her feet resting on the other cushion and one arm looped around the back of Ez’s neck. “In this exact position? Seems a bit complicated for reading purposes.”
“Well, that’s just a piss-poor attitude to have about the subject,” Ez says, and Roma snorts out a laugh. “We could read in this position, or in another position, or…” Her fingertips skim up Roma’s thigh. “We could do a lot of other things in a lot of other positions on this couch, too.”
Roma fights back a smile. “That’s quite a bit to do before lunch.”
“Right. Lunch. You’ll have to remind me about all of your stupid human eating hours,” Ez says, and she unceremoniously shoves Roma to the side so she can stand up. Grinning, Roma follows her. “So we can head back to the kitchen for that, I suppose. Cass might be a heathen who lets JJ and Desi eat on the couch, but that just seems barbaric to me. We’ll eat at the table like civilized people.”
“What about the bedroom?” Roma asks. “Like, what if I want to make you breakfast in bed?”
“I would not trust you to not burn the house down.”
“Rude.”
“But true.” Ez shoots Roma a crooked smile. “After lunch, we could go out on the town. Stroll through the Courtyard, sit and relax by Lakeside. I would keep you glamoured, of course, so no one from the Sanctum could recognize you. You could start an entirely new life for yourself.”
Roma’s heart twinges. “That sounds kind of nice,” she admits softly.
Ez’s smile is a little bit sad. “JJ seems to enjoy that part, too. Getting to build a new life with Cass and Desi. A peaceful life.” Clearing her throat, she gestures back towards the kitchen table. “After that is dinner, I suppose. You humans really do spend most of your lives eating, don’t you?”
“Do you have a problem with that, Laguerre?”
“Depends on the food.” Ez grins. “We could go visit Cass and JJ for dinner, maybe. Or Obie?—a lot of his recipes are global cuisines that span back thousands of years. He has spices that I’m pretty sure don’t even exist anymore.”
Excited curiosity sparks through Roma. “That’s really cool.”
Ez beams. “I think so, too. And after that, I guess, is bedtime,” she says, and she takes Roma’s hand, guiding her back to the bedroom. “Definitely for you, possibly for both of us. And then we wake up the next morning, and then… we start again.”
Roma’s chest feels warm. “So that’s a day in the life with the great Esmeralda Laguerre, huh?”
“That’s one of many possible days in the life,” Ez says. “Because you can make this life anything you want, Roma. We can make it anything we want. I guess that little niceties like eating and sleeping are non-negotiable, but beyond that, the world is ours. We could spend weeks traveling abroad, or we could spend weeks never leaving the bedroom. We could help with Desi’s homeschooling, or we could try every food truck in Redwater. We could?—?” She hesitates. “We could even open a shop together, if you wanted. A magic shop. We could sell spellcasting textbooks, curate old spell books. Maybe even put together a spell book of our own.”
Roma’s heart twirls. “That sounds really fun, actually. I’ve been wondering lately if glamours and rifts might be possible with human magic, so maybe we could experiment with those?”
Ez’s eyebrows shoot up. “That would be a fascinating tangent. Maybe we could work on some healing spells that work on both demons and humans, too? We’ll have people from all over the country visiting our magic shop for new spells.”
“And?—?” Roma’s mind buzzes with possibilities. “And could we have a coffee shop inside of it? Like, with pastries and everything?”
“Oh, don’t tell Obie that. He can and will invite himself to be an employee just to bake croissants every day.”
“I fail to see the issue there,” Roma says. “And?—and you said that JJ is learning how to cook, right? Maybe he could help, too. Him and Cass. And we’ll have a shelf full of plushies for Desi.”
Ez’s eyes soften. “Sounds perfect. And, hypothetically, we don’t even need to turn a profit?—I have enough money to last several lifetimes. We could just do it for fun. Just as something for us to share together.”
Roma’s chest aches with something unfamiliar?—something a bit like homesickness, she thinks. Homesickness for something she’s never even had. “It’s a nice dream,” she whispers.
Ez’s smile wavers. “It doesn’t have to be, though,” she says, ducking her head to meet Roma’s eyes. “Obviously, we’ll start with the breakfast and the books rather than the magic shop, but?—but none of this has to be a dream. It can be our life. Your life.” Hesitantly, she reaches out and takes Roma’s hands. “So you have your place to run towards, instead of just your place to run away from.”
Roma’s heart squeezes. “I…”
It sounds perfect. It sounds completely, impossibly perfect, like everything she never thought she could have?—everything she never even thought she wanted? —is coming together before her eyes. Getting to live a life of peace, a life of leisure, a life away from hunting and pain and death??—
A cozy life. A life with someone she respects, with someone she adores, with someone she’s starting to think she might even love. A life where her partner is always within reaching distance and her friends are a mere phone call away.
Friends like JJ. Months ago, Roma was committed to bringing JJ back to the Sanctum, making the Council proud, and restoring the Gutierrez name, but now?
Now, Roma can’t imagine hurting JJ like that. Can’t imagine taking him away from the family he’s fought to build for himself, can’t imagine taking him away from Cass and Desi. Can’t imagine taking him away from Obie, who went out on a limb for Roma all those months ago and seems cautiously willing to trust her again now.
But, most of all, Roma can’t imagine a world where she could ever, ever betray Esmeralda Laguerre. Not for anything. She swallows hard. “Ez, I??—?”
Abruptly, a loud ringtone blares out, making both of them jump. Swearing, Ez digs around in her pocket. “Sorry, sorry?—I am still bitter about the creation of phones, by the way; they are just so inconvenient, always ringing at the worst?—?” Still grumbling to herself, she swipes into the screen and presses it to her ear. “Obie, I’m kind of in the middle of something here. Could this conversation be a text message?”
There’s a muffled voice on the other end?—muffled, Roma realizes, because her enhanced hearing is deactivated with the rest of her enchantments. Whatever Obie says, though, it’s enough to make Ez’s spine stiffen and her eyes widen. “What?”
“What is it?” Roma says sharply, stepping forward.
Ez’s jaw works. “Hold on,” she says, and she pulls the phone away from her ear, tapping a button. “Obie, you’re on speaker?—I’m here with Roma. Could you repeat that?”
And, this time, Obie’s voice is as clear as day. “Micah and Gregorio think they might’ve found some new information about the mega-rift epidemic?—information that could impact your counterspell. Can you meet us at Sawyer and Naomi’s place?”