Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
RAUM
The drive to his parents’ house didn’t take that long, but he was impatient the entire ride, both with his grandfather not dealing with the situation with Nórr, and occupied with thoughts of what his father might be cooking up in his laboratory.
Raum tipped the driver on the app and they piled out of the van, the vehicle pulling away instantly and driving off back to Edmonton.
They weren’t that far outside the city limits, and there were some distant neighbors visible through the trees, but he understood the haste to leave and return to a more populated area.
Raum led Ezra and Saemund up the paved driveway to the garage, and he reached down and lifted the door higher so they could all duck under it and enter the garage.
His mother’s car was gone, as expected. The two doors at the rear of the garage led to the kitchen in the house and the backyard, and he headed for the one leading to the backyard, opening it and heading across the stone patio behind the house to the rather large shed at the rear of the backyard near the fence line.
The modified shed was retrofitted with a ventilation system and emergency fire suppressants, water sprinklers, and a huge HVAC system that handled the intense temperature swings between winter and summer in Alberta.
Windows and skylights had been added, along with a sliding metal door in place of the typical wooden panels, this one with a security system and deadbolts.
There was a ramp leading up to the doors, and Raum led the way up, his footsteps echoing, surely alerting his father to their arrival.
The inside of the shed was lit up, bright enough to illuminate part of the yard and the trees beyond the fence.
To call it a shed was a bit of a misnomer, considering it was nearly the same square footage as the house.
“Dad?” Raum called as he entered the shed, his father’s laboratory spread out in a wild mix of tables, cases, supplies, shelves, and machinery.
He had no idea what half the stuff was in the lab, and what he did recognize made him sigh in exasperation and some alarm.
“Don’t touch anything, and don’t knock into anything,” he warned Ezra, who came in after him, and Ezra nodded, eyes wide and clearly curious.
Music was playing—he recognized the energetic Celtic music playlist that his father played when he was in an experimenting mood—and followed the music to the rear of the lab, the automated ventilation system humming overhead.
“Dad?” he called again, this time louder, trying to be heard over the music playing over the sound system and the vents overhead pulling away the fumes from whatever his father was creating.
He found Nórr at the table in the back corner he’d creatively named the alchemist’s station, sitting on a stool and hunched over a pile of what appeared to be crushed crystals and a clear viscous fluid in a shallow glass dish; there was a tendril of smoke rising where the crystals and fluid made contact.
“Dad!” Raum found his father’s phone and turned off the music, setting the phone back on the table, but a bit farther away from the smoking ingredients of whatever his father was cooking up.
The sudden absence of the music finally got through to his father and Nórr looked up, blinking hard. “What?” he asked, looking around, finally noticing his father, son, and Ezra all watching him with various expressions of concern, worry, and fascination. “What’s going on?”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” Saemund lamented, gesturing to the phone. “I should have tried that first.”
Raum rolled his eyes and turned back to his father. “Dad, how long have you been at it?”
“Oh, not long? Your mother kissed me goodbye a few minutes ago, I’m sure. She just left,” Nórr said absently, rubbing at his face and eyes. Smoke continued to curl into the air from the dish, the smoke getting sucked up into the vents that were hanging above each work station.
“Freya left hours ago, my dear boy,” Saemund said, shaking his head. “You’ve been ignoring phone calls and texts all day, and ignored me when I was here earlier.”
“You were here?” Nórr asked, confused at the thought, and he finally sat up from his hunched-over position and groaned as he stretched his back and arms. “I would have seen you here, surely.”
“You know how you get when you’re crafting, my dear boy,” Saemund said, and he pointed to the dish in front of Nórr. “That’s on fire now.”
A blue flame was merrily burning in the glass dish, and Nórr yelped and grabbed a fireproof cloth and slapped it over top of the dish, extinguishing the flames, though a bit of the viscous fluid splattered out onto the table and began sizzling, trying to eat through the metal surface.
Raum reached over the table to the small shelf built above it on the wall, grabbing the container of baking soda, which he sprinkled over the spots that were sizzling, neutralizing the mysterious fluid.
He’d spent many hours in the lab with his father as a boy, and this was a habit, even years later.
Nórr was mostly High Court Sidhe, merely a quarter human, and he healed like one.
He lacked any permanent scars or marks from his various experiments over the years since he took up alchemy as a hobby.
If he had more human blood in him he’d likely be covered in scars, and might have more caution as a result.
Ezra
“What are you making?” Ezra asked, coming closer and eyeing the items laid out across the surface of the table.
Raum leaned against the table with one hip, crossing his arms, and Ezra inched in a bit between Raum and his father, admiring the thick, veiny forearms Raum sported before focusing on Nórr and his project.
“Charms,” Nórr said immediately, spinning to face Ezra on his stool and smiling wide, though it was a bit of a feral expression.
“And potions, but that was earlier. They’re cooking for now.
” He paused, then leaned over a bit on his stool to look past Ezra into the maze of the chaotic lab.
“Yup, still cooking.” He sat back and spun back to the table and the ingredients in front of him.
“This is a charm to make all hot coffee drinks within a certain radius immediately go cold.”
Ezra blinked down at the mixture in front of Nórr, and hummed a bit to himself.
It looked like he was using crystallized caffeine and something entirely new that Ezra had never seen before, and the inherent energies of the combination under the fireproof scrap of cloth was muted, but almost what Nórr needed to pull off a cold-coffee charm.
Useful in summer, but then Nórr didn’t seem to be in a generous mood so perhaps there was some mischief behind his creation.
It was something he’d never heard of before, but then he liked his coffee hot.
“Someone made you mad, didn’t they?” Ezra took a guess.
Nórr shot him a sharp glance full of glee and mischief. “Lots of people have made me mad. There used to be a list, but I got too old and the list too long, so now I just make charms that fuck up annoying people’s days.”
“And other things,” Raum muttered. “Who pissed you off now?”
“An annoying man at the local coffee shop. He cuts in line every day, is rude to the staff and baristas, and never picks up his trash from the tables. Every. Single. Day.”
“Won’t the staff get in trouble if the hot coffee goes cold all at once if you use the charm in the cafe?” Ezra asked, thinking about the logistics of getting it on the person without it affecting others.
Charms didn’t have long lifespans like cursed objects or artifacts did, but they could go wrong all too easily if not made by a professional.
Though they were simple to diffuse for Ezra—he merely overloaded them with energy and they burnt out.
Other people who didn’t have the power to spare for such an option paid for it instead, or traded skills, or in cases of a charm being used in a crime, the police typically had wizards capable of deactivating them on staff.
“That’s why it’s going in his car and has a radius of five feet,” Nórr declared with determination, practically glowing with satisfaction. “Are you going to turn me in to the police?”
Ezra snorted out a laugh. “I’m a US citizen in Canada for work. It’s none of my business what you do for fun.”
Nórr cackled in glee. “I like you.”
Ezra smiled wide, happy that his date’s father liked him enough to say it out loud.
“What’s your catalyst for the charm’s spell?” Ezra asked, and he leaned a bit into Raum while talking to Nórr. Raum settled a large, warm hand on Ezra’s hip and held on firmly, tugging Ezra back into his side so they were plastered together from shoulder to thigh.
Saemund huffed and shook his head, wandering off into the controlled chaos of the lab, muttering to himself.
“I’m using harpy spit, caffeine crystals, and some dry ice. A drop of energy catalyzes the reaction and it should last for a few months before dying on its own.”
“Harpy spit?” Ezra nodded as he realized what the viscous fluid was in the dish. “Hard to get, and harder to use without the acid destroying everything it touches.”
“I’ll be sealing the charm in this tiny glass bottle and then wrapping it in treated waxed leather.” Nórr pointed to the materials on the table along the wall under the shelf. “No leaks, no spills, and the energy of the charm will naturally degrade after a few months, rendering it inert.”
“You do this a lot, don’t you,” Ezra mused, eyeing the lab setup and the various experiments in different stages of completion.
“Charms to annoy? In between my larger projects, yes. I like to be busy,” Nórr explained, and he finally saw how Raum was holding Ezra. “Oh, that’s right, you two were on a date. Why’d you come here if you were on a date?”
Ezra felt Raum drag in a deep breath and sigh, and he looked over his shoulder to see Raum’s face.
He’d never seen such an expression before on another person, and he was guessing it was fondness and exasperation.
He knew what exasperation looked like for sure.
He’d certainly never seen familial fondness on someone’s face when they looked at him, so he wasn’t sure.
A twinge went through his core, and he thought perhaps he was a bit sad about that.
He mentally shook it off. His family drama was old and over.
“We were worried you’d set the lab on fire or blow something up,” Raum said. “Grandpa made it sound urgent.”
“I haven’t blown the lab up in years!” Nórr denied, brows furrowed.
“I think. The years tend to blur once you get past a certain age. And Pop needs to stop worrying so much, I haven’t had any incidents since I last burned down the shed.
It’s why we have these annoying vents and the like everywhere.
” Nórr gestured to the ceiling and the complicated safety systems among the rafters.
The ventilation and fire suppression systems all seemed fairly new to Ezra.
He wondered if Nórr, due to his age, simply had a passing relationship with time.
Ezra could empathize—he lost track of time all too easily himself.
Raum did mention that both his parents were centuries old, despite Nórr looking the same age as his son.
He wondered briefly what the passage of time would be like, living that long—but even as a sorcerer-ranked practitioner, he wasn’t likely to see past his one-hundred and fiftieth birthday.
A mere glimpse at eternity for an unmated magical human.
He had yet to meet Raum’s mother, Freya, in person, and he wondered if she saw time much like Nórr did, or if she perhaps had more of a human grasp on the concepts of time.
“My dear child, is this meant to be spilling over?” Saemund called from the depths of the laboratory, making Nórr finally leap off his stool and sprint toward his father’s voice.
“Don’t touch anything!” Nórr called out as he ran, whether to Ezra and Raum, or his father, Ezra had no idea.
“Should we follow them?” Ezra asked, content to remain leaning on Raum, relishing the bigger man’s heat along his back and side.
“Nothing’s on fire,” Raum said, leaning down enough that he could speak in Ezra’s ear, warm breath tickling his neck.
Big hands slid around his waist and hips, rubbing, gently squeezing, and Ezra lit up like one of Nórr’s experiments, heat swamping him. He put his head back and nipped at Raum’s jaw, nosing along the strong column of his throat, and Raum’s hands gripped his hips harder.
“Take me home with you,” Ezra breathed out quietly.
Raum shuddered behind him, grip tight enough it almost hurt, and Raum exhaled roughly before he nodded in agreement.
Raum gently moved Ezra away so he could move, and he took Ezra’s hand and began leading him from the laboratory. “Dad, Grandpa! We’re heading out!” Raum called out loudly enough to be heard over the hum of machinery.
They heard a distracted goodbye from the depths of the lab and Ezra willingly followed Raum out of the shed, through the backyard, and back into the garage. There Ezra was spun and gently pushed against the remaining car in the garage, and Raum’s mouth descended on his in a deep, wet kiss.
Raum kissed like his life depended on it, like he did it for a living, tipping Ezra’s head back and devouring his mouth, tongue and lips demanding Ezra yield, which he did with enthusiasm.
Raum ended the kiss abruptly, yanking his phone out of his pocket and Ezra watched in between desperate gulps for air as Raum summoned a car from the app, the phone pinging as a car was sent their way.
“Ten minutes,” Raum said, putting his phone away, and Ezra launched himself back into Raum’s arms, Raum lifting him off his feet as their lips met in another crushing kiss.
They made out for what felt like forever, but then a horn honked and they broke apart, Raum leading a dazed Ezra out of the garage and down the driveway to the curb, to the waiting car.
Ezra was checked out, mind obsessed with how Raum tasted, felt, smelled, the heat from his large frame and the way he manhandled Ezra.
All of it was perfect. He huddled against Raum in the back seat of the car and held Raum’s hand, a big thumb rubbing the side of his hand and wrist, making his blood sing.
Raum smelled like clean skin, wildflowers, and sin.
He wanted to breathe Raum in and hold on to that breath forever.