Chapter Thirteen
They sat in one of the back booths at the brightly lit, and colorful cafeteria Food House.
It was Schuyler’s beloved comfort food spot, as evidenced by the towering stack of pancakes and bacon on his tray.
He’d been quiet since the barn, and Issac had stopped trying to engage in conversation, choosing instead to pick at his chicken salad sandwich and chips.
“If you wanted to bottom, I’d have topped you,” Issac mumbled sheepishly, clearly still thinking about what he’d witnessed.
“If I’m in the mood, absolutely.” Schuyler loved the idea.
“But it wouldn’t be like what you saw. That’s what happens when I’m with him—and why I can’t be with him.
He’s infused dark magic into his very being.
He’s used it to make his sweat poppers, his scent is amped up with pheromones, and his spit tastes like your favorite candy.
He’s walking sex, literally, and it’s intoxicating.
Too intoxicating.” Schuyler sighed, lamentably.
“Are you mad at me because of this?”
“What? No, not at all. Everything I did was my choice.” Schuyler reached over and stroked Issac’s hand, reassuring him. “I do have one question, though: how’d you do it?” Despite the intense sex he’d just experienced and the fuzzy brain he nursed, one thought still hounded him: the Push.
“Do what?” Issac questioned, confused.
“You sent a Push to me. Trying to prompt me to agree to Azrael. We never covered those kinds of unethical spells; how’d you know how to do that?” Schuyler was questioning a lot of things since feeling the Push; had Issac been lying to him?
“I didn’t… I don’t… I really dunno what you’re talking about,” he stammered.
“I didn’t push anything. I admit, I wanted you to say yes, partly for the dirt, but honestly, because I wanted to watch.
He was hot. I kept thinking about how I low-key hoped you’d accept.
” Issac’s big eyes went glassy at the thought of not being believed. “Honestly, I don’t know what you mean.”
There was the possibility that, in Issac’s excited state of arousal, combined with the lingering residual magic of the previous ritual, he could have sent the Push without realizing what he was doing. Magic operated intuitively after all.
“I believe you,” Schuyler said after a tense minute of silence, to Issac’s relief.
“Some witches use those spells often, usually on Tourists and those in the outside world. I don’t.
A lot of us don’t. There are unethical spells we know how to perform, how to recognize, but we’ve chosen not to use them.
Coercing someone with magic leaves a scar—it’s bad mojo. ”
“I would never,” Issac proclaimed. “Even if I knew how, which I promise I don’t, I’d still never do anything like that, especially to you.” Relived, he lit up with a dopey, adorable expression. He stopped picking at his sandwich, taking large bites instead.
Schuyler sat back, feeling satisfied the situation had cleared itself up. There was still the issue of Rae, but Schuyler would deal with that when he had to.
“Azrael said you cared for me back there, called me your lover. Am I?”
Schuyler’s reaction to the question caused his throat to gulp, which made the last piece of bacon he’d eaten go sideways in his throat, almost choking him. He quickly spat it out.
Issac watched the piece of meat hit the far end of the table.
Sky grabbed his water and swallowed a mouthful down. “Um… well, yes. I guess? I… don’t really know what to label things, but I know something is there.”
“I’ve never been anyone’s lover before,” Issac added with a smirk. “And if it’s ‘something,’ then we can discuss it when the time comes. If that’s now, okay; if not, whenever the time is right. But I’m open to the conversation.”
Schuyler marveled at him. There were moments like this when Issac’s maturity shone through, and Sky realized just how huge the difference between Issac and himself was at that age.
Issac approached things with a clearer mind than Sky did at twenty-six.
Schuyler had been far messier. “Are you open to having a different conversation?”
If there was any time to ask, it was now.
“Of course, whatever you want to talk about.”
“The spell, Issac. There’s been warnings from my friends about the power of those items that raise both questions and concerns for your safety.
I’m in this now. I can’t let anything happen to you, and I don’t want anything to happen to you.
But when even the Lwa are asking ‘What the fuck,’ I have to question.
I need to know what the spell is. You mentioned a bladder today. Like, dude, that’s new information.”
Schuyler watched the joy dissipate from Issac’s face as his eyes dimmed and dropped, his lips flattened, he sank into the chair. Not the reaction Sky expected, and he feared he’d asked the wrong question.
“I knew you were going to ask me. And it’s not that I haven’t wanted to talk about the spell with you, it’s just complicated.
And I’m sorry.” Issac lowered his head, pushing his plate around the brown plastic tray and sighing heavily as he shifted in his seat.
“I owe you the truth though: Mors Bis Remota.”
The truth? What had he lied about?
“Issac, what are you saying?”
“That’s the spell. Mors Bis Remota—Death Twice Removed.
The spell kind of, sort of, brings someone back from the dead.
But,” he quickly added, “it’s in a way that doesn’t violate the Edict.
The Elders won’t interfere. My uncle considered all of that when he devised the spell; there are notes about it.
“The spell does two things with one goal: it reanimates a body temporarily, bringing it back to the point before death, but grants it no life. He described it as ‘an empty suit waiting to be put on.’
“Then the second part calls forth the spirit from wherever they are now, allowing entry into the vessel for a short period. How short is unknown, but that is what he wrote. Time enough to ask a question at least, which is what I’m hoping for.”
A fascinating concept, and one that tugged at Schuyler’s curious nature. In theory, no edicts were broken, no life was being granted to that which was dead before, not if the spirit wasn’t summoned directly into the vessel but instead stepped in of its own accord. An idea that seemed ingenious.
“There’s a little more,” Issac announced, hesitant to continue. He interrupted Schuyler’s racing mind, which was working through the variables of the spell: where the spirit was located would play a role, where the body was as well. What could go wrong with it?
“This is the part… I… um, I didn’t realize.
Not at first. I need you to know that. I told you I hadn’t really read the whiney parts of the journal that closely.
And… I didn’t know we would be at this place, but then you licked my ass so good what was I to do?
” He laughed nervously. “There never really seemed like a good time to say something, and the longer I didn’t say anything, the weirder the whole thing became—and snowballed.
And now, there still isn’t a right moment, and I just didn’t know. ”
“Issac,” Schuyler snapped, trying to silence the rambling. “What is it?”
“My uncle… his name, um… isn’t Yannif Pudesky. I made that up. His name was Devion Kincaide.” He spit the words out fast, nearly collapsing after speaking, relieved from the burden he’d been carrying.
The fuck he just say? Someone needs to repeat that.
Devion Kincaide.
Yep, that’s what I thought I heard.
Schuyler sat in shock, as if the shit had just been slapped out of him. The food in his stomach churned; he felt sick. Schuyler wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but hearing his first love’s name come out of Issac’s mouth was not on the bingo card. “Your uncle is my Dev?”
“Yes.” Issac nodded softly, treading lightly. “Again, I didn’t know that at first.”
“The journal? It’s his?”
“Yes,” Issac confirmed, trying to avoid looking into Sky’s face.
“See, he didn’t use your name a lot—he calls you Smudge—so I didn’t realize until after we’d met.
That day you went home, when I went to the library, I started reading the journal more closely, going back further, and there your name was.
I didn’t realize, And then on that trail you talked about him, and your relationship, and I didn’t know what to say or do.
It’s a weird coincidence, and again, I didn’t expect this to happen between us. ”
Smudge.
He hadn’t heard that term of endearment in over twenty years.
The nickname had stuck after he’d grabbed my paper in class and messed up the wet ink.
I was so mad at him, livid really, for messing up my pretty handwriting.
And he was all, ‘Oh, it’s just a smudge.
’ Like a damn dagger to my heart. I’d lost my shit and told him he’d ruined my assignment and my life.
He’d just laughed and got a kick out of calling me Smudge from then on.
The pancakes wanted to work their way up from Schuyler’s stomach.
He pushed them down, just as he did, the flood of emotions rising to overwhelm him.
Food House became a hellscape. The noise of people talking, eating, moving their trays along the counters blared in his ears as if someone had turned up the volume on everything except Issac, who continued apologizing in front of him.
There was too much information to process.
I fucked Dev’s nephew. The spell was going to bring him back to life?
I’m a dirty uncle. Does it count if you didn’t know?
Are you still put on lists? A spell he’d unwittingly been assisting with.
Did he want to allow Issac to resurrect Dev?
I performed Analmancy on Dev’s nephew, who would have technically been my nephew.