Page 101 of Fool Me Twice

“Thebasics,”Sawyer repeats emphatically, stalking through the rift and moving aside to let Naomi pass. “Just enough to be functional with general-purpose spellcasting.”

“You’re not all that functional, Solomon.”

“Piss off,Laguerre!”

Hurriedly, Naomi steps in to defuse the tension. “The basic spellcasting classes only focus on a small subset of spells, and they only have enough theory to explain those particular spells. They’re mainly just for drilling the incantations that hunters use most often‍—tracking spells, healing spells, offensive and defensive spells. Most hunters don’t continue their studies beyond that.”

“And I was a purebred.” Bitterness creeps into Sawyer’s voice. “I would’ve passed the class no matter what I did, so I spent all my time on combat skills, instead. That didn’t help.”

“Yeah.” Naomi’s eyes drift over to Redwater’s southern hillside. “There aren’t many Romas in the Redwater Sanctum.”

Ez’s frayed nerves jangle at the mention of Roma. She takes a deep breath to clear out the sensation. “All right,” she says, trying to keep her voice even as she leads them to their next mega-rift. “After today’s shift, I want you two to walk me through the spells youdoknow. That’ll give me a sense of which magic bases you’re familiar with, and then I might be able to help you more with the blocking spell from there. Yeah?”

“That’d be great,” Naomi says, nodding. “Thanks, Ez.”

“Yeah,” Sawyer mumbles, glaring down at her sneakers. “Thanks.”

She sounds less annoyed with Ez and more annoyed with the entire situation. Ez gets the distinct sensation that she’s not used to being bad at things, and that she probably just avoided spellcasting altogether when it didn’t come naturally to her.

And, like she said, she was a purebred. No one was going to call her out on it. They would just praise her strong points and sweep her weak ones under the rug.

Not like Roma, who had to fight tooth and nail for every scrap of respect she got. Ez shoves the memories away. “Good,” she says briskly, and she shifts into her spellcasting stance. “Onthreethis time, okay? One, two, three‍—in the name of Nostringvadha…”

And, as she and Sawyer struggle through their joint rift-closing spells together, Ez tries not to think about how JJ isn’t the only human in their group who isn’t prepared for the challenge of the Deep.

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Okay,so,”Bryant says, tossing one of her knives into the air and catching it repeatedly, “on balance, second cousins aren’t reallytooclose genetically‍—I was kind of just lying to make myself feel better. It’s somewhat closer than the Sanctum’s geneticists would prefer, but it’s certainly doable. So, if I play my cards right, I might have a shot with Kenneth Long after all.”

Chester groans, dropping his head into his hands. “Seriously? You’re back on this bullshit so soon?”

“What? It’s my future, Locke! My life! Mylegacy!”

Roma solemnly places a hand on Bryant’s shoulder, avoiding the knife as Bryant grabs it out of midair. “My friend, I give you my full and unconditional blessing to get hitched to Kenneth Long in my stead. Go forth and score to your heart’s content.”

“See?” Bryant says to Chester, wrapping an arm around Roma’s shoulders and squeezing. “Gutierrez gets it!”

Chester casts his eyes to the sky like he’s praying for patience, and for the first time in a long time, Roma feels an honest smile tug at her lips. Right now, the three of them are hovering in a secluded corner of the training grounds, far enough away fromprying eyes and ears that they can speak somewhat freely, and right now‍?—

Well. Right now, Roma feels more like herself than she has since last week.

It’s almost eerie how quickly life settled back into some semblance of normalcy. A few hours after her meeting with Councilwoman Nasir, Roma grabbed Bryant and dragged her up to her suite to tell her how everything ended, giving her the same story she told Chester the night before.

Letting her know that their mission was over, and that Roma had failed. Bryant insisted that Romahadn’tfailed, not yet, and proceeded to pace around her room like a caged animal for fifteen minutes straight, wracking her brain for any way to salvage the operation‍—and Roma’s reputation.

Honestly, the thought ofsucceedingin her mission made Roma feel like she was going to throw up, but she deeply appreciated Bryant’s support, anyway. Despite the bloodlines hierarchy looming like a wall between them, rigid and impenetrable, Bryant has always been good about trying to use her status to pull Roma and Chester up with her.

That status is something Roma always longed for in the past. Now, though, she’s not so sure if being at the top of the Sanctum’s food chain is really all it’s cracked up to be.

In other news, she and Bryant got sent out on a mission a couple of days ago, one of their few since the mega-rift epidemic began. A spellcaster on the edge of town summoned a demon and was preparing to launch an attack. Frankly, Roma thinks it’s justrudeto open yet another rift in the middle of a rift-opening crisis, but she’s never really considered summoners to be polite. She and Bryant dispatched him and brought the demon back to the Sanctum for testing.

For the first time, Roma had nightmares thinking about what the interrogators‍—interrogators like Chester‍—might be doing toit down in the prison. Taking a deep breath, she forces herself back to the present. “At least I don’t have to worry about it anymore. The thought of sleeping with Long was making me break out in hives, even if itwasonly for procreational purposes. I’ll probably be just as vaguely unsatisfied with whichever mixed-breed hunter they eventually match me with.” She grimaces. “If they match me with anyone at this rate.”

Chester winces. “Yeah,” he says, his eyes sweeping around the training grounds. They chose this corner specifically because it was quiet, but today, it seems like people are giving them an even wider berth than usual. “A lot of hunters aren’t happy with you right now. Are you‍—are you doing okay?”

There’s an honest thread of concern in his voice. Roma’s heart hurts. She remembers that he got knocked around on a regular basis when he first started training down in the prison, his co-workers‍—and his interrogation mentor‍—taking advantage of his low status as a neophyte hunter to rough him up without consequences.

That was one battle Roma and Bryant didn’t have to fight for him, though‍—namely, because Sawyer stormed down to the prison and raised enough hell for all of them combined. Swallowing hard, Roma pushes the memories away. “I’m okay,” she says gently. “Really. They’re more passive-aggressive than anything else. I can handle it. Areyoutwo doing okay? After all, everyone knows you were helping me with the mission.”

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