Page 79 of Fool Me Twice

She’ll have all the time she’s currently spending with Ez. A pang twists through Ez at the thought. “As long as the Deep doesn’t decide to smite us, of course.”

“Well, if the Deep smites us,” Roma says, “then none of this will be my problem anymore, anyway.”

Ez snorts. “That’s one way of looking at it.”

“Yeah.” For a few seconds, Roma seems lost in thought, her gaze fixed out the window; then, abruptly, she turns back to Ez. “So there isn’t anybody else we want to ask for feedback, right?”

Ez shakes her head. “More opinions are always better, but it seems like we’ve both exhausted our lists of options. All that’s left now is to actually cast the spell.”

“Then…” Roma’s eyes dart towards the sky again. “Do we want to do it at sunset?”

Ez’s stomach lurches.“Tonight?You want to do ittonight?”

“Well, when else would we do it?” Roma’s shoulders hunch unsurely. “There’s really no reason to wait. We don’t need any more opinions or feedback, and we’ve already proven that we can cast an effective spell after a few dry runs. And‍—and the sooner we stop the mega-rift epidemic, the better off we’ll be. Thesaferwe’ll be.”

The sooner we’ll leave each other behind for good.Ez bites back the words. “But thepizza,”she complains, gesturing towards the cooling rack. “What about thepizza?”

Roma rolls her eyes. “We can just have celebratory pizza afterward. And it’ll probably still be warm‍—we just need a rift to get out of here, a quick spell to stabilize the Deep, and another rift to come back. Ten minutes, tops.”

And Roma‍?—

Roma’s chin is lifted and her eyes are firm. She’s ready to go through with this, ready to officially put their counterspell to the test, ready to risk it all to save Redwater.

Ready to close the book on this chapter of their lives. Ez’s chest squeezes. “All right,” she says, her voice coming out curter than she intended. “Far end of Lakeside again?”

“Sure. It worked well last time.”

“Let’s get moving, then,” Ez says, and she snaps open a rift.

And, as Roma gives her an unreadable smile and strides through, Ez realizes that this really might be the last she sees of Roma Gutierrez.

35

Roma 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 itincorrectly, 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 ofcolorful 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?”

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