Page 83 of Fool Me Twice

For a long moment, they stare at each other. Roma looks torn between surprised and confused and maybe even pleased, and Ez’s pulse is pounding an exhilarated drumbeat against her temples, and then‍?—

And then Roma laughs. She immediately claps a hand over her mouth, hiding her smile, but there’s no disguising the light dancing behind her eyes. “Well,” she says. “This isn’t how I expected tonight to go.”

Ez grins back. “Me, neither,” she says, and she leans in again, touching a kiss to the back of Roma’s hand. “But I think I’d like it to continue like this. Yeah?”

Tentatively, Roma lowers her hand. Her cheeks are flushed, but her smile is bright. “I‍—yeah. Yeah, I think I would. I mean,I already told Bryant that I won’t be home until tomorrow, so I have all night, and‍—and yeah. I’d like to keep doing this.”

“Good,” Ez says, and she pushes herself to her feet, holding out a hand to help Roma up. “Except weprobablyshouldn’t be in public for the purposes of continuing this. Back to my place?”

Roma’s grin makes her eyes crinkle in the corners. “Sure,” she says, and she gingerly places her hand into Ez’s, a frown creasing her brow at the sight of the corrosion burns. “Is there anything we can do to heal those?”

Ez’s heart twinges. “I don’t think so,” she says quietly, pulling Roma to her feet. “I’ve been looking for a healing spell that works on them for years, but…”

Roma’s frown deepens. “Well, we know that the corrosion spell stays imbued in the burns themselves, and that the burns only heal as the enchantment dissipates, so…” Suddenly, her eyes snap up to Ez’s face. “Can you cast the deactivation spell on yourself?”

Curiosity twines through Ez. “I mean, there’s no reason why Ican’t,”she says, and she takes a deep breath, holding her hands a few inches away from each other. “In the name of Nostringvadha…”

Ez flows through the incantation again, sneaking a peek at Roma’s face. Her eyes are riveted on Ez’s palms and her expression is expectant,hopeful,like she wants those burns off of Ez’s skin even more than Ez herself does.

Because she blames herself for putting them there, maybe. Ez feels a pang.

And then she feels something entirely different‍—a cool rush of magic sweeping over her hands. Eyes widening, she watches as the burns slowly fade away, leaving nothing but unblemished skin in their place.

It worked. Two hundred years of searching for a spell to heal corrosion burns, and Roma Gutierrez, a bona fide hunter, finally found it.

Found it in a spell that Ez created herself.“Roma,”she breathes.

Roma looks smugly satisfied. “There we go. Much better.”

Heart pounding, Ez lunges forward and kisses Roma again. “So deactivating the corrosion spell heals corrosion burns,” she mumbles between kisses. “But‍—but how does it heal themoutright?If it just blocks the enchantment, then you should still need a healing spell for the burns themselves, but‍?—‍”

“Uh, I think it’s because the burns themselves are made of corrosion,” Roma says, and she kisses Ez long and hard again. “The corrosion doesn’t cause the burns‍—the burns aremade ofcorrosion. So blocking the spell heals the burns.”

“But if that’s the case, then how‍?—‍?”

Unexpectedly, Roma bursts into giggles, tugging the slightest bit away from Ez. “Can we‍—can we not discuss the scholarly applications of spellcasting while we’re kissing, please?”

Ez grins back. “Sure,” she says, and she snaps open a rift. “Bedroom?”

Roma’s smile is shy and eager at the same time. “Okay,” she says, slipping her hand into Ez’s, and they step into Ez’s bedroom side by side.

Herrealbedroom. The one in her actual house, not the one in her safe house.

She thinks Roma has earned a place here by now. And she wastes no time in getting Roma exactly where she wants her, nudging in close to kiss her again, to loop her arms around Roma’s neck, to guide her back towards the bed and ease her down onto the mattress.

Roma hastily kicks off her sneakers in midair. Ez snorts out a laugh. “I can handle that, you know,” she says, and with a flickof her wrist, she teleports Roma’s shoes neatly to the side of the door.

Roma rolls her eyes. “Just because you’re the most powerful spellcaster on the East Coast doesn’t mean you have to use magic for every little thing.”

“Life would be too boring otherwise,” Ez argues, and she climbs onto the bed, bracketing Roma’s hips with her knees to lean down and kiss her.

Roma lets out a disgruntled noise when they come up for air. “You calling me boring, Laguerre?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Gutierrez,” Ez says, and she kisses her again.

She can barely believe that they made it here. After all the anger and mistrust, after all the sniping remarks and pointed barbs, after all the times they helped each other and vouched for each other, even when they didn’t want to‍?—

After everything they’ve been through, they finally made it.

---