He found a few articles, mostly from the States and western Europe, that mentioned the curse-breaker, and only in the last five years. Nothing beyond that timeframe, which made sense, as Ezra seemed to be in his late twenties. Practitioners of a certain strength, usually sorcerers, and especially powerful ones at that, typically stopped aging in their late forties or early fifties, and Ezra looked too young to not be the age he appeared. An obscure article from four years prior listed Ezra as a graduate of UC Berkeley, and Raum was delighted to see Ezra had a degree in history, though the specifics weren’t mentioned in the article.
The article also mentioned that Ezra was a San Francisco Redmayne, a wealthy practitioner clan that had been on the West Coast of the US since the late eighteen hundreds, and made it through the devastating earthquake of 1906 with minimal casualties. Not surprising, considering that historically, wealthy practitioner clans tended to protect their properties with spells, to the detriment of their neighbors.
Ezra was remarkably unpretentious, and curiosity over how he came out that way drove Raum to search for more on the Redmaynes, and he found plenty. Pictures of a handsome older couple that had to be his parents, and a younger man and woman with similar coloring who were likely his siblings. No pictures of Ezra with his family, at least nothing recent, and Raum suspected this was a ‘black sheep of the family’ situation, though he might be wrong—it was possible Ezra was merely camera-shy and not interested in a public life. His family was active in local politics and philanthropic work, appearing in numerous articles and society pages from local and state newspapers, and Raum gave up his idle curiosity when his search led him to copious amounts of social media posts featuring the younger Redmaynes. He had no desire to get sucked into a doom-scroll of vapidity.
Raum reluctantly put away his phone and cleaned up, setting his office to rights. He set aside the books and reference materials they had used earlier in their searches, reserving them in the library system under his name so no colleagues absconded with them. He set a priority flag on the entire thing, and added a short message directing anyone with complaints to the dean. He technically wasn’t allowed to do any of that, but the head librarian knew he was assisting the government officers with something, and hopefully the rumor mill on campus would be enough to keep people from poking about too much, wary of drawing the eye and attention of the feds.
The last thing he did before leaving was dismiss the new window, returning the wall outside his office to the old-fashioned beige wallpaper and old wood paneling it had been earlier that day before a sweet kitty needed the bushes. It wouldn’t do to have a guard on patrol suddenly notice a window in a wall that had never been there before. Too many questions he wouldn’t answer.
The ability to change reality wasn’t limited to the immediate area of his magical office. The boundaries were a bit hazy, and there was a buffer zone of several feet around the office that let him alter reality with some willpower and imagination. The area he could affect was growing as the years went by.
He closed the office door and dismissed the office back to where it belonged, smiling to himself as he felt the office settle across the campus in the history department building.
Raum grabbed his backpack and slung it over his shoulder, and then left the library, thinking hard about the whole day and especially the handsome practitioner who literally fell into his arms. Hopefully there would be no fainting the next day, but he wouldn’t say no to an armful of Ezra Redmayne again.
Ezra
Ezra layon his back on the borrowed bed at Sacred Threshold staring at the ceiling. It was late, and the room was dark. Lilith purred contentedly on his chest, curled up with her nose under her tail, eyes shut. He had one hand on her back, idly petting her every once in a while.
He fell asleep earlier when Harlan and Chase brought him back to his room, and he slept until well past the usual supper hour. His stomach drove him to leave his room in search of food, only for him to be pleasantly surprised by the insulated takeout bag in the hall right outside his door, a note from the MERS soldiers addressed to him stapled to the top.
He was touched by the gesture and a bit bemused by the apology penned by Chase for pushing him too hard. He’d pushed himself—the officers weren’t really his babysitters, but the sentiment was nice. It was rare that anyone other than a medical professional cared about his well-being.
Well that wasn’t entirely true—there was his old mentor at Berkeley, a history professor named Dr. Ruth Royal, and she was the definition of intimidating. She was a tenured professor of Ancient Mediterranean History and Department Chair, specializing in curses, hexes, and cursed objects from Ancient Roman, Celtic, Greek, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian cultures. She was also an expert in historical methods of curse-breaking, which is why he had gravitated toward her classes.
While old enough to be his mother, she was anything but maternal in her approach to teaching, preferring an impersonal dynamic, though she was decidedly helpful and made sure to be accessible to her students. She nearly stepped on him one afternoon in the main hallway of the history building at Berkley, when Ezra was sitting against the wall nursing a stress headache and trying to manage his brain on his new ADHD meds.
Instead of walking over him, as many professors had done already, she toed off her heels and sat crisscrossed on the floor next to him, asking him very pointed questions, like why he was pretending to be a speed bump in a busy hallway. With a deep, hopeless sigh, he merely handed over the pile of syllabi he had in his lap from all his courses, and told her in a dejected mumble that his brain was broken and he wasn’t sure what he was doing.
She took one look at the chaos of Ezra’s freshman year course-load, arched her brow at the mess, and then yanked him to his feet, effectively kidnapping him for the rest of the day. She handed him her heels and dragged him back to her office, where she sat him down and proceeded to save his life and sanity.
Dr. Royal helped him chisel out a plan for his academic future, and she listened in nonjudgmental silence as he explained his rather unmoored mental state at the time. She had experience with his issues, as she had ADHD herself, the inattentive subtype, and she also had an abundance of common sense and access to university resources. She sent him to mental health professionals at the university student center who could help him, and they did, and for that, he was more than thankful. That day in her office stood out in his memory, even years later and after countless days and hours spent sitting in that same room over the remaining four years of his undergraduate education.
Seeing a professional and accomplished person with ADHD gave Ezra hope that he could pull himself together and have a successful life of his own. Meeting Dr. Royal saved him in more ways than one—she saved him that day his freshman year, and helped him learn how to save himself the rest of his time in college.
Even years after graduation and after embarking on his career, they still kept in touch. Dr. Royal was also more than an expert in historical curse-breaking methods—she was herself one of the best curse-breakers in the world, and even semi-retired from curse-breaking at the early age of forty-nine, she still commanded a lot of respect in the niche world of curse-breaking. She was famous for her ethics and her results—when it came to artifacts and cultural objects that had the misfortune of being cursed, hexed, or bespelled in some unwelcome manner, she took the route of safety first, history second, money never.
Unless it came to collecting her due after turning in an invoice, then she was merciless. When an object’s provenance was contested by its culture of origin, she always insisted on handing it over to a local museum and refused to take money for it. It got her into a lot of legal trouble when she was younger, as colonial museums and private collectors were greedy for artifacts, but those troubles were easier to handle the more experienced she became—and the more allies she gained by restoring lost cultural treasures to the rightful owners. As a result, most ethical curse-breakers refused to work for private collectors and those peddling artifacts in the black market, and Ezra followed her lead on that trajectory for his own practices once he established himself after graduation.
As if thinking of her summoned the good doctor, a ping on his private phone alerted him to a text. He grumbled at having to move to reach it but managed without spilling either himself or Lilith to the floor, swiping it off the nightstand where the MERS phone stayed blessedly dark.
It was a text from Dr. Royal, and he smirked when he opened it.
Making sure you aren’t dead or buried in a government bunker being experimented upon.— Dr R
It was late, but with the slight time difference and her preference for late hours, he figured it wasn’t too late to have a text chat. Besides, she was clearly wide awake if she was poking at him via text.
Alive and well. Still working on the issue.—Ezra
A long pause, and he saw the dots in the message window as she typed out a reply. He hoped she wasn’t writing an essay, but more than likely she was trying to make it as succinct and sarcastic as possible. She hated wasting words, even digital ones.
5 days is your average, which means this artifact is not. Do you need help?—Dr R
Ezra considered it. He dropped the phone on his chest and went back to petting Lilith, thinking about the logistics of pulling his mentor out of her comfortable industrial loft and getting her and her three feline familiars over the international border and into Alberta, and wrangling MERS into extending the NDA. He was pragmatic enough to know he may need help, but he was hoping to give it a go himself first.
He plucked his phone off his chest and thumbed a reply.
If I can’t solve it on my own I’ll send for you. MERS, Alberta, Canada. Okay being read into foreign gov spec ops?—Ezra
