To call it a shed was a bit of a misnomer, considering it was nearly the same square footage as the house.
“Dad?” Raum called as he entered the shed, his father’s laboratory spread out in a wild mix of tables, cases, supplies, shelves, and machinery. He had no idea what half the stuff was in the lab, and what he did recognize made him sigh in exasperation and some alarm. “Don’t touch anything, and don’t knock into anything,” he warned Ezra, who came in after him, and Ezra nodded, eyes wide and clearly curious.
Music was playing—he recognized the energetic Celtic music playlist that his father played when he was in an experimenting mood—and followed the music to the rear of the lab, the automated ventilation system humming overhead.
“Dad?” he called again, this time louder, trying to be heard over the music playing over the sound system and the vents overhead pulling away the fumes from whatever his father was creating.
He found Nórr at the table in the back corner he’d creatively named the alchemist’s station, sitting on a stool and hunched over a pile of what appeared to be crushed crystals and a clear viscous fluid in a shallow glass dish; there was a tendril of smoke rising where the crystals and fluid made contact.
“Dad!” Raum found his father’s phone and turned off the music, setting the phone back on the table, but a bit farther away from the smoking ingredients of whatever his father was cooking up.
The sudden absence of the music finally got through to his father and Nórr looked up, blinking hard. “What?” he asked, looking around, finally noticing his father, son, and Ezra all watching him with various expressions of concern, worry, and fascination. “What’s going on?”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” Saemund lamented, gesturing to the phone. “I should have tried that first.”
Raum rolled his eyes and turned back to his father. “Dad, how long have you been at it?”
“Oh, not long? Your mother kissed me goodbye a few minutes ago, I’m sure. She just left,” Nórr said absently, rubbing at his face and eyes. Smoke continued to curl into the air from the dish, the smoke getting sucked up into the vents that were hanging above each work station.
“Freya left hours ago, my dear boy,” Saemund said, shaking his head. “You’ve been ignoring phone calls and texts all day, and ignored me when I was here earlier.”
“You were here?” Nórr asked, confused at the thought, and he finally sat up from his hunched-over position and groaned as he stretched his back and arms. “I would have seen you here, surely.”
“You know how you get when you’re crafting, my dear boy,” Saemund said, and he pointed to the dish in front of Nórr. “That’s on fire now.”
A blue flame was merrily burning in the glass dish, and Nórr yelped and grabbed a fireproof cloth and slapped it over top of the dish, extinguishing the flames, though a bit of the viscous fluid splattered out onto the table and began sizzling, trying to eat through the metal surface. Raum reached over the table to the small shelf built above it on the wall, grabbing the container of baking soda, which he sprinkled over the spots that were sizzling, neutralizing the mysterious fluid. He’d spent many hours in the lab with his father as a boy, and this was a habit, even years later.
Nórr was mostly High Court Sidhe, merely a quarter human, and he healed like one. He lacked any permanent scars or marks from his various experiments over the years since he took up alchemy as a hobby. If he had more human blood in him he’d likely be covered in scars, and might have more caution as a result.
Ezra
“What are you making?”Ezra asked, coming closer and eyeing the items laid out across the surface of the table. Raum leaned against the table with one hip, crossing his arms, and Ezra inched in a bit between Raum and his father, admiring the thick, veiny forearms Raum sported before focusing on Nórr and his project.
“Charms,” Nórr said immediately, spinning to face Ezra on his stool and smiling wide, though it was a bit of a feral expression. “And potions, but that was earlier. They’re cooking for now.” He paused, then leaned over a bit on his stool to lookpast Ezra into the maze of the chaotic lab. “Yup, still cooking.” He sat back and spun back to the table and the ingredients in front of him. “This is a charm to make all hot coffee drinks within a certain radius immediately go cold.”
Ezra blinked down at the mixture in front of Nórr, and hummed a bit to himself. It looked like he was using crystallized caffeine and something entirely new that Ezra had never seen before, and the inherent energies of the combination under the fireproof scrap of cloth was muted, but almost what Nórr needed to pull off a cold-coffee charm. Useful in summer, but then Nórr didn’t seem to be in a generous mood so perhaps there was some mischief behind his creation. It was something he’d never heard of before, but then he liked his coffee hot.
“Someone made you mad, didn’t they?” Ezra took a guess.
Nórr shot him a sharp glance full of glee and mischief. “Lots of people have made me mad. There used to be a list, but I got too old and the list too long, so now I just make charms that fuck up annoying people’s days.”
“And other things,” Raum muttered. “Who pissed you off now?”
“An annoying man at the local coffee shop. He cuts in line every day, is rude to the staff and baristas, and never picks up his trash from the tables. Every. Single. Day.”
“Won’t the staff get in trouble if the hot coffee goes cold all at once if you use the charm in the cafe?” Ezra asked, thinking about the logistics of getting it on the person without it affecting others.
Charms didn’t have long lifespans like cursed objects or artifacts did, but they could go wrong all too easily if not made by a professional. Though they were simple to diffuse for Ezra—he merely overloaded them with energy and they burnt out. Other people who didn’t have the power to spare for such an option paid for it instead, or traded skills, or in cases of a charmbeing used in a crime, the police typically had wizards capable of deactivating them on staff.
“That’s why it’s going in his car and has a radius of five feet,” Nórr declared with determination, practically glowing with satisfaction. “Are you going to turn me in to the police?”
Ezra snorted out a laugh. “I’m a US citizen in Canada for work. It’s none of my business what you do for fun.”
Nórr cackled in glee. “I like you.”
Ezra smiled wide, happy that his date’s father liked him enough to say it out loud.
“What’s your catalyst for the charm’s spell?” Ezra asked, and he leaned a bit into Raum while talking to Nórr. Raum settled a large, warm hand on Ezra’s hip and held on firmly, tugging Ezra back into his side so they were plastered together from shoulder to thigh.
