“Two roommates.” Zoe pulled out her small notebook and flipped a few pages. “You are with Juliana Rivas and,” she flipped another page, “and pending. I suppose you’ll find out when you get there.”
“I see.”
“If there is nothing else then?”
Eva shook her head.
“Then I will see you in Montana.” Zoe Baxter turned and vanished.
Eva frowned as the cool air breezed through the alley. She had forgotten about her guest until the end of their conversation. She was still mad at the demon, but she didn’t mean to neglect her for an entire day.
Hopefully she wouldn’t be too angry.
Hopefully she didn’t wander.
Eva sighed. Hopefully the blood trail would be easy to pick up.
— — —
Arachne was having a bad day.
She filled up the blood vials, perfectly of course. Not a speck of dust made it in.
She settled down on the lobby bench and waited for morning. Being a demon, Arachne never had the need for sleep. Still, it was a way to pass time without doing anything. So she tried to sleep.
It didn’t go over so well.
The dust in the lobby kept getting under her exoskeleton. It itched in every nook and cranny of her body. She wanted a bath.
Instead of sleeping, Arachne wandered the first floor. None of the appliances or plumbing worked, not that she expected it to, but there was nothing that wasn’t covered in decades of dust to help clean her off.
Arachne returned to the lobby and sat perfectly still. She didn’t want to disturb more dust or agitate the dust already on her.
And she waited.
When the sun finally decided to wake up and spread its tendrils of light, Arachne perked up. Her Eva would be up soon and there had to be something to help clean up on the second floor.
She waited. Her new master never descended. But Arachne wasn’t going to disappoint her Eva on the first day of their contract.
As the sun rose higher in the sky, Arachne felt a small doubt. She knew Eva had school, and that it started some time in the morning. Morning had long since passed. Shouldn’t her Eva be up by now?
She twitched. Had something happened to her new master?
Five more minutes. Arachne would wait in the lobby, unmoving. Five more minutes.
But her Eva never descended the stairs.
Worry began to fill Arachne. What if it were too late. Their contract—their connection—was still there, so her master wasn’t dead.
Arachne stood and approached the stairs. She paced at the bottom. Worry rising within her. She didn’t think her new master had added her blood to the blood wards. Not unless she had a spare vial of it upstairs.
But could she chance her new master being hurt beyond the wards?
She walked up the first step. One of her long legs extended from her waist. She held it out in front of her and cautiously moved to the second step. The third step.
At the forth step, her extended leg began tingling. Just a light tickle of a feeling.
The sixth step the tickle turned to a small burn.
By eight, the burn had turned to all out pain and the rest of her body started the tingling.
The moment her feet moved to the tenth step, her leg at the top of the staircase exploded into a shower of black viscera.
Arachne stepped down three steps, bringing her leg closer for inspection. She grinned at the bleeding stump. As expected of her Eva. She doubted even a full-fledged devil would be able to survive more than thirty seconds in that killing field.
Her smile slipped into a frown. If a devil couldn’t survive up there, what chance did she have.
She retracted her bloodied leg. It would heal quick enough, benefits of being a demon. Now she needed a new plan.
Arachne walked outside. The sun had crossed the high point in the sky and was slowly descending towards evening. Still her new master was missing.
Four undamaged legs sprouted from her back. She used them in conjunction with her clawed hands and feet to scale the outside of the building. She carefully approached the second floor, but the tingle of the blood wards didn’t reach outside the building.
Moving from room to room, Arachne searched for any sign of her master. Several of the rooms looked just as abandoned as the first floor. Some were cleaned. One was used as a miniature version of Devon Foster’s library. Another held shelves of potions.
One room had obviously been set up as a summoning chamber. A small black skull sat in the center, staring at Arachne with vacant eyes. As she moved, the skull seemed to follow her, yet even with eight eyes she couldn’t actually see it move.
Arachne didn’t like it. It was obviously demonic in origin. If someone was trying to steal her Eva…
The concrete wall cracked and fractured under her grip. She stopped and calmed herself with several deep breaths. Unless that skull had something to do with her master’s disappearance, she would deal with it later.
For now, she still had rooms to check.
Eventually she found a room with a slept in bed, no dust, and clothes tossed about the floor. It was on the opposite side of the building from the summoning room.
