So Eva just waited with a polite smile on her face. Hoping Juliana and Shalise returned quickly.
Luckily they did not dilly-dally. They brought back a plate of nachos each. Eva wondered if that was the only thing the club served. Juliana did not look overly pleased with it, at the very least.
Shalise was the one who managed to get a conversation going. She was much better at these things than Eva or Juliana. Talking about school was even a safe topic for Eva. Something she was very glad about when Jordan turned his masked face to her.
“Figure out your element yet? You were having problems with it if I remember right.”
“I can’t do a tiny bit of water magic which would normally mean my affinity is fire, right?” At Jordan nodding his head, Eva continued, “I don’t think I’m especially good at fire magic or air and earth. Chaos magic feels the best to use, honestly. That could be because it is the only real magic I knew before school.”
“You knew chaos magic before attending school?” Eva couldn’t see his face, but his voice sounded intrigued.
“Only a little. A darkness spell and a blink that apparently isn’t a proper blink.” She demonstrated by stepping past Juliana and onto the open floor then back to her seat.
It had taken her months to perfect stepping into a sitting position. Most tries ended up with her either standing on the chair or standing in front of it.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t even see if Jordan was impressed. Max spoke up in his place.
“I want to learn that. No. I need to learn that.” He batted his eyes and looked at Eva. “Teach me please?”
Shelby spoke before Eva could. “You can barely manage simple water spells and that is supposed to be your element. If you try that, you’ll wind up cutting yourself to pieces.”
The large boy deflated a bit at that. He puffed back up and drew his fist in front of himself with confidence. “I’ll start taking my studies seriously if it means I can teleport around.”
Eva quirked her eyebrow at that and shook her head. It was magic. He wasn’t taking it seriously? He might as well have just stayed in a regular school.
“That was impressive,” Jordan said. “Don’t worry too much though. Fire is supposedly the hardest of the four. As an earth mage, I’m finding it extra difficult.”
“Same,” Irene said.
Shelby frowned at Irene. “I don’t think I’ve found fire to be too hard and I’m air. At least not the warming spell and light spell we learned in class.”
“Hey,” Irene dropped her voice to a whisper, “is it just me or has that Phantom been staring at us for a while?”
Eva glanced up along with everyone else.
Arachne stood at the top of the stairs wearing a phantom mask. It covered four eyes on her forehead, but both her gleaming red eyes as well as a smaller eye beneath her left were visible. Not to mention the black carapace and sharp teeth that filled her grin.
The black tendrils that made up her hair had been swept back and lay in perfectly straight lines.
The rest of her was covered in a black suit with a red vest and black tie on a black shirt. She didn’t have shoes on and she didn’t have anything hiding her long fingers either.
Eva almost jumped to her feet. She might have if she hadn’t been so shocked at Arachne actually wearing clothes.
Juliana, on the other hand, did jump up.
Irene turned to them with a raised eyebrow. “Someone you know?”
“Ah, maybe. I’ll go speak with her,” Eva said.
She stepped straight from her seat to Arachne before anyone could say anything.
“What are you doing?” Eva half hissed.
“It is fine,” Arachne said with a wave of her hand, “we went trick-or-treating that one time and nobody cared.”
“That was different. Everyone over there has seen your spider form. They’ll notice similarities if not draw the correct conclusions outright.”
A long needly finger pointed at the phantom mask. “That’s why I’m disguised. You didn’t think I’d wear clothes for fun, did you?”
“So what, where have you even been all day?”
“It took longer than expected to steal these clothes without being noticed.”
“You could have asked me.”
“I wanted it to be a surprise. Are you surprised?”
“Very,” Eva deadpanned.
The smile that grew on Arachne’s face was so genuine that Eva had a hard time maintaining her anger. She almost felt bad that Arachne couldn’t walk over and join their table.
“So,” Eva said, “what do you want?”
“A dance.”
“I…” Eva glanced over the railing. “No one is even dancing.”
“More people to watch us.”
“I’ve never danced a day in my life.”
“I know,” Arachne’s gentle smile never wavered. “We’ll run to the bathroom and have a crash course. Enough to keep you on your feet, at least. And even after, I won’t mind if you step on mine.”
Eva bit her lip. What a cruel demon. How could she show up looking so earnest. “Alright. Meet me in the bathroom. I’m going to explain at least a little to the others.”
Arachne nodded and turned to the second floor bathrooms.
Eva stepped straight back to the table.
“Someone you know?” Irene asked again.
“Yeah, friend of mine from Florida. She decided to visit unexpectedly today.”
