Eva turned her head back to give her colorful master a look. She wasn’t sure it had the same effect without eyes. Not that she’d ever intimidated her master with a look.
Wayne’s eyes continued their focus on Eva. “What kind of things are going down?” He sounded cowed, slightly.
Eva shrugged. “He’s the demonologist. I’m really a lot more normal than you might think despite the company I keep.”
“To put it short,” Devon said, “a demon ranking in the seventy-two–those are the big ones no one should be crazy enough to mess with–attacked some of the nuns. There was one death for sure, though I believe the demon allowed its other target to escape.”
“Escape? The nun said kidnapped.”
“That just means the missing nun hasn’t returned to the sisters.” Devon shrugged his shoulders. “Or she got hunted down later and no body has been found yet. I lost the trail somewhere in the alleyways near the house.”
“You said Zoe Baxter was indisposed,” Eva said, “is she hurt?”
“She says she’s fine, but she’s been holed up in her office since yesterday. She hasn’t come out even to speak with her students,” Wayne sighed lightly, gaze drifting off to the side. His eyes snapped back to Eva. “Not that she needs your insincere concern.”
Eva crossed her arms and tilted her head to one side. “Why would you think that? I genuinely like Zoe Baxter.”
Devon gave her an odd look from behind her back. He clearly did not agree.
The four stared at each other. Arachne started drumming her sharp fingers into her legs. The clicks were the only sound in the quiet prison.
“Did Zoe actually know about all this?” He waved his hands around, mostly towards Eva and Arachne. “About your hands?”
“She did. She had a chat with Arachne,” Eva gestured to her silent companion. “She’s even keyed into my wards in my home now.”
Devon took half a step back. “What.”
Eva waved him off. “My home. I decide who comes and goes.”
“That.” Wayne pointed. “Arachne?” His hand pressed against his forehead and slid down his face. “Your pet tarantula. That thing lived in the dorms?”
Arachne let out a low growl. “Used to. Not anymore.”
“Because of the nuns,” Eva clarified. “I don’t think they’d take too kindly to her.”
A silence descended on the group again. Devon apparently got fed up with it. Without a word, he turned and slunk back into the women’s ward.
Eva shifted uncomfortably under the alchemy professor’s glare. Even without being able to see the slate gray of his eyes, they still held a piercing look.
“So what now?” Eva asked.
His answer could determine her future. She very much wanted to know if it was time to retreat to Florida, or even elsewhere. The prison had grown on her, a lot, since she came here. Leaving both it and the school would be something tragic.
“You weren’t the cause of whatever made Zoe lock herself away?”
Eva shook her head. “I am concerned to hear that myself.”
Wayne Lurcher spat on the ground.
Her ground. Her prison walkway.
“I need to talk to Zoe.” He turned and hobbled a few paces away.
Eva winced. His legs didn’t look all that bad to her vision. Her own shoulder didn’t hurt unless she knocked it against something. Walking had to be a nightmare if the same was true for him.
“I’m no hypocrite.” He paused and turned back to Eva. “Let it never be said that I treat my own students differently from others.”
Whatever he was saying, it wasn’t making sense to Eva. It was mostly under his breath. Talking to himself, probably. Without any directions, Eva stood there, staring at him.
“Well?”
Eva tilted her head to one side. “Well what?”
“Are you coming back or not?”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Eva said. She couldn’t help shifting her weight to one foot and lightly tapping the other on the ground.
“What’s not to understand?”
“Are you going to be alerting demon hunters?”
“Alerting hunters?” He flailed one of his hands in her direction the way he did when someone screwed up big time in his class. She’d never had that flail pointed in her direction. “I came out here to bring you back to the dorms. That’s what I’m going to do. You can explain how you got out of a locked room on your own.
“If you would hurry, that’d be great. I need to have several
Eva glanced at Arachne. It was less to see her and more to elicit a response from the spider-woman. That response ended up being a mere shrug of her shoulders.
With a sigh, Eva turned back to Wayne Lurcher. “Alright.” She walked up to him. Arachne followed with her claw gripped around Eva’s good arm.
Wayne clasped a large hand over her other shoulder.
Eva winced. “How are your legs?”
“Fine. How’s your shoulder–” His grip loosened slightly as he cut himself off. No apology.
The stinging sensation that spiderwebbed across her back lessened slightly. Eva would have preferred him moving his hand to her other shoulder.
“What do you think you’re doing?” He glared at Arachne. His heart rate didn’t jump in the slightest.
“I’m going too.”
