As amusing as that might be.
The rumor about Eva being involved was far harder to dismiss.
Zoe didn’t believe the girl to be responsible. She had taken steps to prevent the school from being involved in the nun riot at the end of the previous semester. No one had even been hurt there. Turning around and dropping an army of monsters on Brakket’s front porch just didn’t seem like her style.
The lack of her presence was somewhat damning enough on its own. Zoe might have suspected her of doing something even if she had been present. Eva had promised to inform Zoe of any major plans and Zoe was going to trust that she would until she proved otherwise. That was the only reason she was leaning towards Eva having nothing to do with the day’s events.
Zoe didn’t know what to make of Miss Coggins’ absence. To the best of her knowledge, she had never missed a single class. While Zoe had seen her around Eva’s little group, Irene was always more of an outlier–a hanger-on.
She didn’t know enough about Miss Coggins to make an accurate guess as to what would have caused her to miss class. That was a failure of her own. There would always be students she interacted with more often than others, but Irene was often quiet and rarely spoke up on her own.
Both girls missing at once had troublesome implications. The thought that more students than just Eva had ended up involved with anything that Eva touched was more than a little concerning.
Zoe took her eyes off her class for a moment as she scanned the rest of the room. It was far too crowded to pick out any individuals. The professors were relatively easy to pick out even among the older students. All save for Bradley and Franklin wore suits of some type.
Few of her colleagues were having the same success as Zoe at keeping their students quiet. The Brakket gymnasium was a veritable roar of panicked students and a handful of panicked teachers. Poor Yuria looked like she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
One voice stood out over the rabble of the crowd.
“Six of my students are missing.”
With a frown, Zoe turned to the squeak of a voice. Her eyes narrowed as she caught sight of the culprit.
She’d been too busy with keeping all of her own students together to pay attention to the other woman’s class. It came as no surprise that the rest of Rickenbacker three-thirteen disappeared to wherever Eva was. She put far too much faith in the other woman’s ability to keep the class together.
The older witch touched the tips of her fingernails together over and over again as she spoke to one of the security personnel. Her normal confidence in the face of everything was gone–dashed by Zoe’s own students.
She was only aware of four students missing. Irene and Zoe’s girls. Who were the other two missing?
Zoe glanced over to the other professor’s class. It didn’t take long to notice the lack of Miss Coggins’ other half and Mr. Anderson.
“I’m sorry,” the guard said. “Orders are to stay here. I’ll send out a notification to the others, but I haven’t heard from them since they went outside.”
His voice was far more subdued than Alari’s nervous voice. He was young, but projected a serious air around him. Between the roar of the students and his subtle voice, he may as well have been whispering. Only through carefully enhancing her sense of hearing did the volume become a non-issue for Zoe.
Zoe turned and walked up to Alari. “Watch my class. I’ll find them.”
The security guard turned towards Zoe. “Ma’am, I’m not suppose–”
She didn’t have the time to argue with an uninformed guard. Zoe twitched her dagger. The walls of the gym fell apart into the featureless white of between. All the people disappeared along with the rest of reality.
The hallway leading to the gym built up around Zoe. Immediately, she set off down the hall. She gave a cursory glance into each room, just in case there were other students that had been left behind.
Checking the entire school was not a viable option. It was doubtful that any of her girls were inside. They’d be out where all the action was.
Zoe was already regretting allowing Shalise and Juliana out of her sight. Juliana managed to be a skilled combatant at the very least. Zoe only barely scraped by in their duels during the summer seminars–that was entirely thanks to Zoe stacking the deck in her favor.
It was a fair tactic. Fights in real life were rarely even.
But dragging along Shalise… That was plain irresponsible. Even if she had the rune gloves to help her with attacks, she wasn’t ready for a fight. She didn’t have the mindset for it.
