The main target of her return trip, aside from the books, wasn’t in the closet. Eva spun back to the room with a handful of skirts in arm. She dropped them in a pile around the center of the room before she ducked under her bed.
A small smile split across Eva’s face. There it was.
Eva stretched her claws beneath the bed and dragged out the small bag.
Sunlight pouring from the window glinted off the shined metal when Eva opened the bag. Gold. All the gold she stole from the museum over a year prior. Originally it had been there to cover her theft of her new favorite bloodstone capped dagger.
Who knew when it might come in useful. Brackets, rings, necklaces, earrings. It wasn’t all that much, but it was far more than nothing.
Eva dropped the bag of gold down on the pile of skirts. She had one thing left to do. Eva rolled up a sleeve of her shirt.
Drawing her void dagger from its sheath against her back, Eva jammed it straight into her forearm–just above the hardened carapace of her hands. A blob of blood spilled forth and gathered in the air a few inches from her.
A flick of her arm had her flesh mending back together. In the same smooth motion, Eva sheathed her dagger.
With a twist of her fingers, she added the blood to the existing wards. Eva wasn’t about to risk the wards either failing or rejecting her after too many treatments. Even if the hospital had regained its abandoned status, it could always serve as a good fall-back safe house.
If she had the time, she’d add an infernal walk gate. Teleporting cross-country wasn’t something she was looking forward to attempting in any case. She still needed the gate just for getting to and from the prison.
It was probably all psychological these days. Eva knew in her head that a gate wasn’t required. Much like clapping her hands to obliterate her blood, the gate served as a focusing crutch. One she used out of fear.
Trying to obliterate blood without clapping wasn’t scary. The worst that would happen was nothing at all. She’d already failed an infernal walk once and Eva did not have any desires to wind up in Hell again.
Juliana might have given her an escape in that situation, but it wasn’t something she wished to test. She had escaped with Arachne the first time on the technicality of still being human. If that same technicality prevented her from using her own beacon, Eva would be stuck again.
Even if she could use it, she still had to figure out how.
Luckily, she didn’t have the time to draw a gateway circle. Keeping Zoe waiting too long might see her entering the building despite the warning of the wards Eva gave.
Eva gathered up the gold and the clothes into the gold bag and almost ran into Arachne back in the hall.
“Got all the books?”
Arachne held up the suitcase they’d brought as if that were all the answer she needed to give.
They walked down–Arachne once again hit the corpse with the suitcase–and Eva made sure to grab the book showing everyone in the building out of the lobby. It would be easier to modify it for the prison than to create a new one. Part of it could be left alone for the hospital, though Eva wasn’t sure it would work long distance.
Something to test later.
Outside, Eva walked right up to Zoe Baxter. The professor stood against a wall of the hospital.
“Got everything?”
“Yep, all cleaned out.”
“Sure you don’t have anyone you want to say hello to while in town?”
“We already popped in and said hello to Doctor Thompson’s veterinary clinic. I don’t think I know anyone else in Florida.” Eva certainly did not wish to say hello to Todd or Michael. They weren’t half important enough to warrant consideration.
Zoe gave a light frown, but nodded anyway. “Let’s head back then.” She held out both hands. Eva took one while Arachne shrank and latched onto Eva’s chest.
Eva smiled as her professor didn’t flinch at either the clawed hands touching her or Arachne’s spontaneous transformation.
The smile vanished from her face as the world fell away. Cold set in. She almost shook her hand out of Zoe’s iron-like grip before the world righted itself.
Eva and Arachne collapsed to the floor of her prison, shaking and shuddering.
— — —
“D-Didn’t he die?”
“That’s what I heard.”
“I watched it happen,” Eva said. “He fell from three or four stories. Head first.”
Juliana glanced back at the man behind the counter. His sunken in eyes scanned back and forth over a book he held in pencil-thin fingers. One hand raised to scratch at his hairline. It went back to the book without even being wiped off despite the still-wet-looking gel covering his hair.
