“Oh, this is Wayne Lurcher. A colleague. He was hospitalized until today. I think I’ve mentioned him.” Zoe turned to Wayne. “This is Ylva. A, ah, demon.”
“Yeah,” Wayne said with a grunt. “We’ve met.”
Zoe felt her eyebrows rise as she turned back to Ylva.
“Your impropriety in failing to greet Ourself upon entering Our domain has been noted.”
Only after Wayne gave a light shrug did Ylva turn her gaze to Zoe.
“You required something of Us?”
Zoe blinked. It took a moment to remember what she wanted in the first place. “The nun, the prisoner. I need her for an experiment. Possibly a solution.”
“Regrettable. Ali has escaped as planned.”
“That’s…” Zoe’s shoulders slumped. “Is it too late to recall her?”
“Should Ali’s former companions notice her return here, she will become compromised. We will recover her when We recover Nel. Are you unable to enact this solution on your own.”
Zoe frowned. “I’d have to create a whole new spell to emulate their lightning. It is possible, but it would take a lot more time.”
Plans for a few variations of nun lightning flashed through her mind. It helped that she had thought about the topic in the past. There would be complications.
Zoe glanced to her side. Wayne would be able to help. He knew a good amount of non-standard magic.
“I’ll get started,” Zoe said, “but it may be faster to recover Nel. Do we have a time frame for that?”
Blue lips curled into a smile.
“Soon.”
—
The theory was sound.
Elysium lightning would work. Either Ylva had to undo her halting of the curse or Zoe’s counter-curse would break the effect. But the lightning should overpower and consume the curse before it could spread further.
Zoe sighed.
Poor Charlie.
Watching yet another rat slide down into the incinerator weighed on Zoe’s conscience. Charlie, being one of the oldest of her experiments, especially hurt.
Zoe’s attempts at replicating the white lightning still needed work.
She had selected him specifically because Zoe had thought that she might be able to save him had anything gone wrong by severing his tail. It had been going so well too, but she had underestimated the tenacity of the curse.
After applying her counter-curse, it started off working exactly as intended. Her magic sought out and destroyed all magic within the rat. Simultaneously healing Charlie had his tail growing back beyond the point of the cut, though the healing efforts were stymied by her counter-curse before too much could happen.
The moment Zoe had smiled to herself and relaxed back in her chair, things started going wrong.
Her counter-curse ended up eating itself before it could completely eradicate the entirety of the curse.
Zoe snapped her gloves off and dropped them into the incinerator along with poor Charlie. Shutting the lid, Zoe watched and waited as the magic did its work. Soon enough, nothing but ashes remained.
She had crossed out no more than three errant lines in her theory before the door slammed into the wall as it opened.
Zoe gave a light start. Her dagger was in her hands in an instant.
She didn’t attack. “Devon?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.
The trench-coated man took two steps into the room. One of his arms writhed and squirmed beneath the coat. The small bit that poked out looked like something from a giant squid.
Zoe suppressed a shudder as he glanced at the still warm incinerator.
“No success?”
“Getting there. Any fascinating insights from you today?”
His suggestion that all of her work might fail on account of Eva’s ‘quasi-demonic nature’ had almost caused Zoe to toss out all of her work with the rats. She would have to retest everything on demons anyway.
Aside from Arachne–she had immediately volunteered for testing–demons were in a distressingly short supply. Apparently she couldn’t just summon up some to start experimenting on. If she failed to convince a demon to submit to experimentation, she would have to dominate it. Tricking a demon into a false sense of security was against some ‘rules’ that Zoe had yet to come across in any of the books that Eva had loaned her.
Needless to say, Zoe was far from confident in her ability to dominate a demon’s will.
A short snort escaped him. “When you are ready to test on a demon, let me know. In the mean time…
“Us?”
“Everyone.”
That got Zoe to perk up. “Has something happened with Nel or Alicia?” Her pulse jumped as another thought occurred to her. “Or Juliana and Shalise? Are they alright? Nothing happened to th–”
Devon held up a hand–a tentacle. “Why don’t we head over and find out straight from the horse’s mouth? It didn’t sound mad or upset, but who can tell with that thing anyhow.”
Nodding, Zoe stacked her notebooks and dropped them into a drawer.
Devon and Zoe walked side-by-side as they moved to the conference room. Carlos, Genoa–soaked in sweat–and Arachne–covered in dirt–joined them partway there.
