Void Domain, Book 04 полностью

Catherine blinked, not quite sure she had heard him correctly. In the end, she shook her head. It didn’t matter to her one way or the other. Maybe if she was lucky, the idiot would actually summon Zagan. If she was really lucky, Zagan would be in a murderous mood for being disturbed.

Without Anderson hanging over her shoulder, she would be free to return to properly educating the ignorant mortals.

Sighing, Catherine turned to the short stack of papers on her desk.

“Now,” she mumbled to herself, “where did I put those dice?”

—

Sterile.

If there was one word to describe Zoe Baxter’s apartment, Sterile would be it.

The apartment building itself was of the seedier type. Probably the best one in Brakket despite that. There really were no good apartment buildings in Brakket. Most were half-abandoned at best.

But the difference between one step inside Baxter’s room and one step out in the hallway might as well be the difference between a desert and a jungle.

Someone had done a real number on the place. Catherine’s nose couldn’t detect the faintest trace of any sort of remains she had expected to find–from past tenants if not Baxter herself.

Catherine pressed the door shut behind her, cushioning the noise with a small bit of air magic. As much as the apartment was supposed to be empty, Catherine didn’t feel like taking too many chances. At the same time, she wasn’t exactly trying to hide her presence. She could have made a stealthier approach than walking in through the front door.

Still, since Martina had delegated the acquisition of the room to Catherine, getting a second key had been child’s play–human children at that.

Why the school had to buy her an apartment, Catherine never bothered to ask. She had learned enough about the mortal realm to understand that normal employees whose houses had burned down were essentially left to fend for themselves. There might be a community pot to chip in, but rarely more.

Dismissing the tangent, Catherine crept into the apartment proper. It was minimalistic. A table, two chairs, and a couch pressed up against the window were the only pieces of furniture in the room. The kitchen had appliances, though those had come with the apartment. No decorations, paintings, plants, or anything to suggest that the place was actually lived in.

She brushed her fingers across the top of the dining room table. Her fingers came off clean.

Ignoring the main room, Catherine moved into the bedroom–the only other real room in the place.

Much like the rest of the apartment, the bedroom was clear of most personal effects. Her bed had plain sheets–picked up in a hurry no doubt. The only thing that really stood out was the desk and the heavy-looking safe at its side.

Ignoring the safe for now, Catherine pulled out the chair, sat at the desk, and started rifling through. A good deal of the papers were actually students’ work. That would explain the small gap in the grade book between Baxter’s vacation and Catherine taking over.

Catherine tossed the papers to the side. That small gap had already been resolved through repeated application of dice rolls. Whatever was written down was, therefore, worthless.

The next notebook gave Catherine pause. The title was simply Black Metal Ring. It didn’t take much to guess what this was about. Catherine had felt the effects of the ring more than once over the last several months. Baxter didn’t have it on constantly, which defeated the purpose for the most part, but she wore it often enough. Especially after her house burned down.

Sure enough, the first entry was about her initial contact with the ring, how it felt, and other such details. It quickly delved into experiments on the ring itself as well as a few tests involving creatures from the Brakket Academy zoo–all inconclusive or complete failures with regards to fending off some of the more hostile creatures.

From there, Catherine had to widen her eyes. According to the notes, Baxter was attempting to recreate the initial effects that she had felt. The ones that, if Catherine understood correctly, not only ‘keyed’ Baxter to the ring but were the exact thing that caused intense foreboding in demons towards the bearer.

Ambitious. Catherine would give her that. Doomed to failure of course. The magic that powered the rings was Death’s magic. Not just anyone could toss that around.

Sure enough, the next page was riddled with failure notices. Zero successes unless Catherine was going to count her finding out all the ways in which applying Death magic did not work–and Catherine was not about to give her that.

Chilly air caressing her skin broke Catherine out of her thoughts. It was a very unnatural chill.

Catherine snapped the notebook shut, slid it back into the desk, and stood from her seat.

Her breath caught in her throat as she turned to face possibly the second worst demon in the area.