“Be that as it may, you could have at least sent off a message to us earlier.” With an exasperation-filled sigh, Zoe glanced over into the cell. Immediately, she winced. “She looks… Is she going to be alright?”
“Fine enough,” Eva said. “She’s actually mending her skin on her own. Maybe I’ll toss in a few potions if she is on her best behavior.”
“Really?” Zoe said, pressing closer to the cell for a better look. After a moment of inspection and apparently not finding what she was looking for, Zoe frowned. “Are you sure?”
“It is excruciatingly slow, but yes.”
Zoe hummed for a moment before pulling away. “Alright,” she said slowly as she turned to face Eva. “Now, what exactly happened and what are we going to do about her?”
Sighing, Eva wondered if she shouldn’t just call in everyone for a quick meeting. It would save a lot on the repetition.
Unfortunately for Eva, Ylva turned her attention towards Eva as well. Resigned, she started explaining everything from the start.
It was all Eva could do to keep in her irritation when Wayne wandered in fifteen minutes later asking what had happened.
— — —
Irene’s arm trembled as she sketched out a wide circle on the floor. The chalk in her hands left a trail of excess dust from the unsteady pressure, much of which smeared under her sweaty palms. Droplets of sweat fell from her brow, landing on her chalk and further marring her circle.
“You call that a circle? Looks more like an egg.”
Pausing for a moment, Irene looked at her drawing. It looked great. She had used string attached to her chalk and the center point. Unless the school had some computerized circle drawing laser machine, it was as perfect of a circle as anyone would be getting.
In fact, glancing over some of the other groups’ summoning circles, Irene was sure that hers was by far the best even taking into account the sweat droplets and other minor errors.
Gritting her teeth, Irene shot a glare at her partner, Randal Hemwick.
He sat on top of one of the tables that had been shoved aside, lightly swinging his dangling feet as he frowned at her drawing. Apart from constant criticisms, he hadn’t offered the slightest bit of help. And his criticisms were more complaints than anything useful.
Though him not helping was mostly her fault.
“I don’t want to summon a demon with something that shoddy,” he said, brushing a hand through his light gray hair. “Couldn’t you add some flourish to some of the designs? If your circle works at all, any demons we summon would be offended at your poor craftsmanship. And you’re so slow. Look,” he pointed, “those two groups are already done.”
Following his finger, Irene frowned. Had they looked at the book more than once? Despite her not having the actual summoning part of the circle memorized, she could see plentiful errors in the shackles. And those, as she firmly believed, were by far the most important part if people wanted to stay alive.
“Go draw your own if you hate it so much,” Irene said, grumbling more to herself than for her ‘partner’ to hear.
He heard anyway. “Aww, Irene. I would, but then who would summon your demon for you?”
Irene winced before falling silent. That had been their agreement. She would draw the entire summoning array and he would do the summoning.
But when he put it like that, it made it sound like she was frightened.
She was. Still, he didn’t need to say it so loud.
Choosing to ignore him, Irene returned to drawing out the lines, curves, circles, and so on. Almost every mark she made on the floor got double-checked in the book.
“No!”
The sudden shout caused Irene to jump. Her chalk went sliding across a small portion of her circle, ruining the last five minutes of work.
Sighing, she looked over to what caused the disturbance.
“If I can walk through your shackles without even trying, an imp will overpower them without breaking a sweat.” Catherine swiped her high-heeled foot through the circle on the ground, ruining perhaps the entire hour’s worth of work. “Do it again or watch another group.”
With that said, the succubus wandered off to evaluate another circle.
That was a relief at least. When Catherine had announced that today they would change the fact that this diablery class contained no diabolists, Irene had worried a lot that she was going to take up her usual routine of not supervising the students. She would feel much better had Eva shown up–Eva seemed to be far more responsible of the two, a scary thought on its own–but an active Catherine was good enough so far.
Picking up a fresh corner of her cleaning cloth, Irene set to work removing all traces of her mistake. It didn’t take long, and redrawing the affected lines as she erased sped up the process by skipping over the need to double-check in the book.
She still did, of course. But not until everything had been redrawn.
Setting down her book, Irene jumped.
Randal had slid off of the desk and was leaning uncomfortably close.
