Eva smiled as she folded the letter back up. That, at least, was some good news. An actual expert coming to look at the enigma could lead to a breakthrough.
“Good news?”
Eva suppressed a start as she glanced up. She had completely forgotten that Zoe was still in the common room. After having taken a seat in one of the chairs, Zoe had pulled out a stack of papers and started going through them in silence.
Essays, most likely. She assigned far too many for her own good.
“You could say that,” Eva said as she replaced the letter in its envelope. “Carlos is going to stop by the day after tomorrow to look at our icy little friend.”
Putting on a small frown, Zoe set down her current essay. “Is that a… wise idea?”
“Have him come here? Why not? He’s a magizoologist with several published books under his belt.” Eva thumbed over her shoulder at the pile of discarded books. “If he can’t help even a little bit, I don’t know who can.”
“I mean…” she trailed off, rubbing her forehead just above her eyebrow. “What I mean to say–”
“I know what you mean,” Eva said. “His wife and daughter had quite the hardships recently. Arguably because of me. And if not because of me, probably because of Arachne and Zagan, one of whom will be at the school. We’ll try to avoid him, I think.
“But I still want to be friends with Juliana. She is pretty much the first person that I’ve met who I have become friends with. Not counting Arachne. Sure, it started out mostly because I didn’t want to be seen as an extreme anti-social, and then because we were roommates, but we still became friends.”
Eva paused, thinking. They
Shaking her head, Eva moved on. “And I still want to be friends with Juliana. So consider this testing the waters. If Carlos absolutely hates me, then I suppose there won’t be much I could do. He and Genoa will probably cart Juliana off to some other school, if they don’t just home school her. Otherwise, maybe I can arrange to meet with Juliana. Perhaps just an afternoon at the coffee shop to start with.”
Such an encounter felt like it would be very awkward. Eva could imagine it now, both of them sitting across from each other and not doing more than nibbling at whatever food they ordered in absolute silence.
But baby steps. That could wait until after Carlos.
“In any case,” Eva said, lifting the envelope, “what is written here gives me some hope that he doesn’t loathe or fear me.”
Dropping the letter on the table, Eva reached over and pulled up the next book. Not one written by Carlos, but some other zoologist. She hesitated in opening it up.
All this creature research was getting in the way of her revenge against Sawyer. She really needed to be searching through blood magic books.
Eva frowned as she glanced over to Zoe, specifically her hands. The professor had returned to grading her papers. On the middle finger of her right hand rested a dark ring. It had been rotated so that the skull engraving was on the inside of her hand, but it was unmistakably Ylva’s ring. The void metal made it quite obvious.
Juliana had a ring like that. Presumably, she was still wearing it. Did Sawyer still want it? Was she in danger from Sawyer just by being off on her own?
