“Perhaps,” Catherine said, her chair grinding back against the tiles as she stood, “you should move on to the ‘enigma.’ Your greetings can be exchanged later; at some point in time when I am not required to be here observing this disgusting display of social diarrhea.”
Eva could have done without that last line, but apart from that, all she was thinking was
“Right.” Eva clapped her hands together. “Um, just follow us?”
Heading out of the office lobby and into Brakket Academy proper, Eva kept just a few steps ahead of Juliana and Erich while Carlos trailed behind them. Catherine took up the rear, absolutely failing at her job of keeping an eye on the guests if all the noises coming from her cellphone were any indication.
The short walk passed in silence. And not the good, comfortable type of silence. Eva had a number of questions that she wanted to ask of Juliana, but with Erich sticking at her side and Juliana not at Eva’s side, it felt like an insurmountable task.
So instead, Eva used the walk to reflect. Partially on Juliana and the distance she was keeping, but mostly on herself.
Why was it so hard to talk to her? Eva had never had a problem like this. Mostly because she cared very little for what other people thought of her. Awkward situations were a snap to avoid when your only friends were a potentially insane old man and a spider demon.
But even after coming to Brakket and meeting Juliana, Shalise, Jordan, Irene, Shelby, and even Max, Eva had not had trouble interacting with them. And that included immediately after her gloves came off–so to speak–about demons and Arachne.
Really, all of them, save for Max and Irene to an extent, cared far less about the whole diablery thing than Eva had been expecting.
This, here and now, was a completely different feeling. Arachne had almost killed her friend’s mother. Under the influence of another demon or not, that was more than enough to cause a rift. Especially since they knew that Eva still associated with Arachne.
But still, she should be able to
Maybe it was something else then. Carlos and Erich? That was a whole lot more likely. Eva did care what Carlos thought to an extent. Not quite the levels of what she cared about Juliana’s thoughts. And Erich, Eva had only just met him. With no real opinions set in stone, she only cared about what he thought as an extension of what Juliana might think if he ended up hating her.
“Alright,” Eva said as she pushed open the door. “Inside that large ice block is the creature. I do have some information about it from other sources, but I think that I would rather hear your uninfluenced opinion to start with.”
“Is there a reason,” Carlos said as he readjusted his glasses again, “that you two are here instead of the dean or the school’s magizoology professor?”
Eva blinked. She had been expecting him to rush up to the enigma and start examining it, or whatever a magizoologist did when they came across a potentially undiscovered species.
“I’m not sure about the dean,” Eva said with a glance towards Catherine.
The succubus just shrugged and went back to her cellphone.
“Professor Twillie is on the outside of the loop because of the nature of the creature and how it arrived. Zoe should be here before long, she was just taking care of overseeing a makeup test that will be ending soonish.”
“That’s a summoning circle,” Juliana said, quirking an eyebrow at Eva. “It is a demon then? You think my dad has a better chance of identifying it than Devon?”
Eva nodded. “It is a summoning circle. Every other line in the room is a shackle. The creature is not a demon, however. The intended target of the circle was an imp. Catherine, myself, and Zagan have all confirmed that the circle should have summoned an imp. This arrived instead.”
The creature’s method of arriving had been included in her letter, so confirming that didn’t reveal anything new, unless Juliana hadn’t read the letter.
“Very well,” Carlos said, stepping towards the ice block. “Is it possible to melt the ice?”
“Yeah. It’s just regular ice. A fresh layer gets frozen on once a day by a water mage. Heat would take it down.”
“I mean, is it dangerous to melt the ice?”
Eva frowned. “Probably not. Its blood has stopped circulating. I would say that it is dead…”
“But?”
“One of the quirks of these things, according to Ylva, is that they don’t die properly. None of the ones that I have killed have gotten back up, but I was a whole lot more violent than freezing water over one. But if it did wake up, with both myself and Catherine here, we should be able to handle a single one without much issue.”
Nodding, Carlos said, “I think we should leave it as is until Zoe arrives. Not that I don’t trust that you can take care of it, I’d rather have the extra focus on hand if something does go wrong.”
