The voice came from a normal teacher. A woman wearing her hair in a ribbon. The ends of the ribbon stretched upwards, giving it the appearance of bunny ears. If he remembered their notes correctly, it was the warding teacher. Chelsea Lepus.
They had already dismissed her as not being related to any of the diabolical events aside from her employment with Brakket Academy. Damning, but not so much that she was a priority target.
He glanced around once before responding. “I don’t suppose you know what happened to the secretary.”
“Actually,” she said slowly, tapping her foot against the ground as she thought. “I don’t think I’ve seen her for a few days. Strange, now that you mention it.”
“A few days?” They had focused on other targets for the last week or so. The succubus’ routine was so regular that neither he nor Gertrude could have imagined that something would have changed. “She didn’t mention taking any vacations?”
“Oh hoh, not to me,” Chelsea said with a bright smile. “Catherine doesn’t talk much. I’ll have to ask the dean when she gets in. Was there something I might be able to help you with?”
“I think it will be sufficient for me to return at a later date. Thank you anyway.”
With their target gone, Clement had no intention of sticking around. He turned and left, trying not to betray any unnecessary haste in his movements. None of their plans had accounted for her absence. He needed to get back to Gertrude and find out what had happened.
He definitely did not want to stick around while there was a pillar wandering the school grounds.
Not without his armor.
— — —
Eva snapped to a sitting position in her bed, pushing the nausea to the back of her mind.
“Sawyer knows,” she said.
Nel jumped to her feet. “W-what do you mean?”
The augur’s heartbeat had been constantly elevated during their little road trip. Every time she glanced in Serena’s direction, it jumped a bit more before settling back down. If Eva hadn’t known better, she might have guessed that the augur had feelings for the vampire.
Feelings other than fear, that was.
The moment the words left her mouth, Nel’s heart went into overdrive. She ran to the door and peeked out the peephole as if Sawyer was right outside at this very moment.
A groan came out from under the covers of the other bed.
Serena
And she obviously needed it.
Serena pushed the covers off her with another groan, looking like the risen dead that she was. Her eyes were half lidded and there was a certain stiffness in her movements. With her hair unkempt in a halo around her head, she sat up and groggily glanced around the room. A stark contrast to her normally chipper and well-groomed appearance.
Eva, however, was barely paying attention. She was focused on Sawyer and his reading of the text message that they had sent. “He took one look at the message and realized that something was wrong.”
Eva jumped out of bed and ran to her backpack, fighting off the sensory nausea. She had to get everything ready. All of the demon blood and bloodstones, Basila and an engorgement potion, a certain cursed dagger, and her blood that she was going to use to bribe the vampires with. She would have to skip over one ritual that she had wanted to perform on herself.
The movements were making her sick. Sawyer’s agitated state didn’t help much either.
“They must have had some sort of pass phrase that we didn’t include.”
“Calm down,” Serena said slowly, her words transforming into a long yawn partway through. “He doesn’t know that it is you, does he?”
Eva paused her frantic movements, thinking about and watching what Sawyer was up to.
Sawyer had spent the remainder of the day making skeletons with Des. An hour after nightfall, he headed back to the graveyard and started looking through corpses, just as he had the night before. He spent some time sorting through a number of caskets and sending them either to the warehouse or the field. Once finished, he had gone to the field himself.
After he had his hands elbow deep inside the second casket of the night, Eva had sent off her text message.
A simple note about how ‘the boss’ was having him do a few tasks and the vampire might be out of contact for a time.
As Eva had hoped, Sawyer didn’t check his phone immediately. As before, he had forgotten about it until noon. Or maybe he had been deliberately not responding. Either way, he hadn’t looked at the message for several hours.
That was when everything had gone awry.
His eyes had roamed over the words. With an unnatural calm, Sawyer turned off the phone and slipped it into his pocket. He moved back into the room where Des was still slaving away with the skeletons.
“Des,” he had said, “if you would be so kind, we need to prepare for guests.”
