“He also died in Hell. Are there reapers in Hell? Anyone to go around and collect his soul?” Eva mused, mostly to herself. Maybe he was floating around, plan foiled and trapped within her domain because he was on a whole other plane of existence from where he had probably planned on dying. “Then there was the fact that he died telling me that I should have killed him when I had the chance.”
“That’s not ominous.”
“Definitely not,” Eva said as she turned down a street a ways away from the Brakket Academy campus.
Living in a small city was actually kind of nice. Everything was in walking distance of everything else. Technically, most everything in Florida was within walking distance if she blinked around constantly. As long as she didn’t care about maintaining a low profile, getting seen wasn’t even an issue.
The apartment building that Ylva, Nel, and Zoe lived in was closer than most buildings to the academy. A few other teachers lived in it as well, the ones that didn’t own an actual house around Brakket.
As Eva stared up at it, she wondered just where Wayne lived. She had never had a reason to visit him at his home, but was fairly certain that he didn’t live in the apartment building. He probably had a home somewhere, but with the ability to freely teleport, he could live on the other side of the country if he really wanted to.
Whatever the case was with Wayne, Eva didn’t really care. It was just a momentary thought. She had no reason to visit him and didn’t want a reason to do so.
Taking the stairs up to the third floor, Eva found herself frowning.
The room up above that had previously held that overexcited woman was not empty. Neither the woman nor her companion were inside. Something else definitely was.
Something familiar.
Being nothing but densely packed tendrils, Lucy had something of an odd circulatory system no matter how she looked on the outside. Because of that, she was extraordinarily distinctive. Eva could pick her out of a crowd made up of demons and humans far easier than anyone else.
And there above Eva was Lucy.
Trying to reach out and detect her with her sense of demons failed entirely.
That was the only explanation that Eva could come up with. Lucy was still alive. If only just. Her tentacles were moving ever so slightly. Perhaps she was drugged.
With how much blood was splattered around the room, it could be that she was just about dead.
Shaking her head, Eva started sprinting up the stairs, past the third floor.
She paused just long enough to turn to Juliana. “Room three-oh-four. Ylva should be inside with Nel and Zoe.” Eva could see all three of them through her sense of blood. “Let Ylva know that Lucy is upstairs in the room of that woman I warned her about. She’s injured.”
Without waiting to see if Juliana would do as she had asked, Eva continued her sprint upstairs.
Eva had already lost Arachne. She wasn’t such good friends with Lucy, but she didn’t want to lose her as well.
Reaching the door, Eva didn’t hesitate in jamming her dagger into her arm. Smearing a ring of blood around the deadbolt and handle, she stepped back. Even her blood should be strong enough to take out a wooden door.
Eva clapped her hands.
Her blood vanished with a flash of light.
Blinking away the spots in her eyes, she found the door to be entirely unharmed. Not even a scratch.
Undaunted, Eva lifted one leg into the air.
The door might be impervious to magical harm. Maybe mundane as well. The wall right around the handle had streaks of unpainted plaster filling in some gap. It clearly had been repaired recently. It likely wouldn’t have the same protections.
With all of her might, Eva kicked out her leg into the wall.
Shards of drywall, wood splinters, and dust filled the air as her foot went clean through the wall. Suppressing a cough, Eva jerked her foot back as fast as she could. Just in case something was on the other side.
Waving her hand to clear the dust from the air, Eva peeked through the hole.
Lucy was lying in the center of the room, unformed, within a set of glowing shackles. Tentacles had been removed from her main mass. Bits of Lucy were spread around, some in piles while others were scattered around the room. Furniture had been shoved aside to make room for all of the drawings on the floor.
“Hold on Lucy. I’m here,” Eva said as she reached through the hole she had made.
Fumbling around, she eventually managed to flick open the locks on the door. There was a chain set in place, but whatever enchantments had been placed on the door itself did not apply to it. At least, not all of it. With a grasp and a pull, the chain came off the wall.
She had expected the chain itself to break, but it was the latch attached to the wall that actually came apart.
Door unlocked, Eva swung it open.
