When she thought about it more, it wasn’t that much of a surprise. Lucy had lost a good portion of her entire body mass. And, if she went by the Arachne metric, Lucy had lost several hundred more limbs than Arachne ever lost at once. Each limb was much thinner than Arachne’s arm, but much longer.
Not to mention, she had lost them to a magical circle constructed by demon hunters. If anyone had a way to stunt demonic healing, it would be hunters. If the room hadn’t been mostly destroyed, she could have asked Devon about the circles. Unfortunately, the time for that had long been lost.
“I wouldn’t worry about feeding her. I don’t have much hunger these days. My eating is almost purely driven by memories and the taste. Arachne hasn’t ever eaten much in my presence either.”
“Doesn’t make much sense. I don’t know how demons can function without fuel. To say nothing of how you can heal on your own.”
“Magic,” Eva said with a shrug.
With a weak chuckle, Nurse Post went back to her desk and retook her seat. “I should have known.”
“So no forming into a person at all? Or even enough to talk?”
“Not that I’ve seen. I do admit that I haven’t spent all that much time inside Lucy’s room.” Nurse Post shifted, crossing one leg over the other. “There is something a little unnerving about Lucy. I try to remain professional, but…”
Eva waved a hand as the nurse trailed off, suppressing a shudder at the same time. “Oh, don’t worry. I feel the same.”
Not so much about Lucy herself. Tentacles could be creepy, but Eva felt relatively used to them. A good number of demons had tentacles. After seeing her domain, Eva had second thoughts about the whole ordeal. Lucy’s domain was disturbing. There was simply no other word for it. Every time she thought about it, she got slight shivers.
“Anyway,” Eva said, “I’ve got to run. I’ll check in again. Maybe just before Martina leaves.”
“I’m sure she would appreciate that.”
With a parting wave, Eva stepped out of the room.
Right into Arachne’s waiting arms.
“No blood on your hands?”
Eva shook her head. “Not this time.”
“The succubus will be irritated.”
“Let her be. Even if Martina can’t recover, I won’t be doing anything here. Not under the Nurse’s nose. It will be at least a week.”
Arachne curled her fingers in the air as they walked down the hallways of Brakket Academy. “Doesn’t matter to me. I’ll keep her away from you if she grows violent.”
Eva reached over and took hold of one of Arachne’s hands. She leaned just a little closer. “Thanks,” she said softly.
As the summer went on, Brakket Academy was slowly coming back to life. A surprising number of students were actually returning. Mostly in the top two years of school—they were probably thinking that they could tough out one more year. However, there had been a marginal decline in student population among the earlier years. Apparently the new first years numbered less than fifteen. Not a particularly good number.
Eva was hoping that the older students were right about nothing too dangerous going on this year.
Maybe next year would be better so long as this year went well. It would be a good thing if nothing happened.
Apart from Arachne’s mission. Eva still hadn’t talked with her about that little issue.
She really didn’t want to. Things were peaceful at the moment and Eva didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize that.
“It’s nice,” she said as a student passed by them in the hallway. He gave them their room, but otherwise didn’t so much as blink at Arachne. Eva might have expected that of someone from the diablery class, but she didn’t recognize this particular student.
“It’s nice,” she repeated. “Here we are, walking side by side in broad daylight. No one even cares.”
“And after all the pains I went through to hide around here the first year and a half,” Arachne grumbled. She left her mouth in a half-open grimace.
“Oh don’t be like that. If we would have walked around like this my first year, everyone would have freaked out.”
“Then why now?”
“Well, first, general people probably don’t know
“The fact is that enough crazy things have gone on around Brakket that you walking around just isn’t that strange anymore. Especially when you’re walking around without being too menacing. And you’re walking with me.
“Is that a compliment?”
“Depends. Is being scary to most mortals a compliment?”
Arachne tilted her chin up, preening. “I suppose it is.”
“You have to admit, this is much better than hiding under my shirt in your spider form.”
