Her head swung side to side as she moved away from Eva. She took a ginger step around Vektul before sprinting straight to the door she had pointed out. With one final glance at Eva and her group, she disappeared into the room.
“Perhaps,” Eva said to Vektul after a moment, “we should move elsewhere. Are you hungry? Do you get hungry?”
“I can eat. Upon arriving, I was given a… strawberry? I think they called it that.”
“Enjoyable?”
Vektul shrugged. In a voice as toneless and as emotionless as he had used before, he said, “I could eat more.”
Eva chuckled. “Alright. Let’s head to the kitchens. We should be able to scrounge up some things and, hopefully, not stand right outside doors where people are going to be wandering about. Especially not younger people. They aren’t quite as accustomed to my appearance as the older years.”
As she led him down the stairs and towards the kitchen, Vektul cocked his head to the side.
“I don’t understand.”
“What?”
“I don’t understand.”
Eva shook her head. This demon really needed to spend some time around regular people. Were all the demons that Anderson had brought like this? “I mean, what is it that you don’t understand?”
“That human. Why was she… I don’t understand her motivations.”
“Motivations?” Eva said as she pushed into the kitchen.
Nobody was around. That was somewhat expected. It was earlier in the evening. Not so early that everyone would be hungry, but generally before the majority of the students ate. Some people might show up to eat an early snack before going to study or work on homework.
Hopefully keeping away from that door would give anybody who entered a moment or two to process the demons gathered around and not freak out instantly.
“She had no ‘motivations’ for fainting. Maybe you could say that her motivations after waking were to get away from us as soon as possible. To remove herself from our presence.
“Above all, you could say that fear ‘motivated’ her.”
“We have a contract to not harm the students,” Vektul said, taking a seat.
Arachne plopped down in the seat opposite from him, slouching in her seat slightly. “I’ve no such contract. I could kill them all if I so choose.”
Eva paused her movements towards one of the great refrigerators to shoot a glare in Arachne’s direction.
The spider-demon stiffened almost immediately, pulling out of her slouch to look mildly ashamed of herself.
“Maybe we should get you a contract.”
“That is completely unnecessary. I assure you. It was just an example.”
“Uh huh.” Eva pulled open the fridge and rummaged through.
The school kept it stocked with a fairly poor assortment of goods. Eva, not being the best chef around, just found a few apples and decided that would have to do. If Vektul wanted to have something a bit more gourmet for tasting the cuisine of the mortal realm, he would just have to visit a real restaurant.
“Besides,” Arachne continued, “a demon cannot hold a contract with another demon. Otherwise I’d probably be in the Keeper’s claws for what I did to get your eyes. And I do not want to be beholden to some random mortal.”
“Juliana isn’t a random mortal. Zoe isn’t either. I’m sure that Zoe at least would sleep much better if she knew that you couldn’t hurt anyone.”
“I like to keep the option open. What if the necromancer’s daughter returns? I’d like the freedom to deal with her as I see fit.”
“Well,” Eva said, setting a pair of apples on the table. Arachne wouldn’t want one and really, she didn’t either. She would just nibble at it to make Vektul not feel alone in eating. “I doubt she would be coming as a student again. Her appearance is a bit distinctive. Even if she covered it up on the outside, I’d be able to spot her insides and would kill her before she could do anything.”
Vektul stared at his apple as Eva took a seat next to Arachne. He plucked off the stem and popped it right into his mouth. No expression of disgust or enjoyment came over his face as he swallowed. He turned the apple over, continuing to stare at it.
Taking pity on him, Eva took a large bite out of the side of the apple. Her razor-sharp teeth glided through the meat of the fruit as if it were no more solid than cotton candy.
Even now, almost a month after her most recent treatment, it was still surprising just how sharp they were. More surprising was the fact that it was incredibly difficult to bite through her own tongue. She had accidentally bit her tongue one time and almost hadn’t noticed. That incident had prompted a few experiments. To actually injure her tongue took more force than she would ever use eating anything normally.
Maybe they could be used as a weapon. However, given her experiences in Sawyer’s mind, she was going to need to be extraordinarily desperate to put other people’s body parts in her mouth.
