Neither did Saija.
After waiting a full minute, neither had so much as moved. Eva felt her smile start to slip. If Irene got scared and went around telling people, things could go poorly. She didn’t want to kill Irene, so maybe Serena could perform a little memory trick to make her forget.
Except Serena wasn’t in on the ritual’s secret either.
Eva bit her lip before smiling again. “So how is that for a sales pitch?” she asked, trying for a small bit of humor.
“Terrible,” Irene said, voice flat. “But you’re serious, aren’t you.”
“Unfortunately.”
Irene’s hands shot to her hair where she started tugging. “Why me?” she moaned.
“Well, because you’re an earth mage and Juliana–”
“I just wanted to come to school, learn some magic, work on my studies, and other
“Apocalypse has been used to describe the situation by some of the people who know, yes,” Eva said with a reluctant nod of her head. “But we’re trying to avoid–”
Irene sank down to her knees, getting her pants covered in dirt, and cupped her hands to her face. She wasn’t crying… but she obviously wasn’t taking the information half as well as Juliana had. Of course, Juliana already knew half of it. The only thing she hadn’t known was Arachne’s mission to bring Void over to Earth without Life’s involvement.
At her side, Saija fluttered a pair of wings that hadn’t been out a mere ten minutes ago. She hovered over Irene, bobbing from one shoulder to the other without quite knowing how to help her troubled friend. Only when she placed a hand on Irene’s shoulder did Irene finally move.
She glanced out of her cupped hands, looking at Saija with a half-hearted glare. “Did you know about all this?”
Her head whipped back and forth in a definite negative. “Sounds neat though. I’ve never seen Void. Do you think Powers are cute–”
“I used to think I was the only sane person who went to Brakket,” Irene said, face back buried in her hands. The low volume of her voice combined with her hands forced Eva to take a step closer to properly hear her. “I was right,” she said with a groan.
Irene popped up, brows furrowed. She stuck a finger in Eva’s chest. “You can’t just say that we’re on the verge of apocalypse all nonchalant-like.”
“Ah huh.”
“‘Ah huh,’ she says.” Irene turned to glare at Saija. “‘Do you think a Power is cute,’ she says. Do neither of you have any sense of gravity?”
“Of course I do,” Saija said with a disarming smile. She spread her wings ever so slightly. “Every time I fly, gravity is there to drag me back down to Earth should I lapse in my gliding.”
Irene stared, gaze deader than Ylva’s. Without even a sigh or a simple shake of her head, she turned and started off in the direction they had been coming from.
Saija gave a questioning glance towards Eva.
Eva had her own frown leveled at the succubus.
Saija let out a little noise from the back of her throat before moving straight to Irene’s side.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“No. Not really,” Irene said without inflection. “I just need to go have a mental breakdown. Don’t worry about me.”
Eva blinked in front of her, hands up to stop her from going forwards. “I don’t suppose I can convince you to have your breakdown later? There are still a few things to go over. Like who it is safe to talk about this with. Also I’m sure Juliana would–”
“Safe to talk about it with?”
“Well, we don’t want to cause a panic now do we?”
“So you do have a sense of how big this is,” Irene said, hands on her hips.
Eva just smiled, ignoring the panic on Irene’s face. “Come on,” she said. “Juliana should be waiting for us. She’ll probably be mad at me for being so late again, but oh well.”
— — —
Zoe paused as her companion stopped to sniff the air. A vampire’s sense of smell wasn’t good for much aside from the scent of blood. A fact that had Zoe instantly on edge.
“Something wrong?” she asked, hand closing around the hilt of her dagger.
“I don’t think so,” Serena said. “Just a familiar scent heading off towards the forest again.”
“Eva?”
“Yep. Along with a demon who isn’t Arachne and someone else.”
Zoe let her arm drop to her side with a small sigh. Eva and demon likely meant it was nothing to be worried about. Especially because Serena had smelled Eva off in the forests on occasion ever since she arrived. They were probably just training for the next event.
Still, she couldn’t help but ask. “Who is the someone else?”
Serena shrugged her shoulders. “Don’t know. A human. I haven’t really interacted with anyone aside from you and Wayne, so everyone else sort of muddles together. No real distinct scent.”
“Could you find them again if they were in front of you?”
“Probably. Why?”
“Just curious,” Zoe said, continuing off towards Wayne’s classroom.
