With Anise and Chris both helping, their progress had been through the roof. Of course, Eva still needed to find people for the ritual itself, but she was actually relatively certain that wouldn’t be much of a problem at all. A quick check-in with Vektul let Eva know that despite having the eye implanted in their chest, both nuns should work just fine. Probably.
He actually hadn’t been absolutely certain. If she could, Eva would try to get fully normal humans. Just in case.
Still, no demon hunters had shown up to accost Eva. Or anyone else, for that matter. No laser beams had destroyed the ritual circle, or her prison, or the school, or anything else. No nuns had shown up aside from the two expected ones, though Ylva hadn’t gone to the inquest in their place just yet. It wasn’t scheduled until just before New Years. And Sawyer was still dead as far as Eva knew.
Not even the vampire had shown up to accost her. Though she had caught him staring at her a few times during lunches or around the halls. It was enough that Eva had taken to either skipping lunch or eating outside. She didn’t eat much anyway and the food served by Brakket Academy often made her lose her appetite even if she did feel peckish.
Since both Chris and Anise were more or less following her around outside school hours, they probably served as a decent deterrent to the vampire as well.
Despite everything going exactly as Eva hoped, she couldn’t help but feel a niggling concern in the back of her mind. Everything was going
She didn’t know what the shoe was going to be or where it would fall from. She didn’t even have any proper means of preparing for it.
“And that’s why you need to watch out for anything suspicious. Don’t go anywhere alone. Keep an eye out after dark, especially outside the main school building and the Infinite Courtyard. Even take care inside your rooms.”
“Paranoid much?”
Eva narrowed her eyes at Chris. Considering how she had acted before Ylva agreed to help them, she was the last person Eva wanted to get a lecture on paranoia from.
“Just be careful.” Eva pointed to Irene, Saija, and Chris. “Especially you three. Who knows what Redford is going to do. If he puts you into a position where you can easily be ambushed, things could go bad fast if one of our enemies decides to make a big deal out of the event.
“Other than that, take tomorrow off. Rest up or prepare for the event. Both. Whatever you want.”
“Take tomorrow off? Since when did you become our boss?”
Juliana’s tone implied that she was joking or otherwise trying to lighten the conversation. Still, something in her voice made Eva feel like she wasn’t being completely humorous.
Her frustration wasn’t wholly incomprehensible. She had been working for the longest amount of time and was easily the hardest worker of the four. Even taking into account her frequent breaks to spar with Arachne, she still got more done than any two of the others combined.
Before Eva could actually comment, Irene stepped up to Juliana.
“Could I ask you a few questions?”
“Sure? You don’t have to ask my permission.”
“Well,” she paused with a glance towards the nuns, “it’s about the event.”
Chris put her hands on her hips. “Oh I see how it is,” she said, turning and walking away. Anise hesitated for a moment before following after her. “Plot your strategies,” she called over her shoulder, “they won’t help you. We might be working on this nonsense together, but we are still enemies.”
As they walked away from the ritual circle, Eva turned back to the other two humans. “If you’re going to be discussing the event, I’m going to take off.”
“Hold on,” Juliana said, grabbing Eva’s arm. “Where are you going?”
“Catherine has been texting me all day. Something back at the prison that she wants to show me, apparently.”
Juliana gave her something of a pointed look before giving a quick glance towards Irene.
Repressing a sigh, Eva said, “Did you want to come along as well? Irene and Saija can come too.” She paused as she tried to remember if either had actually been to the prison before. “I might need a few drops of blood though.”
“Blood? I–”
Saija decided to talk right over Irene’s cry of alarm. “Your mysterious prison? We’d love to go. Wouldn’t we?” She wrapped an arm around Irene’s shoulders. “Irene can ask her questions there.”
Irene, even with her arms all locked up by Saija, shook her head back and forth.
“It shouldn’t be anything big. Catherine said that it wasn’t vital. But it has been a while since I actually visited because of all this,” Eva said, spreading her arms out in a gesture towards the ritual field. “At the very least, I need to make sure that Catherine and Devon haven’t burned the place down.”
