“Yeah, you’re hilarious.” Eva threw back the bed sheets and knelt down by her master’s leg. She said to Arthfael, “An Elysium Sister hit him with a spell that looked like a bolt of lightning. He was healing it himself and it seemed to be working, albeit slowly. He apparently took the wrong combination of potions because,” she gestured towards the ritual circle on the floor, “he thought whatever this is would work.”
The great cat leapt onto the bed, causing it to sink under his weight. He sniffed at the leg, glanced back at Eva, then licked it.
Eva winced, glad her master was asleep while the sandpaper like tongue ran across his injured leg.
“If you can help heal it, great. If not then don’t worry. Just try to keep him away from the potions for a few days. I’ll make sure to leave a note about how he owes you lots of extra fish.
“Speaking of, Arachne.” The spider-demon turned in her chair. “I’m heading out to pick up a few supplies for our trip, as well as a fresh fish for Arthfael. When you are done with the letter, head back home and start putting anything you think we should take in a neat pile. Clothes, books, everything.”
That said, Eva turned to leave the room. “Oh,” she paused at the door. She flicked her finger between the cat and the spider. “No fighting.”
—
Eva stepped straight through the window into her room with a freshly acquired suitcase. It was already loaded down with books she had liberated from her master’s library.
A pile of clothes lay neatly folded on the end of her bed. Next to it lay a small satchel containing potions. Inside were mostly restoratives, though a few poisons seemed to have made their way in. Her two daggers along with all her vials of Arachne’s blood rested atop a pile of books, mostly on the topic of blood magic.
The only thing missing was the cage for Arachne and the spider-demon herself.
“Arachne,” Eva called out. “Are you home?”
“In here.”
Eva poked her head into the hall and peeked around. Arachne sat on the floor in the open doorway of the summoning room. Six legs arced out from her back, flexing slightly around her.
“Is it staring at you again?” Eva asked as she walked up behind her.
“No it isn’t.” She stood up and edged around the shackles. The skull never budged. “I even climbed outside the window to see if it would look at me then, but it didn’t.”
“Maybe it wasn’t sure if you were a threat or not the first time, now it doesn’t think you are.”
Arachne growled. “I think I’d rather be seen as a threat.”
Eva walked inside the shackles and picked up the black skull. “I haven’t had the time to really examine it,” she said. She held it out in her palm, weighing it.
While it was still golden and in the bag, it had been very heavy. All the gold she had stolen was heavy. They always said gold was heavy but she never had the opportunity to just grab a handful and hold it in her hands.
Now that it had blackened, the skull weighed almost twice as much. Despite feeling the weight, Eva had no trouble lifting up the palm sized skull. It was an odd sensation. Her arm should be straining right now, but it didn’t feel much different from holding a baseball.
Arachne looked like she wanted to tackle it out of Eva’s hands. “It didn’t kill me before, so I doubt it will kill me now,” Eva said. “But we can’t leave it here. If it is a beacon, I don’t want to return sometime in the future to find an angry hel trapped inside the shackles for who knows how long.”
“We should destroy it.”
Eva shook her head. “I’m a bit averse to that for similar reasons.”
Arachne just growled again.
Eva frowned at the spider-demon. Something was eating her up. Something more than just holding a potentially dangerous object. Or maybe that’s just it, Eva thought as she looked back to the skull.
“We’ll take it with us. I think one of your first jobs will be to find a place where we can put all our extracurricular equipment that isn’t a dorm full of schoolchildren.”
Eva gave the skull an experimental toss straight up. Just enough force for it to leave her hand. She caught it again with no problem save for the odd weight-weightless feeling.
“Let’s go put everything in the suitcase and head to bed. Our flight leaves early tomorrow.”
Chapter 007
“A cat carrier?” The security agent quirked an eyebrow.
“It just has a few books in it,” Eva said with a shrug. “I’m planning on coming back in a car and bringing a cat with me. I figured I could use it as a carry-on for the flight.”
Too much information? Did I offer an explanation too fast? Eva suppressed a nervous swallow. If she was caught, there would definitely be problems. When the officer didn’t say anything, Eva prodded, “is there a problem with that?”
“No, I suppose not. Run it through the x-ray.”
Eva nodded and set the carrier on the conveyor belt. She pulled off her mostly empty book bag and set it next to the carrier. She stepped through the body scanner.
With no items that could be considered contraband, Eva knew she didn’t have anything to worry about.
That did nothing to stop the sweat and adrenaline. Everything could still go so very wrong. At best she would be kicked out of the airport and have to find another way to her new school. At worst she would be arrested and throughly searched. They would find all her black magic books, among other items.
She gave a sigh of relief when she made it past the checkpoint. She picked up her bag and the cage and had to stop herself from running to the bathroom.
She locked herself in the furthest stall and finally relaxed. Now she had to wait. There was forty-five minutes before her flight was scheduled to leave. Eva moved books from the carrier to her book bag, all except for two. One she cracked open and started to read, the other was left in the carrier.
It didn’t take long before the ceiling tile above her moved. It lifted just a crack and eight red eyes glowed from within. A second later and the tile moved to the side.
A large spider silk net slowly descended into her stall. Eva caught it and pulled out her daggers, the black skull, and her blood and potions. She tossed those into her backpack.
Arachne crawled down the wall and into Eva’s lap after sliding the ceiling tile back into place. She wrapped her legs around Eva’s own legs.
They sat like that for twenty minutes. Just waiting down the time Eva had to spend in the company of other people.
Eva knew most of her worries were unfounded, despite the horror stories surrounding flight security these days. Being around a number of unknown people still made Eva a bit nervous. The feeling was only compounded by her carrying around two daggers, tons of books she shouldn’t be caught with, an artifact of unknown power. And Arachne.
She knew she wasn’t in any danger between her own magics and Arachne. The people around her might not be so lucky.
All that combined with the nerves of having never flown before and Eva could barely sit still. Arachne on her lap was a huge comfort of a familiar situation. Sadly, even that couldn’t last forever.
She stroked the back of Arachne’s smooth carapace. “Arachne,” Eva whispered, “into the cage.”
Arachne slipped her legs beneath Eva’s shirt and started to skitter under.
Eva clamped her hands around her waist. “No, we talked about this.”
If Arachne had a human mouth instead of fangs, Eva imagined she would be pouting. She crawled into the cage in the most dejected manner a spider could.
To be fair, Arachne’s spider form had very long legs and not a small body either. The small cat cage was not made for someone of her dimensions. Eva frowned at the eight red eyes glaring out of the dark cage.