Eva didn’t seem perturbed.
Arachne was the one who spoke. “Running around with what?” Threatened more like.
“Strange people,” Juliana offered after a sip of her tea.
She didn’t think she was ready for a conversation like this. Especially not in a place where Eva controlled wards that apparently blew off one of Arachne’s legs. If Eva took a sudden dislike to Juliana, she might be in for some serious pain.
Eva seemed to have the same idea. “I understand you must have questions,” she said. “There are just some things I don’t think I’m ready to answer. Suspect all you wish for now, I just ask that you don’t tell anyone anything. In the future I may be more open. After we’ve spent more time together. For now just know that no one in this complex wishes harm on you or anyone in Brakket.”
“That sounds good,” Juliana said. It was concerning that Eva felt the need to explicitly state she didn’t want to hurt anyone.
“Friends then?”
“Were we not before?”
Eva smiled at that. She patted Arachne’s head. “And how are you feeling?”
“I told you, I’m fine.”
“How are your wounds then?”
“Better.”
“Better?”
Juliana gasped as Arachne dug her long, spindly fingers beneath the large gash in her chest. Her fingers were clean when she pulled them away.
“See, no blood. Carapace will take a while to heal, however.”
“Good. Maybe it is time to go back to the dorms then?”
Arachne resettled her head on Eva’s lap. “Not that better,” she said.
“So,” Juliana nodded towards the pile of books they had liberated from the cave, “planning on becoming a necromancer now?”
“Hardly,” Eva scoffed. Juliana felt a bit of relief at the disdain with which she said that. “They may come in handy if we’re going to keep running into necromancers. Even if they don’t, I like adding to my library, no matter the book.”
“Just owning them could land you in prison.”
“Already there,” Eva said with a gesture around the room.
Juliana sighed. She had a feeling there was more to that statement than the obvious.
“Get a few hours of sleep,” Eva said. “We will head back to Brakket before dawn. You can use that couch. If you end up being a frequent visitor, maybe we’ll scrounge up another bed.”
Eva roused Arachne and they retired together into Eva’s room. Juliana wondered at their relationship once more. She decided it couldn’t possibly be anything. Arachne was way too old for Eva no matter what.
The cell door slammed shut. It had been fitted with panels of wood between the bars, as had several other doors on that side of the common room. Juliana could probably fix it up better, using her ferrokinesis.
That thought brought her attention to the heavy metal flowing beneath her shirt. Once she fell asleep, it would either flow off of her and make a mess on the floor, or it would harden and possibly suffocate her. She set to storing it.
She flexed the muscles in her arms out as much as possible before hardening a layer over them as bracers. That gave enough space when she relaxed to keep circulation while keeping them from jiggling around. She repeated the action on her lower legs. There was still a lot of metal left. She thickened the metal on her arms and legs and turned the rest into a ball around the size of a skull.
Juliana shuddered. Not a skull. A cantaloupe.
She hefted it onto the floor beside her. It was much heavier all in one lump than spread around her body.
She laid down on the couch and carefully shut her eyes, all while thinking of a beautiful sunrise cresting over a flowery field. Juliana desperately tried to ignore the horde of skeletons that had joined the zombies trampling over the hills.
Chapter 017
A hot fire burned away the cold October air. It crackled and warmed the young instructor’s office. The professor sat in her chair, calmly reading through a thin book as the red flames scorched the walls of her fireplace.
Zoe Baxter sighed and snapped her book shut. She tossed it into a pile of similar books and grabbed the next book on her stack. It slipped from her tired fingers and clattered to the floor. Zoe didn’t bother to pick it up. If the pile of worthless books was any indication, it wouldn’t help anyway. She moved on to the next book in the stack.
There were no records to be found of any books, tomes, or grimoires titled Exanimis de Mortuum.
It didn’t help that Eva’s description had been so vague. There were apparently no words on the cover, just a pentagram with a man inside it. Its effects were to shield souls from Death. Randolph Carter had recognized it almost instantly from the cover alone.
Randolph Carter suffered some sort of injury while finding the cover of the grimoire. He promptly vanished presumably to find a way to heal himself. That’s what Eva said, in any case. Zoe hadn’t seen the man since their first meeting over a month ago now. Eva said that her only instructions were for the book to be destroyed.
And therein lay the heart of her current problem.
The book was proving impossible to damage.
Zoe thought there might have been a hint or directions for its disposal, but she couldn’t find a reference to it anywhere. There was no word on any alternate names it might go by and Zoe couldn’t even ask because of Carter’s disappearance.
She had tried the standard methods for eliminating dangerous objects, but none worked. The disguised cover, Resplendent Mysteriis, had long since been destroyed. It was the bulk of the black pages that refused any attempts at destruction.
Eva made her impatience clear. She only got more nervous as time elapsed. The phases of the moon bothered her as did the upcoming Halloween. They passed the day of the new moon without incident, but even Zoe was apprehensive about Halloween.
If she couldn’t find a way to destroy the book by the thirty-first, she was very seriously considering handing it over to Eva.
The girl was strongly convinced that she could destroy the book where Zoe had failed. She said that it was her who destroyed the phylactery they stole earlier in the year. That Eva refused to speak of what methods she would use and refused to allow Zoe to watch both lent credence to her claims as well as disturbed Zoe.
There was little doubt that Randolph Carter used magics more obscure than proper thaumaturgy. Those obscure magics generally fell into one of two categories: light and dark. If the man was a practitioner of light magic then Zoe would eat kiviak for a month straight.
Zoe tossed another book on the pile. None of them were helping and the few left unread in the stack likely wouldn’t either. She stood up and paced around her small office.
Other help could be called in, of course. Several groups were known to fight this sort of thing. Any of them would cause a big stir about the whole situation that the academy simply didn’t need right now. She was lucky that none of the three students involved in this mess raised a fuss about it.
Of course, Shalise didn’t have anyone to raise a fuss to. Not that the girl knew of anyway. Juliana wouldn’t dare tell her mother more than she already had. Genoa had had several words for Zoe about her daughter’s activities over the summer and none of those words were very kind.
Eva not only had no one to tell but also was the primary maker of trouble.
Finder of trouble, Zoe corrected. Whatever necromancers got their roots in the town were the makers of trouble.
A chime rang through the office. Zoe stopped pacing with a sigh. The students would arrive soon and she hardly got sleep the night before. She definitely made no progress with the book.
She glared at the book that was sitting deep in her roaring fireplace. It happily soaked up the flames without suffering a single singe. Zoe flicked her dagger, extinguishing the flames, and dropped the book back to between. At least there it should be safe from theft and mostly immutable.