Juliana gave her a very half-hearted hug, more like a pat on the back. Her mother just barked out a laugh and sat back down.
“Perhaps you’ll tell another story the next time we meet.”
Genoa gave Eva a wide grin. “Look forward to it.” She glanced down at her barely touched soup and picked through it with her spoon. “I wonder if I could get them to toss this into a microwave for a minute.”
Eva chuckled at her distress as Juliana led her out of the shop.
“She’s so embarrassing,” she said once they were outside.
“Oh? I thought most parents told stories about their children to embarrass them. She spent most of the time telling her own story.”
“That’s embarrassing in its own right.”
“At least the story was good.”
Juliana scoffed loudly and abruptly. Eva stopped moving to avoid running into her, but the blond didn’t stop.
Eva took a few quick steps to catch up to her. “I thought you liked your mother’s stories. You mentioned as much over the summer.”
“Yeah. That was before I got my own stories.”
“Your stories?”
“The abandoned house, the crypt, even Halloween. Most of them consisted of me running around scared or doing nothing at all.”
Eva frowned as she followed after the girl. “Well, I can’t say much about the house, but like I said earlier about Halloween; don’t sell yourself short because you watched over Shalise. That was important and I’m sure it means a lot to her. A lot more than me running off into the night.
“And don’t forget you took out those archer skeletons plus tunneled us out. We might not have lived if it wasn’t for that.”
Another scoff erupted from the girl in front of Eva. “You could have killed those skeletons. I saw that spell you did.”
“Could have, but we very well might have died if I had.”
“That was ‘your’ magic, wasn’t it.” The blond stopped, seemingly ignoring Eva. “You knocked away a massive horde with that.” She spun, facing Eva. “Teach me.”
Eva slowed to a halt next to the blond. “I can’t. Or perhaps won’t.” She moved in and whispered in the girl’s ear. “There are reasons black magic is called ‘black’ magic. You do not want to take that step.”
“How do you know what I want,” she hissed.
Eva shrugged and walked past the still blond. “You’re a powerful earth mage. Focus on that. I’d hate to see you stunt yourself the way I have.”
It was a lie to be sure. Eva didn’t feel stunted, just unpracticed. Still, it felt a good excuse for the girl.
“You’ll have stories to rival your mother in time. You just need practice and patience. And practice at embellishing as well as your mother.
“Trust me. You’ll be much happier with yourself if you can look your mother in the eyes when you tell your stories.”
Chapter 022
An awkward air hung about the usual group. No one talked, no one laughed. Everyone sat around picking at their food.
Everyone except for Max. He had his usual double helping of refried beans and a side of string beans.
Eva wasn’t sure what was up with everyone. Juliana, she could understand. The girl had barely spoken two words since Eva refused to talk about blood magics or demonology.
She didn’t think she had done anything to the others. None of them asked about Shalise. Either they already knew she was back at home or they didn’t care.
Could they be worried over what happened on Halloween?
Even if they were, Eva didn’t know what to say. Juliana did not seem to like her opinions on the matter. The twins would probably like it less.
Eva picked through her own salad.
It wasn’t just her table in a mood. The rest of the lunchroom kept to themselves as well. A table holding a lot of normally loud fourth years was completely subdued.
The round table that normally held the student council was completely empty.
Eva regretted not finding out at least the years of the deceased students. The student council had more than six members, but if some of them died then the rest might be absent.
Or their parents had pulled students. There were at least two students in the first year whose parents wouldn’t allow them to remain at school. More might have followed suit had the Elysium Sisters not showed up.
One of the nuns stood guard in front of the large windows looking out into the Infinite Courtyard.
She barely avoided a glare from Eva as her thoughts drifted in the Sister’s direction.
Her hands were clasped behind her back as she slowly sent her gaze across the cafeteria. The nun should really be watching out the windows. It was almost as if she was expecting a horde of zombies to teleport inside the room at any moment.
Which, Eva supposed, they could. She’d seen several flesh golems materialize out of thin air in the street. Even with that, Eva wasn’t about to give the nun the benefit of the doubt.
Despite there being swarms of the nuns dotted around town and campus, Eva hadn’t been accosted by any of them since her first encounter outside the dorms. That didn’t stop Eva from being annoyed with their presence. That they seemed to spend most of their efforts watching the students rather than hunting necromancers only compounded Eva’s annoyance.
Eva let her fork drop into her dish with a loud clatter. Irene, surprisingly, was the one to jump at the noise. Eva didn’t pay the brunette any mind.
“I’m going to head to next class, I don’t think I’m very hungry.”
“Twillie won’t let you in until class starts,” Jordan said. “You’ll be stuck outside in the cold and snow.”
Eva gave the boy a shrug as she picked up her plate. “I’m loaded up with enough heat runes that I could confuse Antarctica with the Sahara.”
Eva gave the group a light smile before she walked through the courtyard doors, earning a glare from the Sister. She might have been the same one that originally tried to attack Eva. It was hard to tell for sure.
Most of the nuns looked so similar with their nun habits on that Eva had a difficult time telling them apart from each other. The few who wore the black robes were much easier to tell apart, but only because there were less to keep track of.
Trudging through the snow to Bradley Twillie’s zoo wasn’t a fun affair. No one bothered to shovel the snow on the paths in the courtyard. There were a few footprints from the classes earlier in the day, but that was as close as the road got to being clear.
Eva decided she didn’t like snow. It rarely snowed in the middle of Florida and when it did, it was less snow and more of cold rain. Snow had a nasty habit of getting all over the ground. It was deep enough that stepping in it would get it inside her shoes. Even with heat runes melting and warming the snow, Eva’s socks stayed soaking wet.
More than once she thought about increasing the temperature.
That was one of the reasons she went back to wearing her skirt with her gray top. It was high enough up that it didn’t get caught in the snow, unlike her pant legs. With heat runes, she could barely tell the difference between the temperature.
The boots the nuns wore were appealing. Hopefully the shops in town sold something similar. Simple shoes were just not good enough for Montana’s winter. Though, if it snowed more–something she figured it would–even the knee-high boots might not be high enough to keep the snow out.
Sadly, no boots would stop that horrid crunching sound.
Bradley Twillie’s zoo had a small area that had been cleared of snow in front of the main door. The door itself was locked, as Jordan predicted, so Eva took a seat on a bench near a snow-covered flowerbed. She leaned back and rested her eyes.
It wasn’t long before sounds of crunching snow approached her. Eva snapped her eyes open, making sure that the person wasn’t a threat.
The skinny form of Professor Twillie stumbled up to his own lecture room. He either wasn’t paying attention or simply ignored Eva; he walked straight to the door and stepped inside. The soft click of the door locking behind him may as well have been thunder in the silent outdoors.