Void Domain, Book 02
Chapter 001
“Your grip has tightened since Halloween.”
“I heard you were staying in town for Christmas,” Eva shrugged. “I went out to buy a stress ball straight away.”
Genoa Rivas barked out a laugh. “Good. Good.”
She released Eva’s hand and clasped her own on the shoulder of her partner. With a light shove, the spindly man stumbled forwards. He managed to avoid crashing into Eva by inches.
“This is my husband, Carlos.”
A spindly arm stretched out to Eva. “H-hello,” he said in a high-pitched voice.
“Eva,” she said. Just as she had with Genoa, Eva carefully took his hand in her own gloved hand. She gave the lightest of squeezes, even lighter than she had with Genoa.
He still winced.
It had been getting better over the last month. The amount of crushed pens and pencils had dropped significantly. Almost. At least she felt good enough about her grip to touch other people again.
Carlos tapped the side of his coke-bottle glasses when Eva released his hand. “I heard you have an interesting pet.”
Eva shot a glance at a shrugging Juliana. The blond already took her seat at the large clock-faced table.
“She’s currently staying with my guardian out of town.”
The smile on his face faltered for just a moment. It quickly returned, though not quite as strong.
Eva wondered if she hadn’t ruined Christmas for the poor man. Not that she’d go around showing off Arachne even if it would have been the best day in his life.
“A shame,” Carlos said. He took his seat next to Genoa.
Eva followed suit, glad her seat didn’t have the spinning saw-blade beneath it. It wasn’t making noise and probably wasn’t real. She still wasn’t feeling up to testing it, given that she could actually see it.
If the Liddellest Cafe redecorated for Christmas, it wasn’t very apparent. As far as Eva could tell, it was the same quaint cafe she visited in November. One table was a large mushroom with several toadstools around for seats. Another table was completely flat. She recalled that it had been made out of cards the last time she was here.
No decorations hung from the ceiling. If anything had changed, it might have been the colors.
She hadn’t found a way around seeing colors.
A tea-pot wandered over and poured out a cup and some tea. Eva took a sip and winced. Oyster tea.
“Juli tells me that you two aren’t heading out into the Infinite Courtyard for the school’s Christmas party,” Genoa said.
Juliana coughed and pushed her tea-cup away from her. “A few of our friends decided to stay in and do a simple gift exchange.”
“Something I am very thankful for,” Eva said. “The cold and I are not on good terms.”
“Aren’t you a fire mage?”
“I’ll just say that I am still learning, and we’ll leave it at that.”
“Is the school’s fire magic teacher not very good?” Carlos asked after taking a long sip of his tea.
“I don’t have anyone to compare Professor Calvin to, but he seems alright. At first I was thinking I might be bad at fire magic, but others in my year seem to be having the same difficulty.”
A large platter walked onto the table and started handing out small plates of Christmas ham to everyone. Eva quickly took a large bite, thankful to be spared further elaboration. That the ham tasted like ham was also something to be thankful for.
Genoa didn’t seem so willing to let it go. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the…” Her fingers pointed at her own eyes.
“Mother,” Juliana started in a warning tone. “I believe we discussed this in my letter. No constant badgering over Eva.”
Eva just smiled. That answered the question of why neither of her parents asked about the blindfold.
“It isn’t constant and it isn’t badgering. It was a question.” Genoa dropped her voice to a low whisper. “I can’t believe those Elysium Sisters are parading themselves around as heroes. I knew they were no good.”
“Now, now dear,” Carlos said, patting her thigh under the table. “Let’s not make a scene.”
Eva decided to switch the subject off the nuns before Genoa did anything loud. She had apparently been told the version of the story where the nuns showed up too late to rescue Eva’s eyes.
“I don’t think my eyes are as much of a hindrance as everyone else thinks. Professor Lurcher taught me how to use fire magic to constantly detect the ambient temperature of everything around me. I can see as well or better, so long as things aren’t exactly the same temperature as their surroundings. Even then, the heat radiating off of me and other people hits the things and creates a sort of bump where they are.”
At least, that was the cover Zoe Baxter told her to give. The school staff didn’t want it to become public knowledge that a student was actively using dark magic at school. They seemed to be under the impression that the dark magic was the necromancer’s doing.
That was fine with Eva. Zoe hadn’t told anyone. Juliana hadn’t told anyone. And Eva was certainly in no rush to correct that misconception.
“I see, that is clever. Air mages can sense wind direction almost innately. What you’re doing is probably something similar.” Genoa nodded, seeming to accept the lie easily.
They ate in peace while discussing school topics. How much Juliana hated history came up more than once, courtesy of her father. He didn’t mention either of their ecology classes. Eva thought he would be all over Professor Twillie’s class, at the very least.
Creatures found in a normal zoo were apparently too commonplace for him.
Eva briefly considered asking Genoa if she had any interesting stories. Carlos stood up just as Eva opened her mouth.
“Look at the time,” Carlos sad with a glance at the table. “We must be off or we will be missing our flight.”
He must have a supernatural sense for when someone is going to ask for a story, Eva thought with a frown.
“Flight?”
“Your father and I are traveling to Russia for all of January and February.”
“In the middle of winter?” Eva couldn’t help but shudder at the thought. She though Montana was cold and yet Russia was known for freezing temperatures.
“Quite so,” Carlos said with a grin, “it is the best time to observe leshenka. All the Russians drinking to keep warm draws them out in hordes.”
Juliana opened her mouth but her mother headed her off. “Don’t worry, your father and I have other plans to keep warm.”
“Mother…”
Genoa barked out a laugh as she pulled on her heavy fur coat.
Eva wondered if she planned on wearing more in Russia than the straps exposing most of her skin she currently wore.
“Oh, yes.” Genoa dropped a hand in her pocket and pulled out two objects. “Merry Christmas, you two. Good luck with your gift exchange,” she said. After dropping the objects on the table, she ushered herself and a politely waving Carlos out of the cafe.
Eva pulled all the tiny flecks of her blood off their clothes as they left. She moved some to the small box in front of her.
Juliana already had hers open. “Oh mother,” she mumbled.
Eva kept her blood off of it, wanting it to be something of a surprise for when she opened her own box.
It was a little cardboard box that folded back at the top. Eva gently pulled it open and flooded the inside with blood. A tiny flood. Just enough to get a good read on what was inside.
It took a minute to figure out what she was looking at. At first, she thought it was a coil of rope. It moved. A snake maybe? Except it didn’t have any blood.
Puzzled, Eva turned to Juliana’s and sent a few flakes to check her gift out.
Standing in her hand was a miniature bird. At least, it had wings and feathers and clawed talons. It stood up like a human and had a human-like face, minus the feathers making up its hair.