Nel looked around the office with assistance from her glimpse to cover more area in half the time. Her tunic was nowhere to be seen. The only scrap of clothing Nel could find was a long robe hanging off a hook on a wall. Nel quickly slipped into it.
She returned to the couch and sat. And waited. Her bare foot slapped against the tile floor as she tried to calm her tense muscles. It wasn’t helping. She picked up that foot and crossed it over her other leg. That leg decided to start tapping.
The butterflies filling her stomach didn’t help either. Every little sound from the classroom, muffled though they were, had her jumping in her seat. Sister Cross was sure to be one of those noises.
The kindly chime of the school bell nearly sent Nel into a panic attack. She used her glimpse to see everything in the surrounding area.
No Sister Cross.
Students tossed notebooks into bags and filed out of the classroom. The teacher waited until the last one left. She turned and marched into the office.
Without hesitation, she strutted to the privacy curtain and tossed it to one side.
“You’re awake.”
Nel flinched back. She couldn’t help it. A feeling of guilt washed over her. She shook it off. Nothing that happened was her fault. It wasn’t.
“How long was I out?” Nel asked in a quiet voice.
“You showed up on Saturday afternoon and the last class of Monday just finished. Roughly forty-eight hours. Now,” the instructor’s eyes glared down on her, “explain.”
Nel found herself flinching back under the glare. I’m not the enemy, stop looking at me like that, she thought. “I don’t have time. It is supposed to take five days, but Sister Cross could have declared an emergency or broken rules or any number of things. I need to be gone. You can teleport right?”
There was a slight hesitance behind the teacher’s eyes. “I can. I–”
“Your student, the ab–” Nel cut herself off. What was the girl’s name? She couldn’t remember. “The one with black hair and hands,” Nel wiggled her own fingers. “She has a prison. I know you’ve been there, I’ve seen you there. I need to be taken there.”
The professor took several steps backwards. A glint in the light brought Nel’s eyes down to her hands. She held a dagger, gripped with white knuckles.
Nel cowered backwards into the couch. She pulled her arms up to hide her face. Why did the professor have a knife out? She didn’t want to be stabbed.
“Are you a demon?”
“What?” Nel stared at the woman. Why would she think such a thing. “I’m a human.”
“I don’t believe that for a second.”
Nel blinked at the woman. She could feel the tears welling at the edges of her eyes. “I’m the Charon Chapter augur. I’m as human as they come.”
“The missing augur.”
Missing? “I ran away. Sister Cross is trying to kill me.”
The professor’s eyes narrowed. They searched over Nel’s face, looking for any sign of deceit. “Then why do you need to speak to my student?”
“She can hide me.”
Chapter 012
“An attack?”
“Indeed.”
Eva watched her master’s reactions carefully as he soaked up the details of what happened. Zoe Baxter seemed calm while delivering the news, but her master’s heart rate jumped. Arachne stood behind Eva’s chair with her arms wrapped around Eva, stoic in her expressions as usual. Her heart tube thing didn’t change its pulses in the slightest.
She was almost sad that she had missed it. It sounded like a lot of fun to watch.
It was her first day out of the infirmary and already she hated her cast. The awkwardness of a glove over it had Eva wondering if she should even bother going to school for a week or two. It would be possible to fit a glove over the cast, but the part that wrapped around the palm of her hand bothered her too much.
“You let it waltz into the cafeteria and just start tossing students around?”
Zoe Baxter’s lips twisted up into a mean scowl. “Not a single student had injuries exceeding a scrape or two. There were two students who claimed to have been nearly charged into by the beast, but how they escaped is unclear.”
“Their safety wasn’t thanks to any of you, according to your story anyhow.” Devon looked positively smug as he leaned back in his own chair with his arms crossed.
Something snapped inside Zoe. Eva could almost see it. “Mr. Foster, the school does everything in its power to assure the safety of our students.”
“Except get an enchanter to magic the glass unbreakable.”
“It should have been unbreakable,” she said through grit teeth. “Lightning shouldn’t do a thing to the glass. Those nuns’ lightning does something odd to enchantments. But,” Zoe said with a glare towards Devon, “I’m not here to discuss the security of Brakket.
“Both Professor Kines as well as a group of fifth year students confirmed that the creature that attacked was not a lamassu. It was far larger, the wings were differently shaped and the face was longer.”
“And that’s why you want me to look at it.” Devon leaned back and stared at the blank ceiling. Eva had had ideas to decorate it similar to one of the Rickenbacker study rooms, but lost the desire when she lost her eyes. “What did the nuns say about it?”
Zoe sighed, slumping in her own chair. Her perfect posture deflated to a lazy recline. “They didn’t. Sister Cross brought in a few of her people to retrieve the corpse. She looked around with glowing eyes for a few minutes before leaving without a word. I think the dean warned them about staying. With no injuries, the school day went on as normal for the most part.”
An awkward silence encircled the group. Devon continued staring at the ceiling, lost in thought. Zoe pulled herself out of her slump and straightened her back.
Eva looked up to Arachne. “What do you think?”
Zoe flinched as the spider-woman spoke. “There are a number of demons that can feely change shape to whatever they want, including a winged bull. I don’t know of any specific ones. Demons aren’t exactly friendly with one another. We don’t all meet up once a month for tea.
“Of course,” her mouth split into a lazy grin. Eva found herself wishing she could properly see the demon’s sharp teeth. “We are looking for a pillar, aren’t we Devon? If anyone can freely shapeshift, it would be one of them.”
“Pillar?” Zoe Baxter turned her sharp eyes to Eva’s master.
“Royalty of Hell. One of the seventy-two attacked the nuns’ augur on Saturday.”
“Royalty of Hell sounds big,” Zoe said with a shake of her head. “And you didn’t think to tell me this?”
“With all due respect,” Eva said, “I haven’t even seen you since Friday. You didn’t show up when I was attacked and didn’t even drop by the nurse’s office while I was incarcerated. One might think you didn’t care.”
Eva smiled a friendly smile. She had been irked by the absence of her favorite instructor. Hopefully Zoe had a good reason.
“Right. I was busy. It was related to the augur.”
“Oh?”
Zoe sighed and stood up. “I will be right back, though I will appear outside. Meet me there,” she said with a glance at Eva.
With that and a slash of her dagger, Zoe disappeared. Cold air flooded the small commons room of the women’s ward in her wake. Eva’s runes had to work overtime to return the temperature to the standard level of ambient heat.
“Well,” Eva said, “shall we head out there?”
“I’m going to the school. Unless something changed, there are no nuns around to interfere and it has been less than three hours since the ‘attack.’ I’d rather not wait.”