Irene held her gaze for another second or two before she glanced off to some point over Eva’s shoulder. As if looking at her directly would be painful. After a moment of standing there, she gripped Eva by the upper arm and pulled her off to a corner of the room.
Eva gave Juliana a shrug as she allowed herself to be dragged off.
“What did you need?”
“Nothing, really. I just wanted to make sure you knew. The girl over there, the one with all the stitches. She’s been staring at you.”
Rather than turn her head, Eva looked through her sense of blood. The blended girl had her eyes directly on the side of Eva’s head. Her companion seemed wholly engrossed with his meal, apparently unconcerned with the bell having rung.
“That isn’t entirely unexpected,” Eva said with a nod. “I was fairly cruel to her after she… well,” Eva lifted her hand in the air.
Irene flinched back.
Eva immediately dropped her arm behind her back. “Sorry.”
“No. No. I’m fine. I just,” she slowly tuned her gaze to Eva’s other side. “It isn’t just today. She’s been staring–glaring even–for weeks. Every time I look around, her, her mismatched eyes are just there.”
She ran a hand through her hair, leaving short, brown strands out of place on the side of her head.
“Irene,” Eva said, forcibly restraining herself from reaching forwards. “Are you alright?”
“I just… You, and her, and Jordan, and regular school, and Professor Lurcher being gone, and Professor Baxter’s injuries, and–”
“Irene. Let’s go sh–swimming.” Eva almost said shopping. She managed to stop herself just in time. It was her first instinct to say, but shopping was not on the list of things she was very interested in. “Or the hot springs.”
“What?” She actually looked up straight into Eva’s eyes. Her eyes darted from left to right, looking into each of Eva’s eyes. By the fifth pass, she seemed to realize what she was looking at. Irene took a step backwards and averted her eyes again.
“You’re stressed out.” A whole lot more than Eva originally thought. “When was the last time you did anything that wasn’t schoolwork or worry about the people around you?”
“I don’t–”
“Come on.” Eva put on her kindest smile. “Just you and me. I’m not going to hurt you. We can just swim or relax in the pool. We don’t even have to talk if you don’t want to.”
“Right now?”
“If we go now, you can’t think about it. You don’t have time to worry and get stressed out about it.”
“We have class.”
“Professor Carr won’t mind if you explain that stress was getting to you. Neither will Zoe. And it isn’t even lying.”
“I don’t know…”
“I do.” Eva held out her hand.
This time, Eva did not withdraw when Irene took a step backwards. Eva did ensure the sharp tips of her fingers were all folded inwards. All the while, Irene’s eyes stayed glued to the claw.
They stayed frozen as the lunchroom cleared around them. Irene’s heart rate picked up as time wore on. Just as she started to reach her hand out, the bell rang.
They were late to class.
Rather than give Irene the opportunity to second guess herself, Eva reached out and grabbed the partially extended hand.
Irene let out a small ‘eep’ as Eva started dragging her away from their classroom.
“I-I don’t even have a swimsuit.”
Eva grinned. “Neither do I.”
— — —
Nel took a deep breath of the frankincense filled air. She much preferred the steamy air of Lady Ylva’s baths–even with the revelation that she had been spied upon since she got there–but she had a job to do.
It wasn’t even a difficult job. Quite the opposite, really. A mix between monotonous and relaxing. Nel had overworked herself to the point of passing out after the demons attacked.
Lady Ylva had been very clear afterwards that she was never to do something so foolish again. Her property was to be kept in good, working order. An unconscious augur was an unproductive augur.
Warm feelings fluttered around Nel’s stomach every time she realized that Lady Ylva actually cared. If in her own, slightly twisted way. Nel had a feeling that she would be worked as hard as or harder than Sister Cross had Eva been in charge of her.
So, Nel slowly and very relaxedly cycled through her fetters. She wasn’t even doing it every hour. Especially not while the children were at school. They were all together and Lady Ylva was right there with them.
A strand of platinum hair drifted over in front of Nel as her master crossed her mind.
Lady Ylva sat at her own table in the back of a classroom. Her head rested on an upraised fist as she slouched back in the chairs. An almost perfect recreation of the pose she had on her large throne; all except for the fact that her tiny legs didn’t quite reach the floor. They just kind of dangled in the air.
Nel wished she possessed the kind of impulsiveness required to just up and hug the little girl.
Zoe Baxter was in the same room as Ylva, teaching, so Nel skipped over that strand of hair.
Arachne and Genoa were out fighting. Again. Nel rolled her eyes. The first few days, she had been glued to watching them. Their fights were very flashy and interesting, but quickly dulled as Nel realized there wasn’t much actual danger. Neither had managed to kill each other. Nel suspected they both were holding cards in their sleeves just in case they ever had to actually fight one another.
Genoa’s daughter sat with Sister Cross’ daughter in a different class. History by the looks of the textbook.
An empty seat at Juliana’s side gave Nel pause. Her breath hitched as a long, black hair moved into position.
Nel let out a small sigh. She’d been worried for nothing. Eva looked extremely relaxed in a large pool of steaming water. Her eyes were shut and she had a faint smile on her face as she rested her head against a headrest set outside the pool.
Eva’s companion looked distinctly less relaxed. The girl, who Nel vaguely recalled seeing around Eva on occasion, had her knees to her chest and her arms wrapped around herself beneath the surface of the water. Only her head above her nose poked out. Her eyes darted between the ceiling, Eva, and the door to the room.
It was somewhat maddening. She was squandering the fairly impressive hot springs of their dorms. Not as impressive as Lady Ylva’s bath, of course.
Nel had half a mind to go and take her own bath right then and there. She restrained herself with no small amount of reluctance.
Her final fetter–a vial of blood that was heavily coagulated despite the preservative vial–drifted over in front of Nel. Eva wouldn’t be able to make use of such a decayed sample, but Nel didn’t use haemomancy.
The boy attached to the fetter was disturbing as always. He had a blank, vacant gaze that Nel normally attributed to victims of spectral possession. That Ylva had been in the same room and hadn’t obliterated the ghost was the only reason Nel second guessed herself about the boy’s condition.
That it probably wasn’t a ghost didn’t make it any less unnerving.
Nel blinked one set of eyes. He wasn’t in a classroom. Or the Brakket dorms. The floor had orange, interlocking hexagons with red hexagons in the center. Featureless white walls separated numbered doors. A hotel?
The little girl that never left the boy’s side was absent.
Nel detached her vision from the fetter and moved outside the hotel. The town didn’t appear to be Brakket. The roads were all different and it was missing the lake and Brakket Academy itself. It was not missing the mostly deserted feeling.
Back inside the hotel–and it was a hotel albeit a small one–Nel peeked into one of the rooms.
Her heart skipped three beats.
Three things sat in the room. One had sharp razors for arms. They hung in front of him like scythes. Another was a bird of some sort. At least, it had the wings and beak of one. Nel wasn’t sure it would be able to fly without a heavy dose of magic. The third looked like someone had literally stapled Arachne’s black chitin to its body.