Irene jumped a good foot in the air as a wet slopping noise echoed down the hall. Heart beating a million beats a second, she gripped her wand and got off of her chair. Just what the wand was meant to do against anything, she wasn’t entirely certain. But it was a small comfort as she ran to the edge of the shackles and peered into the room.
Nothing. Not a single thing. The sand still held her own footprints, and those of both Professor Lurcher and Catherine, but was otherwise smooth and undisturbed. She couldn’t see into the corners of the room without stepping onto or over the shackles, but Irene felt fairly confident that the room was empty.
Unless it isn’t.
A shiver ran up Irene’s spine as she recalled the first sentence in their diablery textbooks: ‘Never make assumptions when demons are involved.’
Scenarios ran through her mind. What if there was something in there.
She couldn’t see it, so it had to be using a spell of some sort. Either it was invisible or capable of altering her perception.
Irene took a step back from the shackles. It could even be right in front of her, hoping she would step over the line.
But it couldn’t be invisible. It would still leave footprints.
Unless it could float over the sand.
The only other possibility was that it had burrowed beneath the sand. Mundane logic said that the sands would be disturbed at least somewhat. But mundane logic generally went out the window when dealing with magic. Any half-baked earth mage would be able to smooth over sands enough to avoid notice from the distance she was standing.
Well, that’s not the only other possibility, Irene thought as she pressed a finger to her temple. My imagination could be playing tricks on—
“What are you doing?”
Irene screamed. She would never admit to it, but a high-pitched shriek sprung from her mouth as she felt a hand come down on her shoulder.
Her mind took an extra minute to process Jordan’s voice.
Clutching her chest, Irene tried to calm down. Her efforts weren’t helped any by Jordan’s snickering.
“It isn’t funny,” Irene said, giving him a punch in the shoulder.
Jordan rubbed his shoulder, but didn’t stop his snickering. If anything, it only made him laugh harder. “You were concentrating so hard,” he said between chuckles.
“I heard something like a barrel of spaghetti being dumped on the ground. It scared me, alright? You don’t have to make fun of me for it.”
His laughter died down with a single, “ah.”
“What? Did you find something out?”
He shook his head. “Dad is meeting with Dean Turner and Professor Zagan. They wouldn’t let me in. I ran into someone who I thought might help watch Eva’s room, but…” Jordan trailed off with a glance over his shoulder. “See for yourself.”
Following his gaze, Irene spotted… something. Something had spilled? With a rag on top of it. Maybe. It was at the far end of the hallway, just at the top of the staircase.
“What is it?”
“Well, it used to be a security guard. Now however, well, your barrel of spaghetti example might not be so inaccurate.”
“Oh, it’s Lucy.”
Irene started towards the demon, moving around Jordan. Seeing Lucy was actually something of a relief. The day she had come into class, they got a brief introduction to contracts. Lucy’s contract was essentially to act as security for Brakket Academy and to protect the students at all costs.
If there was something inside of Eva’s room, having Lucy around would be a great reassurance.
Or not, Irene thought as she got closer.
Lucy was well and thoroughly disassociated with herself. She had flattened herself out on the floor, her spindly tentacles making no effort to maintain her human form. Or do much of anything at all. Only her security uniform kept her in any kind of recognizable shape.
In other words, she was something that would be incredibly difficult to explain if anyone emerged from their rooms.
Irene glanced up and down the hallway, but apart from Jordan, there was no one around. And that was in spite of her earlier scream. The rooms had some protection against noise, but the scream should have gone through.
Then again, it was the dead of night. Most people were probably in deep sleep.
Irene stooped down to be a little closer to the mass of tentacles. “Lucy? Can you hear me?”
Something that might have been a response in tentacle-people language emerged from the mass. An effort was made, but whatever it was, Irene found it entirely unintelligible.
“You’re going to have to form a mouth if you want to talk to me. And everything else you use for speech.”
Irene immediately regretted saying anything at all.
Watching as the pile of wet spaghetti noodles twisted around to form a set of disembodied lips was one of the more disturbing things that Irene had witnessed in her recent memory. Possibly ever.
“This place feels gross.”
“I don’t feel anything,” Irene said. Though, now that it was mentioned, Catherine had been complaining about something similar before she had left.
But she wasn’t, Irene glanced down at the mass, like this.
“Do you think you can pull yourself together?”
Rather than give any verbal response, Lucy’s tentacles trembled. She was trying, that much was clear. Slowly, ever so slowly, her body started to gain some definition.
“Huh.”
Irene jumped again. She shouldn’t have, she knew that Jordan was right at her side. He was just so quiet and easy to forget about.
At least he was a distraction from Lucy. When she had demonstrated her true form in class, she had only done an arm. Even that had been quickly and easily decentralized into the strands of tentacles and put back together. As Lucy was now, it looked almost painful.
Irene was thankful that her uniform was covering up most of her body.
“You don’t seem very surprised. I expected more shock.”
Putting on a frown, the only thing that Irene could think of in response was that the contract was incredibly inconvenient. Jordan knew about demons anyway. There should be an exception for people like him, if nothing else.
“Neither do you,” Irene said with a shake of her head.
“Oh, I was plenty surprised when she fell face first into the ground and exploded into ribbons.”
“I’m sure.”
To avoid any continuation of the topic, Irene reached down and helped the mostly solid Lucy to her feet. She made sure to only touch Lucy on her clothes; the demon was covered in some slimy mucus.
She wobbled a fair amount, but managed to keep from falling on her face again. There was a bit of wet gurgling noises coming from–Irene wanted to say from Lucy’s throat, but that wasn’t entirely accurate. It was just coming from Lucy in general.
“Why is this place so gross?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Irene said. “I don’t feel anything.” Except a constant butterflies-in-stomach feeling, she thought. She was fairly certain that the feeling wasn’t related. Glancing over at Jordan, Irene asked, “do you feel anything?”
He shrugged. “Not particularly. Maybe a little unsettling sensation, but that could have just been from watching Lucy put herself together.”
“Something is here. But not? It’s,” Lucy paused, scrunching up her face in concentration.
Given her lack of bone structure or human muscles, the look sent chills up Irene’s spine. She was clearly mimicking what she had seen other people do in similar situations, but wasn’t quite succeeding. There was just something uncanny about it. If asked, Irene wouldn’t be able to point out any one thing in particular that was wrong with it. It just looked off.
“I don’t know the words,” Lucy eventually said, sagging in defeat.
On instinct, Irene reached forward to help steady the demon. When Lucy sagged, she sagged.