Forget the seventy-two. She had a legitimate Power following her actions. What did He expect of her?
Eva didn’t even realize that she had been hyperventilating until Zagan placed a hand on her shoulder. She glanced up to meet his golden eyes, wondering just what words of advice he would offer.
“If your actions will determine what sort of demon you will become, I wonder just what inaction will mean.”
With that, he smiled and walked away.
Eva stumbled as his hand left her shoulder. She watched him wander down the empty hallway with static in her thoughts.
Only after he had gone, only after she had stood still for several minutes did Eva blink.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
The moment the words left her mouth, an idea came to mind. She couldn’t be sure that it was what Zagan was talking about, but it fit as well as anything.
Eva balled her fists. “Sawyer,” she hissed through gritted teeth.
With a thought, Eva teleported to the women’s ward. She had work to do. Preparations to make.
The minute she woke up from her treatment, Sawyer would wish that he had never heard of Brakket Academy.
Chapter 006
Juliana Laura Rivas flipped through the news.
It had been months and there was still no sign that anything was amiss around Brakket City.
The purple streaks in the sky had attracted a good amount of attention for the first month. Brakket was fairly isolated from much of the mundane world, but not so much that the sky would go unnoticed. Even had satellites not been able to pick up the anomaly, people in neighboring cities could look out the window and see the sky. It was simply too huge of an effect to contain.
Conspiracy theorists had come out of the woodwork to appear on talk shows. No one could agree on any one cause. Mundane experts were baffled. Some tried to claim that the purple streaks in the sky were caused by light refracting in certain ways in the area. One guy with extremely messy hair appeared numerous times to claim that aliens were behind everything.
Once it had been found out that Brakket Academy was supposedly one of those ‘magical’ academies, people started to get nervous.
Everyone had been expecting a repeat of the Lansing incident. Some catastrophe of city-leveling proportions. Cameras were trained on the city—from a safe distance—day in and day out.
Somehow, one news station had managed to get Dean Turner to do an interview.
“The state of the sky is the result of a failed experiment. The intended effect was to shade the entire sky for a set distance, filtering certain wavelengths. Uses proposed for the intended effect was to use it in certain parts of the world to control light level to crops, helping to feed millions. It could remove harmful radiation. A more controlled version could be used to color the sky for a celebration, taken down the next day.
“Obviously, things went wrong. The streaks of purple are not harmful. We do not currently know if the sky will return to normal on its own, but we are researching ways to remove the effect.”
Roughly the same announcement that Zoe had said was given to the people of Brakket City.
The interviewer had asked a number of other questions. Most dealing with Brakket Academy itself and the use of magic. Dean Turner had dodged some of the questions while others had been answered.
If Juliana didn’t know better, she might have believed the dean.
But she didn’t need to believe it. She just needed Erich and her dad to believe it.
That interview had started up the debate on whether or not magic actually existed or if everything was a cover up for government conspiracies. Even a decade and a half after Lansing, some people still doubted the actual mages conjuring matter from nothing on live television.
After a month of nothing notable happening around Brakket, the media started to get bored. Less and less of the city was shown. News anchors briefly mentioned that nothing had changed before talking about a plane crash on the other side of the world with a gleam in their eye.
“Now they don’t even show Brakket at all. Obviously nothing bad has happened.”
“We’ve had this discussion before, Juli. You’re not going back.”
Juliana flicked the television off with a huff.
“Mom said I could.”
“Your mother–” Juliana’s father cut himself off with a sigh. He pulled off his glasses with one hand and pressed his thumb and middle finger to his eyes. Bringing his fingers together, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Your mother is a reckless woman. I love her for it, but she often thinks that others can be as reckless as she is.”
“You aren’t as strong as Genoa. You cannot survive what she can survive.”
Juliana’s head whipped to her other side to stare at her brother. “You think I don’t know that? If I was as strong as she is, mom wouldn’t be in the hospital.”
“Juliana–”
“And stop agreeing with each other,” Juliana said, looking between the two men. “It’s weird. You’re supposed to be fighting or arguing. Ignoring each other at the very least.”
Resetting his glasses on his nose, her father looked down at her. “Your brother and I have had our… disagreements in the past. Especially regarding your mother. That doesn’t stop the both of us from caring about you. We want you to be safe.”
Juliana rubbed the black band around her finger. Her thumb idled around the skull pattern engraved into the heavy-yet-light metal. The body heat coming off her finger should have kept it at least lukewarm, yet it felt icy to the touch of her thumb.
The only things–demons, at least–that it hadn’t protected her against were the imps in the prison and Zagan himself. Technically Willie, though she had attacked him first, making that one more of her fault than anything.
“I’ll be safe enough,” she said as she stood.
Erich stood the moment she did.
“Will you calm down?” Juliana half-shouted. “I’m just going to my room. I don’t need you babysitting me everywhere I go. Don’t you have a career to get back to?”
“The bank has given me extended leave for a family emergency.”
“Yeah? Well, emergency over. Go back to work,” Juliana said as she stormed out of the room.
In her first year of school, Juliana had been somewhat sad that the school wanted students there for most of the summer. It had taken her away from her parents and thrust her into a world of unfamiliar people.
Now? Juliana wished that the magical world had decent truant officers. Someone to show up and tell her father and brother that she had to be at school. It didn’t even matter that the school seminars hadn’t started up yet.
Anything to get a little breathing room from her family.
Juliana hadn’t been lying earlier. She had fully intended to head upstairs and lock herself in her room for a few hours.
A sound in the kitchen put that plan on hold.
Her mother was at the hospital. Her father and brother were in the living room. No one else should be home.
And yet, there was a sound in the kitchen.
Heart beating faster, Juliana channeled magic through her ring foci. Metal plates coating most of her skin turned from solid to liquid. It flowed over her, providing armor to her hands and head. A long blade stretched out from either wrist until they broke off from the main armor to act more like regular swords.
Thoroughly ready, Juliana pressed open the swinging door to the kitchen.
And promptly froze.
The familiar smell of sulfur permeated the room. It was all coming from one man. Dressed in a dark suit, a barrel-chested man with short black hair was rummaging through the refrigerator.
“No Hellfire,” he said with a click of his tongue. With an overly exaggerated sigh, he turned to stare at Juliana with golden eyes.
“P-Professor Zagan,” Juliana squeaked.
This was bad. Or good? Probably bad.