Despite her words, she remained seated in the common room.
Eva pulled out one certain vial from the cupboard. A muted brown color potion. Not really what it was supposed to look like, but uncapping the top and sniffing at it, Eva didn’t find anything really wrong with the light citrus scent. It probably wouldn’t kill her.
It might not work as intended, but at least she tried.
“Here,” Eva said, tossing the vial to Lynn. “Same thing I took when I amputated my legs. It should make your entire body numb for a few hours. Though I did have to take about twenty vials of it, but potions don’t work too well on me.”
Lynn caught the vial out of the air, frowning at the color as she performed the same smell test that Eva did. Unlike Eva, she wrinkled her nose, pushing the vial away from her face. She opened her mouth.
For a moment, Eva thought that she was going to complain.
Lynn brought the vial to her lips and tipped it all back in a single swig.
She shuddered as her face twisted into disgust. The disgust quickly vanished as her face regained a neutral expression.
“Well, it works on my tongue at least.”
Eva waited, watching as the nun went slack-jawed.
“And rest of my body,” she slurred after a moment.
“Excellent. Let’s get to work.”
Eva drew her dagger as Lynn started removing her shirt.
The purple blotches on her arm reached just below her shoulder—luckily for Lynn, it would be much harder to remove the corruption if it had spread onto her chest. Eva couldn’t tell that anything was odd. As far as her blood was concerned, everything was normal.
The blotches cut off below her shoulder with a sharp line. Slightly curved.
“This is where the moonlight cut off,” Lynn started, slightly slurring her words as she traced the sharp line. “I moved my arm into the light before stepping fully into it. Obviously, I didn’t follow through with the remainder of the ritual.”
“If you had finished, would the corruption have been pulled away?” Eva mused as she cut a thin line into Lynn’s arm. “Perhaps it was only temporary.”
Lynn had abjectly refused to allow demon blood anywhere near her. Even after explaining that human blood wasn’t half a strong, she hadn’t agreed.
So if it wasn’t a clean cut, it wouldn’t be Eva’s fault.
“That wasn’t something I could chance. Not with Shalise sleeping a tent over. If something had happened… if I had turned into an enigma or otherwise lost my mind…”
“Probably good that you didn’t.”
Standing away from Lynn, Eva clapped her hands together right away.
The blood dripping out of the wound Eva had cut flashed white. When the spots died out from Eva’s eyes, Lynn’s arm was lying at her side, looking a whole lot more like mutilated beef than Eva had intended. However, Lynn herself didn’t look too bad.
Eva did let out a small groan as she hardened the blood around Lynn’s stump. “I should have had you move.”
Glancing down at the bleeding limb on the couch, she gave a half-smile. “Your loss,” Lynn said. “I feel…”
Whatever she was going to say, she didn’t make it. Her eyes rolled back in her head as she fell over to the side.
—
Eva shifted her mask around, molding the blood over her hair to give her a smooth and solid skullcap.
Arachne wasn’t with her. She was far too recognizable for what Eva intended to do. Even Eva’s mask could be recognized by anyone who went to the Elysium Order’s cathedral. Both Zoe and Wayne as well as the nuns.
Though Eva hoped she wouldn’t be running into one of them anytime soon.
Serena could recognize it as well, but Eva hadn’t seen the vampire in forever. She had left a note stating that she was going home. After that, Wayne had disappeared for a few days before returning alone. Presumably she was fine.
Eva had been somewhat put off by the simple note as a farewell. They had a somewhat awkward situation when she had lost control after teleporting, but Eva hadn’t held it against her. It was Eva’s fault for teleporting her, if anything.
But that was all in the past. Focusing on the present, Eva had to ensure that she wouldn’t be easily recognized. She had bought an entirely new outfit specifically for tonight. Normally, Eva wore skirts and tee-shirts. She hadn’t worn shoes since her inhuman nature had been revealed to the school population.
Today, she had a long pair of suit pants with a dark button-up shirt.
And her mask.
Sitting in front of a well-lit mirror, Eva stared at herself with a frown. The mask on her face turned to a frown as well. It took a bit of practice to mimic her expressions on the mask. It wasn’t perfect. Anyone who looked too closely would realize that her mask didn’t move quite like a real face would.
But it was close enough.
“Now,” Eva said as she looked out at the array of chemicals on the desk in front of the mirror. “How do I do this?”
Reaching out, she picked up a circular container of powder that roughly matched her skin tone. Setting it down, she took hold of a jar of thicker goop. As with the powder, it matched her skin.
But Eva had no idea how to use it.
Having lived on her own since she was younger, Eva had never really gotten into makeup. People at her old school used it. Eva only rarely spoke with them. Her attending middle school had been solely to avoid any trouble involving the law coming after her for truancy that, in retrospect, had probably been wholly unnecessary.
It wasn’t like she was registered to live at the abandoned hospital.
None of her limited experience with others in school had led to an interest in makeup.
With a groan, Eva started slathering the goop over her semi-solid mask. The surface of her mask was hard enough that the makeup didn’t soak into it. Which was good for her control over the blood. If the blood became too contaminated, she would lose control and her mask would become a solid masquerade mask.
Unfortunately, the goop didn’t mesh into the mask the same way that it did with skin. Eva had to make the mask slightly porous to get it spread smoothly. There were still ridges and clumps of thicker makeup, but Eva managed to get it smoothed out for the most part.
Grabbing a brush and the powder, Eva brushed some up on her face. She had no idea what she was doing, but she was trying to give some definition to the smooth, plastic-like texture of the goop.
A bit of lipstick gave some color to her lips.
“Whatever,” Eva said with a shake of her head. It didn’t need to be perfect. It just needed to make her not look like her and not look like hardened demon blood. The makeup definitely accomplished both tasks. It didn’t really make her look like a human though.
Reaching to the side of the mirror, Eva picked up a short blond wig. Enough to cover the rest of her head that didn’t have makeup over it. It took a bit of molding of her mask to get it to stay on and not slip off, but eventually she managed.
Finally, Eva reached towards a small container. The large, full-eye contacts that Devon had gifted her long ago before she had lost her original eyes. She could have worn them earlier, but after missing eyes completely and going with the blindfold for so long, suddenly having eyes would have been strange.
And they were a nightmare to insert and remove.
She should have done so before putting on her mask, but it was easy enough to detach from the rest of her face without ruining the makeup. Not that it could really look any worse.
Eva had to pull down the lip of her eye as she slipped the edge of the contact under her eyelid. Pressing it into place, there was a bit of an air bubble on the inside. Nothing painful, but her eye would dry out if left too long.
She wasn’t planning on taking too long tonight.
“I look like a doll,” Eva said after she inserted her second contact and replaced her mask. “A doll that was left in the oven for too long.”
Whatever she looked like didn’t matter. She wasn’t planning on interacting with anyone. Her disguise only needed to function from afar. And on anyone watching on any security cameras.