Even Arachne had taken on a more respectful tone while speaking to her. Somewhat. Probably.
It was really hard to say. They didn’t speak all that much. Before or since.
Glancing to her side, she found Arachne gritting her teeth almost as much as Catherine was. Maybe more.
The children were mostly avoiding the armored spider. That was to be expected. Even before the ritual, few demons could hope to attract as much attention as a succubus. Even one as lowly as Catherine had been. It was only natural that she be the center of attention.
But whatever Arachne’s opinions towards Catherine were, they barely mattered. The ritual had worked. Catherine could feel it deep within her chest. A swelling of something more than she had been before.
The thing that did matter was Arachne’s slowly clenching and unclenching fists. She was about to tear somebody apart. While Catherine really didn’t care what happened to most of the mortal children, she really didn’t want to get into a fight. She had ritual circles to improve and maybe a game or two to play.
Now that this first ritual was complete, she felt like she deserved a little bit of unwinding downtime.
Letting out just a hair of that swell within her chest had the entire auditorium falling silent. The children looked at her with lovestruck eyes, mouths still gaping open yet silent.
“Do me a favor,” Catherine said, injecting just a hair of magic into her voice. “Go to your classrooms and leave me alone.”
A few vacant nods followed before the children started scrambling off to follow her orders.
Catherine started chuckling. She couldn’t help it. The spell would wear off after a few minutes, but she had just charmed an entire auditorium full of mortals like it was nothing.
The adults at the far end of the room were still around. Catherine had specifically excluded them from her spell. Some were staring at her with mild disapproval. Others were the opposite; perhaps because she hadn’t killed anyone.
Really, it was absurdly easy to exceed expectations when expectations couldn’t possibly be any lower.
Zoe had her lips pressed thin. Despite her obvious disapproval, she gave Catherine a brief nod of her head.
Catherine rolled her eyes. She didn’t need the professor’s approval.
There were a few others in the auditorium. A couple of the students who had participated in the diablery class the previous year. They would have spent enough time around Catherine to understand what she had done and were able to resist it. Catherine had no doubts that she could ensnare them should she wish. All it would take was a little more power.
Eva and her group of friends hadn’t moved either. Catherine had not expected her spell to work on Eva and wasn’t sure that more power would be the answer. Though Catherine had become stronger, Eva felt stronger still. Even if the girl didn’t act like it.
More worrying was that Devon said that there were still treatments to undergo. At least one though possibly as many as three. His original schedule had been thrown off with the death of Arachne. He hadn’t locked down the exact functions or limitations of the new one just yet.
And if Eva decided to perform more rituals of the type that Catherine was doing…
Catherine shuddered. She didn’t want to think of what might result. There had to be a limit to the power one could gain. But where was that limit? For all Catherine knew, it was far enough out that it wouldn’t really matter that there was a limit because nothing but a Power would be able to stand up to Eva.
Of course, if Catherine continued with her rituals, maybe that would be her instead.
Whatever the future held, Catherine was still just a little giddy at the moment. She walked up to Eva and glanced around.
Jordan, Irene, and Eva had all come out of that unaffected. Irene had her arm clamped around her sister’s shoulder, keeping her from wandering off to class. Eva’s blond friend was rubbing her forehead while Eva had an arm on the other’s shoulder, similar to Irene.
Catherine didn’t much care for any of them. She looked right towards Eva and grinned. “Did you see that? The whole room fell under my sway in an instant.”
“You couldn’t do something like that before?”
“Maybe to a small group of people. This was a whole auditorium. At least a hundred people, right?”
Eva glanced over to her friends before she shrugged. “No idea. Do that many people even attend Brakket?”
“They do. Trust me. I used to be the secretary here.”
“You never even did your job. You just played games the whole time.”
“She did enough of her job to cause trouble now that she is gone.”
Catherine scowled as she turned to Anderson. He had left the stage and was walking straight towards her. Or as straight as he could walk with all the auditorium seats in the way.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come back?”
“Quite certain,” Catherine said. “Replacing me cannot be that difficult. A monkey could do the job.”
“Even monkeys get nervous when hearing about demons around. Truly an unfortunate name for your species. Imagine if you were named ‘hoogoozlaps’ instead of demons. No one would fear you or take you seriously in the least.”
Catherine, and the children still around, stared. Anderson wasn’t one to make a joke. At least, Catherine hadn’t known him to. Perhaps he had always been so ticked off with Martina that his humor had fled.
That was something that Catherine could understand.
But if this was his sense of humor, perhaps he should have left it alone.
“I think I will stick with demon,” she said after a moment of awkward silence.
“Very well. Anyway, thank you for coming. I know you don’t have to follow my directions at the moment.”
Catherine narrowed her eyes. She didn’t much like his phrasing. At the moment sounded like he intended to get her under his thumb. “I don’t appreciate being made into a zoo animal for your students. I came solely because you offered a computer.”
“Don’t worry. You served your purpose well enough. Dismissing the students as you did helped immensely as well. It calmed a great deal of my professors, though I did hear a comment demeaning mind control. But I can see that this does not interest you,” he said as Catherine just glared. “If you’ll follow me, I can get the computer I promised you.”
Finally, Catherine smiled. She took a single step before a thought crossed her mind.
“Eva,” Catherine said, “if you and Arachne would accompany me. Perhaps along with your mortal friends.”
The semi-demon in question blinked before slowly nodding her head. “I don’t have a problem with that. Zoe is my first class and I’m sure that she would understand. Why?”
“Computers have many small components. I’m strong enough to carry just about anything, but carrying so much can be tedious. A few extra hands would be appreciated.”
So Catherine said. In truth, she did not want to be alone with Anderson after that comment of his. It might be completely innocuous, but Catherine was unwilling to take chances.
Anderson didn’t look upset in the slightest, lending credence to the idea that it had been an innocent comment.
Their entourage had made it through the school and into the offices area unmolested. With the classes starting, the hallways were empty.
There was a cardboard box on top of Catherine’s old secretary desk. From a brief glance inside, she found it to be full of her the secretary computer. That suited her just fine. Everything was already customized for her.
Though her excuse for having Eva come along with her now sounded somewhat weak, but Catherine really didn’t care what they thought so long as she was left free.
“The other reason I asked you here was to ask a favor,” Anderson said. “I wanted to ask if you might meet with the demons I have coming in. Address a few questions and concerns.”