While she could be a freshman, this girl looked about nine. She couldn’t be. Thirteen was the absolute youngest it was possible to attend Brakket. And they would have a birthday sometime soon after starting school if they entered that young.
“Are you going to let go of me?”
“Oh. Of course.” Eva shook her head. If the girl was out looking for the demons—which Eva was guessing based on her being far too young for school—she should toughen up a bit when finding one.
Eva shot a quick glance towards Vektul. The boy—or the demon who appeared as a boy—just stood to the side. It was a curiosity filled stare. Possibly puzzling out how he had thought her dead only for her to wake and be standing in a minute.
“Do you live on this floor?” Eva asked, turning back towards the girl.
With a short nod and a gesture towards one of the rooms, she started to speak. Only started. She made a small noise before something caught in her throat. It took a few coughs for her to actually get the words out. “Just–just over there.”
Which threw Eva’s theories out the window. She must just be a baby-faced teen with a severe height impairment. Or maybe she hadn’t started school but lived with a relative in the dorms for some reason.
“Do you need help getting there?”
Her head swung side to side as she moved away from Eva. She took a ginger step around Vektul before sprinting straight to the door she had pointed out. With one final glance at Eva and her group, she disappeared into the room.
“Perhaps,” Eva said to Vektul after a moment, “we should move elsewhere. Are you hungry? Do you get hungry?”
“I can eat. Upon arriving, I was given a… strawberry? I think they called it that.”
“Enjoyable?”
Vektul shrugged. In a voice as toneless and as emotionless as he had used before, he said, “I could eat more.”
Eva chuckled. “Alright. Let’s head to the kitchens. We should be able to scrounge up some things and, hopefully, not stand right outside doors where people are going to be wandering about. Especially not younger people. They aren’t quite as accustomed to my appearance as the older years.”
As she led him down the stairs and towards the kitchen, Vektul cocked his head to the side.
“I don’t understand.”
“What?”
“I don’t understand.”
Eva shook her head. This demon really needed to spend some time around regular people. Were all the demons that Anderson had brought like this? “I mean, what is it that you don’t understand?”
“That human. Why was she… I don’t understand her motivations.”
“Motivations?” Eva said as she pushed into the kitchen.
Nobody was around. That was somewhat expected. It was earlier in the evening. Not so early that everyone would be hungry, but generally before the majority of the students ate. Some people might show up to eat an early snack before going to study or work on homework.
Hopefully keeping away from that door would give anybody who entered a moment or two to process the demons gathered around and not freak out instantly.
“She had no ‘motivations’ for fainting. Maybe you could say that her motivations after waking were to get away from us as soon as possible. To remove herself from our presence.
“Above all, you could say that fear ‘motivated’ her.”
“We have a contract to not harm the students,” Vektul said, taking a seat.
Arachne plopped down in the seat opposite from him, slouching in her seat slightly. “I’ve no such contract. I could kill them all if I so choose.”
Eva paused her movements towards one of the great refrigerators to shoot a glare in Arachne’s direction.
The spider-demon stiffened almost immediately, pulling out of her slouch to look mildly ashamed of herself.
“Maybe we should get you a contract.”
“That is completely unnecessary. I assure you. It was just an example.”
“Uh huh.” Eva pulled open the fridge and rummaged through.
The school kept it stocked with a fairly poor assortment of goods. Eva, not being the best chef around, just found a few apples and decided that would have to do. If Vektul wanted to have something a bit more gourmet for tasting the cuisine of the mortal realm, he would just have to visit a real restaurant.
“Besides,” Arachne continued, “a demon cannot hold a contract with another demon. Otherwise I’d probably be in the Keeper’s claws for what I did to get your eyes. And I do not want to be beholden to some random mortal.”
“Juliana isn’t a random mortal. Zoe isn’t either. I’m sure that Zoe at least would sleep much better if she knew that you couldn’t hurt anyone.”
“I like to keep the option open. What if the necromancer’s daughter returns? I’d like the freedom to deal with her as I see fit.”
“Well,” Eva said, setting a pair of apples on the table. Arachne wouldn’t want one and really, she didn’t either. She would just nibble at it to make Vektul not feel alone in eating. “I doubt she would be coming as a student again. Her appearance is a bit distinctive. Even if she covered it up on the outside, I’d be able to spot her insides and would kill her before she could do anything.”
Vektul stared at his apple as Eva took a seat next to Arachne. He plucked off the stem and popped it right into his mouth. No expression of disgust or enjoyment came over his face as he swallowed. He turned the apple over, continuing to stare at it.
Taking pity on him, Eva took a large bite out of the side of the apple. Her razor-sharp teeth glided through the meat of the fruit as if it were no more solid than cotton candy.
Even now, almost a month after her most recent treatment, it was still surprising just how sharp they were. More surprising was the fact that it was incredibly difficult to bite through her own tongue. She had accidentally bit her tongue one time and almost hadn’t noticed. That incident had prompted a few experiments. To actually injure her tongue took more force than she would ever use eating anything normally.
Maybe they could be used as a weapon. However, given her experiences in Sawyer’s mind, she was going to need to be extraordinarily desperate to put other people’s body parts in her mouth.
Mimicking her actions, Vektul took a bite out of the side of the apple. His own teeth weren’t quite as sharp as Eva’s. They certainly weren’t the triangular interlocking knives that made up most demons’ teeth. Of course, Catherine’s teeth weren’t sharp while in her human form. He was probably hiding them.
After the first bite, he took a second. That was quickly followed by a third.
Soon enough, he had finished off the apple, core and all.
“She wanted to be alone?”
Eva blinked, confused for a moment before realizing that he was still talking about that student.
“Maybe not alone, but not with us. Demons scare most people.”
“Most. But not all?”
“No. Not all. In fact, I’m sure that plenty of students will be all to eager to meet with you all.”
“Good,” he said. There was a note of finality to his otherwise emotionless voice. “Though I have my mission to assist you, I hoped to speak with mortals.”
“Speak with mortals?” Eva frowned. “Anyone in particular?”
“No. Merely beings who are not constructs or Void. Someone… new.”
Eva fell silent for a few moments.
Much like Lucy, this demon must have been one of the ones who had never interacted with anyone or anything outside of his domain. His isolation was manifesting itself in an entirely different manner. Rather than the fascination with everything around and an almost unbearably chipper attitude that Lucy possessed, Vektul was emotionless. As if he didn’t know how to act, let alone how to react to everything around him.
“Now that you mention it, your mission. What exactly is the intended outcome of assisting me?”
He tilted his head to one side. He must have learned that gesture from somewhere.