'Ha! Not even through my first class and I'm already causing trouble,' Leo thought to himself.
He had been prepared to make waves after sensing a couple of devils in the lab. Still, who would have thought that one of them would all but faint after simply looking at him?
'Am I that scary?'
Walking down the stairs Maria had led them to, Leo stood in front of the infirmary with Kira in his arms. She'd tried to struggle a little at first, but quickly gave up and calmed down.
Maria, who had led him down the stairs, opened a door in the hallway wide and shouted, "Miss Hastings! Kira fainted in class and doesn't feel well."
"Oh? Place her down on the bed, it's unoccupied," a voice called out from deeper inside the room.
The infirmary was not that different from what you could expect from any small clinic—except for the lack of a reception area or receptionist, that is. It was simply a large room with three beds on either side of the room, with privacy curtains on the far side of the room covered by curtains.
The infirmary was neat and tidy, but the moment Leo entered, his eyes were drawn to the stunning woman sitting on the edge of the desk on the far side of the room. She sat with her legs crossed, offering him a glimpse of her sexy black underwear under the tight black mini-skirt she wore. Below the short skirt, a pair of black, lace, thigh-high stockings covered long legs that ended in a pair of shiny red Jimmy Choos.
Because of how beautiful his mother was, Leo was insensitive to the beauty of most women… but he had to admit that the woman in front of him was an amazing specimen of the fairer sex. This woman had curves for days.
Beautiful long black hair, gentle green eyes that hid behind a pair of red round glasses, and those amazing breasts. A green knitted turtleneck sweater emphasized the heavy breasts that must require a Herculean effort from her bra, rather than hiding how voluptuous she was.
'We have the same green eyes,' Leo noted.
The color of his eyes was unusual, so he was surprised to see someone else with the same color eyes. Thankfully, even though he was surprised by her voluptuous body and the color of her eyes, he had the sense not to ogle her.
"Maria? You have someone else with you?" Standing up, the woman walked towards Maria and Leo, but when she saw his face, she stopped. It was brief, but Leo could swear he had seen surprise, immediately followed by excitement, flicker across the woman's faced. It was replaced by a radiant smile so quickly that he wasn't sure of what he'd seen.
'My, oh my… I didn't think she'd bring you back here, of all places,' the woman mused. 'It seems like things around this town are finally going to get interesting.'
Turning from Leo, she tsk'd before directing him to lay the young woman in his arms down on the bed nearest her desk.
Once he'd placed Kira on the bed and the nurse made sure Kira was okay, she stood and stretched a hand towards Leo. "I am the school nurse, Cherry Hastings. You must be Leo Karteros… it's nice to meet you."
Leo briefly wondered how this woman could know his name, but then he remembered that he was one of the few men in the school… and a transfer student to boot. It was normal for the faculty to know about him. Just as he was about to answer her, though.
"Karteros?!" Maria let out a cry of surprise that caused Kira, who was laying back in the bed with one arm draped over her eyes, to sit up.
Feeling her exclamation had been too dramatic, Maria chuckled awkwardly. "Sorry, Miss Hastings. It's just that Kira is also named Karteros. What a coincidence, right?"
Leo nodded. This was indeed a coincidence. The name Karteros, while not unique, was fairly rare. For two of them to meet in the same school? Now that was a coincidence.
But then suddenly the school broadcast sounded.
[Miss Hastings, please come to the staff room at once. I repeat—]
"Dammit…" Miss Hastings muttered to herself, a tired sigh accompanying her soft curse before she headed for her own desk on the far wall of the large room. She pulled out several documents from the drawer.
"Sorry, I have to attend a meeting." She looked at Kira, "Karteros, I can't stay and look after you, but if you want, you can rest here a bit longer."
"Also, Karteros…" This time, she turned and addressed Leo directly. "Hmmm… I will just call you Leo to avoid confusion. Leo, and Miss Mephisto…" She threw something silver at him that Leo promptly caught. "That's the key for the infirmary. I'll tell your teachers that you are here, so lock the door behind me."
"You can return the key later." She gave him a wink.
Halfway through the door, she suddenly stopped and turned around. "You're of age, so I won't tell you not to screw around… but that's a sickbed. If you three are going to play around, at least do it somewhere where we teachers won't see the evidence. There are plenty of spots for a tryst. Personally, I recommend right behind the admin building or in the gym storeroom."
"Wha—"
Leo was left speechless at the brazen words coming out of the mouth of the nurse that was winking at him.
"If you do, be careful and use protection." She pointed to a bowl full of condoms on one corner of her desk.
"…"
"…"
Leo and Kira were both dumbfounded while Maria laughed out loud. "I really like her."
"Miss Hastings is a p-pervert!" Kira stammered and then hid her face under the blanket. Her mind reeled at the new student's name.
Karteros.
For Kira, the name wasn't just any name. It was the name that had given her a new chance and a new identity. Because of the stress of everything that had happened, it didn't take long for Kira to fall asleep, her dreams filled with the new student.
Once Leo was sure that Kira was fast asleep, he handed the silver key to Maria and stood. "Well then, I think I will leave you with your friend." He checked his phone for the time. "There's still an hour left of lab, and I need to get back. I'll see you later."
He had done what he had to do, and it was time to leave.
"Ah… thanks." Looking at his departing back, Maria hesitated, wondering whether she should say something more than that. In the end, she decided not to say or doing anything without first telling Rayne and Mimi about what had happened.
Once Leo closed the door of the infirmary behind him, his expression clouded. "Maria Mephisto, huh?"
He'd never completed his education at the Vatican because of what had happened to his second mom. Leo and his father had been excommunicated and kicked out of the holy city after what Raphaeline had done. Because he hadn't kept in touch with any of the adepts he'd trained with, he hadn't paid attention to devil high society for years.
Still, there was no way he wouldn't know that name. Letting out a deep sigh, Leo couldn't help but wonder if it wouldn't be better simply to leave Spartanburg behind and head for one of the other safe houses.
He felt like what he'd hoped would be a normal, everyday life was about to fall apart. After all, he had just met a relative of the one of the Calamities—Salvatore Mephisto. Getting tangled up in the plots and machinations of the family of one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse was not 'laying low'.
The last thing Leo needed was to come to the attention of War.
***
Leo paused just inside the door to the lab room. "Professor Starling? Ah… Maria, I think it was? She stayed with Kira in the nurse's office when Miss Hastings was called to a meeting."
The Professor looked up from where she was helping a pair of students evaporate a saturated sodium chloride solution.
"Mr. Karteros? Good. I want you to join Ms. Silvers at Ms. Mephisto's lab station. We're just wrapping up with the first part of an experiment to separate mixtures by evaporation." She pointed to a petite blonde student across the room.
"Ms. Silvers?"
The petite blonde blinked and pointed to herself.
"Yes, Ms. Silvers, you… Copy down the weights you and your two partners took for the 100 ml of tap water, the 100 ml of saturated sodium chloride solution, and the post evaporation particulate." The Professor shook her head at the sudden look of fear in the blonde's eyes. "You won't be playing third wheel anymore—you're going to be Mr. Karteros's lab partner. Together, the two of you can start the second part of this lab, separating mixtures by gravity filtration. He can help you calculate the mass percent of sodium chloride in the initial saturated solution from the first part of the lab after you finish part two."
Leo finished putting on the required safety gear hung at their lab station just as his new lab partner came over with an armful of notebooks. Without a word, though occasionally shooting him a shy look, she started setting up the stand, ring, and funnel for the next part of the lab.
"Hi… I'm Leo," he softly said as he handed the blonde a piece of filter paper.
When she started to lay the filter paper across the top of the funnel, Leo stopped her by reaching for her wrist. "You have to wet the filter paper with deionized water, first," he explained.
She blushed, jerking her hand back. "S-Sorry, Leo!"
Leo chuckled as he took the filter paper and held it over the sink at their lab station before pouring the deionized water over it. "I'm the one who should apologize. I didn't mean to startle you."
He grinned at her as he set the now wet filter paper over the funnel. "Professor Starling called you Miss Silvers… but it'll be awkward if I have to keep calling you that."
"Right… I should have introduced myself when you told me your name." The blonde snickered, cheeks still a rosy hue. "It's Asa, by the way… Asa Silvers. I'd shake your hand, but…" She held up her rubber-glove covered hands before offering him her elbow.
"It's nice to meet you, Asa." He bumped her elbow with his, then looked down at the lab instructions. "If you want to add and stir things together, I'll write out the chemical equation for the sodium carbonate and calcium chloride mixture."
They finished the second part of the lab ahead of everyone else—mostly because Leo had done it before. With everything already calculated, their apparatus cleaned and put away, he took the final ten minutes of class to get to know his lab partner better.
"I'm so glad you knew what you were doing with all this," Asa said, waving her arms around. "I want to get into the nursing program here, but I'm worried my grades in Chemistry and Biology will keep me from pursuing my dreams."
Leo smiled. Though initially terribly shy, when he got Asa talking about what she wanted to major in, the pretty little blonde lit up. As she told him about how much she enjoyed helping people, about her work at the clinic downtown on weekends, she was a different person from the stammering, blushing mess he'd started part two of the lab with.
"Who do you have for Biology?" he asked. "Because I've got this class, Biology 101, World History 101, Calculus, English Lit, and Algorithm Design for Machine Learning this semester. We might even be in the same class, if we have the same Profs."
"Wow! That's a lot of hours…" Asa studied her hands in her lap. "I'm barely taking the twelve-and-a-half hours required for a full-time student. And that last one doesn't sound like an entry level computer science course."
Leo shrugged. "That one is in my major, and I've always been good at computers. The rest are all freshman gen-ed courses. I'll probably stop taking science courses after these first two semesters of chemistry and biology."
He leaned in conspiratorially close. "To be honest, I've already taken a full year of bio and chem, back in Colorado. I'm only retaking them because my credits didn't transfer—that, and I figured it'll be an easy 'A' since I've taken it before. The syllabus looked about the same."
"I've got Wilson after lunch on Tuesday and Thursday mornings for bio," she explained. "Only meeting twice a week means those classes will be loooooong."
"Sorry, I've got Stenwood on Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon. Shorter classes meeting three times a week, but I'll be able to give you a heads up the day before if we go over anything tricky."
She beamed at him.
Leo leaned back, noting how pretty Asa was when she smiled. "I can help you out, if you're worried that bio and chem might hold you back." He nudged her in the side with his elbow. "Stick with me, and I'll make sure you get into the nursing program."