Chapter 255 - Friendship Is Also Magic

I had to say that while the entire misadventure with Staghead wasn't on the top ten of my most pleasant experiences, I brought some good things out of it. Namely, the connections with Cornellio, Eve and Bob. I would even call them friends, the kind that doesn't chat together much, but can watch each other back.

Cornellio lamented the loss of the reputation of his—just opened!—auction house, and the loss of the trust of vampires to the idea of socialising more. After the incident that happened, very few would dare to accept the invitation again, unless he excludes vampires out of the list of guests—and they were some of the most profitable clients.

I could only sympathise.

Our team's roads separated again, but there was an unspoken promise to keep in contact. And when I and JJ left for St. Petersburg, Eve asked to come with so she could—just as she wanted to—research my fragment of the jade seal.

I left it with Ghost, where it was mostly hidden from the world in the magic box of holding. So to not complicate relations with local witches, Eve didn't come to Nightingale territory—or that of any other coven—instead she stayed in a hotel on a land of some vampire.. Witches' version of neutral territory.

So from that point of view, my store was also a totally neutral territory. I invited Eve to the kitchen, where we could sit with the comfort of food nearby—and where there was a table to put the seals on. The real one and the fake one.

There were plenty of differences between them if one compared them side to side. I used jade as the base and edited the colours of it with magic, just like I added the lines of the seal. It was Eve who finished the fake by adding magic to these lines, so it won't just look the same, but feel it. She missed a lot of smaller ones, though, threads so tiny that she must've missed them entirely.

"This is a masterpiece." Eve said with quiet admiration, tracing the lines of the real seal with a finger. "It's a true crime that the purpose of it was as idiotic as it was. If it wasn't, who knows how much good it could've brought to the world? A seal like that could change it completely. And it would be an even bigger crime to destroy it…"

"Yeah. So many artefacts get lost because of vandals, or black archeologists who don't care for historical values, or just because the time is merciless, and we are going to destroy another one. Even thinking that it's all for the greater good doesn't help to stop the blood that pours out of my heart right now!" I sighed.

"We aren't destroying it now!" Eve immediately shifted the seal closer to herself, then caught herself and relaxed. "I mean, I still have at least document it and found out as much as I could from it. Will you let me rent it, Diana?"

"I promised, didn't I?" I smiled. "So let's discuss price."

Eve chuckled. "How could we go without it? Luckily for you, I'm not a fan of haggling."

That made the conclusion of the deal fairly quick. Since Eve end up didn't spend all these millions on Cornellio's piece of the seal, she had plenty of money to pay me and seemingly little regard to its value.

I could've asked so much from her… but we were friends, weren't we? So I didn't, and we ended up still being friends by the end of the bargaining.

"It's a pleasure doing business with you, Eve."

"Same goes," she smiled, a little crookedly, and looked into the window. The sky outside was so cloudy that I left the curtains open today. "One day I should come to your city for business instead of pleasure. It's a nice one to visit after you live away from people for as long as I did… not too noisy."

"As someone who believes that wild nature is best when you and it are safely separated by either distance or a layer of asphalt, I really can't measure the level of the noise in the city. I didn't peg you for a rural person, though, Eve. Do you live in a hut on a chicken legs deep in a forest?" I grinned.

Eve huffed. "No. Just a cottage in a field, but away from people. It's because of my partner. He is an uncontrollable telepath. In other words, he hears every thought of people nearby. For him, any big gatherings, not to mention cities, are torturous." A soft smile and a tender look bloomed on Eve's face as she spoke. "A lot of my research into cities goes into trying to find out how to block his gift from working."

I didn't know what to be more fascinated with—the loving expression Eve had or another miraculous tale of the world. In the end, I chose the former. There were so many different magic things on Earth and next to it, but how often did you meet with someone so happily in love?

"I wish you best luck with that. If you think that my ability can help you with your task, Eve, don't be shy to call me. You know, I have plenty of experience in assisting in spells." I grinned with some nostalgia. "When I found my teacher, it was right when that demon was summoned in the city—and did you know the summoners were still not found?—so we spent most of our time with him healing the afflicted by the demon people, and me cleaning up his spells."

Eve's eyes shone. "Combine magic this way? I've never heard about it, but then again, how often do you get an arch-witch into your assistants? This really opens some interesting possibilities. Your teacher sounds like a brilliant and ingenious person. And as just a good teacher, from what I've seen you do despite your relatively brief experience in using magic."