El has never made a knife before and her mother didn't really believe in overpreparation, probably because it would have sacrificed El's abundant childhood innocence or something to be drilling for death school. She finds her assignment and saves Lissa a seat, not that anyone else was likely to sit next to her but conceivably someone could be after the stool, and hangs back a little from the supplies, waiting to see which metals people are taking - she knows what copper looks like but tin is anybody's guess. It doesn't sound to her like the sort of thing that should be terribly valuable so hopefully nobody's determined to hoard.
Lissa grabs the mold stuff and wax, maybe a bit more than they need, and hurries to drop it on the table. She nearly trips over her own feet, but manages to catch herself on the table's edge with a "whew."
"And now for the main ingredients!" she says, half to herself and half to El.
Oh, that kid has a vibe. It's - not exactly the vibe you'd expect from having murdered several other students for malia, it's subtle for that and any kid competent to make it subtle could also just turn it off. But anyone who has merely started on hamsters in the first week is also bad news.
Frank sits down at her table, plays his fingertips across the tabletop. "Name?"
Oh, is that what he meant. Lissa bristles slightly, her desire to protect one of the few friends she has here coming to the fore. "Nope!" says Lissa, emphatically slamming her hands on the table. "I've been with El in a bunch of classes and meals and she hasn't killed anyone at all! Why would you even think that?"
"Well," Frank says with slightly exaggerated slowness, "whoever's killing the freshmen is almost definitely doing it for malia, which gives you a vibe, and your bestie here? Has a vibe. And we've been unable to find the murderer so what we're doing now is just going to every freshman shop class and trying to account for every kid who seems even the slightest bit off, so we can catch the murderer. The murderer isn't going to go after me, and I'd love to be in the gym right now instead, so you could stand to cool it a bit, okay?"
"Thank you, O self-appointed heroic detective lacking only a deerstalker hat! Your skill at profiling is second only to the good people at bloody Heathrow! I tremble in awe! It would be the highlight of my life, Frank, if I may be so bold as to call you Frank, if you were to search my room for guinea pigs!"
Oria Duccini walks briskly in from the doorway. This needs attention. Frank confronting someone...
Oria can see El, and that is a hell of an aura for a freshling.
But. She has her spell up. And that says... nothing. Not a speck.
"Wow, kid, you have the weirdest aura I have ever seen, and I live with an enclave of maleficers."