"Didn't care to wear the uniform?" ....they're just sort of standing in the loo now but El has no idea even after a mad sleepover how to suggest they have this conversation in a less stupid place.

Lucia starts moving towards the exit. "They should've designed a better uniform if they wanted me to wear it. Not nearly enough pockets, what were they thinking." 

"Designed for the catwalk, s'pose." Home to her room she goes.

The next morning at breakfast, Lucia asks, "So, when d'you want to do the mirror?" 

"Work period?"

"Sounds good!"

So at work period the three of them assemble in the shop and El magnanimously lets Lucia open her project locker in case Schroedinger's mal will still be there if it's not El opening the door (it isn't) and they can get underway on the mirror.

And Lucia has just finished her part when the sirenspiders show up, which is good, because she would absolutely have dropped everything to kill them regardless, and this way they don't have to redo the pour, probably. 

"Hey, Aadhya, sirenspider bits are useful, right?" she asks once they're all dead and nothing is left but involuntary twitching. "I busted up the main carapaces a bunch but I think there's probably still loads of salvageable material." 

Aadhya climbs out from under the table. "- yes, they are - how badly is it ruined, El -"

It's not. It's perfectly smooth. El whispers her last line of Latin and drops her hands to her sides.

Lucia comes over and glances at it. "Oh, perfect. Hey, mister mirror, got any ominous bullshit to say yet?" 

"Galadriel!" intones the mirror. "You will topple the -"

"Yes, yes, bloody thank you," El mutters, stuffing the mirror into the wrappings that she had the frame in before.

"Rude, it could at least have said some ominous bullshit to me, I'm the one who addressed it. So, siren-spider harvesting." 

"- yes," says Aadhya, blinking away her startlement at the perfect mirror and setting about collecting bits.

Lucia cares a lot about wasting as little of the spider as possible and not very much at all about who gets how much of it. Once she's confident that Aadhya has the situation handled she does a perimeter check and then starts prowling for anything else that might be hanging around. 

Lucia spends a lot of time hanging around El, at one point or another, but not all of it; not even all of it that she doesn't spend in actual classes. 

She accompanies El on a couple of maintenance shifts--it gets done faster if two people do it, and maintenance shifts are kind of dangerous. 

But she still spends a decent chunk of her time hunting on the lowest levels of the school. 

She's doing that when her power-sharer starts screaming at her that a big ol' chunk of New York is imperiled in the library. 

She makes for the stairwell and bolts, taking the stairs two at a time, muttering a spell to go faster--if New York is in trouble in the library, that's--that's really bad, the library is the safest place in the school, and New York is never the lowest-hanging fruit. 

There were four of them. The good news was that they had, somehow, gone after New York first--Lucia didn't have time to work out why, she just needed to kill, kill, kill. One of them was an ooze, which was annoying because swords don't work on those. One of them was a manifestation, which swords work on even less. 

She had to use up all the mana on her person, and everything in the crystal El had given her after the night of madness. 

But nobody was dead. 

Nobody in the main reading room, anyway. She had to bully it out of Magnus, but they had come in through the stacks--anyone who'd had a carrel between wherever they came into the library and the reading room was no doubt chunky salsa. 

...Where was El? 

It wasn't that Lucia expected her to be in the main reading room, or anything. El could've finagled an invitation if she wanted it, probably, on the strength of Lucia's attachment to her and the fact that she still hadn't tried to squash the rumors that they were lovers. 

But that meant she could have been in the stacks, and even if it were more improbable than it was, it would have worried at Lucia until she found out for sure. 

She had more mana, now, from killing the last of the four, and so she hissed under her breath, "Yes I love to see a tiger from the Congo or the Niger and especially when lashing of his tail." 

(She didn't know why El was shiny the way mals were shiny, but it probably meant Lucia could use her favorite mal-tracking spell on her--)

There. A bright glow, in an area that Lucia was vaguely aware had south Asian languages. Lucia bolted. 

El wasn't chunky salsa, but something was. Something horrible and rotting and slorping into the drains. 

"El? El!" 

Yep! That's her! She looks awful!

"El, are you okay?" 

El has some of the horrible stuff on her, and it doesn't seem to be, like, eating through her clothes or anything, so Lucia will just drop to her knees in front of her and hug her. 

El manages to adjust her weight to not fall over when hugged by a kneeling Lucia.

Ohhhh boy. This isn't good. 

If El doesn't say anything for another minute, Lucia will try to help her to her feet, and if that doesn't work, she will pick her up and carry her. 

El sort of halfheartedly makes a face at her about being picked up but does not actually object.

Then Lucia will carry her back to her room, muttering a spell that causes the last of the awful to crisp up and crumble away before it can get on El's bed, and put her there and sit with her. 

Lucia lets her rest, through the lunch bell and into the afternoon, and finally bullies her awake to go to dinner.