Page 41 of The Goddess is Angry
“No offense, but we all had them,” the wolf said. “You dashed them the first day. How are they even going to arrest a fucking god and put them on trial? Even if you let it get that far, she’s going to look like a complete fool if they let you get on the stand.”
“Ifthis is Lindsay, and I don’t think it is, I’m pretty sure she’s counting on me fleeing back to my realm and not trying to fight it. She disrespected her creator and has been carrying on a petty feud with the daughter of the God of Chaos for years, so framing me for murder wouldn’t shock me.
“Lindsay Krauss being able to pull off what I know so far, thatwould.Whoever did this has done it before. And they were bold enough to do itthatclose to Halliwell Square while a massive orgy was going on. That speaks to someone who has gotten away with this enough that they think they’ll never get caught and someone with enough power that they think they can handle anyone who comes upon them in the act.”
Saffron’s coven wanted justice and started chiming in that they were powerful and dangerous, too. I got it. If it were George, I’d probably get myself killed trying to avenge her.
“Listen to me closely,” Azren said. “I outrank all of you in terms of power. You aren’t going to get better justice than you are from the God of Death. Youcanhelp me catch the person who did this by getting me in the same room as the independent study students and all their mates before everyone leaves for Yule break.”
Tall order considering everyone was going to be leaving in the morning. They said they’d make it happen, and I had no doubt they would. They were pretty fucking motivated. I would be, too.
We had two dead witches and three possible suspects. Of the three, we only had a name for one. Azren might not think it was Headmaster Krauss, especially since she had been housebound since the murders started.
But people like Headmaster Krauss and my dad didn’t get their hands dirty when they were doing illegal. I didn’t know if there was some secret message board where people like them found criminals to do their bidding, but I stayed with my dad long enough to learn to never let it tie back to you.
Kaylee accidentally hexing her mom had given Lindsay Krauss a hell of an alibi and plenty of time to plot.
george
Lindsay Krauss hiring someone to brutally murder students and frame Azren was insanely farfetched but also made a lot more sense than an angel or a god murdering college students. I trusted Azren’s gut feelings. Unnatural deaths had probably happened on this campus before, but that didn’t necessarily mean they were all connected.
Lindsay had a motive I brought up with Azren when we were meeting with the independent study students. Catching a serial killer wouldn’t just put her on the map. Azren was a god, so they outranked her. They didn’t want the headmaster gig, but Azren did find all the shit she was doing that she wasn’t supposed to.
The board was a bunch of greedy fucks. They would havelovedto keep Azren on as headmaster if Azren could have a revolving door of gods teaching history. The Academy of the Profane was the oldest and best university in the United States, but not the entire world.
They’d been after my dad for ages because none of the other supernatural colleges had a god teaching. Just Azren teaching history put them on the map, but they wanted more. Lindsay struck me as the type to read all the fine print to know which rules or bend and exploit.
She would have known about the cover-up policy when a student died. It wasn’t such a huge stretch that Azren was going to break all those rules. Lindsay might not be trying to frame Azren, but her lizard brain could very well be having someone kill students so the board wouldn’t ask Azren to replace her.
That was the kind of ‘fucked up’ we were dealing with. Especially since no one should be able to manipulate memories like that. It was possible with potions if you could get the victim to drink it. It was also possible a god had done trial and error on mortals until they figured out how to mess with their minds without killing them.
In other words, we had nothing.
Azren and I pulled all the independent student students and their mates aside. It wasn’t just the witches. We talked to all of them just in case. The board was going to flip, but we let them know they might be a target. We told them to be on the lookout for anyone strange and we told their covens, hives, packs, whatever to come find Azren if someone started acting weird and appeared to be lying. We told them to never go anywhere alone until we found who did this.
It was a start.
I was saying goodbye to everyone as their parents came to get them and take them home. Oscar’s abuela and Ren’s parents were fawning over me when they realized I knew sign language and I wasn’t breaking their duo up. They were both great. Oscar’s abuela Rosita said something to Oscar in Spanish and I laughed because it was funny. She was tiny, and she reached up to tug on Oscar’s ear.
“Andshe speaks Spanish. You’d better worship this one and treat her as good as you do your boyfriend.”
“Oh, he does.”
“She can also read and write Kanji,” Ren bragged.
“That’s because she’s perfect,” West said.
I really wasn’t. None of the gods were. All my siblings spoke multiple languages because most of our family did and made sure we did. Like, all my cousins were fluent in Old Norse because three of their dads were. My little brother was four years younger than I was and linguistics were kind of his thing. He knew more languages than I did.
Before I could even say anything, someone started shouting. It was loud and someone was angry. When I turned, a well-dressed vampire couple was absolutely berating their child. Belladonna Mortem was red faced and staring at her feet. This clearly wasn’t the first time they’d done this, and they felt comfortable doing it in front of the entire student body.
Her parents wereterrible.I only had three classes with Belladonna, but I knew she was insanely smart and busted her ass, unlike the other legacy students in my classes. As much as I hated to admit it, she was a good co-captain of the cheerleading squad because when she was cheerleading, she took that stick out of her ass, forgot all the vampire superiority crap, and had fun.
Apparently, Belladonna had a perfect grade point average, but her parents were mad that she hadn’t been chosen for independent study yet. Which was fucking ridiculous because we’d only just completed our first semester and no one ever got asked this early.
The cheerleading squad was supposed to be a secret, but they went around talking to her professors and one of them let it slip. Having a dodgeball and cheerleading team at this college for the first time was a historic event, even if we were all terrible and lost every game. We weren’t. Both teams were damned good and could win. Her parents were demanding she quit because cheering on lesser races was beneath a vampire.
Church and his grandfather had been standing there with us. They both looked disgusted.
