Page 53 of The Goddess is Angry
Iusually hated the holidays. If I celebrated them with my family when I was younger, I couldn’t remember. Celebrating with humans just felt weird because IknewI wasn’t human and a lot of their holiday traditions were taken from the supernaturals they feared. The thing was, I didn’t know what kind of supernatural I was and they didn’t really want to celebrate with me, either.
The only reason I looked forward to it this year was that the students would be gone. They usually avoided me or were pretty terrible to me, but I always got lonelier when campus was empty. I was the only person in maintenance who lived in one of the old staff cottages, so when the students were gone, it was just me.
But when the blackouts started and students were dying, I was grateful for the empty campus. No one died, and I had the opportunity to search for clues. If it was me, I had to have left something behind. The Paranormal Investigation Bureau always came sniffing around me, eventually. I never let them catch me, but it had to be more than just me making everyone around me incredibly uncomfortable.
I never found anything, like usual. I even went through my entire wardrobe. I cleaned so much blood at every scene but never woke up with any of it on my clothes. My wardrobe was limited because I didn’t have a ton of money. None of my clothes were missing. I was seven feet tall with muscles and nothing about me said shifter. Someone would complain and I’d be fired if I was skulking through campus naked. I was too big to be inconspicuous.
I was hoping to havesomethingthat exonerated me before I approached the God of Death with my story. Because honestly, I couldn’t say it wasn’t me. I’d been avoiding them. If they were anywhere on campus, I didn’t let them see me.
But there was another person I was drawn to who might be able to get me an introduction to the pretty Death god in a way that they didn’t instantly kill me as soon as I opened my mouth.
It was so stupid. George Bell had only been polite to me when I was dropping off her luggage. She also had the same color eyes as me. It was such a shitty thing to latch onto, but I’d never met anyone with silver eyes like mine before.
And she was nice. Most people weren’t. I wasn’t going to presume since she was polite to me for ten minutes that it meant anything. I watched her, but I never approached her. I picked flowers and left them in her dorm room when she was in class. She could have thought everyone got them, it was the ghosts, or one of the guys she was dating.
I didn’t care if she never knew it was me. Sometimes, she braided the flowers I picked into her hair. She looked beautiful. I needed to get her alone because I didn’t know how her guys were going to react to me. I knew she spent a good bit of time with Azren, so hopefully, her word carried weight.
Of course, I could be reading this all wrong. We’d only had one conversation, and it was only a few sentences. Still, I’d been trying to figure out who I was for so long and so many people had died. There were now a lot of gods on campus.
One of them should be able to help, right?
george
History with Azren and Loki was something. Kaylee wasn’t kicked out for tardiness, even if she wasn’t late. Azren usually just pretended like she didn’t exist but Loki very much didn’t. If Kaylee and Paris thought my dad was bad, they really should have kept their mouths shut around Loki.
My dad actually wanted to be there and my mom probably threatened him not to use magic against students so Headmaster Krauss didn’t take it out on me. I’m guessing my Aunt Ravyn told Loki the same, but he pored through the rule book so he knew exactly how to break them.
Kaylee made some shitty comment and Paris egged her on. Azren had this serene look on their face, but I could tell they were irritated. There wasn’t as much bite in Kaylee’s statement. They said they pulled the whole God of Death card on them and terrorized them. It seemed like she was pushing boundaries and seeing if she could get away with it.
Breaking news at eleven. She didn’t.
“Wow, you’re really annoying,” Loki said, waving his hand. Kaylee and Paris’s hair erupted into a rat’s nest of tangles. “You may have to shave that off.”
Their hands flew to their hair and realized how knotted their hair was. West started giggling.
“I have a detangler that’ll fix that, but you aren’t lionesses and you’ve been shit to my girlfriend and friends.”
“This is your fault, George!” Kaylee shrieked.
Of course, it was. I hadn’t even opened my mouth this entire exchange. I just rolled my eyes. Loki apparently didn’t stop there. A roach crawled out of Kaylee’s hair and ran across her nose. Kaylee shrieked and knocked over her desk. She and Paris went storming out of the room.
“Anyway,” Loki said, yawning.
“Yes, anyway,” Azren said. “Keep in mind, folks, we have cosmic power and some of us have less patience than others. I’m Death. You don’t want to press me.”
Azren was looking right at Kaylee’s less-vocal minions, who slunk low in their chairs. Azren got about ten minutes into their lecture when Headmaster Krauss stormed in, followed by Kaylee and Paris with scarves on their heads. Headmaster Krauss looked utterly ridiculous in that getup. She looked like a beekeeper who thought the whole beehive was haunted.
“What’s this I hear about magic being used on students?” she demanded.
“Section one, part two of the faculty handbook states magic, force, and vampire bites may be used against students for disciplinary purposes as long as no permanent harm comes to the student. It’s supposed to teach them respect and how to fight back. Your crotch dropping was being a little asshole and fucked around and found out.” Loki yawned.
“And according to the rest of the staff and a good bit of the student body, she’s a little asshole to everyone. She mouthed off to a trickster and paid the price. Might consider what’s going to happen when a primordial gets sick of her shit.”
“Put their hair back! The rule book says no permanent damage and a healer can’t fix that.”
“No. You and your daughter have a long-ass history of disrespecting gods and it’s time you learn. Loki didn’t do any permanent damage. Your daughter doesn’t need a healer or a god. She needs a lot of time with detangler and a comb while she thinks about the consequences of her actions. By the way, I could have healed that nasty, painful shit all over your body as soon as you were cursed, but you were literally trying to get an innocent eighteen-year-old you have a petty feud against expelled for it when it was your fucking kid that threw the hex,” Azren sneered.
I couldn’t see Headmaster Krauss’s face under the hat and veil, but I was guessing it still hadn’t sunk in yet. Azren also hadn’t healed her because she was rude to them.
