Page 30 of Chaos
“I think Hettie is long dead. I told you we shouldn’t have gotten involved in this.”
“Ithink Hettie is still at the library. The librarian wasn’t very nice to us. I think she figured out something was up before she raised the god and is torturing poor Hettie until she talked.”
“We owe it to Hettie to go back there and check.”
“You saw what happened the last time we went there. People surrounded the library. We barely blinked, and suddenly, we were in the middle of the highway. I’m not fucking with that.”
“We shouldn’t have gotten involved with this. I get Hettie is in love with Dorian, but we are going down a dangerous path. We tried to help him resurrect a god. The god might not have wanted to be back here and murdered Hettie.”
One witch sighed.
“We’re involved now whether or not we want to be. That librarian saw every single one of our faces. Even if she stopped the resurrection, she’s got access to an entire library to figure out who we were trying to raise. Once she figures it out, we’re in deep shit.”
“You’re right. Maybe we can give her something to spare us. Why did Dorian want the god so bad? Did Hettie ever say?”
“Hettie was sweet, and I loved her to death, but she always got stupid around men. She would have helped him, even without knowing.”
“Yes, butwearen’t stupid. We should have asked questions instead of going all sisterhood of witches and helping her. We’re in deep shit here.”
“We’ll figure it out. We always do.”
They knew nothing, so I was free to use my vampire speed to get to where I’d stashed my bike. I had done some fucked up shit for love, but I can’t say I’d ever convinced an entire coven to raise a god for some dick. Ripley was pretty vocal about it being some nasty dick too. People should have some standards. It might be pretty, but if the sex was terrible and they asked you to do bad things, walk away.
The hedge witch Dorian convinced to do his dirty work died for it too. Many people were going to die because Dorian Gray was plotting something. I had a feeling Ripley had gotten information from the spirits at the library. She probably confirmed it was Dorian who wasn’t supposed to be there.
I was an asshole to everyone, but even I had my limits. I needed to get back and let everyone know the hedge witches that weren’t dead weren’t involved in this. They were helping a sister witch and didn’t deserve to die for it.
Chapter 27
Gabriel
I
was so fucking angry. I stormed out of the room after the spirits left. Five hundred years of being treated like shit by the magical community, and most of those people had their own deals with demons. This Silvaria was clearly a respected witch or she wouldn’t be on the board of the Library of the Profane. Look what she did with it. It was so fucked up she’d gained that much power, and I couldn’t even get a job in the magical community.
I was sitting on one of the Library of the Profanes balconies and just glaring at the grounds. It was beautiful out here. The flowering jasmine grew everywhere and I could spot herbs and flowers meant for spells all over the place There was a tall rowan tree at the entrance for protection. I could smell the heady scent of the flowers mixing from up here.
It was hard to believe this was a mass grave. The only way anything could have grown on cursed grounds like this was if the spirits were happy. No one had any reason to think any of the shades here hated their lot because nothing was dying.
The balcony door opened, and Ripley joined me. She handed me a cold beer and took the chair next to me. I didn’treallywant to be alone, but I was used to it. I didn’t have anyone to talk about this shit with. My family just accepted it and went about their menial human jobs. If I complained, they told me it was just our lot in life, and we couldn’t change it.
“That was fucked up,” Ripley said, sipping her beer.
I wrenched the cap off mine and took a huge sip.
“What do you intend to do with what you’ve learned?”
“I’ve never liked Silvaria. She’s one of those uber-wealthy witches who can trace their lines all the way back to Salem and even past that, she has ties to old royalty in Europe. She doesn’t see being on the board as a position of honor she needs to take seriously. It’s all just bragging rights for her.
“I love this place. My sister is the lead curator at the Museum of the Profane. We both graduated from the Academy. My family didn’t come from a famous line, and my parents weren’t wealthy. They gave us scholarships to the Academy of the Profane, and we had to fight to get our jobs.
“We weren’t the top choices. They would have wanted someone from one of the ancient lines or someone who came from old money. If it had been up to the boards instead of the spirits, Ravyn and I never would have been invited to the academy, and our applications wouldn’t have even been given a second glance.
“There’s so much fucking snobbery in the magical community, and a lot of them are up to worst shit than what they shun people for. I’ve had some desperate people come in here to get curses broken, and they refuse to name who did it. Draw your own conclusions.”
I should have been angry at what she just said. Yeah, she didn’t have some ancient lineage or money, but they still gave her more chances to succeed than I was. I wasn’t angry with her. She couldn’t help that any more than I could help how people reacted to me.
“Is that why you didn’t even react when you found out who I was? Most people do it to my face, but some people try to hide it. It always slips right before they put the mask on. You could have seen the name John Smith based on your reaction.”
