Page 18 of Coven Relics
“I forgot how strong this tea was,” Bjorn said. “It looked like she had four noses.”
“If you’re tripping balls on tea, you should share with the rest of the class,” Balthazar said.
“Now that she’s gone, we really need to come up with a plan. The locator spell is leading me to this museum, so the blood was most likely Sasha’s. Sleipnir is right. Valentine is hiding somewhere isolated, but it’s going to be close enough to society that he can grab his prey. I can think of a few places like that. We should narrow it down,” Killian said.
I heard a knock on the door, but I couldn’t think of who it would be unless Ripley had sent more of her men over. When I opened the door, it was Minerva Krauss. She always seemed to just show up when I needed her. Minerva was utterly brilliant and the wisest person I knew. She taught me everything I knew about curses, and she’d given me some good life advice, too.
“I was returning a book at the library, and Ripley told me what happened. Ineverliked Valentine, but I didn’t expect him to do something like this. He was always an arrogant fool, and I didn’t think he took his job seriously based on the books he wrote, but I never thought he’d tank his entire career over a ghost. He seemed to like the fame that came with it.”
“Let me introduce you to everyone.”
Introductions went well right up until they didn’t. Everyone seemed eager to meet Minerva since they knew she was important to me. Nothingseemedout of the ordinary until she stepped forward to shake Sleipnir’s hand. Sleipnir took her hand in his and just stood there sniffing. Then, he got right up in her personal space and was aggressively smelling her. What was he doing? Minerva had this lovely, calming aura, and she didn’t even remotely smell bad.
Sleipnir’s entire face lit up. He scooped Minerva up into this massive bear hug and crushed her to his chest.
“Freya! Why are you hiding in an old witch?”
What.the.fuck?
Chapter14
Killian
Iwas utterly verklempt and stunned. Ravyn was probably losing her shit. Sleipnir had to be mistaken. Minerva had been around Reyson and Bram at the library a lot. Reyson never sensed another god, and if a shifter could tell that by smell, Bram would have said something.
Loki stepped forward and sniffed Minerva. He joined the group hug, and they smashed tiny Minerva Krauss between them. Her feet weren’t even touching the floor.
“Your last postcard said you were close to this place. I was hoping to run into you when I came here to stop my hybrids. I’ve missed you, Freya.”
“Set me down, you beasts. How did you know it was me?”
That was the million-dollar question. Loki had said Freya liked to slip her essence into babies that would have been stillborn. She had the DNA and inherent powers of a witch. Loki just cracked up laughing like Ravyn, and I weren’t losing our minds about her mentor being fucking Freya.
“Well, your face is different, your aura is different, and everything about you is witchy, but we’d know that perfume anywhere. People have been selling Freya perfume for ages, but it’s nothing like what you actually wear. Plus, your cardigan has cat hair on it, and you don’t have a familiar with you,” Loki grinned.
Minerva didn’t have a familiar, but she had two extremely well-behaved cats. They weren’t familiars, so a bat would have been prey to them. They never attacked me, and she didn’t put them out when we were at her place. I never found that odd before, and I probably should have. The twin’s pet dog was well trained, but he still liked to chase Felix, and he had big opinions on bats. The twins adored that dog, but he was kind of a menace if you weren’t human.
“I’m about to totally lose my shit,” Ravyn said.
I think I was, too. We should probably lose our shit together. I walked over to her desk, picked her up off her chair, sat down, and pulled her into my lap. I wrapped my arms around her waist because we both needed a hug for this.
“I think everyone who thought Minerva Krauss was just a superb witch is about to lose their shit,” I said.
“Every single one of these assholes should have thought I was just a really good witch. Now I have to change my favorite perfume. It’s rude to out people, Loki, whether they are gay and in the closet or a god trying to make her way in the world as a witch. You know better.”
“You’d better start explaining why you lied to me, or I’m going to start hysterically screaming,” Ravyn said.
I wasn’t too manly to hysterically scream either. Exactly how had we been up close and personal with Freya this entire time and never knew? Lilith created witches, but plenty of us set out offerings on our altars for Freya because she had her own brand of witchcraft, and she’d been a friend to witches.
“Lilith was a very good friend of mine. We were different gods with unique powers, but our magic always meshed well together. I knew she was trying her hand at creation, but that kind of thing is a process and takes time. When I checked back in with her, she had finished, but some terrible man-child of a god thought he was important enough to boss another god around.
“I offered to round up a team to kill his angels and teach him a lesson. Lilith said no because it would have ended up a civil war among the gods, and innocent people would have died. Instead, she introduced me to her witches and told me she thought of me when she made them. She asked me to look after them.
“Ithoughtthat meant keeping them alive long enough to populate the world enough that they couldn’t be hunted down one by one. I heard about the massacre on this site and made myself get born as a witch to take it back and put these lands to good use. This version of me came about because some of you abuse the gifts Lilith gave you with your curses. I asked you to study with me because you are brilliant, and I knew if I didn’t, you’d try it on your own and end up dead.”
That much was true. And that confirmed Loki’s theory that Freya was also Beatrix Halliwell and responsible for Ravyn’s job. Holy fuck. Freya had been looking out for Ravyn before she had even been born.
“But why lie to me?”
