Page 16 of Battle of Witches
“Well, we have her grimoire, and we have something you didn’t have back then. Valentine has taught Asfrid how to use social media. We might be getting there too late when she posts, but she’s not exactly friends with only that shit. It’s all public, and I’m a nosy bitch about drama,” Killian said.
“Girl, same,” Loki said. “Asfrid had a photographic memory. She only wrote things down in the grimoire when they were perfected and meant for other people to use it. She’s remained hidden for two months. Asfrid’s had enough time for Valentine to teach her about the modern world and that if this potion worked, it would be pretty major if she made a post about it. Especially if she made a video of her doing it with Valentine and proved it worked.”
“And the magical community would have eaten it up,” Ravyn said. “They would have pressed pause on everything they knew about the Cult of the Aether Sister and let her gaslight them. They would have forgiven fucking Valentine for assaulting my museum and murdering those girls because it led to a wolf being able to do necromancy and her stupid, power-sharing potion. They don’t evencarethat a wolf can’t do necromancy without a rare eclipse and murdering two innocent people. They are going to eat that shit up.”
“It’s true,” Killian said. “It was like that the last time I was alive.”
Mine, too, in a way. We didn’t have libraries, museums, universities, and the internet, but we respected power. Loki was right. Asfrid would haveknownsetting Thorunn loose claiming to be Loki’s ex-girlfriend and killing all those people wasn’t going to do a damned thing except piss people off. If she used her remedies to heal people instead of hurting them and showed them all the good things she could do with her magic, they would have elevated her next to a god.
It was like she wanted to die.
I think I had this figured out, and I didn’t need a vision to do it. Shit. I was having this massive ‘come to Loki’ talk with myself right now. Yeah, my magic was great—a little unreliable at times, but I had a perfectly functional brain I could use.
“Asfrid would have been famous if she shared all this in our time, but she didn’t. I think I know why. No one else at that time was getting direct guidance from any god. They thought the world was flat and you could sail off the edge. An eclipse was an omen from either the god you thought created the world or the primordials. Of course, we all knew that wasn’t true because Loki was there to teach us.
“We didn’t know how to predict them like you do now, but Asfrid would have known the eclipse in my vision would happen many times. I just don’t think she knew how rare it was. Shewantedto die and wake up in the future. Think about it. She knew other lands were out there, but we didn’t quite have the boats capable of finding them. Loki would have taken us if we all wanted to go, but she went the long way.
“The hybrids knew about the Aether and that they wouldn’t be drinking mead in Valhalla, but they wouldn’t have followed her in some suicide plot with the promise of waking up in the future. Asfrid engineered this entire thing to get them cornered in that basement to take her poison. They wouldn’t have done it unless they had no other choice. Asfrid made damned sure she was going to come back in her prime, not as an old lady, and most people weren’t going to stop by those ruins and risk another hybrid ghost talking to them and attempting to bring them back until it was a world Asfrid wanted to come back in.”
“I’d almost be proud of that level of fuckery if the body count wasn’t so high. I swear, I raised her better than that. You don’t have to kill innocent people when your mind works like that. It’s a gift that needs to be used wisely, or you turn into some fuckwit everyone wants to kill. Shesawwhat happened when I avenged my children and just played my part in one death. It’s like she sucked up all the glory that is Loki but skipped the ethics day,” Loki ranted, running his fingers through his hair.
“I’d say we just test this potion and see if it works, but I have firmly-held religious beliefs against trying anything from grimoires of history’s nastiest serial killers. If this was anyone else, I would have already made it and drank it,” Ravyn said.
This witch was utterly insane, and I was falling in love with her.
We all jumped when her phone rang, even though with her parents in town, a new nephew, and Kaine out there waiting to bust Valentine, someoneshouldhave called by now. Ravyn answered and had a very brief conversation. I couldn’t even tell what it was about. She hung up her phone, whirled around, and struck a sassy pose while grinning at us.
“Want to go help the Paranormal Investigation Bureau bust my stupid cheating ex?”
Totally. And then I was going to get up in his personal space and not let go until Isawwhere Asfrid was and what she was up to.
Chapter13
Killian
Asfrid was personal for Loki, Bjorn, and Sleipnir. Yeah, they hated Valentine, but not likeIloathed Valentine. They heard about what he did to Ravyn and wanted to kill him for it, but I was the one with her through the entire thing. And I was a bat the whole time, so all I had were words to comfort her. There were only so many times you could wish a stupid cheating wolf got a fatal STD, his cock fell off, and he died from it. Sometimes, a witch just needed a good snuggle and cry after eating their favorite ice cream, and I wasn’t really capable of that until Ripley got tricked into raising a god.
Idesperatelywanted to be there when his day got ruined, and he didn’t get to hurt another girl. His victims werealwayswomen. When he graduated from cheating to murder, he picked two eighteen-year-old girls who didn’t have enough training to fight back. And Beyla? She wasn’t quite ready for battle magic because she needed to learn the basics first, but that was onestrong-ass kid. If she didn’t utterly lost her shit after waking up in the hospital and finding out her whole life was a lie, she wasn’t going to follow quietly if Valentine and Asfrid got their hands on her.
But we were going to prevent that from happening.
Kaine was running through the plan with us, and how adorable was it that this giant, gruff dragon didn’t want Beyla missing this party? It was the first one she had been invited to since she transferred to a supernatural high school, and Kaine was going to make damned sure her night wasn’t ruined. That was straight-up ‘dad’ goals if Ravyn and I had kids.
And I’d give it to Loki. He wasallabout getting Beyla to that party, even though he also wanted Valentine to pay. Kaine looked like he was seriously thinking about it when Loki offered to do her hair and makeup until Ravyn reined them both in and forbade it. Beyla was a ballet dancer. She probably knew tricks with hair and makeup, even Balthazar and Loki didn’t know, even if she was just sixteen.
Kaine ran through the plan. I was on bat duty, and I wasn’t even mad about it. I planned on dropping a turd on his shoulder from the sky. Ravyn and I adored the musicalChicago,and if it had been made by supernaturalsforsupernaturals, a drive by pooping from a familiartotallycould have been a verse inThe Cell Block Tango.I’d probably make one up in my head because he really did have it coming.
“Seriously, I’ve been doing this long enough to know that bad guys are slippery bastards, and you might not catch them the first time. No one was expecting Valentine to be able to actually pull off that necromancy, and from what I gathered, you were expecting him to bring back someone else if he did. It was bound to go ass up, and no one is at fault.
“He’s after Beyla now, and that kid has been through enough shit. Those deranged fuck bagsare notgetting anywhere near her. Which means you doexactlywhat I say. If you fuck this up, it isn’t just about you ruining my career and that of an up-and-coming agent. Beyla is at risk, and so is every teenager at that party. So, if you get a little inkling of getting Viking vengeance on the turd, then just don’t.”
Pooping on him didn’t count. He wouldn’t evenknowit was me. Kaine didn’t need to spank any of us into behaving. He gave us carte blanche last time. Two girls died, I got cursed for two months, and Asfrid and Valentine rode off in the moonlight, ass naked, on a motorcycle.
I might have died once, Loki was a god, and Bjorn and Sleipnir were thousands of years old, but none of us were detectives. Loki seemed to take random jobs that amused him when he was bored, but arresting criminals just didn’t seem like something he’d be interested in doing. Even I didn’t agree with some of the things they arrested you for now.
“You’re in charge,” Loki said. “In fact, if you need me to stay at that party and pretend to impress some teenagers to make sure she’s safe, I will.”
“Oh, my Lilith, no,” Ravyn moaned. “You’ve never been to a high school party. They don’t care you’re a god and one of the cool ones. You’re literally that creepy adult at the kids’ party. The guys don’t even care if you can buy beer. They are worried you will steal their girlfriends, and half the girls there will think you are a pervert. I get what you are trying to do, but Valentine was probably one of those college seniors who thought he was a badass at high school parties and should probably have to register when he moves.”
