Page 42 of The Goddess is Fierce
Just then, George, Azren, and Gabriel appeared. Azren was probably the smartest personanyoneknew. I had no doubt they figured out whatever they needed to figure out with the forge. I just had thisnaggingfeeling in the pit of my gut there wassomethingin Shrieking Woods that only the shifters were going to be able to help with.
Azren and George filled us in on what happened in Shrieking Woods and they both had very different theories about the forge, but Baldur had given her a tiny tip about blacksmithing that they both agreed the arrow hadn’t beenmadein Shrieking Woods, but the forge was being used for something.
“You’ve met Hale,” Gabriel said. “You’ve seen his aura. He’s said he’s not ready to talk about it yet, but the Fae Court had him doing some unspeakable things. Hale was an orphan and rather than giving him a chance to get adopted, they swooped him up and groomed him since he was a child for terrible things. Hale escaped, and he views the forest as his redemption. He doesn’t much like people and from what I understand, the FaeCourt would really like their asset back. How would a god get into Shrieking Woods and use the forge without spooking Hale? From what I understand, Hale was the kind of asset that had to sneak around in the shadows and would have known if someone was tailing him or been in his space.”
This was getting weirder and weirder. Shrieking Woods wasn’t being haunted by serial killer banshees, but there was a garden of super rare plants in there under the care of an Unseelie assassin or something. No one really knew. He seemed to suspiciously know a lot about gardening for a spy. I had questions.
“Hale said he was a cinephile. It wouldn’t be that hard to watch Shrieking Woods for when he leaves for the movies, portal directly to the forge, do what he needs to do, and use magic to clean up the evidence. Especially if the killer was only using the forge and not actually stepping into the forest. Blacksmithing is a trade you have to learn. You said Hale sends invoices for his tools and I doubt the Fae Court taught him that while they were teaching him whatever they taught him, that made his aura like that. It’s quite tainted. I’m shocked he was even hired,” Azren said.
“Sorry, but gardening is a skill, too,” Oscar said. “Some of us naturally have a better connection with nature than others, but there’s only so much you can do with magic. Some of it you actually have to study and learn.”
“Oscar is kind of right,” George said. “My grandparents have been trying to grow Fogbane on the rocks outside their shop since they bought it. My grandmother has been all over the internet and deep in the bowels of the Library of the Profane and she’s never heard the orange juice trick. Where did Hale learn it?”
“Aren’t the plants in the Fae realm completely different from ours?” I asked. “I heard they bite.”
Me and plants didn’t get along. We had a very toxic relationship, and it all came down to me not knowing how to love them. It was a family tradition that everyone got a Bonsai tree on their thirteenth birthday. We were supposed to care for it until we died and it would bring us Zen. I’m not sure what kind of chaos I introduced in my life, but mine up and died on me before I’d even turned fourteen and Itriedto take care of it.
My parents gave me a whole-ass lecture when I got the Bonsai on how to care and nurture it and I even got on the internet when it started drooping. That was me growing up knowing about plants in this realm and still killing one. How would an Unseelie who didn’t grow up here and wouldn’t have even been taught plants back in his realm know a trick with Fogbane no one here knew?
The Shrieking Woods caretaker was super suss, and we needed to get some shifters to sniff him. I was more of a hybrid than a shifter, but my nose worked just fine. I’d smell this bitch, too.
“Like I said, I don’t know much about Hale’s background since he’s not ready to talk about it, but I was in the room when Hale was interviewed since my specialty is Dark Magic. Hale has been here five years and Idoknow all the previous caretakers kept journals. There’s a little library in the caretaker’s cottage with all kinds of tricks and tips from the previous caretakers. What he didn’t know about Earth plants, he could easily learn from those journals. Hale probably picked up the orange juice trick there. He’s been here five years and the murders only started last semester.”
Damn. That made sense. I didn’t know why I was even hating on this guy. I’d never met him. Gabriel wasn’t the type to vet someone for this school and give them a job if they were a bad person. I knew the final decision wouldn’t have been his, but he would have given his input.
Azren and George had met him, too. They both said he was intense and his aura was seriously bad, but there was a reason for it and he had an alibi during one of the murders that was checked out by the Paranormal Investigation Bureau.
I needed to check myself. Was I just having bad vibes because the guy was Unseelie and used to be a tool of the Fae Court? Yeah, I’d hate myself if I was because I tried not to do that. I didn’t even like it when someone hated me because I was Asian.
George’s uncle said the arrow was important, and the ghosts said the forge was. No one with knowledge from the Fates or veil said to look at the caretaker. I was just being dramatic and probably racist. Oscar said he loved that I was a little extra most of the time but I usually wasn’t racist.
I hoped the ghosts gave us a bit more to go on or a clue that would pay off faster than Baldur’s did because we found the forge, but we still didn’t know who the killer was and we didn’t know why that damned arrow was so important that Drake’s entire family got murdered.
drake
. . .
Ihonestly got why Azren left us all behind. They were polite and respectful to everyone until someone gave them a reason not to be and even then, you had to push Azren really hard for them to get nasty. Azren liked to dress like the God of Death, but they only liked people to be scared of them when they gave them a reason to. Plus, Azren practically drilled boundaries and consent into my head when I was younger so I didn’t grow up to be an idiot and no one stepped on mine.
Hale only wanted gods in his forest and he hadn’t technically given anyone any reason not to respect that. Especially not me. Before Azren and George went out there with Gabriel, George’sdad said Hale escaped the Fae realm six years ago and had been working in Shrieking Woods five years. The caretaker was on an entirely different realm when everything went down here with my mom.
Azren and George were right to respect Hale’s boundaries. West was right, too. There were things Azren and George were going to miss because they didn’t have a shifter’s sense of smell. There were things in Shrieking Woods we were missing out on without havingmeout there with snake senses.
The first semester of the Academy of the Profane had been dedicated to making sure we all knew how to shift. George should have been inthoseclasses to figure out that part of her god magic, but it just wasn’t possible and we couldn’t change the past.
The second semester shifter classes were mostly about using our senses and not losing control. I hadn’t grown up with my parents to learn everything about being a Basilisk and I was currently the only one at the Academy of the Profane. You couldn’t be a teacher, much less a professor at a college like this, without learning how to teachallsupernaturals and there had been Basilisks here before me.
I was currently learning all kinds of amazing tricks with just my tongue. I didn’t know this and I couldn’t really feel it, but I had an additional Jacobson’s Organ—just like snakes—in my mouth. I could half shift and bring it out. I could sense all kinds of shit around me with just my tongue and the Jacobson’s Organ.
It was cool as fuck. I wasn’t at the first crime scene and I hadn’t mastered shifting that part of my body at the second. I figured it out shortly before Yule break and Azren helped me figure out how to use it back on the Netherworld. I didn’t have any information about the killer from the crime scenes, but Iwouldbe able to pick out what wasn’t supposed to be in that forest.
Weallhad skills that could have been used in Shrieking Woods, but I understood why we weren’t there. I didn’t think it was remotely fair my mom had to leave the Academy of the Profane before she completed her education, nor the fact that both my parents were murdered later, but Itrustedfate, even if I didn’t trust a lot of witches.
We weren’t going to catch the killer in Shrieking Woods. We were going to catch him by doing exactly what George’s uncle and cousin said to do at the dodgeball game. I knew Ren felt differently.
We had to get to dodgeball practice now. I was in the locker room changing clothes. Someone had been in my locker, but they didn’t break in. There was a golden token sitting on my cleats. If the ghosts were handing these out and people took them with them when they graduated, I was guessing someone was making them. I half wondered if Baldur was doing it because he was so nice and those bitches couldn’t even settle his mind by telling him he wasn’t a serial killer. I’dneversay that out loud because I valued my nuts, but I could think it.
I turned the coin over. There was a loom and shears on one side symbolizing the fates. The fates showed up in many cultures and they were weavers in nearly all of them. Azren was sure they existed, but they said no god had ever met them, even though Azren was sure the Fates were the ones creating gods.
