Page 11 of The Goddess is Angry
There were plenty of things Matilda and I would never agree on, but it was minor things about certain foods and music. She thought I looked hot in the style of clothes I liked wearing, but Matilda wouldn’t be caught dead in them, I liked dresses sometimes, but not the type of dresses Matilda wore, even though she looked amazing.
But we had each other’s backs on the major shit and I needed her to just support me and entertain the notion that it might be Drake. I could excuse my guys. I hadn’t shared a womb with them.
So, I was going to do some digging on my own since I was, apparently, alone in this. I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t going to march up to Drake in the dining hall and accuse him of horrifically murdering a witch everyone seemed to love. If it wasn’t him, the entire campus was going to turn on him and her coven would probably kill him. I wasn’t that kind of person.
Iwasthe kind of person that found out which dorm he was staying in and when Drake and his roommate were going to be gone so I could go snooping for clues. I could portal in and out without being seen or picking a lock.
So, that’s what I was doing. And I was surprised by this dorm. One side of the dorm had flannel sheets and posters from a vampire band Balthazar loved. The other side was insanely neat with silk sheets and these gorgeous framed paintings on the wall. There was a music stand by the desk and a violin case.
The side with the band posters had school books on their desk and nothing in the drawers except school supplies. There was a laptop, but it was password protected. My hacker vampire dad made sure we knew how to get around that kind of thing just in case we ever needed it, but I didn’t exactly have time.
I was much more drawn to the other half of the room. There were books on that desk I’d never heard of and that said a lot considering my entire family were voracious readers and my mom was a librarian. There were books everywhere, even in the drawers. There was also a laptop that was password protected.
There was nothing under either mattress, so I moved to the closets. One was horribly disorganized, and it looked like whoever was using that one didn’t like hanging up their clothes. There was nothing under the clothes, so I moved to the next closet.
I froze when someone came home while I was still in their closet. Like, completely froze. I should have portalled out immediately. I stayed hidden just in case I could see someone reveal their hiding place. The closet door was only open an inch, so I peered out. No one could see me and if they came toward the closet, I’d be gone before they ever found me.
It was Drake. The side of the room I was drawn to was apparently his. That didn’t mean he wasn’t a serial killer. Drake picked up the violin and started playing. I was utterly stunned. He wasamazing.Between all my dads, my aunt’s coven, and my extended family in Hell, I’d been exposed to everything from tribal music most people didn’t know anymore, classical music, and vampire rave music.
I was pretty sure Drake composed this because I didn’t know it. It was haunting and stirred up all kinds of emotions. Drake wasn’t even a siren, and I wanted to go out there and be closer to him and his violin.
I almost did because he wasthatgood. There was a loose floorboard in his closet and my phone vibrated in my pocket when I stepped on it. Drake stopped playing.
“Who’s there?” he demanded.
Shit!
I got myself out of his closet and back to my own dorm room. I looked down at my phone to see who was calling me. It was my cousin Freydis. She was a few years younger than me and a seer. Freydis desperately wanted to go to horseback riding camp. Her dad was created during the Viking era and Bjorn said, of course, his kid wanted to learn to ride a horse. My Aunt Ravyn fully supported her kid’s hobbies.
Freydis got thrown from her horse and nearly died. If one of her dads hadn’t been a god who could portal to her and heal her, she might have. But her magic awakened early. She was tutored by her dad and by the seers in hell. Freydis never told anyone exactly what she saw. It was always super cryptic because that’s how everyone in Hell did it.
She was sometimes helpful, but a lot of her visions tended to revolve around my love life. She indirectly warned me that the guy I lost my virginity to was using me.
I’d call her back later. I was happy right now. I didn’t think any of my guys were using me. No, Iknew.But when a seer called you, you didn’t ignore it.
drake
Someone was in my closet. There was already one dead body on campus and I didn’t intend to become the second. My fangs descended and I let them fill with venom. I wasn’t fucking around with these witches. I’d happily go to jail if they didn’t believe me it was self-defense.
But when I flung my closet door open, there was no one in there. My closet wasn’t like my roommate’s. I hung my clothes up and there wasn’t anywhere to hide in here. I only knew one person who could be there one minute and gone the next. Azren justwould notbe caught dead hiding in a closet.
Gods were different when it came to sexuality and gender. Azren had never been inanycloset. They wouldn’t be spying on me in mine. If Azren wanted to talk to me, they would have just appeared on my bed and made themselves at home.
I didn’t imagine it. I got wrapped up in my violin and I’d worked on that piece for ages. I just needed to put the final touches on it and it was done, but it hadn’t come to me yet. It would have had to have been aloudnoise to pull me straight out of my playing.
My roommate’s closet might be a disaster, but he never left food out. We didn’t have rats. That was when I noticed one of the floorboards was crooked. Bethany said this was my mom’s old room, and the ghosts put me in here to help me. Was this Bethany? Because it certainly wasn’t Azren. I was furious with them right now, but they would have stayed.
I fell to my knees and removed the floorboard. There was a dusty, ornate box at the bottom. There were snakes carved on the box lid. My heart was beating in my throat. This box belonged to a Basilisk. Other races used snakes, but these were the serpents I could shift into if I wanted.
I gingerly pulled the box out and reverently carried it to my bed. This could be my mom’s. I didn’t have anything of hers. I was taken to Azren’s realm with a stuffed toy and that was it. I studied the box. It had a blood lock.
Headmaster Krauss became famous with a spell to pick a blood lock, but it involved so much blood, you could die. If this was my mom’s box, then it should just take one drop of my blood to open it. If it wasn’t her box, it would probably kill me. I couldn’t risk it because I didn’tknow.
It was a start. I wanted to go tell Azren, but I was just somadat them. Azren came to me, though. They appeared on my desk chair in a cloud of black smoke.
“Drake, I wanted to apologize for last night. I didn’t forget about you. I would have brought you both, even though I know you don’t like her, but I made a choice. It was violent, Drake. Someone cut out that witch’s heart while she was still alive. You saw your parents getting murdered. You don’t remember any of it because you were just a baby, but I could tell it was going to be bad before I went out there. I didn’t want to trigger any memories by bringing you out there.”
“Shouldn’t it be up to me what I can handle? Maybe I’ll remember who did it.”
