Page 5 of The Goddess is Angry
So, I went and found Fleur’s coven. I sat them down and told them what happened without all the brutal details. I promised them I’d get revenge for them.
“I need your help. I spoke to her ghost and helped carry her to the Aether. The dead don’t remember their last moments. It’s a kindness. She didn’t remember going to the dodgeball field. Can any of you think why she might have been out there? Was she meeting someone? History is an elective after sophomore year, so Fleur wasn’t my student and this was the first time I met her.”
“She wanted to take your class. When she found out a primordial was teaching history, Fleur tried to rearrange her schedule. She was even willing to drop one of her advanced charm classes because she could have taken them next year. She’d never be able to take a history class like yours again.”
And I would have loved to have taught her. I loved teaching, especially when I had students who wanted to be there. All of my older students who had chosen to take history were thirsty for it. Most of them who were taking it as a prerequisite also were, but I had several who just didn’t want to be in my class.
“Headmaster Krauss wouldn’t let her. Fleur is insanely gifted with charms. She was already making a name for herself. Famous graduates reflect well on this university and it makes the headmaster look good. The previous headmaster was happy to just encourage Fleur and bring her new opportunities and let her choose if she wanted to take them. We don’t like Headmaster Krauss. She kept putting all this pressure on Fleur and trying to micromanage her like she could get famous through her.”
Lindsay Krauss had no business anywhere near the position she was currently in, but she wasn’t the reason Fleur was on the dodgeball field. She couldn’t currently leave her house. It wasn’t just the sunlight. She had to be in constant contact with a certain potion being diffused into the air to get rid of that hex. The pustules would have made it insanely painful for her to move.
“Headmaster Krauss is a mediocre witch who wants to be as famous as my dear friend Minerva without working for it. She wasn’t the reason Fleur was on the dodgeball field. I’m sure you saw the video. Everyone did. I’m filling in. Lindsay Krauss didn’t do this, and she wasn’t why Fleur was out there this late. She was probably going to be awful and controlling, but she had a vested interest in Fleur making it to graduation because it made her look good. Can you think of anyone who would do this to her?”
They all shared a look. They were grieving and in shock. In a perfect world, I’d be using my vast knowledge about death and what came after to help them deal with this. Any questions about who did it would have come after they were done grieving. But grief didn’t work like that. You were never done with that. Every time I smelled lavender, it reminded me of my mortal lover who was slaughtered while I was away from her village, it punched me in the gut, and that happened thousands of years ago. I had to do this, so I didn’t have this conversation with other students or have to bring the essence of more people who hadn’t experienced life yet to the Aether.
“Everyone loved her. People tried to join our coven all the time, but Fleur always let them down in a way that they weren’t mad about it after. It’s just…”
“We have to tell them. This is the God of Death. Who do you want getting their hands on who did this? The Paranormal Investigation Bureau or a primordial? Because I don’t want a trial and knowing they are in jail. I want cosmic justice.”
This was probably delicate. I had this conversation before when I was more involved in this realm. My realm also wasn’t utopia, even though I tried to make it as close as possible. Some people just wanted more, and I had criminals, too. I talked to the family and tried to find out who did it a lot.
“No judgment,” I said. “I promise you that I’ve had this conversation since this universe was created and nothing you say is going to shock me. Also, know that nothing you tell me is going to make me think she had this coming or change my opinions about what a promising witch she was.”
“Fleur was a terrible liar. She never lied about anything major, but sometimes she would try to say she wasn’t hungry or tired or that something wasn’t bothering her. Sometimes, Fleur would get burnt out and all she needed was a weekend off from charms to decompress. When we first joined her coven, we noticed right away. We started by asking and she’d always lie and say she was fine. We learned her tells when she lies about the small stuff. She played with her hair and scratched her nose. She never lied about the big stuff.”
“Something was going on with her for the last two months. She wasn’t taking as many charm orders, which wasn’t a huge deal. We fully supported her charm business and how she wanted to run it. At first, it was a good sign because she worked herself too hard. But then she started lying, and she wasn’t doing any of her usual tells. And we suspected it was something big.
“She’d say she was going to be in the library studying, but if we tried to meet her to carry her books, she wasn’t there. Fleur would say she was meeting her charms mentor after dinner for extra work, but they usually met during her office hours.
“The charms professor adored Fleur, but she has five kids under the age of twelve. We thought it was weird she wanted to meet at night and frankly, Fleur never slowed down unless we made her and couldn’t tell people no. We pulled her professor aside and asked her to take the meetings during school hours. She didn’t know anything about night meetings with Fleur.”
“Fleur wouldn’t have cheated on us. We settled on our coven, but we knew she was always getting requests because of how good she was with charms. Most of those people just wanted her because she was going to be famous. We always told her if she met someone who wanted her for her and she clicked with them, to bring them in and see how they vibed with the rest of us.”
“We sat her down for a family talk and asked what was going on. We never called her out for lying if it was about minor stuff because she thought we were mad at her and she’d cry. She was lying about some pretty major stuff this time, but we still tried to be gentle about it, so we didn’t upset her. She doubled down about it and I got angry. It wasn’t like her and it wasn’t like me, either.
“In any other situation, Fleur would have shrunk and started crying when she knew she was wrong and she thought we were mad. I actually was angry this time. Fleur fought back and kept insisting she really was in the library or with her professor. She was mad at us for doubting her.
“That was two nights ago, and she asked for space. We don’t know why she was on the dodgeball field, but it probably has something to do with the nights she was supposed to be at the library or meeting her professor. We shouldn’t have given her space. It was so out of character for her. We should have held her close and demanded she tell us the truth. We could have stopped this. We could have—”
The man broke down crying. This was the hardest part of death. The living always wondered what they could have done differently to keep their loved ones alive. Sometimes, there was nothing. It was their time, even if they were young and it was sudden.
Fleur was unnatural. I could taste it at the scene. She was supposed to grow old with her coven and take the supernatural world by storm with her charms. There was still nothing her coven could have done. Even if they surrounded her with love when she asked for space and didn’t let her leave her dorm on Samhain, it probably would have just happened another night.
“Fleur didn’t know why she was on the dodgeball field. She wouldn’t have remembered how she had died, but she would have remembered why she was out there and who she was meeting. She would have been able to tell me about a new person in her life that might be a suspect. I don’t think she lied to you about where she was those nights. I think she really thought that was where she was because her memory had been altered. She got angry with you because she really thought she was at the library or meeting with her professor.”
“No. Professor Morningstar is one of my favorite professors. He went over those. Memory potions are considered dark arts. They weren’t created with good intentions. They were only recently used for good to help people with extreme trauma, but you can’t keep dosing people with them because there are side effects.
“Professor Morningstar went over those, so we knew what to look for. People who have been frequently dosed with forgetting potions start forgetting things they weren’t coached to forget and they get a rash on their arms. Fleur wasn’t doing that, and we saw her naked all the time. She was blemish free.”
I was afraid of that. I wasn’t teaching Dark Arts, but I studied them. Gabriel had some things in his family grimoire even I didn’t know, but I knew the side effects if someone was abusing memory potions on someone. Forgetting little things happened first, and the rash came second. If Fleur had been given one enough that her coven had figured out she wasn’t where she was supposed to be on two separate occasions, her arms would have been covered.
But memory potions weren’t the only way to manipulate someone. It was a skill every god had if they cared to learn it. It was just like shapeshifting. We could do it if we wanted to. Most of us didn’t try to learn that one because mortals tended to die. We could pull memories out of their heads, but it generally melted their brains. If there was a way to do that without horrifically killing them, no one I was friends with had practiced enough to figure that out.
Everyone I knew considered it a violation. Some of them had seriously sketchy consent issues when it came to people’s bodies, but messing with someone’s mind like that was too much for them.
And all I could do was promise her coven I’d find who did this and punish them. A killer on campus was going to cause a panic.
They couldn’t know it was another god.
