Page 3 of Nine Inch Nasty (Hemlock Academy #9)

His mother blinks at me, clearly not expecting those words from my mouth, recalibrating before she speaks again.

She waves her hand at the air, as if batting away an imaginary fly.

“It’s all bollocks. Right? I mean, my mother and aunts used to talk about it a lot, but…

it always seemed like absolute rubbish. Why am I speaking like an English person? I’m so nervous right now, forgive me.”

I smile at her, steeling myself. “Not rubbish. There is a cursed gargoyle, or rather, there was , and it was your line that originally cursed him.”

“I told you your sister wasn’t crazy! This plays into the story, yes?” Bill asks.

I’m sorry, but I kind of lowkey find it hilarious that a big, scary naga shifter is called Bill.

“So the gargoyle, Leo, is another of my fated mates. Shelly didn’t realize her brother was also, so there was a conflict there eventually, but…

long story short, she and I have never seen eye to eye.

I’ve only been at Hemlock a few months so I really can’t speak much about her, but I have to let you know she got herself into a bit of trouble.

We can talk about that more later, after we handle this realm’s problems.”

“I always knew that girl had more spirit than was good for her. Alright. We’ll come back to her later, or I can get Zacky to fill me in once we rescue him. Let’s go!”

She stands and attempts to leave, but Bill grabs her by the hand and tows her back to the couch. “We need to tell her about, you know …”

“Oh, right.” Cassandra sinks back into her spot next to me.

“This is going to sound ridiculous, but…it’s the only thing we can think of.

We’ve been trying to figure out for quite a while now why everyone here is so miserable, and it seems that the more miserable they get, the darker the center of Glittertopia gets.

“Our best guess, and this is based off of scientific hypotheses, is that everyone is so depressed here because the food absolutely sucks.”

That’s…what? “The food? Are you sure?”

Bill produces a file folder from behind his back and lays it on the table between us. “Look. We’ve surveyed every possible Glittertopian we could, eaten at every restaurant, toured every grocery store, and every single common denominator for peak grumpiness is the food.”

“Saladriel, could you come here for a sec, babe?”

He quirks an eyebrow at me and saunters over, chest puffed up. “You called me babe.”

“Oops, sorry.” There goes that stupid blush again. “What do you think about this?”

He looks through the papers and shrugs. “I dunno. I think our food here is fine. And even if it needed a bit of improvement, which I’m not saying it does, I can’t imagine that would be the reason the entire realm is failing.”

“Well why not?” I challenge.

“Because…that would be ridiculous. Why would the goddess bring in a magically chosen savior to fix such a simple problem? It makes no sense. No, it’s got to be something else.”

I think about Saladriel’s time in my realm, trying to remember him eating anything other than super boring, bland food, but he always turned down anything the rest of us were eating because it wasn’t vegan.

We started getting him his own food, but he always requested such simple things to eat when we’d get groceries that I can’t really say if it contributed to his moods.

Actually, no. That’s not true. “Your third day with us, do you remember when you accidentally took a bite of that mac & cheese I had, not realizing it had dairy products in it? You…acted strangely for a bit.”

He crosses his arms, turning his head up in the air slightly. “That was an accident. Hardly grounds for punishment.”

Cassandra looks at me as if it to say, ‘ See ?’

I put my hand on Saladriel’s knee, hoping to soften the blow. “Saladriel, why would you think we would punish you?”

He looks to Zac’s parents, then to me, and the rest of my mates are hanging closer now, eagerly awaiting his response as well. “The goddess is very strict about what we put in our bodies. She says that food is simply there for nourishment, and if we enjoy it too much…”

“Yes?”

He sighs, covering my hand with his and lacing our fingers together. It sends a little shiver down my spine, which we will not be discussing at further length, thank you. “There may be something to their ideas, but…I don’t see how you can help. Vegan food is…”

“May I ask, out of pure curiosity, why are you all vegan? You told me all unicorns here are, and that seems like a bit of an exaggerated demographic of vegans…there aren’t usually so many in a population. Is it something with your anatomy? Do you react badly to dairy or meat products?”

He thinks about this, seeming a bit stumped. “I guess…it’s just how we are. I don’t... we’re pretty much just taught from a young age that’s our diet. It’s like saying we have manes. We just are.”

Bill leans forward, and I can see his brain working. “Okay, Saladriel, was it? Yes, okay, how did you feel when you had that bite of macaroni and cheese?”

He’s far too serious for what that question actually was.

Eventually, Saladriel cracks and starts crying, covering his face as great, wracking sobs take over his body.

What the hell?

I scoot closer, putting an arm around him. “Hey, hey, what’s wrong?”

He mumbles something.

“What was that?”

He finally pulls his hands away from his face and looks me straight in the eye as he says, “I snuck into the kitchen when everyone else was asleep and ate all the leftovers. I’m also ashamed to say I dug through the trash to find the bits and pieces that people scraped off their plate and ate those, too.

I’m so gross! My body is no longer a holy temple for the goddess!

No wonder she punished me by sending me away, she knew how weak I was!

It was the most godsdamned delicious thing I’ve ever put between my lips, and I hate that I loved it so much! ”

He runs off crying to the other room, slamming the door behind him, leaving us all very perplexed. To put it mildly.

“Well.” Wil drops next to me on the couch, casually grabbing my hand to plant a kiss on it like he’s been doing it forever.

It’s actually a challenge to get myself to stop looking at his mouth after that, because my brain is stuck on a loop remembering every filthy thing he did to me using that exact mouth last night. Fuck .

Bill makes an uncomfortable coughing noise and pulls his collar away from his neck. Oops, lust check. Yeah, that shit’s running all over the place. My bad. I suck it all back in and make sure it’s nice and locked down before I shift my attention back to Zac’s parents. “So, you were saying?”

They outline the plan they’ve come up with, pointing out there were no explicit instructions that I couldn’t get help in my quest to save the realm, which I guess is true.

And really, what do we have to lose? Other than like, well, everything.

But if we do nothing, I’ll likely lose it all anyway, and this seems like as good an idea as any.

Not quite sure how we’re going to pull it off, but maybe I need to take a page out of Saladriel’s book and head to a store of some sort to pick up ingredients.