Rising Fury (Hexing House Book 1) by Jen Rasmussen

angry, defensive, unhappy to be there. It seemed she’d only “volunteered” because it meant the morning off from the janitorial work she did, and had been doing for the last several years as punishment for some unnamed crimes.
    In other words, this was a woman without any obvious virtues. After the first introduction, Thea wasn’t allowed to talk to her or ask her questions. She could only stare, listen, smell, feel, and hope for the best.
    Ten minutes went by without her finding a single thing, and she had to find four virtues in this fury to pass.
    Thea closed her eyes and breathed deeply. The clove smell was there, of course; she had begun to suspect that was fury’s blood. Virtues were much more subtle and tough to pick up, more like the idea of a scent than the scent itself. She took several more deep breaths, and there was something there, something like rain.
    “Purity,” Thea said. “There’s one.”
    “Purity from someone who was punished for thievery?” asked Alecto.
    “No, it’s a different kind of purity.” Thea frowned, trying to figure out what she meant. “There’s an innocence of…” She closed her eyes again. An innocence of what? Sex? Guile?
    “It’s malice,” Thea said at last. “It’s an absence of malice.” She looked across the table at her judges.
    Graves frowned at her and shook his head. “Absence of a vice is not the same as a virtue.”
    “No, I guess not,” agreed Thea. “But there is purity there, in the sense that she’s never wished another person harm, at all. She stole for selfish reasons, I would guess, not with the intention of hurting anyone. A victimless crime, maybe, something she thought wouldn’t be missed, or that could be spared. I bet she was no good at hexing, either. She wouldn’t even want to hurt a human.”
    Alecto tapped some keys and frowned at her screen, perhaps checking Thea’s accuracy against the old woman’s personnel file. Finally she looked up and nodded for Thea to go on, her face blank.
    “And temperance,” Thea said. “She’s even-tempered. She’s not driven by anger, and she can always manage to be patient.”
    The old fury scowled at Thea, but it looked more like embarrassment than annoyance. Her eyes had gotten misty. Thea wondered if it was the first time anyone had ever spoken of her good qualities. Or at least the first time in a long time.
    “Humility,” Thea added. “She doesn’t think much of herself. She settles for being a worse person than she’s capable of being.”
    “That’s three,” said Megaira. “You need one more. Remember, she has at least five.”
    Thea stepped closer to the woman, who flinched, but held her ground. Thea closed her eyes.
    Purity is the rain smell, and that fruity thing, or is it floral? Either way, that’s humility. Temperance is the one like sea air. What else is there?
    She sniffed, embarrassingly loud, but now was not the time to be shy. She had to do this, she had to pass, or else… what?
    For Flannery’s sake, of course. Thea had to become one of them, make them trust her, gain access to them and their secrets. That was why she came.
    And if that wasn’t the only reason, she didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to dissect any other motives for wanting to prove herself, not when she had to focus. Her eyes were still closed, and it seemed her fingers ached even more in the dark and quiet. Behind her someone started tapping a pen on the table.
    It’s like the barn. I don’t even know what about the barn, maybe it’s no one thing, but it reminds me of it. Back when Uncle Gary was alive, and there were cows and horses.
    “Fidelity,” Thea finished at last.
    She opened her eyes to see Alecto raising an eyebrow at her. “You wouldn’t consider stealing from your own colony to be cheating?”
    “Of course it’s cheating, but that speaks to honesty.”
    “It speaks to loyalty, too.”
    “Yes, but fidelity isn’t just loyalty. It’s also faith. This woman