Touch of Frost (Mythos Academy 1)

But then, I thought about my mom. Something about this felt wrong to me, and she'd always told me to trust my feelings, to trust my Gypsy gift. Besides, Grace Frost wouldn't give up so easily if she was investigating Jasmine's murder, and neither would I.

Okay, so I needed more information on Jasmine, and I knew of at least one place to get it-the Internet.

I pulled my laptop out of my bag and fired it up. Mythos Academy had the very best of everything, including free, campuswide Wi-Fi, so I was able to access the school Web site with just a few clicks of my wireless mouse. Every Mythos student was supposed to have his or her own personal school Web page to share interests, photos, and more with fellow students. Kind of like a Facebook account that was only accessible to the other kids at school. But some of the kids, including me, just didn't bother with it. I didn't have any friends at Mythos to start with, so who here would want to read my ramblings?

But, of course, Jasmine had a blog and more than two hundred friends, according to her campus profile. I scrolled down the page, scanning her blog, but there was nothing there. Just catty comments about who was wearing what, along with several dreamy posts about what a great guy Samson Sorensen was. Your typical high school popular rich girl angst. Or what passed for it. There were also several photos of Samson in his ittybitty swim briefs at various meets. Dude totally had six-pack abs. Yeah, I looked at those pictures a little longer and a little more closely than the other ones.

But Jasmine hadn't posted anything on her page that told me anything really deep and meaningful about her, much less why she was at the library last night, which meant that I was going to have to go to another source.

Like her laptop. That's where the good stuff would be anyway. It always was. Even at my old school, kids had always been frantic when they'd lost their laptops, thinking about all the incriminating stuff that someone might find on them. Like e-mails about how drunk the kids had gotten with their friends the weekend their parents thought they went to band camp. Papers they'd downloaded and plagiarized for AP English. Porn.

I tapped my fingers on the table, thinking back to last night, calling up my memories of the scene of the crime, and sorting through them the way that I was able to do. In some ways, my psychometry magic was better than watching a movie, because I had perfect color, picture, and sound every single time.

I hadn't seen a computer or any kind of bag lying on the floor next to Jasmine, just that blood-free dagger with the ruby set into the hilt. So Jasmine probably hadn't had her laptop with her. I knew that she had one, though, because I'd seen her with it yesterday on the quad. The most likely place to look for it would be in her dorm room.

I glanced back at the Web page in front of me. According to her campus profile, Jasmine lived in Valhalla Hall. I snorted. Of course she did. That's where all the Valkyrie princesses lived, since it was the plushest, poshest dorm at Mythos.

According to the whispered rumors that I'd heard today, Jasmine's room had been locked up until her parents could come and pick up her things. I wasn't a great detective like my mom had been, but the rumors told me two things. One, that Jasmine's dorm room should be empty. And two, that if I was going to break in and try to snatch her laptop I needed to do it now-like right now. Before her parents flew back from wherever they'd been vacationing in Greece or magically teleported in or whatever.

And most especially before I lost my nerve.

I sat there a minute, wondering if this was crazy. I was actually thinking about breaking into a dead girl's dorm room to steal her computer just so I could see what kind of info was on it. Just so I could find out why she'd been in the library last night. Just so I could discover all of her secrets.

I sighed. Here I was again, thinking about another girl's secrets and how I could find out all about them. I was so totally dark and twisted sometimes. Despite everything that had happened, I still liked my Gypsy gift and how it let me know things about people, how it let me see into them and get a sense of their true feelings, the ones that they worked so hard to hide. Like Daphne's massive crush on Carson. My psychometry was the only kind of power that I had at Mythos, small though it was.

But the cold, hard truth was that my thirst for secrets, my own stupid curiosity, had gotten my mom killed. Maybe if I hadn't wanted to know Paige's secret so badly, my mom wouldn't have been working so late that night and she would have never been hit by that drunk driver on her way home.

Maybe my mom would have still been alive. Maybe we'd be eating dinner together right now. Barbecue takeout maybe, from the Pork Pit, tucked away in the cozy kitchen of our old house, just the way that we used to at least once a week. Mom would tell me about her day, her violet eyes a little sad, but I was always able to make her laugh and banish the shadows that cloaked her face. After that, she'd ask me about school or what comic book I was reading or even start teasing me about some new boy I liked. Maybe we'd be doing all of those things right now, right this very second, if things had been different.

On the other hand, maybe Paige would still be being abused by her stepdad, too.

Maybe, maybe, maybe . . .

The pain and guilt over my mom's death knifed through my heart, and I rubbed my aching chest. Sometimes, I just didn't know what was right and wrong anymore, or what I was even supposed to do with my Gypsy gift in the first place. Deep down, I didn't think that I was supposed to find lost cell phones and crumpled bras for the rest of my life. But I didn't know if I was supposed to go snooping around in other people's business either. It was the whole Spider-Man dilemma about great power coming with great responsibility. Not that I thought my psychometry was the bestest power in the world or anything. I wasn't that vain or deluded. Not after seeing what some of the kids at Mythos could do.

Maybe ... maybe I should just forget about my whole crazy plan and let Professor Metis do whatever she and the other teachers were doing to find Jasmine's killer.

But then, another memory flashed through my mind, and I remembered Jasmine lying on the library floor, staring up at the ceiling with her sightless eyes, blood all around her. Looking so still and absolutely dead.

I thought about all the mean things that I'd heard the other students say about her today. Maybe they were true, but somebody should care that Jasmine was dead. And it looked like that somebody was me. Now, it was time to actually do something about all of this, whether or not I even knew for sure if it was the right or wrong thing to do in the first place.

But it was a place to start at least, and it was way better than sitting around in the musty stacks brooding about my Gypsy gift, my mom's death, and staring at a strange sword out of the corner of my eye, wondering if it was going to stare back at me. Yeah, digging into Jasmine's death, however misguided it might be, had a lot more appeal than all that.

I packed up my things and left the library.

I'd been inside the Library of Antiquities longer than I'd thought, because twilight was starting to fall when I stepped outside. I checked my watch. After six already . Classes were over for the day, and except for a few kids going to and from the library, the grassy lawn was deserted. At this hour, most of the students were busy with club meetings, sports practice, or getting some dinner in the dining hall before they went back to their dorm rooms to finish their homework. But I didn't mind the gray twilight or the empty quad. The darkening quiet made for better skulking.

I hurried past the five main academy buildings, winding my way down one of the cobblestone paths until I reached Valhalla Hall. The girls' dorm was a three-story gray stone structure, covered with thick ivy vines just like all the other buildings. According to her Web profile, Jasmine's room was on the second floor, which meant that I couldn't just crawl in through an open window or something. Naturally, things just couldn't be that easy for me.

I didn't bother going around to the back of the dorm and trying to get in that way. I knew from living in Styx Hall that's where all the smokers liked to hang out, puffing on cigarettes and occasionally some pot. At Styx, you had to wade through clouds of smoke to get inside and then you reeked of tobacco until you could take a shower. So not worth it.

But all the doors on all the dorms had a machine that you had to swipe your student ID through to get inside. For security reasons and to try to keep the guys, the girls, and their various hookups to a minimum, your ID card only let you into your assigned dorm, which meant that my ID only worked at Styx Hall and not here at Valhalla. Frustration filled me. I'd forgotten about that pertinent detail in my hurry to get over here. Kids could buzz other kids into the dorm through an intercom system outside, but of course I didn't have any friends who roomed in this dorm who would let me in. I didn't have any friends at all.

But I wasn't ready to give up just yet. My eyes scanned the paths that wound by the dorms. After about ten seconds, I spotted a familiar face-a petite Valkyrie girl who was in my English lit class. A girl who'd probably never noticed me before and had absolutely no idea who I was-and, more important, that I didn't exactly belong here. It was worth a shot.

I walked up the steps to the front door of the dorm and started rummaging through my messenger bag, like I was looking for my ID card. A few seconds later, the Valkyrie climbed up the steps. I turned to face her and moved off to one side.

"Forgot my ID card again," I said in a bright voice, and smiled. "Can you scan yours for me, please?"

The other girl gave me a strange look, but she slid her card through the machine, opened the door, and stepped inside. So much for that stellar security Professor Metis had been talking about last night. I followed the Valkyrie inside.

The inside of Valhalla Hall looked pretty much like my dorm. The first floor was a series of common areas linked together, including the living room that I was standing in right now, although it was a lot nicer than the one at Styx Hall, with upscale, expensive-looking furniture. Several couches and recliners ringed three huge TVs. One of them was tuned to some cheesy reality program, although the girl sitting in front of it was more interested in texting on her phone than watching the show.

I didn't waste time gawking but instead hurried up the stairs to the second floor. My luck held, and I didn't run into any more Valkyries. Just about everyone was still out on campus doing their own thing, and the dorm was still and quiet.

I quickly made my way to 21V, which was Jasmine's room, according to her online profile. The door was closed, but other than that, there was no indication that this was the room of a girl who'd been murdered. There was no yellow crime scene tape strung up or anything. Not that I was complaining, but it was just kind of weird, like everything else at Mythos.

I stood there a moment, looking at the door, wondering if this was really the right thing to do. But I'd come too far to back out now. And yeah, I was a little curious about what Jasmine's room looked like. Everyone had been talking about how great it was. Sue me for wondering. Besides, I'd already done most of the breaking-I might as well do the entering and stealing, too. So I drew in a breath, reached for the doorknob, and rattled it.

Locked. Shit.

Yeah, I'd expected the door to be locked, but part of me had also been hoping that the Powers That Were might have slipped up and left it open.

I bent down and looked at the door. Like the doors in my dorm, it wasn't as fancy and sturdy as it could have been and there was a small gap between the door and the frame. So I stuck my hand into one of the side pockets on my bag and fished around until I came up with my driver's license.

I'd been thrilled when I'd gotten my license last year, and I'd even been saving up money from my odd jobs to buy a car. But I hadn't driven since I'd been at the academy, mainly because I could walk everywhere I needed to go on campus and the Cypress Mountain bus went down by Grandma Frost's house every day. And when your mom dies in a car accident it takes the fun out of driving anyway. But my license had other uses, including one that my mom had shown me.

I slid the laminated card in between the door and the frame, gently guiding it down to the lock. It took some wiggling, but I managed to slip my license between the lock and the frame, popping it open.

The door swung inward.

Before I could think too much about what I was doing and how wrong it was, I stepped inside and shut the door behind me. To my surprise, it was light inside, thanks to the soft glow from a stained-glass Tiffany lamp on the desk. I stood there and stared around the room, trying to get a feel for the kind of girl that Jasmine Ashton had been-and who might have wanted to kill her.

It looked pretty much the way that I'd expected it to. Jasmine had the whole space to herself, of course, and it was more like a plush apartment than a dorm room. A bed was tucked away in one corner, covered with a blue Ralph Lauren comforter, a mound of matching pillows, and stuffed animals. Cats mostly, lions, tigers, and panthers, from what I could see.

A large, expensive white vanity table took up the opposite corner. A padded bench sat in front of the glasstopped table, while lights ringed the mirror above it. Makeup, hairbrushes, perfume bottles, and more cluttered the glass, while pictures were stuck in the edges of the gilded gold frame around the mirror. I scanned the pictures, most of which seemed to be of Jasmine, rather than of her friends or family. Somebody had liked looking at herself. I might have, too, if I'd been as pretty as Jasmine had been.

A door in the wall opened up into a walk-in closet full of designer clothes, shoes, and handbags, all carefully organized, while the other door led into the bathroom. I looked in the bathtub and opened the cabinet over the sink, but there was nothing interesting. Just pricey shampoos and lotions. No condoms, no birth control pills.

Maybe the rumors were true about Jasmine still being a virgin and not wanting to cash in her V Card with Samson Sorensen just yet. I wondered how Samson felt about that. He'd certainly looked happy enough rubbing her shoulders on the quad the other day. Jasmine had probably had the Viking wrapped around her little finger, willing to do whatever she wanted-even wait to have sex.