Touch of Frost (Mythos Academy 1)

Once my tour of the room was complete, I went over to the heavy wooden desk that squatted next to a large, expensive TV and a couple of bookcases. The desk was almost always where the good stuff was. Books, papers, pens, fashion magazines. All your usual clutter littered the surface, along with Jasmine's laptop, half-buried underneath a stack of notebooks. Jackpot.

I pulled my hoodie sleeve down so that it covered my hand, grabbed the laptop, and slipped it into my messenger bag. I didn't want to touch the computer just yet. Not here. I didn't know what I might see with my psychometry magic, and I didn't want to do something stupid-like start screaming if there was a bad vibe attached to the computer. I'd do that later, when I got back to my own dorm room. Besides, I'd been in here several minutes now, and every minute longer that I stayed added to the risk of somebody catching me.

When that was done, I rifled through the desk drawers, still careful not to touch anything with my bare hands. But there was nothing in the desk that shouldn't be there and nothing that I thought I could get a real flash or vibe off of.

So I moved on and examined the bookcases that took up part of one wall. To my surprise, there were a lot of books there-a lot of books. Jasmine hadn't struck me as the kind of girl who loved to read. The really bizarre thing was that all the books were kind of ... boring. Textbooks or encyclopedias with titles like Common Valkyrie Powers and Mastering Your Magic.

Maybe it wasn't so weird for Jasmine to have these kinds of books. Maybe she'd had a power besides her inherent Valkyrie strength-magic that let her call down lightning bolts from the sky or turn people to ice with her eyeballs. Okay, so most mean girls had that last power anyway, but here at Mythos a few students actually had the ability to deep-freeze whatever or whoever they wanted. I thought back, but I didn't remember hearing about Jasmine having any kind of special power, and I'd never seen her do any magic, like make storm clouds gather overhead or fog suddenly roll across the quad. Still, none of the books looked like they would be fun to read. Maybe they were just for show and nothing else. I just couldn't see Jasmine spending her time studying spells, researching magic, or learning about whatever kind of Valkyrie power that she might have had.

I was about to turn away from the books when a title caught my eye-The History of Great Artifacts. A memory clicked in my mind. Wait a minute. Last night in the library, Coach Ajax had called the Bowl of Tears an Artifact with a capital A and one of the Thirteen, whatever that meant.

Curious, I used my hoodie sleeve to pull the book off the shelf. A piece of blue paper was stuck in the top, almost like a bookmark. I put the heavy book down on the desk and flipped it open to that section-and was rewarded with a photo of the Bowl of Tears, along with a couple of pages telling all about its history and supposed magical, mythological powers.

My eyes narrowed. Maybe Jasmine hadn't been quite the innocent victim in all this that she'd seemed to be. Maybe ... maybe she'd actually helped someone steal the Bowl of Tears before she'd been killed. Professor Metis had told me that some Mythos students had worked with Reapers before. Why else would Jasmine have this book with this particular page marked about the Bowl if she wasn't involved in its theft somehow?

I slid the book into my bag, right next to the laptop.

Then, I walked over to the very last part of the room that I wanted to look at-the trash can under the desk.

My mom had always told me that people left a lot of interesting things in the trash. Things that you just wouldn't believe folks didn't bother to hide if you were a detective searching someone's house and looking for evidence of all the bad things they'd done. My mom had always claimed that people put stuff in the cans and then forgot about it, like throwing it in the trash was the same as it getting taken off to the dump and buried forever.

So I pulled the can out from under the desk and sifted through the contents, still using my hoodie sleeve to keep from actually touching anything. Most of it was your normal, boring trash. A half-used tube of lip gloss. Some crumpled tissues. An empty bag of potato chips. But there was one thing that was interesting-a photo in the very bottom.

The photo had been torn in two, and I picked up both pieces, turned them over, and fit them together.

To my surprise, the photo wasn't of Jasmine. Instead, Morgan McDougall and Samson Sorensen smiled up at me. They had their arms around each other and were grinning for the camera. The photo looked like it had been taken sometime in the spring on the quad, because the tree behind them was green with new leaves.

I frowned. Why would Jasmine tear this particular photo in two? Was there something going on between Morgan and Samson? According to the rumors that I'd heard, Morgan had her eye on Samson now that Jasmine was dead. But this photo had to have been ripped up before last night, when Jasmine had been murdered.

Nothing made sense. Right now, I had more questions than answers-and a whole lot of trouble I could get into if someone found me snooping in here.

I put the torn photo in my bag with the rest of the stuff that I'd collected. Then, I crept over to the door, listening for voices or footsteps outside. I didn't hear anything, so I opened the door and slipped out into the hallway.

I went out the same way that I'd come in, hurrying down the stairs and walking through the main common room. A few more girls had come into the dorm by now, but none of them glanced at me as I went by. Luckily, I didn't have to swipe an ID card to get out of the dorm, so I was able to push through the front door and scurry down the stairs and back out onto the cobblestone walkway.

I glanced around to make sure no one was watching me, then headed around the side of the stone building so I could cut across one of the smaller quads and walk back to my own dorm.

I was almost clear of Valhalla Hall when a window on the second floor opened and a backpack sailed outside and plummeted to the ground in front of me. Somehow, I stifled the surprised scream in my throat. Especially since the backpack was followed a second later by a guy who landed in a low, perfect crouch. He got to his feet with ease, like the twenty-foot fall was nothing to him, and I saw who he was.

Logan freaking Quinn.

It was more dark than light now, and the Spartan looked even more dangerous in the blackening shadows. The pale, milky moon brought out the blue highlights in his thick, wavy black hair. Logan dusted a few leaves off his designer jeans, then glanced up to find me staring at him. His eyes narrowed in his chiseled face.

"Well, well, if it isn't the Gypsy girl out here in the dark all by herself." Logan's voice sounded deep and ominous. "What are you doing?"

I clutched my bag to my chest, as if that would somehow protect me from the Spartan and the fact that he could kill me with his pinkie finger. "Not sneaking out of some poor girl's dorm room like you so obviously are."

He moved closer to me, but I held my ground and didn't step back . Logan's lips quirked up into that amused smile again. He must have realized that I was scared of him, despite my acidic words.

But I was only a little scared of him, I told myself. And only because Jasmine had been murdered and I was the one who'd found her body. And, well, maybe because I'd just broken into and searched her dorm room and had her laptop in my bag. Okay, so maybe I had several good reasons to be jumpy, in addition to the fact that I was standing here alone in the dark with Logan Quinn. The very sexy, very dangerous Logan Quinn.

"You're right," he said. "I had a date. And you? What are you doing out here?"

I clutched my bag with the stolen computer a little tighter. "Nothing. I was just on my way back to my dorm. Nothing, really."

We stared at each other. Logan's eyes were as pale as the moonlight on his face, more silver than blue now, while his skin resembled the marble statues that could be found on all the academy buildings. Cold. Remote. Hard. Perfect.

"Well, I think I'm going to go do nothing somewhere else," Logan drawled. "Maybe back in my dorm room. Care to join me?"

I couldn't stop my mouth from falling open. Had the infamous Logan Quinn just asked me to go back to his room with him? I rewound the last few seconds in my mind. Yes, yes, he had-a whole two minutes after he'd just jumped out of some other girl's window.

Disgust filled me. Egotistical pig. Did he think that I was that easy? That I'd sleep with him just because he asked? That I was that lonely and that desperate? That he was so sexy that no girl could resist him? My eyes drifted over his muscled body again. Well, maybe he had the right to be pretty confident there.

But even if I had been a raging slut like Morgan McDougall who gave it up just for fun, there was still the little problem of my Gypsy gift. Just touching a hairbrush had made me scream so loud and so long that I'd wound up in the hospital. Sex with somebody like Logan Quinn would probably fry my brain for good. I hadn't even kissed a guy in months now, ever since I'd broken up with Drew Squires, my first, and only, shortlived boyfriend. The last time we'd kissed, I'd felt him pretending that I was Paige Forrest. I'd dumped him right then and there.

"So what do you say, Gypsy girl?" Logan asked in a soft voice. "Want to go back to my room and do nothing together?"

"Sorry," I snapped. "I think I'm going to go call my grandma."

He raised an eyebrow. "The grandma who can rot off a guy's dick?"

I gave him a bright smile, although I wondered if he could even see it or me in the darkness. "The one and the same. I'll be sure and tell her all about you. Gotta run. Bye."

I skirted around him and hurried on, this time not even caring what kind of freak he thought I was. But before I stepped around the side of the building I glanced over my shoulder.

Logan Quinn was still standing underneath the girl's window. Still staring at me. Still watching me.

It might have only been my imagination, but I swear I thought I saw him smile again before I rounded the side of the dorm and he disappeared from sight.

Chapter 8

My chance meeting with Logan Quinn spooked me so much that I practically ran all the way back to Styx Hall. It was almost eight o'clock now, and darkness had fully fallen on the academy. The golden glow from the street lamps that lined the walkways and huddled next to the buildings did little to banish the black shadows. Or maybe that was just because I'd stolen a laptop and other personal stuff from a dead girl's room and now I was feeling all guilty about it.

I swiped my ID card through the machine and went inside the dorm. A few girls, Amazons mostly, hung out in the common area downstairs, texting on their cells, watching TV, or both. Once again, nobody paid any attention to me as I went up the stairs. I doubted they realized that I lived here at all.

My dorm room was the only one on the third floor, stuck in a separate little round turret that had been added onto the building for whatever reason. The walls were straight, although the roof rose up like a pyramid above my head. A couple of large picture windows were set into the turret, including one with a padded window seat that had an awesome view of the campus and the Appalachian Mountains that towered above it.

My room had the same stuff in it as Jasmine's did-a bed, a desk, some bookcases, a tiny TV-although mine were nowhere near as nice or expensive as hers. Still, I liked it. Grandma Frost had helped me decorate it with all my stuff from home, like my posters of Wonder Woman, Karma Girl, and The Killers. My superthick, purple and gray plaid comforter covered my bed, along with the big, fluffy pillows that I liked, while several Swarovski crystal ornaments shaped like snowflakes dangled in the windows.

The snowflakes were an inside joke between us. With a last name like Frost, it was kind of inevitable. I couldn't even remember when it had started, but every year for Christmas, Grandma gave me something with a snowflake on it and I did the same for her. Last year, I'd bought her a snowflake-patterned scarf, and she'd given me the snowflake ornaments in return.

They were my favorite things in the room, along with the picture of my mom that sat on my desk, right next to the latest comic books that I was reading.

I opened the small fridge tucked in at the foot of my bed and grabbed a carton of milk and some pieces of the pumpkin roll that Grandma Frost had sent me back to the academy with. Then, I fished Jasmine's laptop out of my bag, along with the book and the photo that I'd taken from her room, and put everything on my scarred wooden desk. While I scarfed down the milk and the pumpkin treat with its sweet cream cheese filling, I plugged the laptop into the wall and waited for it to boot up.

It took forever, or maybe it just seemed that way because I was in such a hurry to start surfing through Jasmine's files. Finally, the welcome screen popped up-and asked me for a password.

I finished off my milk and cracked my knuckles. Then, I flexed my fingers and put my hands down onto the keyboard, waiting for the vibes and flashes to hit me, to fill my mind the way they always did.

Nothing happened.

I frowned. No, that wasn't quite true. Stuff happened. A couple of images of Jasmine sitting at her desk downloading music and shopping online flashed before my eyes. And I felt ... satisfaction-the kind of smug satisfaction that came from getting exactly what you wanted no matter how expensive it was. Jasmine must have really been lusting after those cute black stiletto boots that she'd bought last week.

The problem was that I didn't get the big whammy that I usually did when I touched someone's stuff. Maybe I should have expected it. Computers were one of the everyday items that I could touch without getting much of a vibe off of, especially the ones in the library that were used by tons of kids. Maybe Jasmine just hadn't used her laptop enough to leave much of an impression of herself behind. Maybe there wasn't anything interesting on here. Maybe she didn't have any deep, dark secrets.

Maybe I'd just broken into a dead girl's dorm room for nothing.