Touch of Frost (Mythos Academy 1)

I bit my lip. Daphne was right. I couldn't tell Professor Metis what had happened, not without getting into the whole weird story. Metis was cool, but I doubted that she'd think too kindly of me breaking into Jasmine's room, swiping her laptop, and then spying on the dead Valkyrie's best friend and boyfriend because I had a weird vibe about the whole situation.

"Too bad about the prowler, though," Logan mused. "I would have liked to have shown it to Coach Ajax. He would have been so impressed."

"True," Daphne agreed.

I looked at the two of them. "Geez. Do you guys really think killing a mythological monster is that cool?"

Daphne and Logan looked at each other.

"Totally," Daphne said.

"Absolutely," Logan agreed.

And they thought I was a freak. At least I had the good sense to be scared of things like prowlers. Things with big, sharp, pointy teeth that could rip me to shreds. I shivered again at the memory of the creature stalking me.

"Well," Daphne said. "I think I've had enough fun for one evening. I'm going back to my room. I still have that paper to write for English lit."

"Let me walk you to your room," Logan offered in a helpful voice. "You, me, and the Gypsy girl could have our own bonfire tonight."

Daphne and I stared at each other. I rolled my eyes while Daphne sniffed.

"Oh, please," she scoffed. "Like I need a guy to protect me. I'm a Valkyrie, remember? I could pick you up and break your back over my knee, Spartan. Like you were a pinata."

"Kinky," Logan said, smiling at her. "I like it."

She snorted. "Save the smarmy charm for Gwen. We all know that she's the one you're really trying to impress anyway."

We did? Because I hadn't gotten that message at all.

My eyes flicked to Logan. Something that looked like a guilty flush crept up the side of his neck, but the flickering flames of the bonfire made it hard to tell for sure.

Daphne snorted again and stomped off in the direction of her dorm, leaving the two of us standing there by the firelight.

"Don't forget to call Carson," I called out in a helpful voice. "The two of you have a date tomorrow night, remember?"

Daphne turned around and made a rude gesture with her hand, telling me exactly what I could go do with myself. But she had a smile on her face while she did it. I found myself grinning back at her. Daphne Cruz was okay, even if she was a rich, spoiled, wannabe Valkyrie princess.

Logan looked at me. "You going to stomp off into the dark, too?"

"Oh no," I said, remembering the way that the prowler had licked its lips and hissed at me. Another shudder rippled through my body. "I'm more than happy to let you walk me back to my dorm."

We left the amphitheater behind and set off across the lower quad. A few people milled around the bonfire, but everyone else was wrapped up in their own little worlds beneath their blankets, macking on their hotties, and nobody paid any attention to Logan and me.

Good thing, since the Spartan was pretty much covered with black blood from head to toe. I winced when we passed by the fire and I saw exactly how much of it there was on him. Logan looked like he'd taken a bath in the prowler's blood.

I couldn't help but wonder what had made him follow me up to the library, and most especially what had made him step in between me and that horrible monster. Yeah, I knew that he was a Spartan and killing bad things was basically what he did, what he was here at Mythos learning how to do.

But there had to be more to it than that. Maybe if I'd been prettier, richer, or more popular it would have made sense. I wasn't exactly the kind of girl that guys tripped over themselves to help. Did Logan think that I'd be so grateful that I'd change my mind about him and just fall into his arms?

My eyes moved over his face and down his muscled body. Well, okay. That would have had some serious appeal, if he wasn't so icky looking right now. Okay, okay. It still had some serious appeal, even if he was all blood covered and nasty.

Logan saw me staring at him. "What are you looking at, Gypsy girl?"

This time, a flush crept up my cheeks. "Nothing," I muttered, and looked away from him.

We didn't speak as we left the light and warmth of the bonfire behind and stepped onto one of the cobblestone walkways that wound around the lower quad and led to Styx Hall.

"So," Logan finally said. "You're trying to figure out what happened to Jasmine, huh? Who killed her and took the Bowl of Tears?"

I shrugged. "Something like that."

"Why?" Logan asked. "Why do you even care? As you've probably guessed by now, Jasmine wasn't exactly the best-liked girl at Mythos. Sure, she was popular, but she terrorized people to get that way. People were afraid of her, and she was basically a coldhearted bitch. Why would you want to find out what happened to someone like that?"

Once again, I thought about Paige Forrest. She'd been a lot like Jasmine, well, except for the coldhearted bitch part. Paige had been pretty, popular, and sweet, but no one had known about the awful thing that was happening to her. Even now, I could still see her stepfather making Paige lie back on her bed while he touched her. My stomach turned over at the memory, and I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself.

I couldn't tell Logan all that, of course. That in some weird way Jasmine reminded me of Paige and that I wanted to help the Valkyrie like I had the other girl. It was too long of a story, and it probably wouldn't make sense to him anyway. Sometimes, my Gypsy gift and all the flashes, vibes, and feelings that went along with it didn't make much sense to me either. But my mom had always told me to trust my instincts, and that was what I was going to do.

"Because somebody should at least care what happened to her," I said in a quiet voice. "Somebody should be sorry that she was murdered, even if nobody really liked Jasmine deep down inside."

"Maybe," Logan said. "But Metis, Ajax, Nickamedes, and everyone else think that a Reaper killed Jasmine and stole the Bowl of Tears. The guy, whoever he is, is long gone."

I shrugged. "Maybe. But something about this whole situation just doesn't feel right to me. Maybe it's because my mom was a cop. She always told me to listen to my instincts."

"Was?" Logan asked in a quiet voice, picking up on the past tense.

"She died six months ago," I said. "She was killed in a car accident by a drunk driver. That's what the police said, anyway."

My throat closed up as I said the words, and I blinked back a wave of sudden hot tears. Once again, my pain, anger, and guilt over my mom's death twisted my heart, like a snake curling tighter and tighter around its victim until all the life had been squeezed out of it. That's how I felt right now. I couldn't even breathe without it hurting so much.

"I'm sorry," Logan said.

I nodded at him, but I didn't trust myself to speak.

We reached Styx Hall a couple of minutes later . The light burned over the front door, but the dorm was quiet. Everyone else must have still been over at the bonfire. I walked up the steps to the patio that wrapped around the dorm, and Logan followed me.

Logan drew closer to me until all that I could see, feel, and hear was him. Black hair, icy blue eyes, square chin, solid chest. He looked the same as always, a total bad boy who knew exactly how sexy he was. But somehow, Logan seemed nobler to me now, braver and stronger. Like there was so much more to him than just his killer smile, easy charm, and rumored ability to get rid of a girl's bra in under five seconds and her panties in another ten.

Maybe that was because Logan had saved my life tonight. That kind of thing would have made any girl think highly of him. Or maybe it was just part of who he was, part of his Spartan heritage, part of becoming the fierce warrior that he was so obviously meant to be.

I thought about the way that he'd so coolly faced that Nemean prowler, the way that he'd actually smiled when fighting the awful creature. Logan made me believe that there was some kind of purpose to all this. At least for tonight, anyway. That yeah, the Chaos War and Reapers and Loki were real, but that there were also good guys like Spartans and Amazons and Valkyries who were ready to stand up and fight the bad guys, too.

Whatever it was, the sudden feeling made me shiver, even as heat blossomed in the pit of my stomach like a flower slowly unfurling and stretching toward the sun. Just the way that I found myself wanting to reach out to Logan, to touch him, no matter how weird, wrong, or stupid it might have been.

"Can I ask you something?" Logan said, tilting his head to one side and looking at me.

"Sure."

"What's with you and all the comic books?"

That was just about the last thing that I'd expected him to say. I blinked. "What?"

"I saw them that day you ran into me on the quad and dropped your bag. Why do you like them so much?" Logan asked. "We pretty much go to school in a comic book. Tonight should have proven that to you. You don't really need to read them."

"I just like them," I said. "I always have."

It was true. I'd always loved the stories of people having amazing powers, of good guys doing good things and always thwarting the bad guys' evil plans at the last possible second. But lately I'd been reading more and more of them, burying myself in the colorful pages as though reading about someone else's heroic deeds would magically change everything around me. As though they would somehow make my life better or put everything back to the way that it had been before my mom died.

"I guess ... I've been reading more of them since my mom's accident," I said, struggling to find the right words. "I guess ... I like them because nobody ever really dies in a comic book, not even the bad guy. At least not for long. I guess ... I keep hoping that one day, my mom's going to just show up, like the characters always do in comic books. That she's going to be fine and tell me that this has all been a bad dream. That she's been trapped in another dimension or that the person who got killed was really her evil clone or something. That she's going to take me away from Mythos and things will go back to the way they used to be. Pretty stupid, huh?"

I blinked a couple of times and scratched my nose like it was itching, even though I was really trying to hold back the tears in my eyes. I didn't want to cry in front of him.

Logan looked at me. "I don't think it's stupid at all, Gwen."

Some of the emotion clogging my throat eased up, and I smiled.

"What?"

"Do you know, I think that's the first time that you've ever said my name? I'm always just that Gypsy girl to you and everyone else."

Logan moved closer to me. "Really? Then, I'll have to say it again. Gwen," he whispered. "Gwen."

I stared into his ice blue eyes, mesmerized by the sudden softness that I saw there, even as Logan's head dipped lower. But then my brain kicked in and I realized that he was actually going to kiss me-and exactly what would happen the moment that his lips touched mine.

"No! Don't! Stop!" I stepped away from him, almost falling down the dorm steps in the process.

Logan frowned, and something like hurt flickered in his eyes.

"It's not that I don't want to-I mean, I do-I really do-it's just ... my gift," I finished in a totally weak, lame voice.

He kept staring at me.

"My Gypsy gift," I said, trying to explain. "My psychometry magic. Whenever I ... touch someone, I get flashes about him. Feelings and images. Kind of like a movie trailer of his life. Or at least what he's thinking about at that particular moment. It really just depends on the person."

The softness in Logan's eyes vanished, and his gaze was suddenly as cold as ice once more, his face harder than any marble statue in the Library of Antiquities.

"And you don't want to see mine," he said in a flat tone. "Because of who and what I am. Because I'm a Spartan."

He said "Spartan" like it was some sort of dirty word or terrible thing to be. I didn't know all the ins and outs of Mythos, but I knew that most of the other students were afraid of Logan and the others kids like him. Because they were Spartans, because they were such good fighters, because they were so fierce, so strong, and so full of life. And now he thought that I was scared of him, too, that I didn't even want to so much as touch him, much less let him kiss me.

"No! No! That's not it at all. I just didn't know if you would ... want me to see ... all those things about you," I finished in that same weak, lame voice. "Some people don't."

They don't want me knowing their secrets. That's what I wanted to say to him. Maybe that's what I should have said to him.

Or maybe I should have just come right out and admitted the fact that I was a total geeky loser who'd only ever kissed one boy in her entire life. And only a couple times at that, with very little tongue action involved. That I was worried my lack of experience would so obviously show and I wouldn't measure up to Logan's standards. That I wouldn't be able to kiss him back like he wanted me to-like I wanted to. That I didn't want him to laugh at me or make fun of me. And most especially, that I was starting to like him way, way more than I should, given the fact that he was who he was and I was who I was. Just Gwen Frost, that Gypsy girl who saw things, and not anyone special, exciting, or particularly interesting.

Logan kept staring at me, that same cold expression in his eyes. He made no move to try to kiss me again. The moment, whatever kind of moment it had been between us, was officially over. Spell, broken. Shattered was more like it. By me and my freak-out over my stupid Gypsy gift and what I might see and feel if I kissed him.