Touch of Frost (Mythos Academy 1)

"Well," I said in an awkward voice, shifting from one foot to the other. "I guess I should go inside now. It's getting, um, cold out here."

"Yeah," Logan said. "Cold."

I stared at him again, wondering what I could do to make things better between us. We'd been on the verge of ... something, something nice, I thought. But I'd ruined it, and I had no idea how to make it right.

"So, thanks, for, um, saving my life tonight."

"Yeah," he said again in that cold, hard voice. "Good night, Gypsy girl."

Logan turned, walked down the steps, and disappeared into the darkness. He didn't look back.

"Good night, Logan," I whispered, even though I knew that he couldn't hear me or see the tears in my eyes.

Feeling like a stupid, stupid loser, I trudged up the stairs to my dorm room, took a shower, and got ready for bed. Maybe it was the fact that I'd almost been eaten by a killer kitty cat or maybe it was my almost kiss with Logan, but I couldn't sleep.

But I just couldn't lie in bed, stare up at the pointed ceiling, and do nothing either. At least, not without replaying the scene with Logan in my mind over and over again. Thanks to my psychometry, I could remember in crystal-clear, humiliating detail just how much I'd freaked out when he'd started to kiss me. I'd be lucky if he ever spoke to me again.

I had to do something to take my mind off all that, so I grabbed the last of Grandma Frost's sweet pumpkin roll out of my minifridge, turned on Jasmine's laptop, and once again surfed through the computer files that Daphne had unlocked for me. But I didn't find anything else that would tell me what was going on, what deep, dark secrets Jasmine might have had, or who had killed her.

I popped another bite of pumpkin roll into my mouth. Thinking. Maybe everyone else was right. Maybe a Reaper had been in the library to steal the Bowl of Tears all along. Maybe he'd murdered Jasmine simply because she'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Thinking about the library and the Bowl made me remember the mythology book that I'd taken from Jasmine's dorm room. My violet eyes flicked over to the thick volume, which was sitting on the edge of my desk. It was the only thing I'd swiped from the Valkryie's room that I hadn't looked at yet.

Gingerly, I touched the book, my fingers skimming the surface, just in case I got another angry, hate-filled flash off it like the one that had been on the photograph of Morgan and Samson. I didn't want to start muttering to myself again-or worse, start screaming so loud that everyone came up to my room to watch the Gypsy girl have another mental meltdown. One had been enough.

No real emotions swept over me as I touched the book-just the feeling of old knowledge and the soft, well-worn impression of hundreds of hands turning and turning and turning the pages until they found the information they were looking for. I couldn't tell exactly how old the book was, but it had been around for quite a while.

I flipped over to the section that Jasmine had marked. To my surprise, it was the start of a whole chapter that dealt with Loki's Bowl of Tears. I moved over to my bed, propped some pillows up behind my back, and started reading.

The Bowl of Tears was what Loki's wife, Sigyn, used to keep snake venom from dripping onto the chained god's once-handsome face....

Blah, blah, blah. The next several paragraphs were pretty much the same thing that Professor Metis had recapped for us in myth-history class, so I skimmed over those. Things got a little more interesting after that, though, because the book starting mentioning a bunch of stuff that Metis had left out, for whatever reason.

The Bowl of Tears is rumored to be one of the Thirteen Artifacts, the magical items that were present and used during the final battle of the Chaos War in which the goddess Nike defeated Loki. Six of the Artifacts belonged to members of the Pantheon, while six belonged to Loki and his Reapers, although scholars often disagree as to what the Artifacts were and on which side they were used. There was also a final Artifact, the thirteenth one, that was rumored to have tipped the scales in Nike's favor, but there is no known record of what it was, how it was used, or what became of it... .

After that, the next few paragraphs dealt with the various Artifacts, including what they might be and what powers they might have. A spear, a shield, a bow and a quiver of arrows, a drum ... it was a pretty long list. Beside most of the items was the museum, library, or university where it was located-and more than a few were here at the Library of Antiquities. Geez. It was like a shopping list for bad guys. "Go here and steal this." Cue the evil laughter. "Wha-ha-ha."

I shook my head and skipped down to the section that talked about the Bowl of Tears.

After he managed to trick his wife, Sigyn, into helping him escape from his chains, Loki kept the Bowl of Tears and imbued it with his own godly magic, turning it into a powerful Artifact. It was rumored that Loki used the Bowl to bend people to his will. That once a person's blood was dripped into the Bowl the god-or whoever had the Bowl at that time-had complete control over him or her. It is also rumored that Loki's followers willingly spilled their own blood into the Bowl and that the god would then grant them special favors and powers for their show of loyalty. Reapers of Chaos were also known to use the Bowl when they sacrificed people to the god, which transferred the victim's powers and life force to Loki. Some believe that the Artifact could be used to help free the god from his current prison and allow him to draw closer to the mortal realm, where he could exert his Chaotic influence once more....

So the Bowl of Tears supposedly had the power to let the person who was holding it bend someone else to his will. If, you know, he just didn't go ahead and sacrifice that person to Loki in the first place. I shivered. Creepy. Coach Ajax and Nickamedes had both said that the Reapers would love to get their hands on the Bowl. Now I understood why. Whoever had the Bowl would have a lot of power.

Still, though, I wondered why the person who'd taken the Bowl had killed Jasmine-and not me. Because I'd been there, too. Knocked unconscious and lying on the library floor right beside the dead Valkyrie. I'd been completely helpless. So why kill Jasmine and leave me behind-alive?

Oh, I knew that I wasn't any kind of real threat. Not physically or magically, and most especially not in a place like Mythos, where all the other students knew how to sling swords and shoot arrows through people's hearts. But it just didn't make sense. If I were going to steal a priceless Artifact from the Library of Antiquities, if I knew enough to somehow be able to beat Nickamedes's magical security system and take the Bowl out of the library, then I think that I'd be smart enough not to leave any witnesses behind. Didn't these people ever watch NCIS or Law & Order reruns?

I just didn't understand why. Why Jasmine had been killed, why my mom had been hit by that drunk driver, why Paige's stepdad had abused her, why I was here at Mythos Academy when I was nothing like the other students . When I had none of their powers, magic, or warrior skills.

But there were no answers to be found in the mythology book or even in my own troubled thoughts. So I closed the thick book, put it on my nightstand, and crawled under my soft comforter. But it was still a long, long time before I was able to put my questions aside and drift off to sleep.

Chapter 15

The next day was spectacularly boring. My classes dragged by, and I was as invisible as ever to the other students. All anyone could talk about was who'd hooked up and split up at the bonfire yesterday and how all that was going to affect the homecoming dance tonight. Even the professors seemed to have given up on getting the students to do any actual work today, because all my morning classes turned into study periods.

Really, though, they were all just raging gossip fests about the homecoming dance. Who was going with whom, what designer dresses everyone was wearing and how much they cost, which dorm was going to have the best after-party and the most kegs. Pretty much the same conversations that the kids would be having back at my old school. Except there I might have actually been going to the dance, instead of staying in my room all night long like I would be here.

In a way, though, I was glad that I wasn't going to the dance. Because mixed in with all the talk about hookups and breakups were whispers of another ritual. Apparently, every year before the homecoming dance the staff and students at Mythos gave thanks to the gods for watching over them for another season, sort of like a harvest celebration. I shivered, thinking about the scene that I'd witnessed at the bonfire last night-the silvery flames and the old, ancient force that had stirred in the air around them. I'd already reached my limit of magic mumbo jumbo for the week-I had zero desire to see any more.

Everyone was so excited about the dance that there was almost no mention of Jasmine Ashton. Only a couple of days had passed since she'd been murdered, and it was like it had never even happened. Everyone else seemed to have forgotten about the Valkyrie already, even though she'd been the most popular girl in our class.

It made me sad and angry at the same time. Especially since I couldn't seem to let go of it. I still couldn't forget seeing Jasmine that night, her dead blue eyes staring up at me like she wanted me to help her.

I still couldn't forget the fact that it should have been me lying there in all those pools of blood.

Lunchtime rolled around. I got my usual grilled chicken salad, along with a bottle of Honeycrisp apple juice and a piece of chocolate-crusted key lime cheesecake that was depressingly small. Seriously. The pale, creamy sliver wasn't even as wide as two of my fingers put together. I loaded everything onto a clear glass tray and retreated to an empty table in the quietest, most remote corner of the dining hall that I could find.

I ignored the salad and all of its elaborately cut veggies, cracked open the sweet, tart apple juice, and drained half of it in one gulp. Not hard, since the drink portions were almost as meager as the dessert ones. I eyed the plastic container, wishing that I'd gone ahead and gotten two juices like I'd really wanted to instead of just one-

A tray plopped down across from me, making me jerk back in surprise and almost drop my juice on the floor.

Daphne Cruz dumped her enormous purse onto the table. Her bag covered up Jasmine's mythology book, which I'd been planning on reading more of at lunch. But that wasn't the strangest thing Daphne did. She actually sat down at my table.

Like-like we were friends or something.

I eyed the Valkyrie, wondering if she'd somehow been possessed or something. If somebody had dripped her blood into Loki's Bowl of Tears and made her a willing slave-

"So," the Valkyrie said, cracking open the lid on her Perrier. "This is where you eat lunch. All the way in the back here. What are you? A vampire who's afraid of sunlight or something?"

Vampires? Were vampires real, too? I wondered, but I didn't want to look stupid and ask, especially since I didn't know what Daphne was doing here in the first place.

"Yeah," I said in a guarded voice. "You caught me. I've got this whole superhero thing going on, so I sit way back here to keep the paparazzi and rabid fans at bay."

Daphne eyed me. After a moment, the Valkyrie's glossy pink lips crinkled up into a smile. "You've got a weird sense of humor. Superheroes are so over."

"Yeah, but the actors who play them in the movies are still so rich. I think they'll get over the heartbreak of losing your approval."

Daphne snorted out a laugh, then picked up her fork and started stabbing her eggplant Parmesan to death. I waited a minute, then looked around the dining hall, wondering if this was some kind of joke. But I didn't see anyone looking in my direction and laughing behind their hands.

What I did see was Morgan McDougall and a couple of the other Valkyrie princesses all sitting at their usual table, deep into their lunchtime gossip and ogling every cute guy who walked by. But Daphne didn't look over at her friends, and they didn't seem to notice her sitting in the corner with me.

"Are you actually ... going to eat lunch with me?" I asked.

"No," Daphne said, breaking a buttery breadstick in half and dipping it into the spicy marinara sauce on her plate. "I'm a figment of your imagination. You're only imagining that I'm sitting here eating with you. Because I'm just so freaking awesome that people daydream about being seen with me."

"Funny," I muttered.

The Valkyrie smiled at me and took a bite of her breadstick.

"But why?" I asked. "You hate me."

Daphne chewed and swallowed. "I wouldn't say hate, exactly. You're kind of like fungus, Gwen. After a while, you just start growing on people."

"So I'm mold. Wonderful. So why don't you just scrub me off and go sit with your Valkyrie friends like usual?"

"Because," Daphne said, dropping her black eyes to her Caesar salad. "The other night when you weren't looking, I forwarded all of Jasmine's e-mails to my account. And I found some things on there that I didn't like-things about me."

"Like what?"

Daphne sighed and pushed her salad away, like she'd lost her appetite. "Like the fact that Jasmine and Morgan were making fun of me behind my back. They knew about my crush on Carson, and they thought it was hysterical. And that was some of the nicer things they said about me. And it wasn't just them. Claudia, Kylie, Seraphina ... all of them were swapping e-mails about me and each other. None of us seem to actually like each other very much."

"So?" I asked. "Isn't that what mean girls do? I mean, the Valkyries are the queen bees of Mythos. You girls make the kids on Gossip Girl look tame. Doesn't it all kind of go with the territory?"

"Maybe." Daphne shrugged. "But I'm sick of it. I've known those girls since first grade, and they all just get shallower and stupider every single year. I think it's time that I made some new friends."