Midnight Frost (Mythos Academy #5)(4)
Author: Jennifer Estep

I stopped and cocked my head to the side, listening, but no sounds came from the other side. Then again, I hadn’t expected them to – I knew exactly how empty this particular room was. I reached into my messenger bag and drew out my wallet. It only took me a minute to slide my driver’s license in between the lock and the frame and pop open the door. I slid through to the other side and shut the door behind me.

The room was dark, so I hit the switch on the wall. Lights blazed on, revealing the same furniture that all of the kids had. A bed, a desk, some bookcases, a flat-screen TV mounted on one of the walls. The only thing that was different about the room was all the trophies he’d won. Dozens of little gold men holding swords, spears, and other weapons peeped out at me from the desk, the bookcases, and a shelf above the bed. There was even a life-sized trophy stuffed in the corner, a staff clutched in his hands like the man was about to step forward and bash me over the head with it. I shivered and looked away. Somehow, the fact that none of the trophies actually had distinct faces made them even creepier.

A loud sigh sounded, and I realized that Vic was awake. The sword had gone to sleep, as was his habit when he was in his scabbard. I pulled the sword free of the leather and held him up so that we were face-to-face. The sword glanced around the room.

Vic sighed again. "Really? You’re going to come in here and mope again?"

"I’m not moping," I said in a defensive voice.

"Really?" Vic asked again, his voice made even more sarcastic by his biting English accent. "Because I think that sitting on the Spartan’s bed and staring at his things definitely qualifies as moping. Brooding, even. Especially when you’ve done it a dozen times since he left."

I looked out over Logan’s room. Maybe Vic was right. Maybe I was moping over the Spartan and the fact that he’d left Mythos – that he’d left me.

I’d first come in here two weeks ago hoping to find some clue as to where Logan had gone. He had asked me not to look for him, and I’d wanted to respect his wishes. Really, I had. I wasn’t planning to track him down and beg him to come back or anything crazy like that. But I figured that maybe my heart wouldn’t hurt quite as much if I at least knew where he was – and that he was okay. So I’d snuck into his room, determined to use my magic to flash on his things until I figured out where he’d gone with his dad, Linus. The first thing I had found had been a note propped up on his desk:

Seriously, Gypsy girl.

Stop looking for me.

Love,

Logan

I didn’t know whether to smile or grumble that he knew me so well.

After I found the note, I abandoned my plan to find out where Logan was. But I couldn’t keep myself from sneaking into his room, especially after the nightmares started. If I closed my eyes and touched his myth-history book or one of the trophies he’d won, I could feel, see, and hear the real Logan and not the Reaper-crazed murderer he’d turned into in my nightmares – the one who seemed to take such evil delight in stabbing me to death over and over again. By using my psychometry on one of his leather jackets or the swords he had lined up in the back of his closet, I could almost pretend he was still here with me, getting ready to meet me at the dining hall for lunch or come to the gym for early morning weapons training. It almost made me feel better about things.

Almost.

"Well, if you’re determined to spend the rest of the night in here brooding, then I’m going back to sleep," Vic said. "Wake me when there’s something to kill."

The sword snapped his eye shut. I sighed and slid him back into his scabbard. At least he wasn’t going to mouth off to me anymore. Or worse, stare at me with such pity in his eye.

I walked over and sat down on the bed, right next to a photo. I picked up the glossy paper, which showed me sitting on the steps outside the Library of Antiquities, my arms around Logan. He had the same black hair and blue eyes as in my dream, but the teasing, mischievous grin that stretched across his face was something that never appeared in my nightmares. It was a welcome sight, one I never got tired of, especially given the horrific images my brain kept conjuring up of him.

He smiled up at me, and I ran my fingers over his face.

"Oh Spartan," I whispered. "I wish you really were sitting on the library steps right now. I wish I was there with you too."

Logan kept grinning at me. Of course, he never answered when I talked to him like this, and he hadn’t responded to any of my voice mails or texts either. Sometimes he seemed like a wonderful dream I’d had – one that was gone forever. Maybe that’s why the nightmares were so terrible, because he wasn’t here to show me that he wasn’t that monster, even though I knew the goodness in his heart. Maybe that’s the reason I snuck into his room so often. So I could remind myself just how real Logan was – and hope that he’d come to his senses and come back to the academy soon.

That he’d come back to me soon.

I snorted. Yeah, Vic was right. Nightmares or not, I was being totally, utterly pathetic.

A pretty silver frame embossed with flowers and vines also lay on the bed. Logan had been going to frame the photo of us and give it to me for Valentine’s Day. I’d used my psychometry to flash on the picture and the frame. He’d been smiling as he’d picked out the frame in one of the Cypress Mountain shops and thinking about how nice the photo of us would look on my desk next to the ones I had of my mom and Professor Metis.

I sighed, and my hand crept up to the necklace around my throat. Six silver strands wrapped around my neck, the diamond-tipped points joining together to form a snowflake in the middle of the delicate, beautiful design. A Christmas gift from Logan. One that I almost always wore, despite the bad memories associated with it – the ones of him attacking me.

For a moment, my chest ached, and I let go of the necklace and massaged a spot right over my heart. Two scars slashed across my skin there. One was from Logan’s attack, while the other had been made by Preston Ashton, a Reaper boy who’d stabbed me. Daphne and Professor Metis had both used their healing magic to try to get rid of my scars, but it hadn’t worked. Metis said that sometimes powerful artifacts left behind marks that would never, ever fade – just like my memories of the battles would never, ever disappear.

I also had two marks on my hands – one from the fight with Logan, while the other was where Vivian had cut me with the Helheim Dagger when she’d used the artifact and my blood to free Loki. The strange thing was that the marks on my hand exactly matched the ones over my heart – right down to their size, shape, and the odd, off-center X they made as they slashed over each other. I wondered how many more scars I would get before Loki was dead – or I was.