Dark Frost (Mythos Academy #3)(28)
Author: Jennifer Estep

Especially since I didn’t know if there were any Reapers watching me tonight.

It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. In fact, I’d say the odds were pretty good that at least one Reaper was in the library, among all the Amazons, Romans, Vikings, and Valkyries. Given their failure to find the dagger at the coliseum, I was pretty sure the Reapers-whoever they really were-were out in full force this evening, especially since I’d seen way more students than usual slip into the stacks.

Of course, some of those kids were just going back there to find a quiet corner to do the nasty. At Mythos, doing the deed in the library was regarded as some kind of thrill. Whenever I dusted the books and artifact cases back in the stacks, I always found several used condoms. Yucko.

I pushed those thoughts out of my mind and concentrated on the map, especially the Xs that marked various spots in the library. Some of the places I recognized, like the cart that sold coffee, energy drinks, and sugary snacks to students so they didn’t have to leave the library to get something to eat while they studied.

Raven, the old woman who’d overseen the collection of the students’ bodies at the coliseum yesterday, also manned the coffee cart. I’d never really paid much attention to Raven before, but it seemed like she was everywhere I turned these days. White hair, white dress, wrinkles. Raven perched on a tall stool behind the cart, reading a celebrity tabloid and seeming to be completely engrossed in the gossip-filled pages. She didn’t notice me staring at her, my narrowed gaze going from the bottles of syrup to the cups to the silver espresso machine squatting next to her elbow.

Still, no matter how strange Raven was, I didn’t think the dagger was hidden in her cart with the blueberry muffins and granola bars, so I turned my attention back to the map.

Another X marked a spot on the main floor where a glass case had once stood holding the Bowl of Tears. I’d managed to use Vic to destroy the artifact, and the case was long gone, smashed to pieces by Jasmine when she’d first stolen the bowl.

The dagger wasn’t hidden there either, so I moved on to the next X. One by one, I examined all the marks on the map, getting a little more disappointed and disheartened with each location. Either the Reaper girl wasn’t as clever as I thought she was or there was something wrong with the map, because every single X was in a place where the dagger just couldn’t be. Like the coffee cart or part of the floor that I knew was completely empty. Weird. Very weird. Why mark up a map with hiding spots that weren’t really hiding spots to begin with?

I was just about to put the map aside as a lost cause when I realized there was a final X that I’d overlooked-one that marked a location on the second floor balcony. I looked up, trying to match the X on the map to the actual spot in the library. It took me several seconds to realize the X actually pointed to one of the statues, Sigyn, the Norse goddess of devotion-and Loki’s wife.

Centuries ago, when Loki had first started making trouble and caused the death of Balder, the Norse god of light, the other gods had chained Loki up beneath a giant snake that continuously dripped venom onto his handsome face. The Bowl of Tears was what Sigyn had used to keep the venom off him as much as possible, even though it had spattered onto her too. But Sigyn had kept right on standing there, holding and emptying that bowl for years-until Loki had somehow tricked the goddess into helping him escape and then had left her behind.

At first, I’d thought Sigyn was kind of dumb for trying to help Loki for all those years, but now, I just felt sorry for her. All she’d done was love the guy. She wasn’t responsible for his being such a monster. Still, Sigyn always seemed to get a bad rap in all the myth-history books. It was like people blamed her for Loki’s getting loose and starting the Chaos War. I figured it wasn’t her fault her husband turned out to be a psychotic criminal mastermind. Besides, Grandma Frost always told me that people made their own choices. I figured it was the same when it came to the gods.

I peered closer at the map. Sigyn’s statue was in a part of the library on the second floor that I didn’t go to all that often. It was bad enough the gryphons and other outside statues always seemed to stare at me-I didn’t want to think that the figures of the gods were watching me, too.

Still, as I looked at the X, my heart started to pick up speed. Sigyn’s statue was in a remote spot in the circular Pantheon, away from the stairs that led up to the second floor. It would be the perfect place to hide something like the Helheim Dagger. I doubted even Nickamedes went to that part of the library more than once or twice a year. Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe the dagger was in the library after all. I’d love nothing more than to go up there, find the dagger’s hiding spot, and show the librarian just how wrong he’d been-

"Are you Gwen?" a soft voice asked.

I looked up to find Vivian Holler standing in front of the checkout counter. Frizzy, auburn hair, pretty face, golden eyes. Vivian stood on her tiptoes, trying to peer over the counter and see what I was doing.

"What are you looking at?" she asked.

I quickly folded half of the map on top of the other, hiding the squiggles from sight. "Nothing. Just some homework for myth-history. You know Professor Metis. She’s always giving us something to do."

"But you’re Gwen, right? Gwen Frost?" Vivian asked. "The Gypsy girl?"

"Yeah, that’s me. Gypsy girl extraordinaire. Can I help you? Do you need help finding a book or something?"

She shook her head. "Not a book, but I heard that you can find other items. Stuff that’s been lost … or maybe even stolen."

"Yeah, I do that from time to time."

Actually, more like twice a week, given the fact that the Mythos students went through cell phones like most people did tissues. Not to mention all the other things they lost, misplaced, or swiped from other students.

"What have you lost?"

"Or had stolen." Vivian winced, as if she didn’t like saying the words out loud or as if she might somehow make them true just by speaking them. The ugly thought was definitely at odds with her soft, sweet, melodic voice.

I raised my eyebrows. "Okay, what have you had stolen?"

She bit her lip. "Well, I don’t know that it was stolen exactly. It’s just that I’m usually really careful with my stuff, you know? I like to know where everything’s at all the time."

Okay, it sounded like Vivian had some neat-freak issues going on, but that was okay. So did I, from time to time.

"So what’s gone missing?" I asked. "Cell phone, keys, your credit cards?"

She shook her head. "Nothing like that. You’re going to think that it’s silly, really, but I lost a ring. A very special ring."