Touch of Frost (Mythos Academy #1)(13)
Author: Jennifer Estep

I sucked in a breath, waiting for my pyschometry to kick in and show me Jasmine’s murder, to let me feel all the horrible pain that she must have experienced. Any second now, it would start. It always did.

But the seconds slid by and turned into a minute, then another one. And still, nothing happened. I didn’t get any flashes or vibes from Jasmine’s blood. Not a single one. Just like I hadn’t gotten any from touching her body. Strange. Even for me. Maybe my psychometry was on the fritz or something because of the massive migraine that I had. For once, I was happy that I didn’t see anything. Even though I wasn’t getting any vibes from it, the sight of Jasmine’s blood on my skin and clothes still made me want to vomit. I curled my stained hands into fists and looked away from them.

"I’m sorry. I don’t remember anything else," I said in a low voice.

"Well, I think it’s rather obvious what happened," Nickamedes said. "A Reaper slipped into the library and stole the Bowl of Tears. Jasmine, unfortunately, got in the way and was killed as a result."

Despite everything that had happened and the fact that my head was still pounding, I frowned. That didn’t seem right to me-not right at all. Mainly because Jasmine had already been in the library earlier. Why would she come back so late? And especially without her friends? Jasmine never went anywhere without her doting entourage of Valkyrie princesses. They were always stacked on top of her like LEGOs.

But the one thought that kept beating through my brain right along with the pain was: Why? Why her and not me? Why had she died and I hadn’t? Why had I been spared again? Why was I always the one left behind to pick up the bloody, broken pieces?

"I told you that you were taking a risk putting it on display," Coach Ajax said. "The Bowl of Tears is exactly the kind of thing that the Reapers would love to get their hands on. It’s one of the Thirteen Artifacts, after all."

Nickamedes shrugged. "There are dozens of things here that the Reapers would love to get their hands on, and there are security spells on all of them to keep them from being taken out of the library. I just don’t understand how the Reaper could have gotten the Bowl out of the library without sounding the alarm-much less slipped onto campus to start with. None of the alarms were tripped on the outer wall, at the main gate, or here in the library. I thought that the perimeter security spells were strong enough, and I double-checked the ones on the Bowl myself this morning."

"Obviously not," Ajax muttered.

The two men glared at each other, and Professor Metis stepped in between them.

"Enough," she said. "I’ll call the cleanup crew and alert the others. I’m sure the academy board will want to increase campus security, magical and otherwise, at least for a few days, until we’re sure that whoever did this isn’t coming back for more artifacts."

Coach Ajax and Nickamedes glared at each other a few more seconds before they both nodded. Then, the two of them, along with Metis, moved off a few feet and started talking about what to do and who to notify.

They weren’t as upset by this as I’d thought they’d be. It almost seemed … normal to them. Like something that had happened before. At my old school, the teachers would have freaked out if a girl had been murdered in the library. But here, it didn’t seem that shocking. More like … an inconvenience. With paperwork to do, calls to make, and blood to clean up. Or something like that.

Well, it wasn’t normal to me, not at all, and all I could do was stare down at Jasmine. So pretty, so popular, so rich, and what had it gotten her? Nothing but an early death. I thought about Paige Forrest and how she’d been the same way. Pretty and popular, but with this horrible secret, with this horrible thing that had been happening to her that nobody knew about.

I wondered if Jasmine was the same way. If she’d had some secret reason for coming back to the library tonight. If there was something more to this than just some mysterious anonymous bad guy stealing a magical, mythological bowl-

"Gwen?" Professor Metis’s voice made me jump. "I’ll take you back to your dorm room now, if you like."

I stared down a final time at Jasmine’s lifeless body and the sticky crimson puddles all around her. It almost looked like the Valkyrie was resting on a giant red pillow, instead of being cold, bloody, and dead. I shuddered and looked away.

"Yeah," I said. "I’d like that a lot right now."

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Metis said something else to Coach Ajax and Nickamedes; then the two of us left the library. It was after ten now, and the quad was deserted. Moonlight frosted everything a bright, glittering silver, even the two gryphons that sat at the base of the library steps. My breath steamed in the cool night air, and I put my bloody hands into my pockets, trying to protect them from the chill. But no matter what I did, I just couldn’t get warm.

We didn’t speak until we were halfway across the quad.

"I know this must be difficult for you, Gwen. Finding Jasmine the way that you did," Professor Metis said. "But this isn’t the first time something like this has happened at Mythos."

My eyes widened. "You mean students have been murdered before? Here at the academy?"

She nodded. "A few."

"How? Why?"

"By Reapers mostly. The students had something that they wanted or got in their way, just like Jasmine did tonight. Or the students were working for the Reapers and did something wrong, something that got them killed. In a few cases, students have actually been Reapers themselves."

Kids my age? Working for the bad guys? Being Reapers themselves? I didn’t know what to make of that.

Metis stared at me. "I know that the academy, this world, is new to you, that you don’t really believe in any of this. In the gods, the warriors, the myths, the Chaos War, any of it. I can tell by the way you’re always staring out the window during my class. You recite the facts to me, but your mind’s not really there."

Her voice was gentle, but I still winced. I thought that I’d hid my disbelief a little better than that. Since my mom had died, I’d gotten pretty good at faking things. Like telling Grandma Frost that everything was fine at my new school. Or convincing myself that I didn’t really care that I didn’t have any friends. That it didn’t bother me that no one would talk to me. That I was as tough and strong and brave as my mom had been, when all I really wanted to do was curl up on my bed and cry myself to sleep every night. I might be able to see other people’s secrets, but I had some of my own, too-ones that I desperately wanted to keep hidden.

"But it’s real, Gwen. All of it. Whether you believe it or not," Metis continued. "Reapers of Chaos are everywhere, even here at Mythos. They can be anyone-parents, teachers, your fellow students. And they will do whatever it takes to get what they want."