Touch of Frost (Mythos Academy #1)(20)
Author: Jennifer Estep

So I pulled the can out from under the desk and sifted through the contents, still using my hoodie sleeve to keep from actually touching anything. Most of it was your normal, boring trash. A half-used tube of lip gloss. Some crumpled tissues. An empty bag of potato chips. But there was one thing that was interesting-a photo in the very bottom.

The photo had been torn in two, and I picked up both pieces, turned them over, and fit them together.

To my surprise, the photo wasn’t of Jasmine. Instead, Morgan McDougall and Samson Sorensen smiled up at me. They had their arms around each other and were grinning for the camera. The photo looked like it had been taken sometime in the spring on the quad, because the tree behind them was green with new leaves.

I frowned. Why would Jasmine tear this particular photo in two? Was there something going on between Morgan and Samson? According to the rumors that I’d heard, Morgan had her eye on Samson now that Jasmine was dead. But this photo had to have been ripped up before last night, when Jasmine had been murdered.

Nothing made sense. Right now, I had more questions than answers-and a whole lot of trouble I could get into if someone found me snooping in here.

I put the torn photo in my bag with the rest of the stuff that I’d collected. Then, I crept over to the door, listening for voices or footsteps outside. I didn’t hear anything, so I opened the door and slipped out into the hallway.

I went out the same way that I’d come in, hurrying down the stairs and walking through the main common room. A few more girls had come into the dorm by now, but none of them glanced at me as I went by. Luckily, I didn’t have to swipe an ID card to get out of the dorm, so I was able to push through the front door and scurry down the stairs and back out onto the cobblestone walkway.

I glanced around to make sure no one was watching me, then headed around the side of the stone building so I could cut across one of the smaller quads and walk back to my own dorm.

I was almost clear of Valhalla Hall when a window on the second floor opened and a backpack sailed outside and plummeted to the ground in front of me. Somehow, I stifled the surprised scream in my throat. Especially since the backpack was followed a second later by a guy who landed in a low, perfect crouch. He got to his feet with ease, like the twenty-foot fall was nothing to him, and I saw who he was.

Logan freaking Quinn.

It was more dark than light now, and the Spartan looked even more dangerous in the blackening shadows. The pale, milky moon brought out the blue highlights in his thick, wavy black hair. Logan dusted a few leaves off his designer jeans, then glanced up to find me staring at him. His eyes narrowed in his chiseled face.

"Well, well, if it isn’t the Gypsy girl out here in the dark all by herself." Logan’s voice sounded deep and ominous. "What are you doing?"

I clutched my bag to my chest, as if that would somehow protect me from the Spartan and the fact that he could kill me with his pinkie finger. "Not sneaking out of some poor girl’s dorm room like you so obviously are."

He moved closer to me, but I held my ground and didn’t step back. Logan’s lips quirked up into that amused smile again. He must have realized that I was scared of him, despite my acidic words.

But I was only a little scared of him, I told myself. And only because Jasmine had been murdered and I was the one who’d found her body. And, well, maybe because I’d just broken into and searched her dorm room and had her laptop in my bag. Okay, so maybe I had several good reasons to be jumpy, in addition to the fact that I was standing here alone in the dark with Logan Quinn. The very sexy, very dangerous Logan Quinn.

"You’re right," he said. "I had a date. And you? What are you doing out here?"

I clutched my bag with the stolen computer a little tighter. "Nothing. I was just on my way back to my dorm. Nothing, really."

We stared at each other. Logan’s eyes were as pale as the moonlight on his face, more silver than blue now, while his skin resembled the marble statues that could be found on all the academy buildings. Cold. Remote. Hard. Perfect.

"Well, I think I’m going to go do nothing somewhere else," Logan drawled. "Maybe back in my dorm room. Care to join me?"

I couldn’t stop my mouth from falling open. Had the infamous Logan Quinn just asked me to go back to his room with him? I rewound the last few seconds in my mind. Yes, yes, he had-a whole two minutes after he’d just jumped out of some other girl’s window.

Disgust filled me. Egotistical pig. Did he think that I was that easy? That I’d sleep with him just because he asked? That I was that lonely and that desperate? That he was so sexy that no girl could resist him? My eyes drifted over his muscled body again. Well, maybe he had the right to be pretty confident there.

But even if I had been a raging slut like Morgan McDougall who gave it up just for fun, there was still the little problem of my Gypsy gift. Just touching a hairbrush had made me scream so loud and so long that I’d wound up in the hospital. Sex with somebody like Logan Quinn would probably fry my brain for good. I hadn’t even kissed a guy in months now, ever since I’d broken up with Drew Squires, my first, and only, shortlived boyfriend. The last time we’d kissed, I’d felt him pretending that I was Paige Forrest. I’d dumped him right then and there.

"So what do you say, Gypsy girl?" Logan asked in a soft voice. "Want to go back to my room and do nothing together?"

"Sorry," I snapped. "I think I’m going to go call my grandma."

He raised an eyebrow. "The grandma who can rot off a guy’s dick?"

I gave him a bright smile, although I wondered if he could even see it or me in the darkness. "The one and the same. I’ll be sure and tell her all about you. Gotta run. Bye."

I skirted around him and hurried on, this time not even caring what kind of freak he thought I was. But before I stepped around the side of the building I glanced over my shoulder.

Logan Quinn was still standing underneath the girl’s window. Still staring at me. Still watching me.

It might have only been my imagination, but I swear I thought I saw him smile again before I rounded the side of the dorm and he disappeared from sight.

Chapter 8

My chance meeting with Logan Quinn spooked me so much that I practically ran all the way back to Styx Hall. It was almost eight o’clock now, and darkness had fully fallen on the academy. The golden glow from the street lamps that lined the walkways and huddled next to the buildings did little to banish the black shadows. Or maybe that was just because I’d stolen a laptop and other personal stuff from a dead girl’s room and now I was feeling all guilty about it.

I swiped my ID card through the machine and went inside the dorm. A few girls, Amazons mostly, hung out in the common area downstairs, texting on their cells, watching TV, or both. Once again, nobody paid any attention to me as I went up the stairs. I doubted they realized that I lived here at all.