Touch of Frost (Mythos Academy #1)(37)
Author: Jennifer Estep

"Sure."

"What’s with you and all the comic books?"

That was just about the last thing that I’d expected him to say. I blinked. "What?"

"I saw them that day you ran into me on the quad and dropped your bag. Why do you like them so much?" Logan asked. "We pretty much go to school in a comic book. Tonight should have proven that to you. You don’t really need to read them."

"I just like them," I said. "I always have."

It was true. I’d always loved the stories of people having amazing powers, of good guys doing good things and always thwarting the bad guys’ evil plans at the last possible second. But lately I’d been reading more and more of them, burying myself in the colorful pages as though reading about someone else’s heroic deeds would magically change everything around me. As though they would somehow make my life better or put everything back to the way that it had been before my mom died.

"I guess … I’ve been reading more of them since my mom’s accident," I said, struggling to find the right words. "I guess … I like them because nobody ever really dies in a comic book, not even the bad guy. At least not for long. I guess … I keep hoping that one day, my mom’s going to just show up, like the characters always do in comic books. That she’s going to be fine and tell me that this has all been a bad dream. That she’s been trapped in another dimension or that the person who got killed was really her evil clone or something. That she’s going to take me away from Mythos and things will go back to the way they used to be. Pretty stupid, huh?"

I blinked a couple of times and scratched my nose like it was itching, even though I was really trying to hold back the tears in my eyes. I didn’t want to cry in front of him.

Logan looked at me. "I don’t think it’s stupid at all, Gwen."

Some of the emotion clogging my throat eased up, and I smiled.

"What?"

"Do you know, I think that’s the first time that you’ve ever said my name? I’m always just that Gypsy girl to you and everyone else."

Logan moved closer to me. "Really? Then, I’ll have to say it again. Gwen," he whispered. "Gwen."

I stared into his ice blue eyes, mesmerized by the sudden softness that I saw there, even as Logan’s head dipped lower. But then my brain kicked in and I realized that he was actually going to kiss me-and exactly what would happen the moment that his lips touched mine.

"No! Don’t! Stop!" I stepped away from him, almost falling down the dorm steps in the process.

Logan frowned, and something like hurt flickered in his eyes.

"It’s not that I don’t want to-I mean, I do-I really do-it’s just … my gift," I finished in a totally weak, lame voice.

He kept staring at me.

"My Gypsy gift," I said, trying to explain. "My psychometry magic. Whenever I … touch someone, I get flashes about him. Feelings and images. Kind of like a movie trailer of his life. Or at least what he’s thinking about at that particular moment. It really just depends on the person."

The softness in Logan’s eyes vanished, and his gaze was suddenly as cold as ice once more, his face harder than any marble statue in the Library of Antiquities.

"And you don’t want to see mine," he said in a flat tone. "Because of who and what I am. Because I’m a Spartan."

He said "Spartan" like it was some sort of dirty word or terrible thing to be. I didn’t know all the ins and outs of Mythos, but I knew that most of the other students were afraid of Logan and the others kids like him. Because they were Spartans, because they were such good fighters, because they were so fierce, so strong, and so full of life. And now he thought that I was scared of him, too, that I didn’t even want to so much as touch him, much less let him kiss me.

"No! No! That’s not it at all. I just didn’t know if you would … want me to see … all those things about you," I finished in that same weak, lame voice. "Some people don’t."

They don’t want me knowing their secrets. That’s what I wanted to say to him. Maybe that’s what I should have said to him.

Or maybe I should have just come right out and admitted the fact that I was a total geeky loser who’d only ever kissed one boy in her entire life. And only a couple times at that, with very little tongue action involved. That I was worried my lack of experience would so obviously show and I wouldn’t measure up to Logan’s standards. That I wouldn’t be able to kiss him back like he wanted me to-like I wanted to. That I didn’t want him to laugh at me or make fun of me. And most especially, that I was starting to like him way, way more than I should, given the fact that he was who he was and I was who I was. Just Gwen Frost, that Gypsy girl who saw things, and not anyone special, exciting, or particularly interesting.

Logan kept staring at me, that same cold expression in his eyes. He made no move to try to kiss me again. The moment, whatever kind of moment it had been between us, was officially over. Spell, broken. Shattered was more like it. By me and my freak-out over my stupid Gypsy gift and what I might see and feel if I kissed him.

"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.