Touch of Frost (Mythos Academy #1)(38)
Author: Jennifer Estep

I popped another bite of pumpkin roll into my mouth. Thinking. Maybe everyone else was right. Maybe a Reaper had been in the library to steal the Bowl of Tears all along. Maybe he’d murdered Jasmine simply because she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Thinking about the library and the Bowl made me remember the mythology book that I’d taken from Jasmine’s dorm room. My violet eyes flicked over to the thick volume, which was sitting on the edge of my desk. It was the only thing I’d swiped from the Valkryie’s room that I hadn’t looked at yet.

Gingerly, I touched the book, my fingers skimming the surface, just in case I got another angry, hate-filled flash off it like the one that had been on the photograph of Morgan and Samson. I didn’t want to start muttering to myself again-or worse, start screaming so loud that everyone came up to my room to watch the Gypsy girl have another mental meltdown. One had been enough.

No real emotions swept over me as I touched the book-just the feeling of old knowledge and the soft, well-worn impression of hundreds of hands turning and turning and turning the pages until they found the information they were looking for. I couldn’t tell exactly how old the book was, but it had been around for quite a while.

I flipped over to the section that Jasmine had marked. To my surprise, it was the start of a whole chapter that dealt with Loki’s Bowl of Tears. I moved over to my bed, propped some pillows up behind my back, and started reading.

The Bowl of Tears was what Loki’s wife, Sigyn, used to keep snake venom from dripping onto the chained god’s once-handsome face….

Blah, blah, blah. The next several paragraphs were pretty much the same thing that Professor Metis had recapped for us in myth-history class, so I skimmed over those. Things got a little more interesting after that, though, because the book starting mentioning a bunch of stuff that Metis had left out, for whatever reason.

The Bowl of Tears is rumored to be one of the Thirteen Artifacts, the magical items that were present and used during the final battle of the Chaos War in which the goddess Nike defeated Loki. Six of the Artifacts belonged to members of the Pantheon, while six belonged to Loki and his Reapers, although scholars often disagree as to what the Artifacts were and on which side they were used. There was also a final Artifact, the thirteenth one, that was rumored to have tipped the scales in Nike’s favor, but there is no known record of what it was, how it was used, or what became of it… .

After that, the next few paragraphs dealt with the various Artifacts, including what they might be and what powers they might have. A spear, a shield, a bow and a quiver of arrows, a drum … it was a pretty long list. Beside most of the items was the museum, library, or university where it was located-and more than a few were here at the Library of Antiquities. Geez. It was like a shopping list for bad guys. "Go here and steal this." Cue the evil laughter. "Wha-ha-ha."

I shook my head and skipped down to the section that talked about the Bowl of Tears.

After he managed to trick his wife, Sigyn, into helping him escape from his chains, Loki kept the Bowl of Tears and imbued it with his own godly magic, turning it into a powerful Artifact. It was rumored that Loki used the Bowl to bend people to his will. That once a person’s blood was dripped into the Bowl the god-or whoever had the Bowl at that time-had complete control over him or her. It is also rumored that Loki’s followers willingly spilled their own blood into the Bowl and that the god would then grant them special favors and powers for their show of loyalty. Reapers of Chaos were also known to use the Bowl when they sacrificed people to the god, which transferred the victim’s powers and life force to Loki. Some believe that the Artifact could be used to help free the god from his current prison and allow him to draw closer to the mortal realm, where he could exert his Chaotic influence once more….

So the Bowl of Tears supposedly had the power to let the person who was holding it bend someone else to his will. If, you know, he just didn’t go ahead and sacrifice that person to Loki in the first place. I shivered. Creepy. Coach Ajax and Nickamedes had both said that the Reapers would love to get their hands on the Bowl. Now I understood why. Whoever had the Bowl would have a lot of power.

Still, though, I wondered why the person who’d taken the Bowl had killed Jasmine-and not me. Because I’d been there, too. Knocked unconscious and lying on the library floor right beside the dead Valkyrie. I’d been completely helpless. So why kill Jasmine and leave me behind-alive?

Oh, I knew that I wasn’t any kind of real threat. Not physically or magically, and most especially not in a place like Mythos, where all the other students knew how to sling swords and shoot arrows through people’s hearts. But it just didn’t make sense. If I were going to steal a priceless Artifact from the Library of Antiquities, if I knew enough to somehow be able to beat Nickamedes’s magical security system and take the Bowl out of the library, then I think that I’d be smart enough not to leave any witnesses behind. Didn’t these people ever watch NCIS or Law & Order reruns?

I just didn’t understand why. Why Jasmine had been killed, why my mom had been hit by that drunk driver, why Paige’s stepdad had abused her, why I was here at Mythos Academy when I was nothing like the other students. When I had none of their powers, magic, or warrior skills.

But there were no answers to be found in the mythology book or even in my own troubled thoughts. So I closed the thick book, put it on my nightstand, and crawled under my soft comforter. But it was still a long, long time before I was able to put my questions aside and drift off to sleep.

Chapter 15

The next day was spectacularly boring. My classes dragged by, and I was as invisible as ever to the other students. All anyone could talk about was who’d hooked up and split up at the bonfire yesterday and how all that was going to affect the homecoming dance tonight. Even the professors seemed to have given up on getting the students to do any actual work today, because all my morning classes turned into study periods.

Really, though, they were all just raging gossip fests about the homecoming dance. Who was going with whom, what designer dresses everyone was wearing and how much they cost, which dorm was going to have the best after-party and the most kegs. Pretty much the same conversations that the kids would be having back at my old school. Except there I might have actually been going to the dance, instead of staying in my room all night long like I would be here.

In a way, though, I was glad that I wasn’t going to the dance. Because mixed in with all the talk about hookups and breakups were whispers of another ritual. Apparently, every year before the homecoming dance the staff and students at Mythos gave thanks to the gods for watching over them for another season, sort of like a harvest celebration. I shivered, thinking about the scene that I’d witnessed at the bonfire last night-the silvery flames and the old, ancient force that had stirred in the air around them. I’d already reached my limit of magic mumbo jumbo for the week-I had zero desire to see any more.