Touch of Frost (Mythos Academy #1)(45)
Author: Jennifer Estep

I raised an eyebrow. "And ruin your first big date? I don’t think so. Even I’m not that much of a bitch."

"Yeah, it might be a little awkward."

"You think?"

We both looked at each other, rolled our eyes, and laughed. That broke the ice between us, and we started talking about all the juicy gossip that we’d heard today. About who was going with whom to the homecoming dance, who would get drunk before it was halfway over, and who was planning to go All the Way tonight with their boyfriends and girlfriends.

And I suddenly realized that I felt almost … normal. Almost like I still went to a normal school with normal kids-and even that I was normal myself. It felt … nice … fun, even.

Finally, we quit gossiping and giggling about the other kids, and Daphne gave me a sly look.

"So what’s going on with you and Logan Quinn?" she asked.

I blinked. "What do you mean?"

She raised an eyebrow. "I mean the two of you looked awfully cozy last night at the bonfire. And he did go all Spartan and kill a Nemean prowler that was trying to eat you. Which is totally sexy, if you ask me."

"Logan Quinn doesn’t strike me as a guy who gets cozy with a girl unless he wants something from her. Like the chance to sign her mattress," I said in a dry tone. "Yeah, he saved my life last night, saved me from that awful prowler. But you should have seen him. It was almost like he was happy that it was trying to kill him. That he actually enjoyed fighting it. I think he killed it more for himself than for me. Like to prove to himself that he could or something."

Daphne shrugged. "Well, he is a Spartan. Killing things is what they do. What did you expect? That he’d send you flowers and write you bad poetry? That dead Nemean prowler is pretty much as close to a stuffed animal as you’re ever going to get from a Spartan like Logan Quinn."

I gave her a blank look. "What does being a Spartan have to do with stuffed animals?"

Daphne sighed. "You’ve been here, what, two months and you still don’t get it, do you, Gwen? How things work around here? Why we’re all really here?"

I shrugged.

Daphne stared at me, her black eyes serious in her pretty face. "We’re all here, all of us-Valkyries, Spartans, Amazons, and all the rest of us-because we’re magic. Because we’re descended from myth. You know all those stories that talk about how brave the Spartans were at the Battle of Thermopylae? How such a small group of them held off all those thousands and thousands of other warriors? Well, it’s not just a story. It’s real. Just like the ancient Valkyries escorted the dead to Valhalla, just like the Trojans totally got punked by the Greeks and that wooden horse during the Trojan War. All the myths, all the legends, all the magic is real. And it’s all a part of us, a piece of us. We keep it alive, and we use it to keep Chaos and darkness from swallowing the world."

A week ago, I would have laughed at her. But now I was actually starting to believe her, to believe in all the myths, magic, and monsters. Too many weird things had happened the past few days for me not to. Jasmine’s murder. The Bowl of Tears disappearing. The statue almost hitting Morgan and Samson. The prowler stalking me, then evaporating in a cloud of smoke after Logan killed it. That strange sword in the library that I couldn’t stop staring at.

"Okay," I said. "Maybe Logan is a Spartan and that explains why he went all berserker last night. Maybe you’re a Valkyrie who can crush diamonds with your bare hands and shoot pink sparks off the ends of your fingers. But all that doesn’t tell me anything about me. I’m the only Gypsy here. That I know of, anyway. The only one who isn’t like the rest of you. I’m not a great warrior. All I do is touch stuff and see things. I don’t fit in with everyone else."

"I wouldn’t say that," Daphne said. "You have magic just like the rest of us do."

"Maybe, but I don’t know why my magic makes me a Gypsy and not something else. Do you?"

She shrugged. "I’ve heard about Gypsies over the years, but nothing concrete about your powers or anything. I even asked around school after you first approached me about stealing Carson’s bracelet, but none of the other kids knew anything either. Neither did the professors that I asked. Or if they knew, they wouldn’t tell me. I always thought Gypsies were warriors, like Valkyries, Amazons, and the rest of us. Just with a different kind of magic."

"Until you met me," I said in a bitter voice. "And realized just how much of a warrior I’m not."

Daphne tilted her head to one side. "How did you even wind up here in the first place? I’ve been wondering about that."

I told her the story about Paige Forrest and how her stepdad had been abusing her. And how seeing all that had led to my mom’s death.

"The next thing I know, Professor Metis is knocking on my Grandma Frost’s front door telling me that I’m going to Mythos Academy this fall," I said, my voice still angry and bitter. "But she never told me why. I asked her the other day, and she still didn’t give me a straight answer. My grandma knows something about all this, too, but she’s not talking either. She just keeps telling me to give the academy a chance, that things will get better for me."

"I don’t know your grandma, but Metis is a crafty one," Daphne said. "She’s not quite like the other professors. Some people say that she’s really a Champion."

"A Champion? What’s that?"

Daphne rolled her eyes. "You really need to pay more attention in myth-history class, Gwen. After the Chaos War ended, all the gods and goddesses agreed to a truce. That basically, they wouldn’t use their powers against each other or interfere with things here in the mortal realm. But, of course, none of them could just sit back and do nothing, so they created Champions instead as a kind of loophole to the truce. Champions are people who are chosen by the gods to be, well, their Champions. Their heroes-or villains, depending on which god it is. A good Champion helps carry out the god’s desires and keep bad stuff from happening. Champions kill Reapers, guard artifacts, or even mentor other people and help them understand their magic. It’s dangerous work, being a Champion. Most of them don’t live too long."

Well, that answered my question about why the gods and goddesses didn’t fight things out among themselves. They’d agreed not to and were using the rest of us to do their bidding instead, which was so totally Clash of the Titans. Being a Champion sounded exactly like something that Metis would do. Not the killing or guarding part, but the mentoring others. Although if the professor had been trying to do that for me, it wasn’t sinking in yet.

I shifted on the bed. Maybe everything that Daphne had said was true, but it still didn’t explain why I was here and what I had to do with myths, gods, the Chaos War, or any of the rest of it. I was just a Gypsy girl who touched stuff and saw things. Hardly special at all. Not like Logan and his killer warrior skills, or Daphne and her incredible strength and sparking fingers.