Spartan Promise

by Jennifer Estep

  “Okay, then, let me guess,” Zoe said. “You found out that Ian has been chatting up Kylie, spying on her to see if she knows anything about the Reapers.”

  I was so surprised that I stopped walking. “How do you know about that?”

  Her hazel eyes gleamed with satisfaction. “Because I’m smart and awesome, and I know stuff.”

  I rolled my eyes again. “And how do you really know about it?”

  “Because I’ve known Ian ever since we were kids.” She paused. “And he might have done the same thing to me not too long ago.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Zoe grimaced, as if she suddenly regretted speaking up. Now she was the one who didn’t want to talk, so I nudged her with my elbow.

  “I think we can walk and talk at the same time. It’s called multitasking, Valkyrie. Maybe you’ve heard of it.”

  She huffed at my using her own words against her, but we both started walking again. We had reached the edge of the quad and were heading down the hill when she sighed.

  “If you must know, when Ian, Mateo, and I were at the New York academy last semester, I had a huge crush on this guy named Antonio,” she said. “Ian’s always thought of himself as my big brother, so he decided to become friends with Antonio and see if he was a good guy, if he liked me back, the whole nine yards.”

  “That sounds humiliating,” I said in a dry tone.

  “Oh, it was totally humiliating, especially since Ian didn’t tell me what he was doing. He even roped Mateo into helping him, and Mateo hacked into Antonio’s phone, his email, everything.” Zoe shook her head. “I had no clue what they were doing until I accidentally picked up Mateo’s phone one day, thinking it was mine, and saw that he was looking at Antonio’s emails.”

  “Then when happened?”

  “I was so angry, and I gave them both a piece of my mind.” Blue sparks erupted out of the Valkyrie’s fingertips, indicating how mad she had been. “I told them to quit spying on Antonio, or else I was going to tell Takeda what they’d done.”

  “And what did the guys say?”

  “Mateo understood, and he quit spying on Antonio right away. He hadn’t wanted to do it to start with. But Ian was a little more difficult to convince.”

  I frowned. “Why?”

  “Ian claimed that he was doing a background check on Antonio to make sure that he wasn’t a Reaper.” Zoe paused. “Keep in mind that all this happened after Ian found out that Drake was a Reaper. Ian said he didn’t want me to get fooled like his brother had fooled him.”

  “Ah.”

  And just like that, everything made sense. Ian had loved and looked up to his big brother, and he had been devastated when he found out that Drake was a Reaper, just like I had been devastated when I learned the truth about my parents. Ian and I might be great warriors, but we had both been blindsided by the people we loved, and now we were both paranoid about getting tricked and hurt like that again. That paranoia was an Achilles’ heel for both of us.

  Zoe cleared her throat, and a guilty look filled her face. “I saw Ian with Kylie outside the gym one day last week. I couldn’t figure out why he would be talking to her, so I snuck up on them, and I heard him ask her about Lance Fuller. That’s when I realized he was spying on her the same way he had spied on Antonio. And then, when I saw you guys in the Bunker earlier, I realized that you had found out too. I’m sorry, Rory. I should have told you what he was doing.”

  “It’s not your fault. Ian is your friend too. It was a tough situation to be in.”

  “He is my friend, but he can be a complete idiot sometimes,” Zoe said. “Just like you’re being a complete idiot right now.”

  “What? Why am I being an idiot?”

  She waved her hand, making more blue sparks of magic crackle in the air. “You and Ian are obviously crazy about each other, so why don’t you both admit it? Instead of not-so-secretly making googly eyes at each other all the time?”

  “Well, my judgment hasn’t been great lately, especially when it comes to guys,” I said in a defensive voice. “Remember my epic crush on Lance Fuller? The Reaper who tried to kill us a few weeks ago? I haven’t forgotten about that.”

  “Ian is not Lance Fuller. Sure, he made a mistake by spying on Kylie and not telling you about it, but he’s still a great guy. Not to mention the fact that he likes you, and you like him.” Zoe nudged me with her elbow again. “So grab the boy and kiss him, already. Nothing could be simpler.”

  She was giving me the same advice that Babs had, but I didn’t think there was anything simple about it. I never did when it came to my feelings, especially opening up and trusting someone with my heart again. I also didn’t want to talk about it anymore, so I changed the subject.

  “And what about you? You’ve been here for a few weeks now. Has anyone caught your eye?”

  Zoe shrugged. “Not really. I’ve flirted with a few guys, but no one’s asked me out. Even if they did, I doubt that I would say yes.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, it’s not like I have a lot of free time, between classes, working on my inventions, and being on the Midgard. Besides, I love hanging out with you guys. Why would I need anyone else?” She sighed. “Plus, Mateo would never let me hear the end of it if I started dating someone.”

  Her words made me think of those weird vibes I had noticed between her and Mateo over the past two days. Maybe they weren’t so weird after all.

  “And why would he do that?”

  She sighed again. “Because he delights in torturing me.”

  “I think you mean teasing you.”

  “Nope, I mean torturing me.” Zoe huffed. “Remember what I told you about Mateo hacking into Antonio’s phone? Well, Mateo found out that Antonio had a pet hamster.”

  “So…”

  “So Antonio loved his pet hamster. He dressed it up in cute outfits and even made it a little playpen. It was really sweet how much he cared about it.”

  “But?”

  “But I was allergic to the hamster, and Antonio told me he just couldn’t date a girl who couldn’t appreciate his beloved pet.” Zoe winced. “It was so humiliating. Mateo teased me about it for weeks.”

  I couldn’t help it. I snickered a little bit.

  She punched me in the shoulder. I coughed to cover up the last of my laughter and decided to change the subject again.

  “Why do you think Mateo teased you so much about it?”

  “I don’t know,” she muttered. “Maybe because Mateo is about as mature as a seven-year-old sometimes.”

  “There could be another reason.”

  “Like what?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe he likes you.”

  She blinked and blinked, as if the thought had never crossed her mind. Her steps slowed, and she stopped in the middle of the path. For a moment, everything was still and quiet. Then a shower of blue sparks erupted out of Zoe’s fingertips.

  “M-M-Mateo?” she sputtered. “And me? Mateo and me?”

  “Yes.” I grinned. “Mateo and Zoe. Sitting in a tree and all that.”

  “Mateo and me.” She repeated the words like they were some foreign language that she was trying to learn. “Mateo and me.”

  “Mateo and Zoe. Zoe and Mateo. Why is that such a strange idea?”

  “Because…we’ve been friends for years,” she said. “We’ve done practically everything together ever since we were little. I’ve always thought of him as one of my best friends. Not anything…more.”

  She stared off into space, her hazel eyes soft and distant, as if she were replaying all of her memories of Mateo, trying to find some deeper meaning in them.

  “Well, maybe you should think of him as something more. Or at least consider the possibility.”

  “Yeah. Sure.” Zoe kept blinking, and more sparks of magic shot out of her fingertips.

  I hid another grin. I had planted the idea in her mind. Now it was up to her what to do with it.

  We kept walking until we reached
the front door of Valhalla Hall, one of the girls’ dorms.

  I glanced around, but I didn’t spot anyone walking along the paths or trudging through the grass. Several lights burned in the dorm, and the faint murmur of a TV sounded somewhere inside, but for the most part, everything was quiet. We wouldn’t get a better chance than this.

  We could have pressed the buzzer by the door and gotten one of the girls who lived here to let us inside, but that girl probably would have wanted to know why we were here, and we couldn’t exactly tell anyone that we were going to search Gretchen’s room for a stolen artifact. Hence all the sneaking around.

  “All right,” I whispered to Zoe. “Do your thing.”

  She reached into her purse and pulled out what looked like a small gun with three metal prongs sticking out of the barrel. Zoe hummed a soft, happy tune as she stuck the gun into the lock. A series of faint click-click-clicks rang out, and less than a minute later, the door opened.

  Zoe pulled her lockpick gun out of the door, held it up, and struck a pose with the gadget. “Works like a charm, every single time.”

  She slid the gadget into her purse, and we slipped inside the dorm. A long hallway with rooms branching off both sides and a set of stairs at the far end stretched out in front of us. Together, Zoe and I strolled along the hallway, as though we had every right to be here, even though neither one of us lived in this dorm.

  We passed a large den, where several girls were clustered together on a couch, eating popcorn and watching some reality dating show. Everyone’s eyes were fixed on the screen, and no one paid any attention as we moved past the doorway.

  Zoe and I kept going. We reached the stairs, climbed up to the second floor, and walked down another hallway.

  “What room is it again?” I whispered.

  “Two-oh-eight,” Zoe whispered back. “Here it is.”

  We stopped in front of a door with the number 208 painted on it—Gretchen’s room.

  Zoe pulled out her lockpick gun again, and less than a minute later, we were stepping inside the room. I closed and locked the door behind us, while Zoe flipped on the lights.

  Gretchen’s dorm room looked like all the others at Mythos Academy. A bed against one wall. A desk covered with computer equipment against another wall. A vanity table perched next to a bookcase. A closet full of clothes and shoes in the corner.

  And, like everyone else, Gretchen had added her own personal touches to the space. A Karma Girl superhero poster on the wall above the bed. Another poster featuring a pretty nighttime scene of the Midway in Cloudburst Falls, West Virginia, on the closet door. Trophies for all the math and computer-science competitions she’d won lined up on top of the bookcase.

  Gretchen might be smart, but she definitely wasn’t a neat freak. Pens, notepads, and textbooks were jumbled together on top of the desk, clothes and shoes were strewn all over the floor, and the sheets had been pulled halfway off the bed.

  “You really think she hid Serket’s Pen in here?” Zoe asked.

  “Well, it certainly would be hard to find in all this mess. She probably has the artifact on her, but maybe we can find something that will tell us why she stole it and what she’s planning to do with it.”

  I texted Ian, telling him we were in Gretchen’s room, and then we got to work. Zoe sat down at the desk and started looking through the books and computer equipment, as well as rummaging through the drawers. I did the same thing to the vanity table.

  Jewelry, makeup, brushes, headbands, bottles of nail polish and scented lotion. It was all ordinary stuff that any girl would have in her room. The only thing that was mildly interesting was the drawer full of eyeglasses. I picked up a couple of the frames, all of which were different colors and shapes and covered with sparkly crystals, and looked through them, but they only held clear glass, not prescription lenses. Seemed Gretchen just wore glasses to make a cool fashion statement, rather than actually needing them.

  Still, I examined everything carefully, even going so far as to open the bottles, in case any of them contained something other than nail polish and lotion. But everything was exactly what it appeared to be, so I lifted my gaze to see if any pictures were tucked into the edges of the vanity-table mirror.

  Given that Gretchen was friends with the superpopular Kylie, I would have thought the entire mirror would be lined with pictures, but she had only put up one photo, which showed her standing with a man and a woman who I assumed were her parents, since Gretchen had the man’s blond hair and the woman’s blue eyes and smile.

  But the weird thing was that the photo was ripped into two pieces, with Gretchen in one half and her parents in the other. Why keep a ripped photo? Had she torn it by accident?

  I had no idea, so I looked over at Zoe. “Anything?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  “Me neither. Let’s keep looking.”

  Zoe nodded, got up from the desk, and waded into the closet to see if Gretchen had hidden anything in the pockets of her clothes or in the toes of her shoes.

  I looked through the vanity-table drawers, but they only held more jewelry and makeup, so I went over to the bed and peered under the mattress, then the bed frame itself. Nothing there but a forgotten, half-eaten chocolate bar and some massive dust bunnies.

  Zoe was still searching through the closet, so I headed over to the bookcase and scanned the titles on the shelves. Myth-history books, big, fat, epic fantasy novels, and lots of volumes on math and computer science. Nothing unusual, but I still grabbed a few books and flipped through them, in case Gretchen had hidden anything in the pages. But no notes or other papers fell out, so I slid the books back onto the shelf.

  Frustrated, I had started to ask Zoe if she had found anything when I noticed a dark purple polo shirt hanging out of the trash can by the bookcase, like Gretchen had tossed it down and hadn’t cared where it had landed. Curious, I fished the shirt out of the trash and held it up.

  The shirt featured a grinning skull and crossbones. The words Club D arched over the top of the skull, while grapevines curled around the bottom of the bones. The words and graphics were done in white, as was the name, Gretchen, on the left side of the shirt.

  The skull, bones, and grapevines were the logo for Club Dionysus—aka Club D—a nightclub on the outskirts of Snowline Ridge. I had never been there, but it was a popular party spot, especially for the older Mythos students. One of the things that made the club so attractive was the fact that it was located next to a cemetery. Dead people didn’t care how loud the club blasted its music at two in the morning or how many kids staggered outside and puked their guts out.

  Gretchen must have worked there as a waitress, since her name was on the shirt. I had no idea why she had tossed the garment into the trash, since it wasn’t stained, but I put it back where I’d found it. We couldn’t let her know we had searched her room.

  “Okay, this is weird.” Zoe stepped out of the closest.

  “What?”

  “This. I found it stuffed in a box full of old term papers in the back of the closet.”

  She handed me a small, thin book, and I held it up to the light so I could read the faded title on the front: Antiques & Artifacts: A Prospective Price Guide.

  I handed it back to her. “So what? It’s a library book. See the bar code on the spine? Gretchen probably used it for some research paper and forgot to return it.”

  “I don’t think she forgot to return it. Look at what she did to it.”

  Zoe flipped through the pages. Every single one of them had been marked in some way. Highlighted text, underlined passages, stars next to pictures.

  The sight made me cringe. I didn’t even like to dog-ear pages in books, much less write in them, but Gretchen had completely ruined this volume. She had highlighted, underlined, and starred so many things that I couldn’t even read some of the original words and captions.

  “What’s this book about again?” I asked.

  “Antiques & Artifacts: A Prospective Price Guide.”
Zoe read the title, then peered at one of the pages that didn’t have quite as much writing on it. “The book tells you what certain antiques and artifacts are worth. See? It has prices listed next to the swords on this page.”

  I could understand Gretchen checking out the book and using it for some school assignment, but the pages were so heavily marked that it seemed she had kept the book for a long time and had read it over and over again. Why would she do that? Unless…she actually wanted to know what the antiques and artifacts were worth.

  Wait a second. Could this be all about…money?

  “Let me see that, please.”

  Zoe handed me the book again, and I flipped to the back and scanned through the index, which was the only part of the book that hadn’t been marked up. I went to the S section and ran my finger down the page, searching, searching, searching…

  Serket’s Pen, page 131.

  I froze, wondering if I was reading the words right, but I blinked, and they remained the same, so I turned to page 131.

  A photo of Serket’s Pen took up most of the page.

  A large black feather and a silver nib shaped like a basilisk, complete with a ruby eye. The artifact looked exactly the same as it had at the mansion earlier today. Gretchen had highlighted, underlined, and starred practically every single word on the page, and I had to squint through the mess of ink to read the caption below the photo.

  This pen is one of the few known artifacts that belonged to Serket, the Egyptian goddess associated with poisons. The pen is made of a single feather that has been fitted into a silver nib shaped like a basilisk. The nib is the most interesting part of the artifact, as it indicates the creatures that can be summoned and controlled by whoever holds the pen. At the time of this printing, the pen was valued at more than two million dollars…

  “Two million dollars,” I whispered. “Two million dollars!”

  “What?” Zoe asked. “What are you talking about?”

  I pointed out the dollar amount. Her eyes slowly widened, and she stared at me.

  “Gretchen didn’t steal the artifact to hurt people,” I said. “She’s going to sell it.”