Jennifer Estep Bundle

by Jennifer Estep

  Rings studded with gems stacked up on her gnarled fingers, while a thin silver chain flashed around her right ankle. Her iron gray hair fell to her shoulders, pushed back by another scarf that she was using as a headband. Her eyes were a bright violet in her tan, wrinkled face.

  Grandma Frost looked like what I’d always thought a real Gypsy should—and exactly like what her clients expected when they came to get their fortunes told. Grandma always claimed that people paid her as much for her appearance as for what she revealed to them. She said that looking the part of the wise old mysterious Gypsy always made for better tips.

  I didn’t know exactly what made us Gypsies. We didn’t act like any Gypsies I’d ever read about. We didn’t live in wagons or wander from town to town or cheat people out of their money. But I’d been called a Gypsy ever since I could remember, and that’s how I’d always thought of myself.

  Maybe it was the fact that I was a Frost. Grandma had told me that it was a tradition for all the women in our family to keep that name, since our Gypsy gifts, our powers, were passed down from mother to daughter. So even though my parents had been married, I’d inherited my mom, Grace’s, last name of Frost, instead of my dad, Tyr’s, last name of Forseti.

  Or maybe it was the gifts themselves that made us Gypsies, the strange things that we could do and see. I didn’t know, and I’d never gotten a real answer from my mom or grandma about it. Then again, I’d never even thought to ask until I’d started going to Mythos, where everyone knew exactly who they were, what they could do, where they came from, and how big their parents’ bank balances were.

  Sometimes, I wondered just how much Grandma Frost knew about the academy, the warrior kids, Reapers, and the rest of it. After all, she hadn’t exactly protested when Professor Metis had come to the house and announced my change in schools. Grandma had been more resigned than anything else, like she’d known that Metis was going to show up sooner or later. Of course, I’d told my grandma all about the weird things that went on at Mythos, but she never blinked an eye at any of them. And every time I asked Grandma about the academy and why I really had to go there, all she said was for me to give it a chance, that things would eventually get better for me.

  Sometimes, I wondered why she was lying to me—when she never had before.

  “Hey there, pumpkin,” Grandma Frost said, dropping a kiss on top of my head and brushing my cheek with her knuckles. “How was school today?”

  I closed my eyes, enjoying the soft warmth of her skin against mine. Because of my Gypsy gift, because of my psychometry magic, I had to be careful about touching other people or letting them touch me. While I got vivid enough vibes from objects, I could get major flashes, major whammies of feeling, from actually coming into contact with someone’s skin. Seriously. I could see everything that they’d ever done, every dirty little secret that they’d ever tried to hide—the good, the bad, and the seriously ugly.

  Oh, I wasn’t like a complete leper when it came to other people. I was usually okay when it came to small, brief, casual touches, like passing a pen to someone in class or letting a girl’s fingers brush mine when we both reached for the same piece of cheesecake in the lunch line.

  Plus, a lot of what I saw depended on the other person and what he was thinking about at the time. I was pretty safe in class, at lunch, or in the library, since mostly the other kids were thinking about how totally boring a certain lecture was or wondering why the dining hall was serving lasagna for like the hundredth time that month.

  But I was still cautious, still careful, around other people, just the way that my mom had taught me to be. Despite the fact that part of me really liked my gift and the power it gave me to know other people’s secrets. Yeah, I was a little dark and twisted that way. But I’d learned a long time ago that even the nicest-seeming person could have the blackest, ugliest heart—like Paige Forrest’s stepdad. It was better to know what people were really like than to put your trust in someone who just wanted to hurt you in the end.

  But there was nothing to be afraid of with Grandma Frost. She loved me, and I loved her. That’s what I felt every time she touched me—the softness of her love, like a fleece blanket wrapping around me and warming me from head to toe. My mom had felt the same way to me, before she’d died.

  I opened my eyes and shrugged, answering Grandma’s question. “The same, more or less. I did make two hundred bucks by finding a bracelet. I put a hundred of it in the cookie jar, just like usual.”

  Grandma hadn’t wanted to take my money when I’d started giving it to her, but I’d insisted. Of course, she wasn’t actually spending any of it, like I wanted her to. Instead, Grandma put all the money that I gave her into a savings account for me—one that I wasn’t supposed to know about. But I’d touched her checkbook one day when I’d been looking through her purse for some gum and had flashed on her setting up the account. I hadn’t said anything to Grandma about it, though. I loved her too much to ruin her secret.

  Grandma nodded, reached into her pocket, and pulled out a crisp hundred of her own. “I made a little money, too, today.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You must have told her something good.”

  “Him,” Grandma corrected. “I told him that he and his wife are going to be the proud parents of a baby girl by this time next year. They’ve been trying to have a baby for two years now, and he was starting to give up hope.”

  I nodded. It wasn’t as weird as it sounded. People came to Grandma Frost and asked her all sorts of things. If they should get married, if they were ever going to have kids, if their spouses were cheating on them, which numbers they should pick to win the lottery. Grandma never lied to anyone who came to her for a reading, no matter how hard the truth was to hear.

  Sometimes, she was even able to help people—like really help them. Just last month, she’d told a woman not to go home after work but to spend the night with a friend instead. Turned out that the woman’s house had been broken into that night by a guy who was wanted for rape, among other things. The police had caught the man just as he was leaving her house, a knife in his hand. The woman had been so grateful that she’d brought all her friends over to get psychic readings.

  Grandma Frost sat down in the chair opposite me and began pulling off some of her scarves. The fabric fluttered down to the table in colorful waves, the coins on the edges tinkling together. “You want me to make you something to eat, pumpkin? I’ve got an hour before my next appointment shows up.”

  “Nah, I had a sandwich. I’ve got to go back to the academy anyway,” I said, getting to my feet, grabbing my bag, and looping it around my shoulder. “I’ve got to work my shift at the library tonight, and I have a report on the Greek gods that’s due next week.”

  The tuition was just as astronomically expensive as everything else was at Mythos, and we just weren’t rich enough to afford it—unless Grandma was holding out on me and hiding secret stacks of cash somewhere. She might be, given how vague and mysterious she’d been about me going to the academy in the first place. Either way, I had to work several hours in the library each week to help offset the cost of my stellar education and expensive room and board. At least, that’s what Nickamedes, the head librarian, claimed. I just thought he liked the free slave labor and bossing me around.

  Grandma Frost stared at me, her violet eyes taking on an empty, glassy look. Something seemed to stir in the air around her, something old and watchful, something that I was familiar with.

  “Well, you be careful,” Grandma Frost murmured in the absent way that she always did whenever she was looking at something that only she could see.

  I waited a few seconds, wondering if she’d tell me to look out for something specific, like a crack in the sidewalk that I might trip over or some books that might topple off a shelf at the library and brain me in the head. But Grandma didn’t say anything else, and, after a moment, her eyes focused once more. Sometimes her visions weren’t crystal clear but more like a general feeling that
something good or bad was going to happen. Plus, it was hard for her to even have visions concerning family in the first place. The closer Grandma was to someone, the less objective about the person she was, and the more her feelings clouded her visions. Even if she had seen something, she’d only tell me the broad outlines, just in case her emotions were screwing up her psychic reception or making her see what she wanted to see—and not what might actually happen.

  Besides, Grandma always said that she wanted me to make my own choices, my own decisions, and not be influenced by some nebulous thing that she saw, since sometimes her visions didn’t come true. People often zigged when Grandma had seen them zag in her visions.

  This must have been one of those times, because she gave me a smile, patted my hand, and moved over to the fridge.

  “Well, at least let me wrap you up some pumpkin roll to take back to the academy,” she said.

  I stood there and watched Grandma Frost bustle around the kitchen. I wasn’t psychic, not like she was. I couldn’t see things without touching them, and I never got a glimpse of the future or anything.

  But for some reason, a shiver crawled up my spine all the same.

  Chapter 4

  By the time I rode the bus back up to Cypress Mountain, avoided looking at the silent, staring sphinxes, slipped through the iron gate, and walked to the library, it was almost six and twilight had started to fall over campus. Soft shades of purple and gray streaked the sky, even as black shadows crept up the sides of the buildings, looking like blood sliding up the stone. I shook my head to banish the weird thought and walked on.

  The Library of Antiquities was the largest structure at Mythos Academy and sat at the top of the cluster of the five main buildings that formed the loose points of the star. Supposedly, the library was only seven stories tall, but it always seemed to me like its towers just kept reaching up and up and up, until they finally pierced the sky with their sharp, swordlike points.

  But what made the library supercreepy were the stone statues that covered it. Gryphons, gargoyles, dragons, even something that looked like a giant Minotaur. The figures were everywhere you looked, from the wide, flat steps that led up to the front entrance to the crenellated balcony on the fourth floor to the corners of the sloping roof. And they were all so detailed and lifelike that it seemed like they’d actually been real at one time—real monsters crawling all over the building until something or someone had frozen them in place.

  I eyed the gryphons perched on either side of the gray stone steps. The statues loomed over me, and both gryphons sat at attention, eagle heads high, their wings folded behind them, and their thick lions’ tails curled around the sharp, curved claws on their front paws.

  Maybe it was my Gypsy gift, my psychometry, but I always felt like the two gryphons were watching me, tracking my movements with their lidless eyes. That all I had to do was touch them and they’d come to life, spring out of the stone, and tear me apart. It was the same feeling I had whenever I had to walk by the sphinxes down at the front gate and all the other statues on campus. I shivered again, tucked my hands into the pockets on my hoodie, hurried up the steps, and headed inside the library.

  I walked through a hallway and a pair of open double doors that led into the main space. Like everything else at Mythos, the Library of Antiquities was old, stuffy, and pretentious. But even I had to admit that it was something to see.

  The main part of the library was shaped like an enormous dome, and the curved ceiling was cut out all the way to the top. Supposedly, frescoes adorned the top arch of the dome, paintings of mythological battles accented with gold, silver, and sparkling jewels. But I’d never been able to spy any of them through the perpetual darkness that shrouded the upper levels.

  What I could see were all the gods and goddesses. They ringed the second floor of the library like sentinels watching over the students studying below. The statues stood at the edge of the curved balcony, separated by slender, fluted columns. There were Greek gods like Nike, Athena, and Zeus. Norse gods like Odin and Thor. Native American deities like the Coyote Trickster and Rabbit. All thirty feet tall and carved out of thick white marble. If you climbed up the stairs to the second floor, you could walk in a circle past them all, something that I’d never wanted to do. Like the gryphons outside, the statues seemed a little too lifelike to me.

  My eyes roamed over the gods and goddesses, staring at them one by one, until I reached the lone empty spot in the circular Pantheon—the place where Loki should have stood. There was no statue of Loki in the library or anywhere else at Mythos. I imagined it had something to do with him being such a bad guy and trying to destroy the world with his Reapers of Chaos. Not exactly the kind of god you wanted to build a shrine to.

  I pulled my eyes away from the empty spot and walked on.

  Bookshelves lined either side of the main aisle before it opened up into an area filled with long tables. A freestanding cart off to the right sold coffee, energy drinks, muffins, and other snacks so students wouldn’t have to leave the library to get something to eat while they were studying. The rich, roasted smell of coffee filled the air, overpowering the dry, musty odor of the thousands of books.

  I didn’t stop walking until I reached the long checkout counter that stood in the center of the library. Several glassed-in offices lay behind the counter, separating one half of the domed room from the other. I stepped around behind the counter, plopped down on the stool next to the checkout computer, and slung my bag off my shoulder. I didn’t even have time to pull out my myth-history book and start on my report before a door in the glass wall behind me squeaked open and Nickamedes stepped outside.

  Nickamedes was the head guy at the Library of Antiquities. A tall, thin man with black hair, piercing blue eyes, and long, pale fingers. He wasn’t that old, maybe forty or so, but he was one giant pain in my ass. Nickamedes loved the library and all the books inside, loved them with a passion that bordered on serial killer creepy. What he didn’t really care for were all the students who tromped through his little kingdom on a daily basis—especially me. For whatever reason, the librarian had disliked me on sight, and his attitude hadn’t improved during the two months that I’d been working here.

  “Well,” Nickamedes huffed, crossing his arms over his chest. “It’s about time you got here, Gwendolyn.”

  I rolled my eyes. The uptight librarian was the only one who called me by my full name, something that I’d asked him not to do, with zero success so far. I think he did it just to annoy me.

  “You’re ten minutes late for your shift—again,” Nickamedes said. “That’s the third time it’s happened in the last two weeks. Where were you?”

  I couldn’t exactly tell him that I’d slipped off the academy grounds to go see Grandma Frost, since, you know, students weren’t supposed to leave campus during the week. It was one of the Big Rules, after all. I didn’t want to get Grandma in trouble—or worse, not be able to go see her anymore. I’d already learned that it was better to sneak around Nickamedes and the other Powers That Were at Mythos than it was to confront them head-on. So I just shrugged.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I was busy doing stuff.”

  Nickamedes’s blue eyes narrowed at my vague, smart-ass answer, and his lips pressed into a thin line. “Well, let me tell you about the newest piece that I pulled out of storage this morning. Several classes have been assigned to study it this semester, so I’m sure you’ll be getting a lot of questions about it.”

  The library was full of glass cases filled with dusty pieces of junk that had supposedly belonged to some god, goddess, mythological hero, or even monster. You couldn’t walk down the aisles without tripping over them. Every other week, Nickamedes pulled something else out of storage and put it on display. Part of my job was to know enough about whatever it was to help the other kids find reference books and more information on it.

  I sighed. “What is it this time?”

  Nickamedes crooked his finger, telling me to follo
w him. We walked to the left past several tables full of students. A large glass case sat in an open space in the middle of the library floor. Resting inside was a simple bowl that looked like it was made out of dull, brown clay. Boring. At least some of the swords looked cool. This? A total snooze.

  “Do you know what this is?” Nickamedes said in a hushed tone, his eyes bright.

  I shrugged. “It looks like a bowl to me.”

  Nickamedes’s face scrunched up, and he muttered something under his breath. Probably cursing my lack of enthusiasm again. “It’s not just any bowl, Gwendolyn. This is the Bowl of Tears.”

  He looked at me like I should have known what that was. I shrugged again.

  “The Bowl of Tears is what the Norse goddess Sigyn used to collect the snake venom that dripped onto her husband, Loki, the first time that he was imprisoned by the other gods, long before the Chaos War. Whenever Sigyn emptied the Bowl, the venom would drip onto Loki’s face and burn him, making him cry out. His screams of pain were so great that the earth shook for miles around him. That’s why it’s called the Bowl of Tears. It’s a very important artifact, one of the Thirteen Artifacts that the Pantheon and the Reapers fought over and with during the last great battle of the Chaos War... .”

  It was all very blah, blah, blah, and my eyes immediately glazed over. More stupid gods and goddesses. I didn’t see how Nickamedes kept them all straight. I was having a hard enough time just trying to pick one for my report that was due for Professor Metis’s myth-history class.

  Finally, after five long, long minutes of spouting nonstop facts, Nickamedes wound down. A professor who’d been sitting at a nearby table came up and asked him a question, and the librarian moved off to answer the other man. I shook my head, trying to banish the drowsiness that I felt, and went back to my spot behind the counter.