Jennifer Estep Bundle

by Jennifer Estep

  Then, Daphne pulled up Jasmine’s personal, private e-mails—the ones that weren’t posted on her Mythos Academy Web page for everyone to see. Now, those? They were way more interesting than anything else on the computer.

  Jasmine might have been the prettiest, richest, most popular girl in our second-year class, but like Carson Callahan had said, she certainly hadn’t been the nicest. There were catty, mean-girl comments about practically everyone at Mythos in her e-mails, especially Morgan McDougall, her supposed best friend—and Daphne, too.

  “She told Morgan that I looked like a heifer in those pink skinny jeans? She’s the one who told me to buy them in the first place! Bitch,” Daphne muttered. “Let’s see what else Jasmine wrote about me.”

  “Actually, I’m more interested in what she had to say about Morgan and Samson Sorensen,” I said.

  Daphne looked over her shoulder at me. “Why?”

  I showed her the picture that I’d found of Morgan and Samson, the one that had been torn in two and shoved in the bottom of Jasmine’s trash can. “I haven’t touched it yet, but it’s got to mean something.”

  “What do you mean you haven’t touched it yet?” Daphne asked in a suspicious voice.

  I sighed. “I mean I haven’t touched-it touched it yet. That’s how my Gypsy gift works. I have to touch something before I get a vibe off of it. Before I can see anything about the object or the person it belonged to.”

  “So why don’t you do that now?” Daphne said in a cross voice. Reading Jasmine’s comments had really pissed her off. “Because I don’t plan on coming back here to help you again.”

  “Fine,” I muttered.

  I plopped down on my bed, picked up the two pieces of the photo, and held them up side by side, like I was trying to put the picture back together. For several long seconds I didn’t feel anything, and I wondered if my psychometry was even going to work. If it had somehow gone on the fritz. I hadn’t gotten any big flashes off Jasmine’s laptop, and I hadn’t gotten any vibes at all off her body or blood in the library. Maybe there was something wrong with me, something wrong with my Gypsy gift.

  I was just about to put the photo down when I felt the faintest stirrings of something—a niggling worm of worry, wriggling deeper and deeper into my heart. As I held on to the photo, the worry intensified, ballooning up into a large ball of suspicion that felt like a lead weight pressing down on my stomach. The ball turned icy as cold knowledge sank into me. I recognized the feelings and what they meant. Wriggling worry, then heavy suspicion, and finally cold confirmation. Whatever Jasmine had thought was going on between Morgan and Samson, between her best friend and her boyfriend, she’d seen or heard something that made her think it was true, that it was really happening.

  But the feelings didn’t stop there.

  The cold knowledge began to burn like acid in my stomach, growing hotter and hotter, as though I’d somehow swallowed a ball of fire. The burning spread through the rest of my body, making me sweat, my hands shake, and my heart hurt, like a giant fist was squeezing it tighter and tighter until it wanted to pop from the strain. I knew what this emotion was, too—rage.

  An image of Jasmine filled my mind, one of her sitting and staring at the photo, tucked into the frame with the others in the mirror on her vanity table. Day after day Jasmine had looked at it, before she finally reached up, yanked the photo out of the frame, and ripped it in two, her face white with anger.

  By this point, I could hear myself babbling, my voice getting sharper and louder with every word: “Bitch. I’m going to kill that bitch for doing this to me, for betraying me like this. Pay, pay, pay, she’s going to pay—”

  Daphne slapped me across the face, pink sparks of magic flicking off the ends of her fingers. The blow knocked me back onto the bed, but the Valkyrie wasn’t done. She reached forward and ripped the two pieces of the photo out of my fisted hands.

  It was like a switch had been shut off deep inside me. Slowly, the hate, rage, and jealousy that I’d felt faded, the pain in my heart eased, and I was in control of myself once more. I let out a long breath. That had been intense, even for me.

  When I felt like it, I sat back up. Daphne stood over me, a worried look on her pretty face. She held the two pieces of the photo with the edges of her fingernails, as though they were something evil. Maybe they were, given the emotions that were attached to them and the awful things that Jasmine had been feeling whenever she looked at the picture of her best friend and her boyfriend.

  “Geez,” Daphne muttered. “Does that happen every time you touch something? Because that’s some freaky stuff, Gwen.”

  I rubbed my aching head. “Tell me about it.”

  “So what did you see?”

  I told Daphne about all the emotions that I’d felt, about seeing Jasmine staring at the photo over and over again and growing a little angrier every single time until she’d finally ripped it up in a fit of rage.

  “So Jasmine thought there was something going on with Morgan and Samson?” Daphne asked in a doubtful tone. “You must be wrong. Because if Jasmine even thought that Morgan was putting the moves on Samson, she would have cut Morgan’s throat—not ended up like that herself in the library.”

  I shrugged. I hadn’t known Jasmine well enough to speculate on what she would or wouldn’t do. All that I’d wanted was to learn what had really happened to her, why she’d come back to the library, and why no one seemed to care that she’d been murdered. Maybe it was my Gypsy gift, but I had a feeling that this was what I was supposed to do. That I was supposed to figure this out. That I needed to. That maybe I might even discover some secret about myself along the way.

  I shook my head to chase away the strange feeling. “What else is on her computer? Anything about the Bowl of Tears?”

  Daphne sat back down at my desk and turned her attention to the screen once more. “Nothing that I see that jumps out at me—Wait a second. Here’s something. Looks like Jasmine wrote her first myth-history report of the semester on the Bowl of Tears. Take a look.”

  I peered over Daphne’s shoulder at the screen. Sure enough, Jasmine had written an essay about the Bowl and the fact that Nickamedes was taking it out of storage and putting it on display at the Library of Antiquities. I scanned through the report, but it didn’t tell me anything that Professor Metis hadn’t earlier. Maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe Jasmine had just had the Great Artifacts book in her room so she could do her report.

  But that still didn’t tell me why she was at the library that night. Had she just wanted another look at the Bowl? If so, why? Why then? So late at night when nobody else was around?

  “Hey,” I asked Daphne, “do you know what Jasmine was doing in the library that night? Why she was there? I remember seeing the four of you in there earlier—you, Jasmine, Morgan, and Samson. Why did she come back?”

  Daphne shrugged. “We went back to our dorm and hung out awhile, watching TV and texting. Jasmine said she thought that maybe she’d left her sweater at the library and she was going to go back to look for it before the library closed. That was the last time that I saw her.”

  A shadow fell over Daphne’s face, and she drummed her fingers on the laptop, causing pink sparks to flash and flicker around the room like tiny fireflies. I plopped back down on the bed, still trying to recover from having touched the photo and feeling all of Jasmine’s pent-up anger, jealousy, and rage.

  I tried to think what my mom, the detective, would do in a situation like this, where she would go from this dead end that I’d come up against. But nothing came to mind.

  “Well, thanks for your help,” I said. “I, uh, appreciate it.”

  Daphne took that as her cue to leave. She stood, picked up her designer purse from where she had set it down on the floor, and slung the oversize bag on her shoulder. Then, the Valkyrie looked at me.

  “What are you going to do now?” she asked. “Because all you have is a myth-history report, a torn-up photo, and some feelings. It doesn’t exact
ly tell you what’s going on. Face it, Gwen. Some Reaper broke into the library to steal the Bowl of Tears, and Jasmine had the bad luck to get in his way. That’s why she got killed. There’s no big mystery, conspiracy, or whatever you think. These things just happen at Mythos.”

  I wanted to ask her why bad things like that happened here, why all the students were expected to grow up and take part in some stupid ancient war between the gods. Why didn’t the gods and goddesses just fight it out among themselves and leave the rest of us alone? But Daphne would probably just give me the same answer that Carson had. The two of them had grown up with all this talk of magic. It was natural to them, even if it wasn’t to me.

  So I just shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  She nodded. “Well, good luck with it, I suppose.”

  I nodded back at her, and she headed for my bedroom door.

  “Daphne.”

  She turned to look at me.

  “You really should give Carson a chance. Because he happens to be crazy about you.” I didn’t know why I was telling her this. Maybe because Daphne had actually been kind of cool about this whole thing, even if I had blackmailed her into helping me.

  She frowned. “How do you know that?”

  “Because when I touched that rose charm, the one that fell behind the desk when you picked up the bracelet?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, I didn’t just feel your emotions. I felt Carson’s, too. He really bought that bracelet for you, Daphne. He just told you that story about Leta Gaston to see what you’d say, to see if you actually liked the bracelet or not. He wanted to give it to you and ask you to the homecoming dance that night, but he chickened out.”

  Daphne’s mouth fell open in surprise, and hope and wonder flashed in her black eyes. “Carson—Carson likes me? Really? He really likes me? You’re not just making it all up?”

  I shook my head. “He really likes you; I promise. I see things, remember? Trust me, I know.”

  A goofy, dreamy sort of grin spread across Daphne’s face. Then, she realized that I was still watching her, and she pressed her lips together into a tight line once more.

  “You know what, Gwen? You might be okay, for a total geek with absolutely no fashion sense.”

  With those words and a small, sly smile the Valkyrie turned and left my bedroom. The strangest thing was that I found myself grinning back at her as she closed the door.

  Chapter 11

  I didn’t get much sleep that night, mainly because I was still feeling the aftereffects of touching the ripped-up photo, still feeling the echoes of Jasmine’s rage and the massive migraine it had given me.

  Maybe I should have known better by now. After all, my Gypsy gift had let me see and feel a lot of things over the years—the good, the bad, and the just plain awful. But I still couldn’t believe that Jasmine Ashton, the pretty, perfect rich girl who seemed to have everything, could feel that much rage at her best friend. Even if she did think that Morgan had something going on with Samson. Guys. They so weren’t worth the drama.

  My lack of sleep put me in a grouchy mood the next day, especially when it was time for my fifth-period gym class.

  I hated gym class.

  Going to a school full of the descendants of mythological warriors was bad enough. But the Powers That Were actually expected me to be coordinated, too. Gym class at Mythos was completely different from what it had been back at my old school. There were no basketballs, softballs, or volleyballs in sight.

  There were too many weapons crowded into the gym for that.

  Like everything else at Mythos, the gym was enormous, with a ceiling that soared several hundred feet into the air. Colorful banners announcing various academy championships over the years dangled down from the rafters, while glossy wooden bleachers ringed the gym on two sides. Thick mats lined the floors, hiding the squeaky basketball court from sight, and racks of weapons butted up against one of the walls. Swords, daggers, bows, staffs, and other things that I didn’t even know the names for but that looked like they would cut you to the bone if you so much as touched them.

  The point of gym class at Mythos wasn’t to score the most or run the most laps like it had been back at my old school. Oh no. Here? You were actually supposed to learn how to use all the weapons on the wall. How to kill, maim, and torture your opponent, whoever it might be.

  At the moment, though, I was the one being tortured.

  “Hee-yah!” the girl in front of me screamed before darting forward, raising her sword high, and bringing it down toward my head with every intention of killing me dead, dead, dead.

  I winced, backed up, and raised my own sword. Her weapon hit my blade, the sharp clanggg of it reverberating all the way up my hand and into my shoulder. The sword slid from my suddenly numb fingers and thumped onto the mat, the way it had five times already in the last five minutes.

  “You’re supposed to block my blow and try to hit me back. Not drop your sword every single time I hit you.” Talia Pizarro rolled her eyes at me. “Geez, Gwen. You really suck at this.”

  “Tell me something I don’t already know,” I muttered.

  At the start of gym class, we drew names to see who would fight whom. Talia had the misfortune of being my sparring partner today. She was an Amazon with ebony skin and short black hair who was almost six feet tall. Talia also happened to be the captain of the girls’ fencing team and could make a pincushion out of me with her sword if she really wanted to. Like all the other Amazons, she was gifted with supernatural quickness. Talia looked like a blur when she moved. One second, she was in front of me. The next, she’d hit me with her sword six times already.

  “Let’s go again,” Talia barked. “You might not get anything out of this, but I want to be able to pass my advanced weapons test next week.”

  Oh yeah. There were tests, too. I was actually being graded on how well I could chop off someone’s head or put an arrow through his eye. I’d prided myself on my perfect 4.0 GPA at my old school, but gym was one class at Mythos that I was definitely going to fail this semester and every other one. Students were required to take gym and all the weapons training that went with it every single semester until they graduated. Yippeeskippee.

  Since Talia was looking at me with murder in her eyes, I sighed and picked up my sword again. I also used the lull in the action to look over to my left, where Morgan McDougall was sparring with her own partner, another Valkyrie girl.

  Gym was the only class that I had with Morgan, and I’d been watching her all period long. Maybe it was nothing or maybe I was just crazy and grasping at straws, but I felt like there was some connection between Jasmine’s murder and that ripped-up photo of Morgan and Samson. Something obvious that I just wasn’t seeing.

  I wasn’t the only one interested in Morgan. Half the guys in the gym kept sneaking looks at her, since Morgan filled out her tight, white T-shirt quite a bit better than most of the other girls did theirs. And Morgan totally knew that the guys were watching her. Ten minutes ago, she’d accidentally-on-purpose spilled water all down the front of her shirt, plastering the fabric to the black sports bra that she had on underneath.

  Morgan and her partner finished their latest round of combat. Then, Morgan looked down at her diamondencrusted watch, said something to the other girl, and slipped out one of the side doors of the gym.

  My eyes narrowed. Class wasn’t even halfway over yet. So where was the Valkyrie going?

  “Hold this,” I said, passing my sword to Talia and hurrying after Morgan.

  “Hey! Where do you think you’re going?” Talia hissed, but I paid no attention to her.

  It wasn’t like I even needed to be in gym class. I wasn’t descended from a long line of mythological warriors, and I certainly didn’t have anything to do with the Pantheon, Reapers, or the Chaos War. But I did want to find out what had happened to Jasmine, which was something that spying on Morgan might actually help me with.

  I kept to the edges of the gym, so I wouldn
’t draw attention to myself and the fact that I was trying to sneak outside in the middle of class. Since everyone else was absorbed in beating the crap out of each other, nobody noticed me.

  Not even Logan Quinn, who was on the other side of the gym. Logan and Oliver Hector, another Spartan, were getting some pointers from Coach Ajax. The big, burly coach barked out some instructions, and the two guys bowed to each other before falling into crouching positions. Ajax held up his hand, then dropped it, and the two Spartans went at each other.

  Smack—smack—smack!

  The two staffs blurred together as Logan and Oliver fought, each turning, twisting, and doing his best to smash the other’s skull in with the blunt weapon. The fight lasted maybe thirty seconds before Logan did some kind of fancy move, used his staff to sweep Oliver’s feet out from under him, and darted forward, putting the edge of his staff against the other guy’s throat. Winner: Logan Quinn.

  Ajax barked out something else and clapped his hands, apparently happy with his star pupil. Logan smiled and stepped back casually, elegantly twirling the staff in his hand like it was a cheerleader’s baton instead of a deadly weapon. Of course, he would love gym class. Beating up people was something that he seemed to excel at. Especially if you believed all the rumors about Logan and how wild, violent, and crazy he and the rest of his Spartan friends were.

  And he looked good doing it. Logan wore a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, exposing the muscles in his arms. The deep blue color of the shirt also brightened his icy eyes, making them seem like they were almost glowing in his face, even all the way over here on the opposite side of the gym. Logan raised up the end of his T-shirt to wipe the sweat off his face, exposing his flat, muscled stomach.

  For a moment, I stopped, completely mesmerized. Just ... wow. All that and washboard abs, too. Ones that put Samson Sorensen’s to shame. I wondered if all the other Spartans at Mythos were as dangerous and sexy as Logan was or if he’d just been blessed with all the bad boy charm—