“Was?” Logan asked in a quiet voice, picking up on the past tense.
“She died six months ago,” I said. “She was killed in a car accident by a drunk driver. That’s what the police said, anyway.”
My throat closed up as I said the words, and I blinked back a wave of sudden hot tears. Once again, my pain, anger, and guilt over my mom’s death twisted my heart, like a snake curling tighter and tighter around its victim until all the life had been squeezed out of it. That’s how I felt right now. I couldn’t even breathe without it hurting so much.
“I’m sorry,” Logan said.
I nodded at him, but I didn’t trust myself to speak.
We reached Styx Hall a couple of minutes later. The light burned over the front door, but the dorm was quiet. Everyone else must have still been over at the bonfire. I walked up the steps to the patio that wrapped around the dorm, and Logan followed me.
Logan drew closer to me until all that I could see, feel, and hear was him. Black hair, icy blue eyes, square chin, solid chest. He looked the same as always, a total bad boy who knew exactly how sexy he was. But somehow, Logan seemed nobler to me now, braver and stronger. Like there was so much more to him than just his killer smile, easy charm, and rumored ability to get rid of a girl’s bra in under five seconds and her panties in another ten.
Maybe that was because Logan had saved my life tonight. That kind of thing would have made any girl think highly of him. Or maybe it was just part of who he was, part of his Spartan heritage, part of becoming the fierce warrior that he was so obviously meant to be.
I thought about the way that he’d so coolly faced that Nemean prowler, the way that he’d actually smiled when fighting the awful creature. Logan made me believe that there was some kind of purpose to all this. At least for tonight, anyway. That yeah, the Chaos War and Reapers and Loki were real, but that there were also good guys like Spartans and Amazons and Valkyries who were ready to stand up and fight the bad guys, too.
Whatever it was, the sudden feeling made me shiver, even as heat blossomed in the pit of my stomach like a flower slowly unfurling and stretching toward the sun. Just the way that I found myself wanting to reach out to Logan, to touch him, no matter how weird, wrong, or stupid it might have been.
“Can I ask you something?” Logan said, tilting his head to one side and looking at me.
“Sure.”
“What’s with you and all the comic books?”
That was just about the last thing that I’d expected him to say. I blinked. “What?”
“I saw them that day you ran into me on the quad and dropped your bag. Why do you like them so much?” Logan asked. “We pretty much go to school in a comic book. Tonight should have proven that to you. You don’t really need to read them.”
“I just like them,” I said. “I always have.”
It was true. I’d always loved the stories of people having amazing powers, of good guys doing good things and always thwarting the bad guys’ evil plans at the last possible second. But lately I’d been reading more and more of them, burying myself in the colorful pages as though reading about someone else’s heroic deeds would magically change everything around me. As though they would somehow make my life better or put everything back to the way that it had been before my mom died.
“I guess ... I’ve been reading more of them since my mom’s accident,” I said, struggling to find the right words. “I guess ... I like them because nobody ever really dies in a comic book, not even the bad guy. At least not for long. I guess ... I keep hoping that one day, my mom’s going to just show up, like the characters always do in comic books. That she’s going to be fine and tell me that this has all been a bad dream. That she’s been trapped in another dimension or that the person who got killed was really her evil clone or something. That she’s going to take me away from Mythos and things will go back to the way they used to be. Pretty stupid, huh?”
I blinked a couple of times and scratched my nose like it was itching, even though I was really trying to hold back the tears in my eyes. I didn’t want to cry in front of him.
Logan looked at me. “I don’t think it’s stupid at all, Gwen.”
Some of the emotion clogging my throat eased up, and I smiled.
“What?”
“Do you know, I think that’s the first time that you’ve ever said my name? I’m always just that Gypsy girl to you and everyone else.”
Logan moved closer to me. “Really? Then, I’ll have to say it again. Gwen,” he whispered. “Gwen.”
I stared into his ice blue eyes, mesmerized by the sudden softness that I saw there, even as Logan’s head dipped lower. But then my brain kicked in and I realized that he was actually going to kiss me—and exactly what would happen the moment that his lips touched mine.
“No! Don’t! Stop!” I stepped away from him, almost falling down the dorm steps in the process.
Logan frowned, and something like hurt flickered in his eyes.
“It’s not that I don’t want to—I mean, I do—I really do—it’s just ... my gift,” I finished in a totally weak, lame voice.
He kept staring at me.
“My Gypsy gift,” I said, trying to explain. “My psychometry magic. Whenever I ... touch someone, I get flashes about him. Feelings and images. Kind of like a movie trailer of his life. Or at least what he’s thinking about at that particular moment. It really just depends on the person.”
The softness in Logan’s eyes vanished, and his gaze was suddenly as cold as ice once more, his face harder than any marble statue in the Library of Antiquities.
“And you don’t want to see mine,” he said in a flat tone. “Because of who and what I am. Because I’m a Spartan.”
He said “Spartan” like it was some sort of dirty word or terrible thing to be. I didn’t know all the ins and outs of Mythos, but I knew that most of the other students were afraid of Logan and the others kids like him. Because they were Spartans, because they were such good fighters, because they were so fierce, so strong, and so full of life. And now he thought that I was scared of him, too, that I didn’t even want to so much as touch him, much less let him kiss me.
“No! No! That’s not it at all. I just didn’t know if you would ... want me to see ... all those things about you,” I finished in that same weak, lame voice. “Some people don’t.”
They don’t want me knowing their secrets. That’s what I wanted to say to him. Maybe that’s what I should have said to him.
Or maybe I should have just come right out and admitted the fact that I was a total geeky loser who’d only ever kissed one boy in her entire life. And only a couple times at that, with very little tongue action involved. That I was worried my lack of experience would so obviously show and I wouldn’t measure up to Logan’s standards. That I wouldn’t be able to kiss him back like he wanted me to—like I wanted to. That I didn’t want him to laugh at me or make fun of me. And most especially, that I was starting to like him way, way more than I should, given the fact that he was who he was and I was who I was. Just Gwen Frost, that Gypsy girl who saw things, and not anyone special, exciting, or particularly interesting.
Logan kept staring at me, that same cold expression in his eyes. He made no move to try to kiss me again. The moment, whatever kind of moment it had been between us, was officially over. Spell, broken. Shattered was more like it. By me and my freak-out over my stupid Gypsy gift and what I might see and feel if I kissed him.
“Well,” I said in an awkward voice, shifting from one foot to the other. “I guess I should go inside now. It’s getting, um, cold out here.”
“Yeah,” Logan said. “Cold.”
I stared at him again, wondering what I could do to make things better between us. We’d been on the verge of ... something, something nice, I thought. But I’d ruined it, and I had no idea how to make it right.
“So, thanks, for, um, saving my life tonight.”
“Yeah,” he said again in that cold, hard voice. “
Good night, Gypsy girl.”
Logan turned, walked down the steps, and disappeared into the darkness. He didn’t look back.
“Good night, Logan,” I whispered, even though I knew that he couldn’t hear me or see the tears in my eyes.
Feeling like a stupid, stupid loser, I trudged up the stairs to my dorm room, took a shower, and got ready for bed. Maybe it was the fact that I’d almost been eaten by a killer kitty cat or maybe it was my almost kiss with Logan, but I couldn’t sleep.
But I just couldn’t lie in bed, stare up at the pointed ceiling, and do nothing either. At least, not without replaying the scene with Logan in my mind over and over again. Thanks to my psychometry, I could remember in crystal-clear, humiliating detail just how much I’d freaked out when he’d started to kiss me. I’d be lucky if he ever spoke to me again.
I had to do something to take my mind off all that, so I grabbed the last of Grandma Frost’s sweet pumpkin roll out of my minifridge, turned on Jasmine’s laptop, and once again surfed through the computer files that Daphne had unlocked for me. But I didn’t find anything else that would tell me what was going on, what deep, dark secrets Jasmine might have had, or who had killed her.
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 flam
es 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.
Everyone was so excited about the dance that there was almost no mention of Jasmine Ashton. Only a couple of days had passed since she’d been murdered, and it was like it had never even happened. Everyone else seemed to have forgotten about the Valkyrie already, even though she’d been the most popular girl in our class.
It made me sad and angry at the same time. Especially since I couldn’t seem to let go of it. I still couldn’t forget seeing Jasmine that night, her dead blue eyes staring up at me like she wanted me to help her.
I still couldn’t forget the fact that it should have been me lying there in all those pools of blood.
Lunchtime rolled around. I got my usual grilled chicken salad, along with a bottle of Honeycrisp apple juice and a piece of chocolate-crusted key lime cheesecake that was depressingly small. Seriously. The pale, creamy sliver wasn’t even as wide as two of my fingers put together. I loaded everything onto a clear glass tray and retreated to an empty table in the quietest, most remote corner of the dining hall that I could find.
I ignored the salad and all of its elaborately cut veggies, cracked open the sweet, tart apple juice, and drained half of it in one gulp. Not hard, since the drink portions were almost as meager as the dessert ones. I eyed the plastic container, wishing that I’d gone ahead and gotten two juices like I’d really wanted to instead of just one—
A tray plopped down across from me, making me jerk back in surprise and almost drop my juice on the floor.
Daphne Cruz dumped her enormous purse onto the table. Her bag covered up Jasmine’s mythology book, which I’d been planning on reading more of at lunch. But that wasn’t the strangest thing Daphne did. She actually sat down at my table.
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