Jennifer Estep Bundle

by Jennifer Estep

  Like—like we were friends or something.

  I eyed the Valkyrie, wondering if she’d somehow been possessed or something. If somebody had dripped her blood into Loki’s Bowl of Tears and made her a willing slave—

  “So,” the Valkyrie said, cracking open the lid on her Perrier. “This is where you eat lunch. All the way in the back here. What are you? A vampire who’s afraid of sunlight or something?”

  Vampires? Were vampires real, too? I wondered, but I didn’t want to look stupid and ask, especially since I didn’t know what Daphne was doing here in the first place.

  “Yeah,” I said in a guarded voice. “You caught me. I’ve got this whole superhero thing going on, so I sit way back here to keep the paparazzi and rabid fans at bay.”

  Daphne eyed me. After a moment, the Valkyrie’s glossy pink lips crinkled up into a smile. “You’ve got a weird sense of humor. Superheroes are so over.”

  “Yeah, but the actors who play them in the movies are still so rich. I think they’ll get over the heartbreak of losing your approval.”

  Daphne snorted out a laugh, then picked up her fork and started stabbing her eggplant Parmesan to death. I waited a minute, then looked around the dining hall, wondering if this was some kind of joke. But I didn’t see anyone looking in my direction and laughing behind their hands.

  What I did see was Morgan McDougall and a couple of the other Valkyrie princesses all sitting at their usual table, deep into their lunchtime gossip and ogling every cute guy who walked by. But Daphne didn’t look over at her friends, and they didn’t seem to notice her sitting in the corner with me.

  “Are you actually ... going to eat lunch with me?” I asked.

  “No,” Daphne said, breaking a buttery breadstick in half and dipping it into the spicy marinara sauce on her plate. “I’m a figment of your imagination. You’re only imagining that I’m sitting here eating with you. Because I’m just so freaking awesome that people daydream about being seen with me.”

  “Funny,” I muttered.

  The Valkyrie smiled at me and took a bite of her breadstick.

  “But why?” I asked. “You hate me.”

  Daphne chewed and swallowed. “I wouldn’t say hate, exactly. You’re kind of like fungus, Gwen. After a while, you just start growing on people.”

  “So I’m mold. Wonderful. So why don’t you just scrub me off and go sit with your Valkyrie friends like usual?”

  “Because,” Daphne said, dropping her black eyes to her Caesar salad. “The other night when you weren’t looking, I forwarded all of Jasmine’s e-mails to my account. And I found some things on there that I didn’t like—things about me.”

  “Like what?”

  Daphne sighed and pushed her salad away, like she’d lost her appetite. “Like the fact that Jasmine and Morgan were making fun of me behind my back. They knew about my crush on Carson, and they thought it was hysterical. And that was some of the nicer things they said about me. And it wasn’t just them. Claudia, Kylie, Seraphina ... all of them were swapping e-mails about me and each other. None of us seem to actually like each other very much.”

  “So?” I asked. “Isn’t that what mean girls do? I mean, the Valkyries are the queen bees of Mythos. You girls make the kids on Gossip Girl look tame. Doesn’t it all kind of go with the territory?”

  “Maybe.” Daphne shrugged. “But I’m sick of it. I’ve known those girls since first grade, and they all just get shallower and stupider every single year. I think it’s time that I made some new friends.”

  She drew in a breath and looked at me. “You did something really cool for me last night, hooking me up with Carson. I don’t know why I was so scared of what everyone else would think about me and him, but I’m not anymore. And I’m not going to forget what you did for me, Gwen.”

  “So you’ve decided that I’m it then?” I asked. “That I’m your new BFF? Overnight? Just like that?”

  For the first time, doubt flickered in Daphne’s black eyes. “Hey, if you want to sit over here in the corner all by yourself and pout about how you don’t have any friends, fine with me. I was just trying to be nice.”

  She grabbed her tray and started to get to her feet to storm off, but I held up my hands in a placating gesture.

  “No, no, no,” I said. “Wait; sit back down. I’d ... love some company. Please. Stay.”

  Daphne stared at me another minute, then sank back into her chair. Geez. The Valkyrie was a little volatile. I’d have to remember that: Don’t piss off Daphne, or she’ll rip your heart out of your chest.

  The Valkyrie clacked her nails on her fork, and pink sparks flashed and fluttered in the air the way that they always did when her fingertips scraped against something.

  “Why do your fingers do that?” I asked. “Why all the pink sparks everywhere?”

  Daphne shrugged. “It’s a Valkyrie thing. It’s just part of our magic.”

  “Magic? What kind of magic?”

  “You know that all Valkyries are strong, right?”

  I nodded. “Strong” was kind of an understatement when you could twist a guy’s head off with your bare hands.

  “Well, Valkyries have other magic, too, another power or ability that’s special. Usually, Valkyries don’t come into their power, whatever it is, until they’re at least sixteen or seventeen. My magic hasn’t quickened yet, so I don’t know what kind of magic I’ll have. But some Valkyries are healers, while others have enhanced senses. Some can do spells and make things happen, while others can control the weather or create fire with their bare hands. Some Valkyries can even create illusions.”

  Something stirred in the back of my mind. “Illusions? What kind of illusions?”

  Daphne shrugged again. “All kinds. Think of it this way: You touch stuff and see things, right? Well, when I touch stuff, sparks of magic fly off the ends of my fingertips. It’s just a thing that Valkyries do. The sparks are just little flashes of color, little pulses of light, and they fade away almost immediately, sort of like rainbows do. They can’t actually hurt you or anything. Basically, my fingers are kind of like sparklers on the Fourth of July.”

  Okay, so it was a mythological quirk or something. Like Logan Quinn being a Spartan, picking up any weapon, and automatically knowing how to kill people with it. But there was one more thing I was curious about.

  “Why pink?” I asked, thinking of the green sparks that I’d seen Morgan shoot off when she and Samson had had their little afternoon delight in the courtyard yesterday. “Why not blue or silver or some other color? Pink seems kind of odd. Kind of ... girly.”

  “It has to do with our auras,” Daphne replied. “The color of the sparks is tied to our emotions and personalities. And the more emotional or upset that we get, the more sparks you see.”

  I raised my eyebrows, wondering what kind of person had a princess pink aura. Daphne saw the question in my eyes.

  “I like pink,” she said in a defensive tone. “I think it’s cool.”

  “Sure, sure it is,” I agreed in a hasty voice.

  Ugh. Every other thing I said seemed to offend the Valkyrie. It had been so long since I’d had a friend—or even since I’d had a lengthy conversation with anyone besides Grandma Frost—that I wasn’t sure how to act anymore. Sure, I’d had friends at my old school, but I’d pushed them all away after my mom’s death. I hadn’t heard from any of them since I’d started going to Mythos, and none of them had tried to contact me. We’d all just gone on with our lives.

  Maybe I felt so awkward because I was worried that you made friends differently at the academy, since everything else seemed to be so twisted and turned upside down. I mean, Daphne wouldn’t want me to drink her blood or anything, would she? Because I was so not doing that. Potential friend or no potential friend.

  Things got a little better after that, mainly because I asked Daphne about Carson and what the two of them had talked about on the phone last night. The Valkyrie’s pretty face took on a soft glow, and more pink spark
s flickered around her fingertips. She was a total goner where Carson was concerned, and she didn’t seem to be afraid to admit it anymore. Then again, she was eating lunch with me, the Gypsy girl who was the academy’s biggest outcast. A date with a band geek like Carson would be a definite social step up from being seen with me.

  “Actually, I came over here to ask you something,” Daphne said, a shy note creeping into her voice. “I was wondering if, um, you’d like to come over to my dorm room before the homecoming dance tonight. I bought a dress, just in case Carson or someone else asked me, but I haven’t shown it to anyone.”

  Her words made me flash back to the last time that I’d done something like that. Something so ... normal. Something so ... fun.

  It had been several weeks before the sophomore prom at my old school—and days before I’d discovered Paige’s secret. I’d just broken up with Drew Squires, my boyfriend of all of three weeks, but I was still planning on going to the prom, mainly because my mom, Grace, and I had spent weeks shopping for the perfect dress and shoes. We’d finally found them both in this little out-of-the-way boutique in a run-down strip mall, including a violet dress that Mom claimed was the exact color of my eyes.

  We’d brought it home that Saturday, and she’d died that next Friday, six days later. Of course I hadn’t gone to the prom after that. But for some reason, I’d decided not to return the dress. In fact, it was hanging in the back of my closet in my dorm room—

  “Are you okay?” Daphne asked, cutting into my memories. “You look like you’re about to cry or something.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, pushing away the memory.

  The Valkyrie stared at me, and I fumbled for an explanation.

  “I was thinking about my mom,” I said in a quiet voice. “Back in the spring, a few days before she died, she took me shopping for a prom dress.”

  “Oh. Oh.” Daphne picked right up on the dead mom part, and she didn’t say anything for a moment. “If you’d rather not, I understand—”

  “No,” I said quickly. “No, I’m fine. I’d love to help you get ready for your big date with Carson. What time do you want me to come over?”

  Daphne and I made plans to meet up later in her room after I worked my shift at the library. The bell rang, signaling the end of the lunch period, and the two of us went our separate ways. And I realized that today was the very first time that I hadn’t had to eat lunch or dinner by myself since I’d been at Mythos. It was nice to have someone to sit with, to have someone to talk to. I’d forgotten just how much I’d missed that. Well, maybe I hadn’t forgotten. Maybe I just hadn’t wanted to remember because it would have made my loneliness that much more painful.

  Unfortunately, my good mood wasn’t contagious, especially not when it came to my professors, and the rest of the day ground by. Finally, though, the last bell of the day rang at the end of my sixth-period myth-history class. I packed up my things as quickly as I could. I wanted to sneak off campus and go see Grandma Frost before I had to report to Nickamedes at the library. Despite the fact that absolutely no one would be doing something as boring as homework tonight, he was still making me work my usual Friday shift before the library closed early because of the dance.

  “Are you going to the homecoming dance, Gwen?” Carson asked me as he stuffed his own books into his bag.

  “Nah,” I said. “But I am helping Daphne get ready. So you know she’s going to look fabulous for you.”

  Carson smiled, and I found myself grinning back at the band geek. Maybe this making friends thing wasn’t so hard after all.

  I left the English-history building and walked across the quad. Today, instead of standing around talking and texting, just about everyone was hurrying on their way, off to make sure that they had everything they needed for tonight—dresses, tuxes, kegs, condoms, and all.

  No one paid any attention to me, and I was able to stroll down to the main gate undetected. I stopped just inside the black iron bars and stared up at the two sphinxes on either side of the opening. Professor Metis had told me that Nickamedes was going to put extra magic, extra wards or whatever, on the closed gate to keep another Reaper from sneaking onto campus. Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed like the sphinxes’ features were even sharper and fiercer now than they had been the last time I’d been at the gate. Their eyes were narrowed to slits, and the edges of their claws glinted in the afternoon sun, like they were half a second away from erupting out of the stone and pouncing on whoever tried to slip past them.

  For a moment I thought about turning back, but it had been a couple of days since I’d seen Grandma Frost. She’d be expecting me to come by, and I missed her. She was all I had left now, and I wanted to see her. It was worth the risk of tripping whatever magical alarm Nickamedes had put on the entrance. Besides, the sphinxes probably wouldn’t kill me—right?

  I tiptoed up to the gate, sucked in my breath, turned sideways, and slipped through the black iron bars.

  Nothing happened.

  No alarms sounded, and the sphinxes didn’t leap down and rip me to shreds, if they could even do that in the first place. Apparently, Nickamedes had only strengthened the spells to keep Reapers out of the academy—not created a new one to keep students inside. Like everyone else, the librarian thought that the threat was outside the academy walls—not inside. Still, I was happy for his oversight, and I hurried across the street and hopped on the bus. Twenty minutes later, I was walking up the steps to Grandma Frost’s house. I used my key to let myself in.

  But for once, Grandma Frost wasn’t busy giving a psychic reading in the other room. Instead, I found her in the kitchen, with its bright, cheery sky blue walls and white tile.

  “Mmm. What smells so good?” I asked, throwing my messenger bag onto the table.

  Grandma grabbed a dishcloth off the counter, reached into the oven, and pulled out a baking sheet full of homemade almond sugar cookies. I breathed in, the warm smells of melted butter, sticky dough, and crystallized sugar making my mouth water and my stomach rumble. Nobody baked as good as Grandma Frost did. The dessert chefs at Mythos could definitely learn a thing or two from her.

  Grandma slid three cookies onto a plate and handed them to me, along with a glass of cold milk. Her usual colorful scarves fluttered around her body, the silver coins on the ends of them chiming together.

  My eyes narrowed. “You knew that I was coming over today.”

  Grandma smiled her mysterious Gypsy smile, the one that she used on all her clients. “I am psychic, pumpkin. It comes in handy sometimes. Especially when I want to bake my granddaughter some cookies.”

  Grandma Frost grabbed a couple of the warm cookies for herself, along with another glass of milk, and the two of us sat down at the kitchen table to eat. We didn’t talk much at first, both of us too busy stuffing our mouths with the sweet treats to bother with conversation. But eventually the cookies and milk disappeared and Grandma stared at me.

  “Isn’t there a big dance at the academy tonight?” she asked. “Something fancy and formal?”

  I blinked. “How do you know that? Did you have a vision of me in a dress or something?”

  “Of course not. I read about it in that electronic newsletter that your Professor Metis sends out every week.” Grandma gave me a sidelong look. “Actually, I got two newsletters this week. The regular one about the dance and the cafeteria menu and all that. The other one was a little more serious—it was all about that poor girl’s murder.”

  Uh-oh. I hadn’t planned on telling Grandma Frost about Jasmine Ashton because I didn’t want her to worry, but Grandma was too smart for me. She always was. I’d never been able to figure out if it was because she was psychic or just knew me that well. There was no use lying to her, so I drew in a breath and told her all about that night in the library and everything that I’d discovered about Jasmine since then.

  “I know all the professors think that it was just some Reaper bad guy after the Bowl of Tears,” I said, finishing up my s
tory. “But I have this weird feeling there’s something else going on. Something we’re all missing. Something obvious. Mom always told me to trust my feelings, my instincts, but I’m starting to wonder if she was wrong about that.”

  Grandma stared at me, a strange light flashing in her violet eyes. It wasn’t the look that she always got when she was seeing a vision of the future. No, this was something else. Like I’d said something to upset her. I supposed that she was just freaked out about Jasmine’s murder. I mean, who would want her only granddaughter to go to school where a student had gotten her throat cut?

  “Are you okay, Grandma?”

  She shook her head, and the light in her eyes vanished. “I’m fine. Just worried about you is all. I hate that you have to go to that school in the first place.”

  I hesitated. “Why do I have to go to Mythos? I’ve asked you before, but you’ve never really explained it to me.”

  Grandma sighed. “Because it’s finally time for you to learn how to use your Gypsy gift, Gwen. Something that you’ll do by going to Mythos.”

  “But I know how to use my psychometry magic already. I always have. I don’t see how going to Mythos changes anything.”

  She shook her head. “It may not make sense now, but it will someday. Trust me, pumpkin, okay?”

  I did trust her, more than anything, but I also wanted answers—answers about why my life had had to change so much. Why everyone at Mythos believed in things that I didn’t. And most especially, why Professor Metis and Grandma Frost thought that I belonged there in the first place.

  I thought about pressing my grandma for answers, but she looked so old in that moment, so sad and tired, like she’d used up all the life that was inside her and was nothing more than a hollow shell. And I just couldn’t do it—not now. Or maybe it was because part of me was scared of what the answers might be. Knowing other people’s secrets made me feel smart. Realizing there might be secrets that involved me made me nervous. Yeah, I could be a total hypocrite sometimes.