Jennifer Estep Bundle

by Jennifer Estep

  Gwen’s Class Schedule

  First period: English lit. I love books—really, I do—but would it kill the professor to let us read some freaking comic books or graphic novels every once in a while? Seriously, they’re so much more fun than all this so-called classic literature that I’m stuck reading all the time.

  Second period: Calculus. I’m good at calculus, but I totally do not see the point of it. All those x’s and y’s are all hypothetical anyway, right?

  Third period: Geography and world politics. The geography is interesting, but the world politics part is a total snooze. Besides, everyone knows that politicians lie.

  Lunch break: A miserable hour where I get to eat by myself in the back of the dining hall while everyone else hangs out with their friends. Oh, goodie.

  Fourth period: Chemistry. Meh. I’m totally ambivalent about chemistry.

  Fifth period: Gym, aka weapons training. I hate gym class. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Why can’t I just be book smart? I have a 4.0 GPA. Why do I have to be coordinated, too? That’s just too much to ask.

  Sixth period: Myth-history. Professor Metis is pretty cool, but it cracks me up that she and the other kids actually believe all this stuff about gods, goddesses, mythological monsters, and Reapers of Chaos. It’s not history, and it’s certainly not real. Uh, is it?

  After-school detour: Yeah, I’ll admit it. I sneak off campus every chance I get, hop on a bus, and go see my Grandma Frost, who lives close to the academy. What are the Powers That Were at the academy going to do—expel me?

  After-school job: I have to hustle from my Grandma Frost’s house back to the academy so I can work at the Library of Antiquities a few days a week. Boring. But the worst part is Nickamedes, who actually thinks that all the dusty pieces of junk in the glass cases are real artifacts—that they actually have magic attached to them. Whatever, dude. I think you’ve been stuck in the library a little too long. Although there’s this sword that I just can’t seem to stay away from....

  Gwen’s First Report on Select Gods and Goddesses for Professor Metis’s Myth-History Class Dated October 1

  So I’m supposed to write this report on some of the various gods and goddesses we’ll be learning about during the semester. Note that I am writing this in protest, Professor Metis, as you know that I don’t really believe in all this magic mumbo jumbo. But since I want to keep my perfect 4.0 GPA intact, here goes:

  Nike: the Greek goddess of victory. Nike was responsible for leading the other members of the Pantheon—the good magic guys—to victory over Loki and his Reapers of Chaos way back in the day. Since Nike is the embodiment of victory, she can never be defeated, not even by a superbad guy like Loki. Never losing? Ever? Sounds like a pretty cool gig to me.

  Athena: the Greek goddess of wisdom. She and Nike are rumored to be pretty tight. I can see why, since victory and wisdom usually go hand in hand.

  Loki: the Norse god of chaos. Loki started out as a simple trickster, but over time his power-hungry nature got the best of him and he started planning to take over the world. He would have succeeded, too, if not for Nike and the other members of the Pantheon banding together to lay the smackdown on him and his evil followers, the Reapers of Chaos. The other gods have imprisoned Loki twice now, but he doesn’t seem to me like the kind of guy who’s ever going to give up... .

  Sigyn: the Norse goddess of ... well, I’m not sure exactly what she’s the goddess of. Some of my myth-history books say she’s the goddess of devotion. Kind of a lame thing to be a goddess of, if you ask me. Anyway, Loki’s wife loved him so much that when the other gods imprisoned him the first time around she held a bowl—the Bowl of Tears—up over his head in order to stop snake venom from dripping onto his handsome face. Kind of dumb, if you ask me, staying with a guy who’s basically a comic book supervillain. Sigyn so needs to move on.

  Addendum to First Report Added at Request of Student Dated October 30

  Ignore previous report. Well, at least the snarky comments. Okay, okay, ignore pretty much the whole report. And I, uh, take back what I said before about none of the gods and goddesses being real. I’ve got a talking magic sword named Vic that says otherwise.

  Plus, it’s kind of hard not to believe in gods and goddesses after you’ve come face-to-face with one—especially Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, who’s the ultimate kick-ass warrior chick.

  And you learn that Nike’s the reason that you have magic in the first place. That the goddess gifted your first ancestor with magic way back in the day.

  And you learn that pretty much every girl in your whole family since then has served Nike in some way over the years.

  And most especially when Nike picks you to be her new Champion. Seriously, me, a freaking Champion. I don’t really think that I’m Champion material at all, but Nike seems to think otherwise for whatever reason. The goddess has plans for me. Big plans. I’m just not quite sure what they are—or how much danger they’ll put me in....

  Read on for a peek at the

  magic, myths, and monsters

  Gwen will face in

  KISS OF FROST,

  coming in December.

  Chapter 1

  Logan Quinn was trying to kill me.

  The Spartan relentlessly pursued me, cutting me off every single time I tried to duck around him and run away.

  Swipe-swipe-swipe.

  Logan swung his sword at me over and over again, the shining silver blade inching a little closer to my throat every single time. His muscles rippled underneath his tight long-sleeved T-shirt as he smoothly moved from one attack position to the next. A smile tugged up his lips, and his ice blue eyes practically glowed with the thrill of battle.

  I did not glow with the thrill of battle. Cringe, yes. Glow, no.

  Clang-clang-clang.

  I brought up my own sword, trying to fend off Logan before he separated my head from my shoulders. Three times, I parried his blows, wincing whenever his sword hit mine, but the last time I wasn’t quite quick enough. Logan stepped forward, the edge of his sword a whisper away from kissing my throat before I could do much more than blink and wonder how it had gotten there to start with.

  And Logan didn’t stop there. He snapped his free wrist to one side and knocked my weapon out of my hand, sending it flying across the gym. My sword somersaulted several times in the air before landing point down in one of the thick mats that covered the gym floor.

  “Dead again, Gypsy girl,” Logan said in a soft voice. “That makes twelve kills in a row now.”

  I sighed. “I know. Believe me, I know. And I’m not any happier about it than you are.”

  Logan nodded, dropped the sword from my throat, and stepped back. Then, he turned and looked over his shoulder at two other Spartan guys who were sprawled across the bleachers, alternately texting on their phones and watching us with bored disinterest.

  “Time?” Logan asked.

  Kenzie Tanaka hit a button on his phone. “Forty-five seconds. Up from thirty-five seconds the time before.”

  “Gwen’s lasting a little longer at least,” Oliver Hector chimed in. “Must be the Wonder Woman T-shirt finally adding to her awesome fighting skills.”

  My face flushed at his snide tone. Okay, so maybe I had worn my favorite long-sleeved superhero shirt this morning in hopes that it might bring me a little luck, which I seriously needed when it came to any kind of fight. But he didn’t have to mock me about it, especially not in front of the others.

  Oliver grinned and smirked at me. I crossed my arms over my chest and gave him a dirty look.

  I didn’t know what Oliver’s deal was, but he always seemed to go out of his way to annoy me. Maybe he thought he was being charming or something. Some guys at Mythos Academy were like that—they thought being total jerks was supercool. Whatever. I had zero interest in the Spartan that way. Oh, Oliver was cute enough with his dirty blond hair, forest green eyes, tan skin, and lazy grin. So was Kenzie, with his glossy black hair and eyes. Not to mention
the obvious muscles the two of them had and the lean strength that was so evident in their bodies. The only problem was that the two Spartans weren’t Logan Quinn.

  Logan was the one I was interested in—even if he had already broken my heart back in the fall.

  Thinking about my stupid, hopeless, unreturned feelings for Logan soured my already grumpy mood, and I stalked across the mats toward my sword.

  The gym at Mythos Academy was about five times the size of a regular one, with a ceiling that soared several hundred feet above my head. In some ways, it was completely normal. Bright banners proclaiming various academy championships in fencing, archery, swimming, and other froufrou sports dangled from the rafters, while wooden bleachers jutted out from two of the walls. Mats covered the floor, hiding the squeaky parquet basketball court from sight.

  And then there were the weapons.

  Racks and racks of them were stacked against another wall, going up so high there was a ladder attached to one side to get to the weapons on the top rows. Swords, daggers, staffs, spears, bows, quivers full of curved, wicked-looking arrows. All of them razor sharp and ready to be picked up and used by the students, most of whom took exceptional pride in showing off their prowess with the sharp, pointed edges.

  The weapons were one of the ways in which Mythos Academy was anything but normal.

  I reached my sword, which was still wobbling back and forth, reminding me of my old piano teacher’s metronome slowly ticking from side to side. I reached down, but before I could tug the sword out of the mat a round silver bulge on the hilt snapped open—revealing a narrowed, angry eye.

  “Another bloody defeat,” Vic muttered, his displeasure giving even more bite to his British accent. “Gwen Frost, you couldn’t kill a Reaper to save your bloody life.”

  I narrowed my own eyes and glared at Vic, hoping he would get the message to shut up already before Logan and the others heard him. I didn’t want to advertise the fact that I had a talking sword. I didn’t want to advertise a lot of things about myself. Not at Mythos.

  For his part, Vic glared right back at me, his eye a curious color that was somewhere between purple and gray. Vic wasn’t alive, not exactly, but I’d come to think of him as that way. Vic was a simple enough sword—a long blade made out of silver metal. But what made the sword seem, well, human to me was the fact that the hilt was shaped like half of a man’s face—like there was a real person trapped there inside the metal who was trying to get out. A slash of a mouth, a groove of a nose, a round bulge of an eye, the curve of an ear. All that added up to Vic, whatever or whoever he really was.

  Well, that and his bloodthirsty attitude. Vic wanted to kill things—Reapers, specifically. Until we’re both bathed in their blood and hungry for more! he’d crowed to me on more than one occasion when I was alone in my dorm room practicing with him.

  Please. The only things I could kill with ease were bugs. And even then only the tiny ones. The big ones crunched too much and made me feel all icked out and guilty. Doing the same to Reapers of Chaos, some seriously bad guys, was totally out of the question. Not unless I got doused in radioactive goo and developed superpowers or something, like Karma Girl, one of my favorite superheroines.

  “What are you going to do when a real Reaper attacks you?” Vic demanded. “Run away and hope he doesn’t chase after you?”

  Actually, that sounded like an excellent plan to me, but I knew Vic wouldn’t see it that way. Neither would Logan, Kenzie, or Oliver, since the guys were all Spartans, descended from a long line of magical mythological warriors. Killing things was as natural as breathing to them. It was what they’d been trained to do since birth, along with the other kids at the academy.

  For the most part, the guys at Mythos were either Vikings or Romans, while the girls were Valkyries or Amazons. But tons of other ancient warrior types attended the academy, everyone from Samurais and Ninjas to Celts and Persians to the Spartans in front of me.

  Killing was definitely not natural to me, but I’d been thrust into this twisted world back at the beginning of the school year. That’s when I’d first started attending Mythos, after a serious freak-out with my Gypsy magic back at my old public high school. Now, the academy with all its warrior whiz kids, scary Reaper bad guys, mythological monsters, and an angry, vengeful god was a place that I just couldn’t escape—no matter how much I would have liked to.

  Especially since there was a goddess counting on me to do something about all the Bad, Bad Things out there in the world—and the ones hidden here on campus, too.

  “Shut up, Vic,” I growled, tugging the sword free of the mat.

  I felt Vic’s mouth move underneath my palm like he was going to backtalk me some more, but then he let out a loud harrumph and his eye snapped shut. I sighed again. Now he was in one of his moods, which meant I was going to have to cajole him to open his eye and speak to me again later in the day. Maybe I’d turn on the TV in my dorm room and see if there was some kind of action-adventure movie on. Watching the bad guys get theirs always seemed to bring Vic out of one of his funks, and the bloodier the movie was the better he liked it.

  “Who are you talking to, Gwen?”

  Oliver Hector’s voice sounded right beside me, and I had to clamp my lips together to keep from shrieking in surprise. I hadn’t heard the Spartan sneak up on me.

  “Nobody.”

  He gave me a look that said he thought I was a complete freak, then shook his head. “Come on. Logan wants you to practice shooting targets next.”

  I looked around, but Logan had disappeared while I’d been talking to Vic. So had Kenzie Tanaka. They’d probably gone to get an energy drink out of one of the vending machines outside the gym, leaving me alone with Oliver. Great.

  Even grumpier than before, I stalked behind Oliver over to the other side of the gym, where an archery target had been set up. The Spartan headed for one of the weapons racks, while I kept going toward the bleachers.

  The four of us had dumped our bags on the bleachers when we’d first come into the gym at seven this morning. I’d only been going to Mythos a few months, and I hadn’t had the lifelong warrior training that the other students had. Now, I was struggling to catch up, which meant schlepping over to the gym every single morning for an hour’s worth of work with Logan and his friends before my regular classes started.

  Out of all the kids at the academy, the Spartans were the best warriors, and Professor Metis had thought they could whip me into shape in no time flat. It wasn’t working out that way, though. I just wasn’t warrior material, no matter what some people—goddess included—thought.

  I slid Vic into his black leather scabbard and laid him flat on one of the bleachers so he wouldn’t fall off. I’d already dropped the sword enough times this morning. Then, I reached into my gray messenger bag for a mirror and brush so I could pull my hair back into a tighter, neater ponytail, since it had come undone while I’d been sparring with Logan.

  I squinted at my reflection in the smooth glass. Wavy brown hair, winter white skin dotted here and there with a few freckles, and eyes that were a strange shade of purple. Violet eyes are smiling eyes, my mom had always said. I thought of how easily Logan had kicked my ass while we’d been training. Nope, I wasn’t smiling about anything this morning.

  When I was done fixing my hair, I put the mirror and brush back into my bag and threw it onto the bleachers. In the process, my bag hit Oliver’s and knocked his to the floor, because I was just that kind of total uncoordinated klutz. And of course, the top of his bag popped open and all kinds of stuff spilled out, tumbling over the mats. Pens, pencils, books, his iPod, a laptop, some silver throwing daggers.

  Sighing, I got down on my knees and started scooping everything back into the bag, careful to use the edge of my sleeve and not actually touch anything with my bare fingers. I had no desire to see into the inner workings of Oliver Hector’s mind, but that’s what would happen if I wasn’t careful.

  I managed to get everything bac
k into the bag except for a thick red notebook. A couple of the metal rings had been bent out of shape, and they snagged on the fabric every time I tried to slide the notebook back into the bag where it belonged. I just didn’t have a long enough sleeve to bend all the metal down, and I couldn’t get a good grip with the soft cotton anyway. Exasperated, I took hold of the metal with my sleeve so I wouldn’t scrape my skin, then grabbed the bottom of the notebook with my bare hand.

  The images hit me the second my fingers touched the red cover.

  A picture of Oliver popped into my head, one of the Spartan leaning over the desk in his dorm room and writing in the notebook. One by one, the images flashed by, giving me a condensed high-def version of Oliver alternately doodling, drawing, and scribbling furiously in the notebook. After a few seconds, the feelings kicked in and I started experiencing Oliver’s emotions, too. All the things he’d felt when he’d been writing in his notebook. The dull boredom of doing class assignments, the annoyed frustration of trying to understand some of the complicated homework, and then, surprisingly, a soft, dreamy fizz that warmed my whole body—

  “What are you doing? That’s mine,” Oliver snapped in a harsh voice.

  I shook off the images and feelings and looked up. The Spartan stood over me, his features tight and pinched.

  “Sorry,” I snapped back. “I didn’t think a guy like you would be so protective of his notebook. What’s in here that’s so supersecret? A list of everyone you’ve slept with? Let me guess. You don’t want me to know who you’ve been hooking up with. You want to tell everyone yourself because that’s what all the guys at Mythos do—brag about their stupid conquests, right?”