Jennifer Estep Bundle

by Jennifer Estep

  I concentrated on that last image, grabbing hold of and really focusing on it, pulling everything into sharp detail, hoping to see something that would tell me where the Helheim Dagger was. But the memory just showed her sitting on the main library steps in between the two stone gryphons that guarded the entrance. My mom turned her head and stared at the gryphon on the right side of the steps, then abruptly looked away. Nothing weird there. The statues always creeped me out, too. Apparently, the image hadn’t been as important as it had seemed.

  I let go of that memory and surfed through the others attached to the diary, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. Just my mom writing and doodling.

  After a few minutes, the images and feelings started to fade, telling me that I’d learned all I could from the diary—at least by using my Gypsy gift. I opened my eyes and flipped through the first couple of pages, my fingers skimming over my mom’s beautiful, flowing handwriting. Even if there wasn’t a clue in the diary about where my mom had hidden the dagger, it was still a piece of her, and I wanted to read it. I wanted to know what she’d done when she’d been at Mythos, how she had felt about the school, who her friends and enemies had been, the cute guys she’d crushed on, and mostly especially how she’d found the courage to be Nike’s Champion and fight Reapers. I wanted to know, well, everything—all her secrets.

  Since there was nothing else in the box, I packed all the clothes and other odd items back inside. Well, except for the quarters. I’d spend those.

  Cradling the diary in the crook of my arm, I turned out the light and walked down the attic stairs to my room on the second floor. Daphne was already asleep, and I lifted the covers and crawled into bed next to her. The Valkyrie murmured something in her sleep, then rolled away from me. A few pink sparks crackled on her fingertips at the motion before winking out. I lay still, and Daphne let out a quiet sigh and sank deeper into sleep. I put my mom’s diary on the nightstand within easy reach. Then I snuggled deeper under the covers, determined to go to sleep so I wouldn’t be totally exhausted tomorrow.

  Slowly, my body relaxed, my mind started to drift, and the comforting blackness began to rise, drowning out the horrors of the day. I was almost asleep ... when a low, angry growl sounded outside my window.

  My eyes snapped open.

  I’d heard growls like that before, and they usually meant one thing—that something was about to try and eat me.

  I lay there in bed, covers pulled up to my chin, straining my eyes and ears, scarcely daring to breathe, but all I heard was Daphne. The Valkyrie snored like she had a chainsaw stuck in her throat, which was super, super annoying. I was beginning to think I’d just dreamed the growl and was starting to sink back into sleep ...

  When I heard it again.

  This time, I couldn’t pretend I’d just imagined it. I slipped out of bed, reached down, and grabbed my scabbard. I slid Vic out of the leather with a whisper and crept over to the window.

  “What’s going on?” Vic mumbled, his half of a mouth stretching into a wide, jaw-cracking yawn.

  “I think there’s something outside,” I muttered.

  The sword blinked his one eye, which glowed like a purple moon in the darkness of my room. “You think? You don’t know? Gypsy, how many times have I told you? Only wake me up when there’s trouble—or Reapers lurking around that I can kill.”

  Vic snapped his eye shut and went back to sleep. I glared at the sword, tempted to shake him awake, but I’d learned there was nothing I could do to get Vic to behave. He might be a mostly inanimate object, but he definitely had a mind of his own.

  I made sure I had a good grip on the sword, then pulled the curtain back and peered outside.

  I didn’t see anything—not a thing.

  No, that wasn’t quite true. I didn’t see anything suspicious. The window looked out into the backyard, where a tall maple stood guard, the tree’s branches reaching all the way over to tap against the glass. When I was a kid, I used to climb outside, sit in the tree, and read my comic books. It had scared my mom to death. Grandma, too. They’d both thought I’d slip, fall, and break my neck, but I never did. Climbing was actually something I was good at. Thanks to my Gypsy gift, I’d always been able to flash on the branches and tell which ones were the strongest and which ones would snap under my weight.

  Right now, though, the branches bobbed back and forth like a tornado-force wind had just whipped through them. Weird. Nothing else was moving, and the wind wasn’t rattling the bushes in the backyard, but the tree looked like a whole flock of birds had suddenly erupted out of the top of it.

  Maybe it was the idea of birds, but I looked up just in time to see a shadow move across the sky in a lazy pattern—almost like it was circling the house.

  My mind flashed back to all those carvings and figures of Black rocs I’d seen when I’d picked up the Reaper girl’s map. Was it possible she’d sent a roc to spy on me? To peer in my window? Perhaps even to peck its way inside through the glass, grab the map she’d dropped, and kill me? I shivered and tightened my grip on Vic.

  I peered into the night, my eyes gliding right, then left, up, then down, looking for a roc, a Nemean prowler, or any other mythological creature that might be lurking about in the clouds above or the shadows below. I didn’t see anything. It wasn’t that late, but a dark frost had already painted the landscape in cold, silvery shards. I would have thought the sight pretty, if I hadn’t known just how much the shadows could hide—

  The growl sounded again.

  I froze, waiting for the sound to cut off like it had before. But this time, it just kept going and going, rumbling along like a car idling by the curb. So I focused, this time really listening to the growl instead of letting myself be frightened by it, and I realized it wasn’t a Nemean prowler like I’d feared. Otherwise, the sound would have been more of a hissing yowl. No, this growl sounded more like ... a dog. A very large, very angry dog.

  A shadow detached itself from the garage behind the house, slinked into the bushes, and disappeared through a gap in the picket fence. Beyond that, the landscape gave way to a hill covered by a wild tangle of briars and brambles, but my eyes locked onto that one shadow, trying to figure out exactly what it was.

  Something with four legs and a tail slipped into the thicket and vanished from sight. It could have been a stray dog—or a Fenrir wolf.

  Not too long ago, I’d helped a Fenrir wolf when it had been injured; afterward, it seemed to regard me as almost a friend. But I hadn’t seen the wolf since I’d left the Powder ski resort. Metis and the other professors had searched for it, but the wolf had escaped into the surrounding mountains. In a way, I was glad. Even though Preston had trained, beaten, and ordered it to kill me, the wolf wasn’t all bad. I’d hoped it would find a pack of wild Fenrir wolves to run and play and live with deep in the mountains.

  But why would the wolf be outside my window tonight? How would it have tracked me here all the way from the ski resort? And why now?

  Then another, more chilling thought entered my mind. What if it wasn’t my wolf, the one I’d helped, but instead another one sent by the Reapers to kill me? Daphne had told me that once you pissed off the Reapers, they didn’t stop coming until you were dead. I’d done plenty to annoy them in the short time I’d been at Mythos Academy.

  I crouched there by the window and watched, but nothing else moved in the tree, the sky, or the shadows below. I breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever had been out there, it looked like it had left, at least for this night.

  Still, it was a long time before I went back to bed—and longer still until I finally fell asleep.

  Chapter 7

  Early the next morning, Grandma Frost drove Daphne and me to Mythos Academy. Normally, I would have just taken the bus that shuttled tourists from Asheville up to the posh suburb of Cypress Mountain, where the academy was located. But after the attack yesterday, Grandma insisted on driving us—and she made me promise her that I wouldn’t sneak off campus to see her dur
ing the week like I usually did. Since I didn’t want her to worry, I reluctantly agreed.

  Grandma dropped us off in the parking lot behind the gym, joining a long line of limos and drivers who were doing the same. Kids got out of the cars and grabbed their designer luggage before hopping onto golf carts and zooming toward their dorm rooms across campus. By the time Daphne and I got our bags out of the trunk, all the carts were full, so we had to wait for someone to come back with an empty one.

  “Everybody’s so quiet,” Daphne murmured, holding her three bulging suitcases in one hand like they didn’t weigh any more than the pink purse hanging off her other arm. “It’s strange.”

  She was right—everyone was being quiet. Eerily so. Normally, kids would have been laughing, texting, and gossiping about who’d hooked up and split up over winter break, but this morning, all the kids had their chins tucked down into the tops of their expensive jackets and their hands shoved deep in their pockets, instead of messing with their phones. Even the kids who hadn’t been at the coliseum yesterday were feeling the fear and pain of the Reapers’ attack. It had been a brutal reminder of why we were all here at Mythos to start with.

  Finally, a couple of golf carts came back, and we were able to leave. Daphne and I put our stuff in our dorm rooms, and at seven thirty that morning, I once again found myself fighting for my life. But this time, it was only in the gym with Logan and his two Spartan friends, Oliver Hector and Kenzie Tanaka.

  Slash-slash-slash.

  I moved Vic through a series of quick maneuvers swinging my sword a little closer to Logan’s head every single time.

  “Ha!” I shouted as I flashed the blade at him. “Take that!”

  Logan grinned, his blue eyes practically glowing in his face. Nothing made the Spartan happier than sparring—especially since he almost always won.

  “Not bad, Gypsy girl,” he said. “You’re finally learning how to attack instead of just defend. But what are you going to do against something like this?”

  Clang-clang-clang.

  The Spartan launched into a series of even quicker, more complicated moves, and ten seconds later, his sword hovered against my throat.

  “And things were going so well up until now,” Vic grumbled.

  “Shut up, Vic,” I said with a smile on my face.

  Yeah, Logan had just mock killed me again, but for the very first time since he’d begun training me, there was a bit of color in his cheeks. The Spartan wasn’t breathing hard, but he’d actually had to put a little effort into beating me that time. I was starting to hold my own against him, and that was saying something, considering he was the best fighter at Mythos.

  Of course, when I’d kissed Logan a few weeks ago, I’d flashed on him and basically absorbed all of his fighting skills. Using my psychometry magic to see and tap into Logan’s memories and make them my own was how I’d kept Preston from killing us, but I never used my magic or Logan’s prowess against him while we were sparring. I wanted to develop some fighting skills of my own, something it finally seemed like I was doing.

  I glanced over at Kenzie and Oliver, who were sprawled across the gym bleachers.

  “Time?” I asked.

  Kenzie checked his phone. “Two minutes, one second. Up more than a minute from our last session before the break.”

  “Looking good, Gypsy,” Oliver said, grinning and giving me a thumbs-up.

  I grinned back. Logan and I headed over to the bleachers. We’d been fighting with swords for half an hour now, and it was time to move on to ranged weapons, like bows, something Kenzie and Oliver used more than Logan did. While Kenzie and Logan set up the archery target and decided what kind of bow we’d practice with today, I walked over to where Oliver sat texting on his phone.

  “So,” I asked the Spartan. “How was your holiday?”

  “Good,” he said. “Lots of food, lots of family stuff, you know, the usual.”

  “And did you meet anyone cute over break?”

  Oliver looked down at his phone, and a blush started to stain his cheeks. “Maybe.”

  I smiled. “Really? That’s great! You’ll have to give me all the juicy details.”

  Oliver shook his head and ran his fingers through his sandy blond hair. “I think it’s too soon for that. I mean, I’m not dating the guy yet or anything. Besides, I still have feelings for Kenzie.”

  Oliver glanced over at his best friend, who was debating the merits of different types of crossbows with Logan. Kenzie didn’t make my heart pound like Logan did, but he was cute in his own right, with his glossy black hair and dark eyes. Before the holiday break, I’d learned that Oliver had a serious, serious crush on him, though Kenzie, who was not gay, had no idea.

  “You want to talk about it?” I asked in a soft voice.

  Oliver shook his head. “Nah. I’ll get over Kenzie, really, I will. It will just take some time.” Another grin creased his face. “Maybe you’d like to talk, say, about that pretty new necklace you’re wearing? How are things with you and Logan?”

  I ran my fingers over the silver strands wrapped around my throat. My gaze went to Logan, who was still talking to Kenzie. “It’s complicated. I mean, we didn’t exactly get a chance to talk yesterday, you know?”

  Oliver’s face darkened. “I know. Logan called Kenzie and me last night and told us what had happened. I can’t believe the Reapers attacked the coliseum like that just because they thought the Helheim Dagger might be there. That was vicious, even for them.”

  I was about to answer him when one of the doors at the far end of the gym creaked open and three kids stepped inside—two girls and a guy.

  They stood in the doorway, eyes wide, peering into the gym like they were expecting to see something really cool inside. I glanced around, wondering what they could be so interested in, but the gym looked the same as it always did. Championship banners in fencing, archery, and other sports dangling from the high ceiling, wooden bleachers jutting out from two of the walls, several racks of weapons stacked up against one another.

  But the kids must have seen what they were looking for because the three of them walked forward, their shoes scuffing on the thick mats that covered most of the floor.

  “Who are they?” I asked. “And what do you think they’re doing here?”

  Oliver glanced over at them. “Some first-year students. I’m not sure what their names are, but I’ve seen them around campus.”

  At Mythos, the students ranged from the first-years, who were sixteen, all the way up to the sixth-years, who were twenty-one. The upper-class students mixed and socialized, but nobody had much to do with the first-years, not even the kids in my class, who were only a year or so older.

  The three kids tiptoed forward and took seats on the bleachers a few feet away from Oliver and me. Then, they just sat there, staring at us like they were waiting for something amazing to happen. I noticed the guy was carrying a staff in addition to his backpack, while the girls both had scabbards that held swords. Nothing unusual there. Practically all the kids took their weapon of choice to classes with them. At Mythos, your weapon told everyone what kind of warrior you were, what kind of magic you had, and what you could do with it, and the swords, staffs, and bows were status symbols just as much as having the latest phone or laptop.

  Logan and Kenzie finished setting up the archery target and headed back to the bleachers. Logan looked at the kids, then at Oliver and me. We both shrugged. We didn’t know who they were or what they wanted. Usually, it was just the four of us in the gym this early in the morning before classes started.

  “Do you guys need something?” Logan asked.

  “Oh, we thought we would, um, watch you,” one of the girls said. “Someone told us that Logan Quinn trains every morning in the gym. That’s you, right?”

  Logan frowned. “Yeah, but why would you guys want to watch me? It’s just weapons training. The same stuff we do in gym class every day.”

  “Because you killed Reapers at the coliseum yesterd
ay,” the guy explained, his eyes bright with excitement. “How awesome was it? I mean, actually getting to fight them? I bet it was supercool.”

  His words unleashed a flood of memories, and for a moment, I was back at the coliseum. The image of the Reaper stabbing Carson flashed through my mind, while Daphne’s screams echoed in my head. And the blood—all the blood that had splashed everywhere. The coppery stench of it filled my nose. My stomach twisted, and my heart pounded as if it had all just happened a second ago.

  “Awesome?” I snapped. “It wasn’t awesome at all. It was hard and scary and dangerous, and I thought I was going to throw up the whole time. There was nothing awesome about it, and if you think there was, then you’re an idiot.”

  The guy’s mouth fell open, and he let out a huff. “Oh, please, you’re just jealous you didn’t kill as many Reapers as Logan did. I heard you just got one, while he killed, like, a dozen.”

  A dozen? Where was he getting that ridiculous number from? Logan had only killed two Reapers—not a dozen. Actually, Daphne had taken out the most Reapers, since the Valkyrie had killed three of them.

  “Is that little punk impugning your fighting skills?” Vic muttered. “Why don’t we go show him who’s boss, eh, Gwen?”

  I gripped Vic tighter, muffling the sound of his voice, but his words only made me that much angrier. So much so that I didn’t realize I’d taken a menacing step forward until I felt Logan’s hand on my arm.

  “Gypsy girl,” Logan said in a soft voice. “It’s all right. Calm down. He doesn’t mean anything by it.”

  I drew in a breath and let it out. “Well, he shouldn’t talk about things he doesn’t know anything about.”

  The guy gave me a haughty look that turned into an arrogant smirk when Logan told them they could stay and watch us train. I moved over to the archery target and started shooting arrows with a bow, while Kenzie and Oliver stood off to one side, calling out tips and suggestions.