Jennifer Estep Bundle

by Jennifer Estep

  “Sure, I am,” Daphne said. “It’s the same stuff you always talk about. You and Logan and your star-crossed relationship, and this big, important thing you have to do for Nike, because you’re her freaking Champion. Give it a rest, Gwen. You are not the absolute center of the universe. The rest of us have problems, too, you know.”

  I stared at the Valkyrie, shocked and a little hurt by her snarky words. “What’s wrong with you? Why would you say something like that to me? You’re supposed to be my friend—my best friend.”

  Daphne glared at me, causing sparks to shoot out of her fingertips. For a moment, she stared at the pink sparks of magic flickering all around her, and her black gaze hardened.

  “Forget it,” she muttered. “You wouldn’t understand anyway.”

  Then, the Valkyrie got to her feet, grabbed her tray, and stalked out of the dining hall without another word.

  I sat there and watched her go, wondering what that had been about. Daphne had been quiet and distracted ever since we’d sat down, but I thought her mood just had to do with the attack at the coliseum and almost losing Carson. Almost watching your boyfriend die, then healing him with magic you suddenly developed was enough to shake up anybody, even the tough, sassy Valkyrie. But it seemed like there was something else going on with my friend, and I had no idea what it was. For the second time in two days, someone had told me that I just wouldn’t understand. Well, I wasn’t a mind reader. I couldn’t understand if they wouldn’t tell me what was going on in the first place.

  Things didn’t get any better the rest of the day, especially since I was paired with Talia in gym class. We sparred with staffs, and the tall Amazon went out of her way to kick my ass, sweeping my feet out from under me and busting my knuckles as many times as she could. I knew it was because Talia was friends with Savannah.

  I wondered if it would make Savannah feel better to know that I’d taken Logan away from myself, too, just by being me.

  Even Professor Metis was in a weird mood in myth-history class, and she rushed out the door the second the last bell of the day rang.

  I walked over to my dorm room to check on Nott and gave the Fenir wolf some meat from the dining hall, along with some fresh water. Then it was time for me to meet up with Vivian Holler at Valhalla Hall.

  Valhalla Hall was the plushest dorm at Mythos and home to most of the Valkyrie mean-girl princesses, although a few Amazons like Savannah lived there, too. I headed up to the second floor, where Vivian’s room was, and knocked on the door.

  A second later, Vivian opened it and gave me a shy smile. “Come on in.”

  I stepped inside the room, and Vivian shut the door behind me. For a second, I just stood there, staring at everything. A bed, a desk, a dresser, some bookshelves, a nice vanity table. Vivian had the same dorm room furniture that most of the girls did.

  Vivian had said she was in the drama club, but she hadn’t told me just how into it she was. Posters from popular musicals like Beauty and the Beast and The Scarlet Pimpernel covered the walls, along with smaller, framed playbills from a couple of plays the Mythos students had staged, including The Odyssey and The Iliad. There were more Janus masks in here, too, from the bronze bookends that propped up a stack of textbooks to the glittery gold stickers that decorated the mirror over the vanity table to a notepad on the desk. I thought I was a little obsessive about comic books, but I had nothing on Vivian.

  I eyed the bookends. It was cool that Vivian was so into theater stuff, but all those crying and laughing faces kind of creeped me out a little—

  “So are you ready to get started?” Vivian asked, cutting into my thoughts. “Because I’ve got to meet up with Savannah and Talia in a few minutes.”

  “Sure,” I said, pulling my eyes away from the masks. “Where do you last remember seeing the ring? Do you remember having it in your room? Or do you think you lost it somewhere on campus?”

  I really, really hoped it was just here in the room. If Vivian had dropped it on her way to one of her classes, it could take me days to find the ring—if I ever did.

  Vivian hesitated. “The last time I remember seeing the ring was in here. Savannah and I were watching TV and hanging out Sunday night, and I remember taking it off and putting it down on my vanity table, right next to my jewelry box. But it’s not in there now, and I can’t find it anywhere.”

  She gestured at the jewelry box, which was also shaped like a pair of faces. It was carved out of onyx and had a slick, glossy surface that reminded me of a piano. Maybe it was a trick of the sunlight sliding in through the window, but for a moment, it seemed like the onyx faces melted into a puddle of black blood that oozed all over the glass-topped table—

  I blinked, and the image vanished. The box was just a box once more.

  “Gwen?” Vivian asked. “Are you okay? You have this strange look on your face.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Can you show me exactly where on the vanity table you put the ring?”

  She gestured to a spot right next to the jewelry box. I drew in a breath, leaned over, touched the surface of the vanity table, and waited for the images to fill my mind.

  Nothing happened.

  I didn’t see anything. No memories, no flashes of feeling, no flickers of emotion, nothing. I moved my fingers all around the table, until I’d touched the entire surface, along with the jewelry box, but I still didn’t get any vibes off it. I stared at the table and realized just how brand-new it looked—and not at all beat up like dorm room furniture usually was.

  “Is this a new table?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Vivian said. “My dad had it delivered this morning. New furniture was part of my Christmas present this year. Everything in here is new, including the jewelry box.”

  That seemed like kind of an odd Christmas present to me. Given how lavishly most of the warrior parents spoiled their kids, I would have expected Vivian to get something like a diamond tennis bracelet, an Aston Martin, or a custom-made sword for Christmas. Then again, I’d bought my grandma a cookie jar for the holiday, so I couldn’t judge too harshly.

  Still, the fact that Vivian’s furniture was all new was a problem, since she hadn’t used it enough yet to leave any imprints of herself behind. That meant I couldn’t get any vibes off her furniture and that I wouldn’t be able to use my Gypsy gift to follow the trail of psychic flashes to her ring, wherever it was.

  It was rare, but every once in a while, I just couldn’t find a missing item. Sometimes there wasn’t much of a trail to follow. Keys slid out of pockets, phones fell out of purses, and watches slipped off wrists every day in every place you could think of. Sometimes the items were just lost for good and no amount of magic or snooping on my part would make them reappear.

  “Is something wrong?” Vivian asked.

  I shook my head. “Nah. I just realized this isn’t going to be as easy as I thought.”

  Vivian gave me a strange look, but she didn’t say anything else. Instead, she sat on the bed and watched while I crawled around the room, running my hands over all her books, makeup, and furniture, searching high and low for her ring.

  I didn’t find the ring, and I didn’t get a single usable vibe off Vivian’s things—not one. Oh, I got a few faint flashes of her reading through her favorite books or putting on her makeup when I touched those items, but those were just the same ordinary vibes I always saw when I touched stuff like that. Almost everything else in her room was new, shiny, and pristine. Good for her, but bad for me since I was trying to use my Gypsy gift.

  Finally, I admitted defeat and climbed to my feet, dusting my hands off on my jeans. “Well, you’re right. I looked under and behind every piece of furniture, and your ring isn’t in here anywhere. Do you think you might have lost it somewhere else on campus? Maybe you took it off before weapons training and left it in one of the gym lockers?”

  She hesitated, a troubled light filling her topaz eyes. “That’s the thing. I’m not so sure that I lost it. I think—I think someone m
ight have taken my ring.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Really? Who? I find stuff for kids all the time, and in my experience, if you think someone stole your ring, then you’re probably right. It happens more than you would think.”

  It always surprised me how totally klepto some of the warrior whiz kids were. Most of them had all the money in the world, but they still stole things from other students and even their friends out of hate, jealousy, or spite. I supposed that actually, you know, paying for something you wanted was so last year.

  Vivian picked at a loose thread on her comforter. “It’s so silly, though. She’s my friend. She would never do anything like that. She would never steal from me, especially not that ring. She knows how much it means to me.”

  “What’s so special about the ring?”

  Vivian bit her lip and dropped her head. “It belonged to my mom. She gave it to me right before she died.”

  “Oh. I’m so sorry.”

  I couldn’t think of anything else to say, and I knew that whatever I said wouldn’t really make a difference anyway. My words wouldn’t bring Vivian any kind of real comfort. Nothing anyone had said to me after my mom was murdered had helped.

  She shrugged. “It happened when I was thirteen. Reapers, you know.”

  My thoughts drifted to Logan, and how his mom and older sister had been murdered by Reapers, too, probably the same way Vivian’s mom had been. Thinking about the Spartan made my heart ache, but I forced myself to focus on the girl in front of me.

  “Come on, Vivian. You might as well tell me who you think stole your ring. It’ll make it that much easier for me to find it if I have a place to start looking.”

  She sighed. “Savannah. I think it was Savannah. Like I said before, the last time I remember having the ring was in my room when we were hanging out two nights ago. She left right before the ten o’clock curfew, and yesterday morning I couldn’t find my ring. It was just ... gone.”

  Vivian’s voice trembled, and she put her hand up over her eyes. Like just the thought that Savannah might have taken the ring was enough to make her cry.

  I frowned, thinking about her soft words. Why would Savannah steal from her friend? Yeah, kids stole from other kids at Mythos all the time, but usually only the superexpensive, high-end items—TVs, platinum watches, emerald earrings the size of quarters. Taking such a simple gold ring, especially when Savannah knew how much it meant to her friend, well, that sounded like something a Reaper would do just for meanness.

  I thought of that flash of red I’d seen in Savannah’s eyes, first at the coliseum and then again yesterday in the dining hall. Could—could Savannah be a Reaper? Could she even be the Reaper—the Reaper girl who’d murdered my mom? Loki’s Champion?

  I didn’t know where the thoughts came from, but once they popped into my head, I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about them. For some reason, the ideas just wormed deeper and deeper into my mind, burrowing into my brain like cold, grasping fingers—

  “So what’s next?” Vivian asked.

  Once again, a dull ache started in the back of my skull, but I finally shook off my suspicions about Savannah. “You give me the hundred-dollar retainer, like we agreed on. I track down some leads and report back to you in a few days. If I find your ring, you pay me the rest of the money, but if I can’t find it, I give you back your hundred bucks. Okay?”

  Vivian nodded, got her wallet out of her designer purse, and passed me a crisp hundred-dollar bill. I held on to the money for a moment, but I didn’t get much of a vibe off it. Just the feeling of it being handed from one person to another until it had wound up with Vivian.

  “Thanks,” I said, stuffing the money into my jeans pocket. “I’ll try to have some news for you in a day or two.”

  I’d done all I could for Vivian, so I headed toward the door. I started to reach for the knob, but Vivian beat me to it and opened the door instead. Well, that was polite of her.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  She nodded. “You’re welcome. And thanks for looking for my ring, Gwen. You have no idea how much it means to me.”

  I smiled at her. “Hey, that’s why I’m the Gypsy girl.”

  I left Vivian’s room, and she shut the door behind me. On my way toward the stairs, I passed Daphne’s room. Like the other Valkyrie wannabe princesses, Daphne also lived at Valhalla Hall. I hadn’t talked to the Valkyrie since our fight at lunch, and she hadn’t called or texted me. I didn’t know what was going on with her, what had upset her so much, but I already missed her. I hadn’t even thought to tell her about Nott showing up yet, and I needed someone to talk to about the wolf, Logan, and most especially about whether or not Savannah could really be a Reaper.

  I hesitated, then knocked on Daphne’s door. No answer. I didn’t hear any music playing inside. No sounds of typing, either. The Valkyrie wasn’t in there working on one of her many computers. Disappointed, I plodded down the stairs, left the dorm, and headed across campus to the English-history building, where Metis had her office.

  Today was Tuesday, which meant it was time for me to pay a visit to Preston Ashton. Ever since the Reaper had been imprisoned at the academy, I’d been using my Gypsy gift to peer into his mind, to try to find out what the other Reapers were up to. Now, of course, I wanted to know what he knew about the Helheim Dagger and if he had a clue as to where it might be hidden. Maybe it was irrational, but I also wanted to see for myself that Preston was still in the academy prison. After hearing that creepy voice whispering to me in the library last night, I wanted to make sure Preston was locked away where he couldn’t hurt anyone—especially not my Grandma Frost.

  I entered the building and walked down the hallway to Metis’s office. To my surprise, the door was cracked open, and I could see two figures inside through the frosted glass. I’d just raised my hand to knock when a voice drifted out to me.

  “But I don’t want to be a healer,” someone muttered. “I never wanted to be a healer.”

  I frowned. That sounded like Daphne. I eased to one side so I could look in through the crack and realized that it was Daphne. The Valkyrie stood in front of Metis’s desk, her hands on her hips, princess pink sparks of magic snapping in the air around her.

  “I’m afraid you don’t have a choice, Daphne,” Metis said in a gentle voice. “Your magic has quickened. There’s no reversing it. We’ve met after classes two days in a row now, and nothing’s changed.”

  Well, that explained where Metis had rushed off to after myth-history.

  Daphne threw her hands up, causing the sparks to cascade over her like raindrops falling from the sky. “But it only quickened because I was so upset about Carson. Because the Reaper stabbed him, and he was going to die.”

  “And your magic’s quickening then, emerging then, was what let you save him,” Metis said.

  Daphne didn’t say anything, but she slumped down in the chair in front of the professor’s desk. “You don’t understand. None of the other Valkyries in my family are healers. My mom has fire magic, and so did my grandma before she died. I thought that’s what kind of power I would have, too. Something strong, something powerful. Not this—this useless thing.”

  Daphne held up her fingers and concentrated. After a moment, the pink sparks bled together, forming a rosy, healing glow that coated her entire hand. Once again, I had the strangest sensation that I could reach out and grab hold of her magic, that I would be able to feel it pouring into me, if only I were to touch the Valkyrie. It was the same feeling I’d had at the coliseum, when I’d grabbed Daphne’s hand and had seen that brilliant pink light burning in her heart—that beautiful, beautiful spark.

  “And then, there’s this,” Daphne muttered.

  The Valkyrie leaned down. When she straightened back up, I realized she was clutching two things in her hands—the onyx bow and the quiver with its single golden arrow. The weapons she’d used to fight the Reapers. I blinked. I’d thought Daphne had left those behind at the Crius Coliseum after the attack.


  “What am I supposed to do with these?” Daphne snapped. “I’ve given them back to you twice now, but every time I go to my room, there they are, lying on my bed. And the same thing’s happened with Carson and that stupid horn he picked up at the coliseum.”

  She laid the weapons on the desk and shoved them at Metis. After a moment, the professor reached over and picked up first the bow, then the quiver. She examined them both for several seconds before putting them down.

  “Daphne, do you ... see anything on the bow or quiver? Any words or symbols?” Metis asked in a soft voice.

  My breath caught in my throat. I knew what Metis was really asking my friend—if Daphne could read some sort of saying on the weapons. Every Champion was given a weapon by the god or goddess she served, and only a Champion could read the words on her specific weapon. Back in the coliseum, I remembered Daphne’s saying the bow and quiver had once belonged to Sigyn, the Norse goddess of devotion. Could—could the goddess have picked Daphne to be her Champion? Was that why the weapons kept showing up in the Valkyrie’s room? Was that why Carson still had that strange horn, too?

  Daphne sighed and picked up the bow and quiver, looking them over. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Well, maybe you will someday soon,” Metis said. “Until then, it appears there is some magic binding the weapons to you, so you might as well keep them—and use them, should the need arise.”

  “Whatever,” Daphne muttered. “Are we done? Because I’ve got an essay to write for English lit.”

  Metis nodded, and Daphne got to her feet and grabbed her things, including the onyx bow and quiver. I barely had time to back up before the Valkyrie yanked open the door and saw me standing in the hallway. Surprise filled her face, but it was quickly replaced by anger.

  Daphne glared at me. “Geez, Gwen. Can’t you keep your nose out of anyone’s business for five minutes?”

  I stiffened at her harsh tone. “I wasn’t here because of you. I’m supposed to go see Preston today. To find out if he knew anything about the Reaper attack or knows where the dagger is hidden.”