Dark Frost: A Mythos Academy Novel

by Jennifer Estep

  “Bitch,” a voice behind me muttered.

  Still in Logan’s arms, I raised my head and turned around to see Savannah Warren glaring at me from a few feet away. Savannah was a lovely Amazon with gorgeous green eyes and red hair that tumbled down her back like a copper waterfall. She also happened to be Logan’s ex-girlfriend, the one he’d broken up with before the holiday break.

  Savannah clutched two bottles of water in her hands, and her fingers tightened around one of them, like she wanted to throw it at me. With her Amazon quickness, she could bean me in the head with the bottle before I’d even realized she’d thrown it—or could even think about ducking.

  Thanks to the gossip that had gone around campus before the holidays, I knew Savannah blamed me for Logan’s breaking up with her. I supposed she had a right to feel that way. After all, I’d demanded that the Spartan kiss me or let me go during the Winter Carnival trip the students had taken a few weeks before the break.

  I’d thought nothing could make me feel any worse today than I already did, but then I saw the hurt that filled Savannah’s face as she looked at Logan holding me. I knew that pain—it was the same sharp, longing ache I’d felt whenever I’d seen Logan kissing the other girl. I’d only wanted the Spartan to care about me like I did him. I’d never intended for Savannah to get hurt—but she had.

  What a mess I’d made of everything. I stepped out of Logan’s arms, even though it was already too late.

  “Savannah?” Vivian asked in a soft voice from her spot on the floor several feet away.

  The Amazon glared at me another second, then walked over to her friend. She handed Vivian a bottle of water, which the other girl opened with shaking hands and started gulping down. Some of the water spilled onto Vivian’s shirt, and Savannah handed her friend a couple of tissues to mop it up. Every few seconds, though, Savannah’s angry eyes would cut to me.

  Logan sighed. “I’ll go talk to her.”

  I shook my head. “No, she’s got a right to be mad at me.”

  “Oh, yes, she does,” another voice drifted over to me. “Because everyone knows how crazy Logan is about you, Gwen. Why, it’s almost the stuff of legend at Mythos. How the Gypsy girl tamed the wild, bad-boy Spartan.”

  Footsteps sounded behind me, and Morgan moved to stand beside me. She looked at Savannah, who was still glaring at me while she talked to Vivian in a low voice.

  “Careful, Gypsy,” Morgan murmured. “Savannah might look sweet and innocent, but the Amazon has a temper. She’s not someone you want to mess with. You know, if you keep this up, you’ll turn into me pretty soon. The school slut who goes around stealing other girls’ boyfriends.”

  The Valkyrie let out a harsh, ugly laugh, and a few green sparks hissed in the air around her. Morgan had a reputation for hooking up with any guy who caught her eye, one that had only gotten worse after everyone found out she’d been sneaking around with her best friend’s boyfriend.

  I’d never figured out how much Morgan remembered of the night Jasmine had tried to sacrifice her to Loki. Jasmine had used a powerful artifact called the Bowl of Tears to basically turn Morgan into a mindless puppet, and Morgan had claimed not to know what had happened. But I had a hunch that she remembered everything Jasmine had done to her, because Morgan had changed since then. She didn’t seem as cold and cruel anymore, and she’d even helped me during the Winter Carnival when I’d decided to sneak into another kid’s room. Now, the Valkyrie was almost someone I thought I could be friends with because she’d gone through some of the same terrible things that I had.

  “I don’t think you’re the school slut, Morgan,” I said in a quiet voice. “I think you kept it together today when the Reapers attacked. You knew you couldn’t fight so many of them, so you hid instead. I think that makes you really brave and really smart.”

  The Valkyrie stared at me in surprise. After a second, her eyes narrowed, but there was a hint of a smile on her face. “You know what? You’re actually okay, Gwen.”

  Morgan headed off to the other side of the coliseum. A soft snort caught my attention, and I realized that Savannah was still glaring at me. She must have heard Morgan’s comment about Logan’s being crazy about me, because anger once again twisted the Amazon’s face.

  But the weirdest thing was that Savannah’s eyes were glowing red.

  Okay, okay, so they weren’t really glowing, but it seemed to me like a bit of fire flickered in her eyes for the briefest second, the kind of eerie crimson color I’d come to associate with Reapers.

  I blinked. As suddenly as it had appeared, the red spark was gone, and Savannah’s face was normal once more, making me wonder if I’d only imagined the whole thing. I rubbed my head, which was suddenly aching—

  “Gwen!” a familiar voice called out. “Gwen!”

  I stood on my tiptoes. An older woman threaded her way through the crowd of people in the coliseum. She looked out of place with her lavender silk shirt, black pants, and black shoes with toes that curled up, like a genie that had somehow escaped from her bottle. Silk scarves covered her body, flowing around her in waves of purple, gray, and green. Silver coins jingled together like musical fringe on the ends of the scarves, the noise echoing to the ceiling and back down again. A coat hung off her shoulders. It matched the iron-gray color of her thick hair, although her eyes were a bright violet in her wrinkled face—the same violet that mine were.

  Yeah, my grandma, Geraldine Frost, might have looked out of place in the bloody chaos of the museum, but the sight of her couldn’t have made me happier.

  Grandma spotted me and hurried in my direction.

  I broke away from Logan and threw myself into her open arms. “Grandma!”

  She hugged me tight. “It’s okay, pumpkin. I’m here now. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  I didn’t know if anything would ever be all right again, but I closed my eyes and hugged her even tighter, pretending it was just for this one moment.

  Grandma hugged me for several minutes before finally letting me go. Then, she looked over at Logan, who was standing behind me.

  “I take it this is the Spartan boy you’ve been telling me so much about?” She smiled. “Why, he’s even more handsome than you said. You’ve been holding out on me, pumpkin.”

  A fierce blush flooded my cheeks. “Grandma!”

  She gave me an amused look. “He was going to meet me sooner or later, pumpkin. Trust me on that. I just didn’t think it would be today—or in this awful way.”

  She was right, and there was nothing I could do now but make the introductions. “Logan Quinn this is my grandma, Geraldine Frost. Grandma, this is Logan. My, uh, friend.”

  I winced as I said the last word. I didn’t know that we were just friends, but Logan hadn’t exactly declared me to be his true love either. Or even just his girlfriend. We hadn’t even been out on a date yet.

  The two of them shook hands. Logan started to let go, but Grandma Frost clasped both of her hands around his. After a second, her violet eyes took on an empty, glassy look, like she was staring at something very far away, and I felt this presence stir in the air around her—something old, watchful, and knowing.

  Grandma Frost was a Gypsy like me, which meant that she had a gift just like I did. In grandma’s case, she was psychic and could see the future. Now, it looked like she was getting a glimpse of Logan’s.

  “It’s not your fault, Logan,” Grandma murmured to the Spartan. “It wasn’t back then, and it won’t be in the future.”

  Logan’s face paled at her words, like he knew exactly what she was talking about. He opened his mouth like he wanted to ask my grandma a question but then clamped his lips shut.

  After a moment, the invisible force swirling around Grandma faded and so did the vacant look in her eyes. She dropped Logan’s hand and stepped back.

  “What did you see?” I asked her.

  For a moment, I didn’t think she was going to answer me, but Grandma finally turned to me and smiled.

/>   “Nothing to worry about, pumpkin,” she said. “Besides, you know I don’t share other people’s fortunes. Client confidentiality and all that.”

  Client confidentiality? Grandma was a fortune-teller, not a lawyer. She almost always told me about her psychic visions—unless they had something to do with me. It was hard for Grandma to have visions about family members and friends, since the closer she was to a person, the more her feelings for them clouded and influenced what she saw. Even when she did see something about me, she didn’t often share what it was. Grandma always said that she wanted me to make my own decisions and follow my own path, instead of relying on a future event that might or might not come to pass. Still, something about the tightness in Grandma’s face made me wonder exactly what she’d seen—and how terrible it had been.

  Logan stared at my grandma, a wary, almost hurt look in his eyes, like she’d just shared his deepest, darkest secret with the whole world. I wondered if Grandma had seen what I had when I’d touched Logan a few weeks ago—the Spartan standing over the bodies of a woman and a girl. I’d been concentrating on his fighting skills when we’d kissed, but I’d seen that image as well, even though I hadn’t been actively searching for it. I wondered if what Grandma Frost had said to Logan had something to do with that memory, if maybe she’d figured out what secret he was keeping from me, the terrible thing he thought would change the way I felt about him. The secret I was bound to discover when my fingers, when my skin, touched his.

  I didn’t get the chance to figure out what they were keeping from me since we split up after that. Carson headed back to Mythos Academy with Logan and Nickamedes, while Grandma Frost drove Daphne and me to her house a few streets over from downtown Asheville. The separation wouldn’t be for long, though, since classes started in the morning, despite the tragedy today. Apparently, the Powers That Were at the academy had decided that being on campus was the safest thing for students right now. After what had happened at the coliseum, I couldn’t blame them. For once, I’d be happy to see the stone sphinxes that guarded the school gates.

  Grandma parked her car on the street, and the three of us trooped up the gray, concrete steps to her lavender-painted house. A brass sign beside the front door read PSYCHIC READINGS HERE, which was how Grandma used her Gypsy gift to make extra money. Side jobs were sort of a habit in the Frost family, and I used my psychometry magic to find things the other kids at Mythos lost—laptops, cell phones, keys, purses, wallets, jewelry, bras, briefs and boxers.

  With my Gypsy gift, it wasn’t too hard for me to find lost objects. Of course, once something was lost, I couldn’t actually touch it, but people left psychic vibes everywhere they went on almost everything they touched. Usually, all I had to do to find a guy’s missing cell phone was run my fingers over the furniture in his dorm room to get an idea of where he’d last put down the phone. And if I didn’t immediately flash on the phone’s location, then I just kept touching stuff in his room—or wherever the images led me—until I did.

  While Daphne went into the living room to call her parents and tell them what had happened, Grandma Frost and I headed into the kitchen. With its sky blue walls and white tile, the kitchen was the brightest, cheeriest room in the house. But today, even it seemed cold, dark, and somber. I pulled out a chair and slumped over the table.

  “I made an apple pie while you were at the coliseum,” Grandma said. “Do you want some, pumpkin?”

  She gestured to a tin she’d put on the counter to cool. The pie sat in between a couple of cookie jars—one shaped like a giant chocolate chip cookie and the other like a blue snowflake. The snowflake jar had been my Christmas present to Grandma, as per our holiday tradition of giving each other something with a snowflake on it. Sort of a natural thing to do when your last name was Frost. This year, Grandma had bought me a long, dark gray wool scarf, gloves, and a matching toboggan, all patterned with glittery silver snowflakes.

  “Pumpkin? The pie?” Grandma asked again.

  “No, thanks. I don’t think I could eat anything right now.”

  Grandma Frost had some mad baking skills, and I had a serious sweet tooth, but even the warm, sugary pie couldn’t tempt me today. It just seemed wrong. To do something as simple as eat dessert after what had happened.

  “I know, pumpkin,” she said. “I don’t feel much like eating myself.”

  Grandma sat down at the kitchen table and clasped my hand in hers, just the way she’d done to Logan earlier. I closed my eyes and let the warmth of her love fill me up and wash away the awfulness of the day.

  “Does it ever get any easier?” I asked in a soft voice, opening my eyes. “Knowing how the Reapers hurt other warriors? Seeing ... what they do to people? After facing down Jasmine and Preston Ashton, I thought I knew what the Reapers were capable of. But today at the coliseum, it was just ... horrible.”

  Grandma shook her head. “I’d like to tell you that it does get easier, that you get used to the blood and violence, but I’d be lying. All I can do is be here for you, Gwen. I’ll always be here for you, no matter what—you can count on that.”

  I thought about my mom and how she’d told me the same thing. That she loved me no matter what and that she’d always be here for me, too. But my mom had been taken away from me, brutally murdered by the Reaper girl.

  My mom’s death wasn’t going to go unpunished.

  I didn’t care what I had to do, but I was going to find out who the Reaper girl really was—and then I was going to kill her. Maybe that made me no better than the Reapers, but I didn’t care. Not after what I’d seen today, not after the Reaper girl had laughed in my face about murdering my mom.

  But I forced myself to push those dark thoughts away, at least for now. Today, I was in Grandma Frost’s kitchen, and that was what I wanted to focus on. Tomorrow, I’d go back to Mythos Academy and start my search for the Helheim Dagger, but for today, we were safe. I was going to enjoy the calm while it lasted.

  Grandma and I sat there in the kitchen, just holding hands, for a long, long time.

  Chapter 6

  Daphne finished her call to her parents and came into the kitchen, but none of us felt like talking or eating. The Valkyrie was still tired from her magic’s quickening and healing Carson, so she took a hot shower and went to bed even though it wasn’t even eight o’clock yet. Grandma did the same, and so did I.

  I wiped the steam off the bathroom mirror and stared at my reflection. Wet, wavy brown hair, a few freckles on my winter-white skin, and eyes that were a strange shade of violet. I’d washed off all the blood that had spattered on me during the attack and thrown my clothes in the trash, but the awful memories were still there, lurking just below the surface of my mind. I shivered and dropped my gaze from the mirror.

  Since I couldn’t sleep, I wrapped myself in my purple flannel robe and trudged up the stairs to the third floor. Really, it was an attic, although Grandma had put some furniture up here for me. After my mom had died, I’d spent hours up here, just staring out the window, crying, and wondering why my mom had been taken from me so suddenly, so cruelly. I must have asked myself why a thousand times, but there was never any answer.

  It wasn’t any easier now that I knew the real reason why.

  I snapped on a lamp. Stacks and stacks of battered cardboard boxes formed a zigzag maze through the attic, stretching from one side of the house to the other. Most of the boxes held your usual clutter, old magazines Grandma had never gotten around to throwing out, worn-out clothes that didn’t fit anymore, Christmas decorations we’d put away until next year.

  But there were some newer boxes in the mix—boxes full of my mom’s things. Her clothes, her books, her jewelry, even her makeup and a bottle of her favorite lilac perfume. Everything my mom had left behind in our old house when she’d been murdered last year. All the pieces of her daily life she’d never use again, thanks to the Reaper girl.

  I hadn’t looked at the boxes since her death, but now it was a necessity. Over the holid
ay break, I’d been going through the boxes and the items inside, one by one, trying to find something, anything that would tell me where my mom had hidden the Helheim Dagger. I’d used my psychometry and touched every single item in every single box, hoping my mom had left me a clue somewhere, that I’d pick up something, get a vibe off it, and see exactly where she’d hidden the dagger.

  It had been one of the hardest things I’d ever done.

  Everything I touched, every sweater I held or necklace I brushed my fingers across brought back a memory of my mom. In a way, it was like I was seeing a condensed version of her life and all the things she’d seen, done, and felt along the way. It was fun flashing on her favorite toys as a kid and seeing her playing with them, her brown hair in pigtails, and freckles dotting her face just like they did mine. But it also reminded me of how much I missed her—and how I’d never see her smile or laugh or talk to her again.

  In a way, touching her things was like losing my mom all over again—a dozen little deaths packed into each and every box.

  But I was determined to do it. My mom had hidden the dagger back when she’d been going to Mythos and had been the Champion of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory. Now, as the goddess’s current Champion, it was my job to find the dagger—before the Reapers did.

  My hope had slowly dwindled as I opened box after box and didn’t find what I was searching for, until now there was only one box left I hadn’t been through. I pulled it over to an old, gray velvet loveseat in the corner, opened the top, and started going through the items inside. Clothes, a worn-out slipper, some dried-up markers, a few books, a roll of quarters my mom had forgotten to take to the bank. It was an odd mix of items.

  One by one, I touched everything in the box, wrapping my fingers around the items and reaching for my pyschometry magic, straining to see everything I possibly could with my Gypsy gift. All I got were a few weak flashes of my mom buying the clothes in the store or shaking the markers and grumbling because they were out of ink. Pretty standard stuff. Most of the time, I didn’t get much of a vibe off common, everyday objects that had a specific purpose or function or ones that tons of people used every day like pens, computers, or paper clips. I only got the big, high-def flashes, the major whammies of memories and feelings, when I touched something a person had a deep, emotional connection to, something she’d imprinted a piece of herself on, like a treasured family heirloom ring or a favorite Christmas ornament someone had made when he was a kid.