Preston smirked at me. “I told you I’d get the best of you one day, Gypsy. How stupid of you not to believe me.”
I glared at him. “Oh, please. You wouldn’t be standing here right now if it wasn’t for Vivian, and we all know it. She’s the one who’s done all the work. She’s the one who got you out of the academy prison.”
I looked at the other girl. “Bravo on that, by the way. And the rest of this elaborate scheme. You’ve managed to pull it off quite nicely.”
She brightened at my snarky tone. “I have, haven’t I? Not that I’m one to gloat, but I really have outdone myself this time.”
“Oh, just go ahead and tell me all about your evil master plan,” I muttered. “You know you want to. That’s why you haven’t killed me already. The villains in movies and comic books always want to gloat, too.”
I didn’t add that that gloating was also always the villains’ downfall—that cliché was the only bit of hope I had right now.
Vivian laughed. The sound grated on my ears just like the roc’s talons had raked across the floor. “Well, that’s one of the reasons, anyway. I’m not quite through with you yet, Gypsy, but we’ll get to that in a few minutes. As for how I tricked you, you’re supposed to be a clever girl. You were smart enough to defeat Preston, although that wouldn’t take much doing. So why don’t you tell me how I tricked you?”
I looked at her for a few seconds, then around at the room again. Thinking. The longer I kept Vivian talking, the longer someone might have to find and rescue me. Of course, I didn’t know exactly who that someone would be. Nickamedes would probably think I’d just slipped out of the library early, instead of realizing that something had happened to me—if he even bothered to look for me. Given my history with the librarian, he’d probably be glad to come out of his office and find me gone.
“Gypsy?” Vivian asked, snapping her fingers in front of my face. “Are you still with us?”
Red sparks streamed out of her fingertips like raindrops. It was something I’d forgotten about these past few days, but during the fight at the coliseum, I’d thought the Reaper girl had to be a Valkyrie, given how strong she was and how much it had hurt when she’d punched me. But I’d never seen Vivian throw off sparks of magic like Daphne or the other Valkyries did.
I nodded at her fingers. “How did you hide that? The sparks and the fact that you’re really a Valkyrie? Everybody at Mythos thinks you’re an Amazon.”
She shrugged. “The same way I hide everything. You want to know a secret?”
I always wanted to know secrets, and most especially hers, but I didn’t say anything. Vivian leaned forward anyway.
She stared at me, and a flicker of red flashed to life in the depths of her golden gaze. “You’re not the only Gypsy at Mythos, Gwen.”
My mouth dropped open, and all the air left my lungs. I was just that shocked. Grandma Frost had told me there were other Gypsies out there, other families gifted with magic by the gods just like ours had been. She’d also told me that not all of the Gypsies were good like us, that some were lazy or indifferent or were even Reapers.
So far, I hadn’t met any other Gypsies, but here I was, face to face with the most evil Gypsy of all—Loki’s Champion. For as good as the goddess Nike was, Loki was equally bad, which meant that his Champion would be just as vicious and ruthless as the evil god was.
“What—what kind of magic did Loki give your family?”
I forced myself to ask the question. If I knew what kind of magic Vivian had, then maybe I could find some way to turn it against her and escape.
Vivian smiled. “Why, the most wonderful magic of all—chaos magic.”
“What’s that?” I’d never heard of that kind of magic before, and I hadn’t seen any references to it in the myth-history books I’d been using to research my own touch magic.
Beside Vivian, Preston snorted. “It’s not chaos magic. For the most part, it’s just regular old telepathy.”
“Telepathy?” I asked. “You mean like reading minds and planting thoughts in people’s brains?”
“Exactly,” Preston said. “Vivian can make people see and hear things that aren’t there. Big whoop, if you ask me.”
A dangerous light flared in Vivian’s eyes, and that spark of Reaper red I’d seen before burned a little brighter at Preston’s mocking words.
I thought of the Reaper red flashes that I’d noticed in Savannah’s eyes and the hate that had filled her face whenever she looked at me. Vivian had done that, I realized, had made me suspect the other girl was a Reaper so I wouldn’t focus on Vivian. That was probably how she’d changed her voice, too, so I wouldn’t hear her talking and realize who she really was. I wondered what else she’d done to me this week. I had a bad, bad feeling that I was about to find out—and that it was going to get a whole lot worse.
“Actually, Preston’s right,” Vivian said. “I can make people see things that aren’t really there, plant thoughts in their heads, even get them to follow my commands. Illusions, confusion, chaos. It’s all the same really, but Loki made my family’s telepathy magic particularly vicious. If I want to, I can look into a person’s brain and make it seem like her worst nightmare has come to life. Would you like to see that, Gwen?”
My heart dropped into my stomach at her cold, cold words. My Gypsy gift had shown me so many awful things over the years. If Vivian looked into my head with her magic, she’d have plenty of nightmares to choose from.
“Of course you would,” Vivian said.
She pushed off the desk and headed toward me. Vivian stopped in front of me and smiled—and then she turned around to stare at Preston.
He frowned. “What are you doing—”
That’s all he got out before his face turned white, and he started screaming.
Preston screamed and screamed and screamed like he would never stop. Desperate, he lurched forward, like he could get away from Vivian’s magic if only he could move. Preston’s knees hit a table. He staggered back, then tripped on a rug and fell to the floor. He curled into a ball, covering his eyes with his hands like he could block out whatever it was he was seeing. But the defensive posture didn’t help him, and Vivian smiled as his shrieks of terror filled the room.
“Preston’s worst nightmare is quite interesting,” she murmured, staring down at him. “It’s you, actually. Apparently, he was never so scared in his life as he was when you told him there was nothing he could do to stop you from touching his hands and riffling through his memories with your psychometry magic. Preston’s something of a control freak, you see.”
Vivian kept staring at the other Reaper, and I felt this force rolling off her—an ugly, angry, malevolent force that got stronger and stronger with every one of Preston’s screams, almost like his fear was giving her even more power, like his terror was making her happy. I could almost see the evil force in the air, slithering over and coiling around and around him like a snake with venom dripping off its fangs—venom that was penetrating Preston’s brain and poisoning his mind with vision after horrific vision.
Finally, Vivian shook her head and turned away from him. The ugly, invisible force vanished, and after a moment, Preston quit screaming, although his whole body shook with violent sobs.
“Too easy,” she said. “His mind is so simple. That was hardly a challenge. But you, Gypsy, you’ve been much more interesting to play with.”
While Preston wept on the floor, I thought about everything that had happened the past few days.
“You planned this whole thing, didn’t you?” I asked. “The attack at the Crius Coliseum, letting me see you there after the fact so I’d notice how shaken up you were, the creepy voice in the Library of Antiquities, even hiring me to find your lost ring. You did it all just so you could keep track of me while I was searching for the Helheim Dagger.”
Vivian reached down and plucked the dagger off the desk. I blinked. How had I not noticed it lying there? She turned the dagger this way and that, making the b
ronze flecks in the marble shimmer. For the first time, I realized what had bothered me so much about the memories I’d gotten off the map that Vivian had dropped—the fact that she’d been wearing her Reaper mask in them to protect her real identity. Something she wouldn’t have done if she hadn’t been planning to leave the map behind the whole time.
“You dropped that map on purpose,” I said. “You wanted me to have it. You wanted me to flash on it. Why?”
Vivian shrugged. “Some of the other Reapers had determined that the dagger’s location was somewhere in or around the Library of Antiquities, but it would have taken years to search the building and find it, especially given my obvious limitations as a student. So I decided to let you find it for me. But since you didn’t seem to know the dagger was in the library, I decided to give you a little push. Everyone always waits until the last second to do his or her homework. I figured you’d probably be at the exhibit the day before school started, so I convinced Savannah to go with me to finish my myth-history assignment.”
“If you were just trying to get at me the whole time, then why kill those other kids?” I whispered. “Why did they have to die?”
Vivian shrugged. “I had to make it look like a real attack or you never would have bought the idea that I’d accidentally dropped the map. Besides, I never liked Samson Sorensen. He always thought he was so much cooler than the other guys at school—much too cool to date someone like me. I asked him out once, back before Jasmine got her hooks into him, but he just laughed and asked why I ever thought he’d want to go out with a mousy little girl like me. Well, he didn’t laugh so much when I ran my sword through his chest, did he?”
Rage twisted her face, and her fingers tightened around the dagger, like she wanted to kill Samson all over again.
“And then in the library?” I asked, trying to keep her talking. “What was with the whole creepy voice thing?”
Vivian’s face smoothed out a bit, and she shrugged again. “I needed Metis’s door codes and magic passwords to get down to the prison to free Preston. I knew she’d been taking you to the prison to pry into his mind, and given your psychometry and the fact that you never forget anything you see or hear, I knew you had the passwords locked away in your brain. All I had to do was slip into your mind and make you think about Preston so I could find the information I needed. We know all about you and your touch magic. I must say it’s come in quite handy so far. Helping me free Preston, then finding the dagger. Good job, Gwen. Good job.”
I thought about all the headaches I’d had these past few days and all the times it had seemed there were a pair of fingers digging into my skull. That had been Vivian, using her telepathy on me. On some level, I’d sensed what she was doing and had even tried to fight back, although it hadn’t worked. Then, another thought popped into my head.
“You know about my touch magic—and what I’m supposed to do with it,” I said, echoing something Preston had once said to me.
Vivian snorted. “Please. As if you could ever kill Loki with your pitiful psychometry.”
Once again, all the air left my lungs, and white stars exploded before my eyes. I thought I’d been stunned before, but that was nothing compared to the utter shock I was feeling right now. “You think—the Reapers actually think—that I’m going to kill Loki with my magic?”
My voice was barely a whisper. I could hardly even find the breath to ask the question. Kill a god? Me? How could I do that with my touch magic? How could anyone do that?
Vivian noticed the shocked look on my face and burst out laughing. “You mean you didn’t know? The great goddess Nike didn’t tell you? Oh, how wonderful.”
Vivian kept right on laughing. Meanwhile, Preston had finally quit shaking and crying and pushed himself up to a sitting position. He gave Vivian a hate-filled glare and wiped away the tears on his flushed cheeks.
“But what about the ring?” I asked, my mind spinning in a thousand different directions. “Why even bother to hire me to find it?”
Vivian held out her hand, admiring the ring glinting on her finger. I stared at the two faces in the gold band. Now, instead of one laughing and one crying, both faces seemed to be twisted and grinning at me with evil, malevolent glee.
“I should have known,” I muttered. “The ring has two faces just like you do. It doesn’t just represent theater masks, does it? Although you should buy something nice for Mr. Ovid, the drama teacher. He’s made you into quite the little actress.”
“True,” Vivian agreed. “I’m much more talented than that stupid Amazon, Helena Paxton, will ever be, but Mr. Ovid always gives her the lead roles in our plays. You really need to brush up on your myth-history, Gwen. I told you before it was a Janus ring, as in the Roman god of beginnings and endings. He has two faces, one looking into the future and one looking into the past. The ring’s been in my family for years as a symbol of our hidden loyalty to Loki. It was my mom’s—until some members of the Pantheon killed her.”
Her face scrunched up, and I remembered the image I’d seen of Vivian’s mom handing her the ring and all the pain the girl had felt at her mom dying. I would have felt sorry for her—if she hadn’t caused me the same pain by murdering my mom.
Then, another thought popped into my head. “That’s why you had brand-new furniture in your dorm room, wasn’t it? And why you rushed to open the door for me when I left the day I came over to look for your ring. You couldn’t take a chance that I’d flash on something in your room, like your vanity table, and realize who you really were. But why hire me to find the ring when it was never lost?”
“You’re right about the furniture. As for the ring, I needed to hang around and see what you were doing, and I didn’t want you to get suspicious of me before you found the dagger. So I made up the story about Savannah’s stealing my ring and hid it in her room for you to find. Besides, I knew it would be easy to make you think that she was a Reaper. It’s no secret the two of you are still fighting over Logan.”
“So it was just a distraction. But you had to know I would touch the ring and flash on it, if only to make sure that Savannah had really stolen it,” I said. “How did you twist the memories around to make it look like she was the Reaper instead of you?”
Vivian shrugged. “Chaos magic, remember? Confusion and illusions. In some ways, my magic is the exact opposite of yours, Gwen. You touch objects and see things. If I focus hard and long enough, I can actually imprint emotions and memories on certain objects. So it was easy for me to take an image of myself wearing the ring and make it look like Savannah.”
“But—”
A series of low chimes sounded, cutting me off. My eyes flicked to the source of the sound—an ebony grandfather clock shaped like a roc that stood against one wall.
“At last, midnight,” Vivian murmured. “Do you know what that means, Gwen?”
“What?”
Vivian smiled. “It means it’s finally time for you to do what I brought you here for.”
I had to force myself to ask the question. “And what would that be?”
Her smile widened. “Die.”
Chapter 22
Another Reaper came into the living room—the man I’d seen when I’d first touched the fake map. He cut through the ropes that tied me to the chair, then he and Preston hauled me through the balcony doors and outside.
I started to fight back, but Preston held a sword against my ribs and told me that he would shove it through my heart if I so much as breathed wrong. So I decided not to breathe wrong.
Vivian led the way, while Preston and the man forced me down a set of stone steps and then out into the forest that lay beyond the mansion. I couldn’t see much of the landscape in the darkness, but I got the sense that we were still in the mountains, still in North Carolina, still close to the academy. I don’t know why that comforted me, but it did. If I was going to die, well, at least it would be close to home. Maybe the members of the Pantheon would at least find my body and bury it.
&nb
sp; We trudged deeper and deeper into the woods, the frosted leaves crunching like brittle bones under our feet. The lights from the mansion behind us slowly disappeared, but they were replaced with new ones up ahead. The lights flickered and danced in the darkness, and I realized they were torches burning in the night.
We stepped through the trees and into a large clearing. An enormous circle made out of black marble had been set into the middle of the forest, with the trees rising up on all sides like the pillars of a great coliseum. Tall, skinny torches had been placed into small holes cut into the stone, and their crackling red flames leaped up into the air, like they were straining to set fire to the trees around them.
We hadn’t passed anyone in the forest, but thirteen people had already gathered inside the stone circle, one standing by each torch—and every single one of them wore a Reaper mask and a black robe.
I stared out into the circle of people, my eyes going from one twisted Loki face to the next. I couldn’t see who was behind the masks, but I thought I probably knew some of them, that they were kids or professors at Mythos. A sense of familiarity radiated off them, along with hate—so much hate. Every single Reaper in the circle would have been more than happy to step forward and kill me. I bit my lip and tried not to show just how terrified I was of them and what they were about to do to me.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“This,” Vivian said in a satisfied voice, “is a Garm gate, one of hundreds located all over the world. It serves as a portal to other gates and even other realms—including Helheim.”
“Helheim?” I whispered.
From researching the dagger, I knew that the weapon was named for Helheim, which was the Norse world of the dead—and the prison realm where Loki was trapped. Supposedly, it was a place that no one—god or mortal alike—could ever escape, but I had a sick, sick feeling that wasn’t going to be true tonight.
Dark Frost: A Mythos Academy Novel Page 21