ENTANGLED (2 page)

“You look amazing,” he said, slipping his fingers through Daphne’s.

The Valkyrie blushed. “Thanks. So do you.”

My friends stood there staring dreamily into each other’s eyes, as though there wasn’t anyone else left in the entire world but the two of them. I was all for new love, but I didn’t like being ignored either, so I cleared my throat. Carson peered through his black glasses at me, like he hadn’t even noticed me until this very second.

“Oh, hi, Gwen.” He frowned. “Where’s your costume?”

Daphne snorted again. “You don’t want to know. Come on. I want to hit the stores before all the good candy is gone.”

We left Styx Hall, stepped onto one of the ash gray cobblestone paths that wound past the student dorms, and walked down to the twelve-foot-high stone wall that ringed the Mythos Academy campus. Normally, the main iron gate would be shut and locked, since students weren’t supposed to leave the grounds during school nights, but the gate stood open tonight, and a steady stream of kids marched through, ready for an evening of Halloween fun.

Daphne, Carson, and I stepped into the flow of traffic. Stone sphinxes perched on the wall on either side of the gate, their open eyes seeming to track the movements of the students walking by below them. The sphinxes were some of the many statues at the academy, and they always creeped me out. The sphinxes seemed a little too lifelike for my peace of mind, like the stone was just a thin shell that covered a real monster underneath—one that could leap down and eat me any time it wanted to. I shivered and dropped my gaze from the statues.

The academy was located in Cypress Mountain, North Carolina, a suburb that was up in the mountains above the city of Asheville. Daphne, Carson, and I headed across the road that wound by the academy and into the suburb itself. Tourists flocked to Cypress Mountain year-round because of all the primo shops that sold everything from designer clothes to expensive jewelry to high-end art. What the tourists didn’t know was that the boutiques were really located here to take advantage of the credit cards and limitless trust funds of the academy’s rich students.

The store owners in Cypress Mountain must have loved Halloween just as much as Daphne did because they’d gone all out with the spooky decorations. Carved jack-o’-lanterns lined all the cobblestone streets, the lit candles inside them flickering and making their grins seem particularly sinister in the darkening shadows. Thick, silvery webs complete with fat, rubber spiders swooped from one doorway to the next, while ghosts, ghouls, and other classic monsters could be seen in the storefront windows, arms outstretched like they wanted to break through the glass and grab the students strolling by.

But those weren’t the only decorations I saw. There were also statues—lots and lots of statues. But they weren’t your normal cutesy garden gnomes or other flowery lawn ornaments. Oh, no. These statues were of monsters—Nemean prowlers, to be exact.

Prowlers were basically like black panthers, only much bigger, much stronger, and much, much deadlier. The prowlers that I’d seen in real life had seemed to me to be more teeth and claws than anything else, and the statues that lined the street were no exception. The stone monstrosities were all longer than I was tall, and most of the statues showed the prowlers with their lips drawn back in snarling smiles, revealing their razor-sharp teeth. I guessed the statues were just the Mythos Academy version of the black cats that other folks might use for their Halloween decorations.

But the worst thing was that the statues’ eyes seem to follow my every movement, my every step, my every breath even, just like the sphinxes at the academy gate had earlier. Like the prowlers were just patiently watching and waiting until I was alone so they could break out of their stone shells and kill me until I was dead, dead, dead.

“Statues,” I muttered. “More freaking statues. Great. Just great.”

“What, Gwen?” Carson asked, turning to look at me. “What did you say?”

I shook my head. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

We got some hollow plastic orange pumpkins that one of the stores was handing out and went from shop to shop, loading up our pumpkins with everything from gourmet pretzels to delicious brownies to candy apples bigger than my fist. I had a serious sweet tooth and quickly filled up my pumpkin, even though we hadn’t gone through half the stores yet. I popped a piece of dark chocolate fudge topped with vanilla-raspberry syrup into my mouth and sighed as the rich flavors exploded on my tongue. Yum. So good.

To my surprise, the shops weren’t just handing out free candy tonight. Weapons, armor, clothing, jewelry. Many of the stores were giving away expensive replicas of the various artifacts that the members of the Pantheon, the good guys, had used to fight Loki and his Reapers of Chaos during the long, bloody Chaos War.

We stopped in one jewelry store that was passing out beautiful rings made of clear, sparkling, heart-shaped crystals held together with thin silver wire. Supposedly, the rings were modeled after one worn by Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love.

“Meh,” Daphne said, putting the ring back down on the glass counter with all the others just like it. “Last year, they were giving away necklaces with
real
diamonds in them.”

Sometimes, I didn’t think that I’d ever get used to how casual Daphne and the other rich academy kids were about money—especially since I used my magic to make extra cash.

I was a Gypsy, which meant that I’d been gifted with magic by one of the gods. In my case, that god was Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, and that magic was psychometry, a fancy way of saying that I could touch any object and immediately know, feel, and see its history. I could see every person who’d ever picked up a book or used a sword, and I could feel their emotions too—if they’d been bored or brave or scared to death. My Gypsy gift let me uncover people’s deepest, darkest secrets no matter how hard they tried to hide them from me—or even themselves.

I used my magic to find things that the kids at Mythos lost—wallets, keys, cell phones, purses, laptops. Of course, when something was missing, I couldn’t actually touch
it
, but usually, all I had to do to find a girl’s cell phone was walk around her room, touch her furniture, and see where the vibes that I got off her desk and dresser led me. Most of the time, I’d flash on an image of the girl throwing her phone into a drawer, then forgetting where she’d put it. Phone found, and yours truly, Gwen Frost, was a couple hundred bucks richer.

“Yeah, well,” I said, picking up one of the rings and putting it in my plastic pumpkin. “It may not be made out of real diamonds, but I still think it’s pretty. I might give it to my Grandma Frost. She wears stacks of rings.”

Daphne shook her head, and we walked on to the next store.

The whole town of Cypress Mountain had been closed down and taken over by Mythos students for the night, along with the professors and other folks who worked at the academy. Professor Metis, my myth-history teacher, Coach Ajax, the guy who oversaw all the weapons training and athletic programs, Nickamedes, the head honcho at the Library of Antiquities. I spotted them in the crowd of people moving in and out of shops on the main drag, along with one face that made my heart pound in my chest.

Logan Quinn.

The sexy Spartan warrior stood across the street outside the jewelry store that we’d been in a few minutes ago. Thick, wavy, black hair, lean, muscled body, ice blue eyes. Logan was cute enough in regular clothes, but tonight, he’d dressed up in black leather and sandals like one of his ancient Spartan ancestors. He carried a bronze sword, and a matching shield was strapped to his left arm. He looked absolutely gorgeous—fierce and strong and brave all at the same time, just like I knew he was.

Logan had saved my life a couple of times recently, and as a result, I’d developed a mad, mad crush on the Spartan. Even now, despite the fact that he’d told me that we couldn’t be together, part of me wanted to go over and talk to him, to see his sexy grin spread across his face, and listen to him tease me about how I wasn’t wearing a costume like everyone else.

Too bad the Spartan wasn’t alone. Savannah Warren, his date, was with him. Savannah was a pretty Amazon with beautiful red hair that flowed down her back, and tonight, she was dressed in an emerald-colored, sea nymph costume that brought out her green eyes. Logan said something to her, and Savannah smiled, her whole face lighting up as she looked at the Spartan.

My heart started to burn with bitter, bitter jealousy. Why couldn’t I be the one that Logan was with tonight? Why couldn’t I be the one that he was smiling at? Why couldn’t he look at me the way that he was at Savannah right now?

As if he could hear my thoughts, the Spartan turned in my direction, and our eyes met. Logan hesitated, then waved at me. I gritted my teeth, lifted my hand, and waved back, even though I didn’t really want to.

“You okay, Gwen?” Daphne asked in a sympathetic voice. The Valkyrie had noticed Logan waving at me—and that Savannah was standing by his side.

“I’m fine,” I said, deliberately turning away from the Spartan. “Just fine. Where to next?”

We kept wandering through town. After about an hour, we’d hit all the shops on the main drag and scored all the goodies they had to offer, so we started going down some of the side streets to the smaller stores. There weren’t as many people here, and night had started to creep over the landscape, bringing blackening shadows along with it. The air was getting colder too, and I stuffed my hands into the pockets of my hoodie, trying to keep them warm. My pumpkin dangled off my arm, bumping along my thigh. Every once in a while, the plastic container would smack into Vic’s hilt, since I had the sword and his scabbard strapped to the black leather belt around my waist. Vic sniffed indignantly every time the pumpkin bumped him, but I ignored the sword’s faint mutterings. He’d quiet down sooner or later.

We cut down another deserted side street. Daphne and Carson walked a few steps ahead of me, talking about all the goodies that they’d picked up tonight and how this year’s haul compared to last year’s. I kicked at a few loose rocks and let their happy, excited words wash over me. All I wanted to do right now was go back to my dorm room, stuff my face full of the junk food that I’d gotten, and try to forget about the fact that Logan was here with another girl. I sighed. Easier said than done.

We kept walking. Eventually, we passed another statue of a Nemean prowler, probably the hundredth one that we’d strolled by tonight. Strangely enough, this one was hidden back in the shadows in one of the alleys, instead of being out on the street near the shops like all the others that I’d seen.

Still, I started to look past the creature when I noticed that its tail was twitching.

For a moment, I thought that maybe my Gypsy gift was just playing tricks on me. It did that sometimes and made me see things that weren’t really there. But no matter how many times or how hard I blinked, the prowler’s tail kept lashing from side to side. The creature sank down onto its haunches, like it was an oversize house cat about to pounce on a mouse. A moment later, its eyes snapped open, and I noticed how red they were—such a bright, burning red.

Cold dread filled my stomach as I realized that the statue wasn’t a statue, that it was a real, live, Nemean prowler—one that was about to rip me and my friends to pieces.

I didn’t think—I just reacted.

I threw myself into Daphne and Carson, knocking them both to the side and down to the ground as far away from the prowler as I could get them. My desperate act worked because instead of leaping on top of my friends, the Nemean prowler came up short, landing in a crouch a few feet away. The creature immediately snapped its head around to us. Its thick, black fur took on a reddish tinge underneath the golden glow of the street lamps, and its eyes blazed like bloody rubies in its face.

“Gwen! What the—” Daphne sputtered, her face mashed against the cobblestone street.

“Fight now, talk later!” I yelled, scrambling off the Valkyrie and getting to my feet.

I stepped in front of my friends, who froze when they spotted the prowler crouched in the street behind us. Daphne let out a curse, and she and Carson both struggled to untangle themselves from each other, get up, and help me.

The creature let out an evil hiss and charged at me. I didn’t have time to draw Vic out of the scabbard that hung from my waist, but I’d managed to hold onto my plastic container of goodies, so I did the only thing that I could—I smashed the prowler in the face with the hollow pumpkin.

The orange plastic exploded like a piñata, and the candy, jewelry, and all the other knickknacks that I’d picked up flew everywhere. The prowler hissed with surprise and stopped short, but it still lashed out and swiped its claws at me. I barely managed to leap back in time to keep from getting slashed to ribbons.

The prowler swiped at me again, causing me to back up even more, and Daphne stepped in front of me to meet the creature’s charge. The Valkyrie had gotten to her feet and grabbed one of the enormous jack-o’-lanterns that lined the street. The carved pumpkin had to weigh at least seventy-five pounds, but thanks to her Valkyrie strength, Daphne hefted it up like it didn’t weigh any more than her tiny purse, lunged forward, and brought it down right on top of the prowler’s head.