Jennifer Estep Bundle (36 page)

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Authors: Jennifer Estep

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I wasn't a warrior like the other kids at Mythos—not exactly—but I wasn't completely without skills, either. I was a Gypsy, a person gifted with magic by one of the gods. In my case, that magic was psychometry, or the ability to touch an object and immediately know, see, and feel its history.
My Gypsy gift, my psychometry, was actually cooler—and a little scarier—than it sounded. Not only could I see who had once worn a bracelet or read a book, no matter how long ago it had been, but I also could feel that person's emotions. Everything she'd been thinking, feeling, and experiencing when she'd been wearing that bracelet or reading that book. Sometimes everything she'd ever felt, seen, or done over a whole lifetime, if her attachment to the object was strong enough. I could tell if a person had been happy or sad, good or bad, smart or dumb, or a thousand other things.
My magic let me know people's secrets—let me see and feel all the things they kept hidden from others and even themselves sometimes. All their conflicting emotions, all the sly things they'd done, all the things they only dreamed about doing in the deepest, blackest parts of their hearts.
Maybe it was dark and twisted of me, but I liked knowing other people's secrets. I liked the power that the knowledge gave me, especially since I didn't have any of the wicked cool fighting skills the other kids at Mythos did. Knowing other people's secrets was sort of an obsession of mine—one that had almost led to me getting killed a few weeks ago.
It was also the reason I held on to Oliver's notebook now. I'd totally expected the boredom and the frustration I'd sensed. Those were both emotions I'd felt many times before when I'd touched other kids' notebooks, computers, pens, and all the other ordinary, everyday objects they used to do their schoolwork.
But that warm, soft, fizzy feeling? Not so much. I knew what it was though: love. Or at least like—
serious
like. Oliver had a major, major crush on someone, enough to write about that person in his notebook, and I wanted to know who it was. Since, you know, secrets were my own form of crack.
I concentrated on the notebook again, on that soft, fizzy, hopeful feeling, and a hazy image started to form in my mind, someone with dark hair, black hair—
“I said that was mine,” Oliver growled, yanking the notebook out of my hand and breaking my connection to it.
The half-formed image abruptly vanished, along with that warm, fizzy sensation. My fingers grabbed for the notebook, but I only came up with empty air. Another second, and I would have seen who Oliver's mystery crush was. But the Spartan held the notebook up out of my reach, then grabbed his bag and shoved the notebook inside it. He was in such a hurry that he ripped the side of the bag's fabric. Oliver glanced up at me to see if I'd noticed.
I smirked at him in the same cocky, knowing way he had smirked at me a few minutes ago, when he'd been making fun of my T-shirt. Oliver's face darkened.
“What are you two doing?” Kenzie asked, coming out of one of the side doors and drinking from a bottle of water in his hand.
“Nothing,” Oliver muttered, shooting me another cold look.
I rolled my eyes and ignored him. Since coming to Mythos, I'd almost been run through with a sword and mauled to death by a killer kitty cat. Dirty looks didn't faze me anymore.
“Where's Logan?” I asked.
“He'll be back in a minute. He said to get started without him,” Kenzie said, his black eyes flicking back and forth between me and Oliver, wondering what was going on.
Oliver turned and stalked down to the other end of the bleachers, taking his bag along with him. Kenzie gave me another curious look, then went over to Oliver. The two of them started talking in low voices, with Oliver still glaring in my direction.
The Spartan was clearly angry at me for touching his precious notebook and teasing him about who his mystery crush might be. Whatever. I didn't care what Oliver thought about me. Besides, he'd started it by making fun of my T-shirt. I might not know how to sling a sword, but I could throw verbal daggers with the best of them.
After about a minute of talking, Kenzie and Oliver broke apart. They both headed toward the archery target, and Kenzie gestured for me to follow them. Apparently, I hadn't pissed them off enough to make them forget about the rest of our training session. Too bad.
Sighing, I got to my feet, ready to show the Spartans that I sucked just as much at using a bow as I did at swinging a sword.
Chapter 2
Thwang!
For the fifth time in as many tries, my arrow weakly thumped against the target, then bounced off and fell to the gym floor.
“No, no, no,” Kenzie said, shaking his head. “How many times do I have to tell you? Using a bow is just like using a sword. You can't be timid about it, Gwen. You have to pull back the string and let the arrow go like you really mean it. Otherwise, you're not going to get enough power to make your arrow go through your target.”
“Yeah, Gwen,” Oliver sniped. “You want to kill Reapers, not make them die laughing at you.”
I ignored Oliver's snide comment, focused on Kenzie's advice, and blew a loose strand of hair off my face. “Power. Mean it. Right.”
I'd been practicing for the last fifteen minutes with a long, curved bow, while the Spartans had looked on and called out advice. Surprisingly, my aim was decent enough to let me hit the outer rim of the target, but I had yet to actually have an arrow stick in it. They all kept bouncing off. Kenzie claimed it was because I wasn't pulling the string back far enough and giving the arrow enough force to penetrate the target. I thought it was because I was just as bad at archery as I was at swordplay. I got good grades. Why did I have to be coordinated, too?
“Here,” Kenzie said, handing me another arrow. “Let's try again.”
Kenzie shook his head at Oliver, who snickered. I sighed and nocked the arrow.
One of the gym doors squeaked open, and Logan stepped back inside. But he wasn't alone—Savannah Warren was with him.
Savannah was a gorgeous Amazon, with intense green eyes and a mane of red hair that blazed down her back in a sunset of ringlets. She also happened to be Logan's current squeeze—one in a long, long line if you believed the gossip around campus.
Logan had a reputation for being one of the resident man-whores at Mythos Academy—the kind of guy that girls just couldn't resist and didn't really want to anyway. He certainly looked the part with his piercing, ice blue eyes; thick, ink black hair; and muscled body. He practically oozed bad-boy charm, even when wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants like he was now. One of the rumors that had gone around campus back in the fall was that Logan signed the mattress of every girl that he slept with at Mythos, just so he could keep them all straight.
Logan stood in the gym doorway, smiling down at Savannah. The Amazon toyed with his shirt, sliding her hand back and forth across his sculpted chest. My fingers tightened around the bow, and ugly, jealous anger burned in the pit of my stomach.
Logan and I had almost had a—a—
thing
a few weeks back. A freaking
moment
. Okay, several
moments
. The Spartan had gotten into the habit of saving my life, first when a Nemean prowler had tried to turn me into catnip, and then later on when a Valkyrie had wanted to kill me for messing up her evil plans. Bad-boy charm I could deal with, but saving my life? Twice? That was a little tougher to forget. I'd fallen hard for Logan as a result, even going so far as to ask him out.
He'd turned me down flat.
Logan had claimed that I didn't know what Spartans were really capable of, that I didn't know what
he
was capable of, and that he wasn't the hero I thought he was.
Whatever. If he didn't like me, he could have just said so. Instead he'd given me some lame excuse that he had a deep, dark secret that would scare me off. I'd once picked up a girl's hairbrush and had seen her stepfather sexually abusing her. I was willing to bet Logan's secret wasn't nearly as horrible as that, but nothing I'd said had convinced him otherwise. Nothing I'd said had convinced him to take a chance on me—on
us
.
“Gwen? You want to shoot that arrow sometime today?” Kenzie said. “We've only got fifteen minutes of practice time left.”
“Sure,” I muttered, turning toward the target.
Savannah's soft laughter drifted across the gym, making my anger burn a little hotter. If I'd been a Valkyrie, like my best friend, Daphne Cruz, princess pink sparks of magic would have been shooting out of my fingertips. That's what happened whenever Daphne got pissed about something—and I was plenty pissed at myself right now for still caring about Logan when he'd made it perfectly clear he didn't feel the same way about me.
I raised the arrow up to eye level and peered down the length of it at the target. Part of me was thinking about Logan, but the other part was thinking about Daphne and how she would have turned around and put an arrow in the Spartan's ass from all the way across the gym. Daphne was great with a bow. In fact, she was one of the best shots at Mythos and the captain of the girls' archery team. An image flickered in my mind then, one of Daphne using the bow, instead of me—
“Any time now, Gwen,” Kenzie said in an impatient voice.
“Yeah, come on, Gwen, while we're all still young,” Oliver sneered.
My anger flared up to supernova level at Oliver's snarky tone, so much so that I didn't think—I just let go.
THUNK!
The arrow hit the target dead center—perfectly in the middle of the black bull's-eye. And this time it stayed there instead of thumping off and falling to the floor.
Beside me, Kenzie blinked. “How did you do that?”
I frowned. “I don't know.”
I really didn't. Yeah, I might have been hitting the target all along, but only the outside edge, and none of my other arrows had even come close to sticking in it. But this one? It had practically
skewered
the target, with only the back half of the shaft now visible.
“Well, whatever you were doing, do it again,” Kenzie said, passing me another arrow.
“If you even can,” Oliver chimed in.
I nocked another arrow and tried to remember what I'd just done. I'd been thinking about Daphne, of course, but it felt like more than that. It had almost seemed like I was ... channeling her somehow. Or at least my memories of her.
My psychometry let me remember every single person and every single object I'd ever touched. Once I flashed on someone or something, those vibes, feelings, and emotions became part of me. I could think about those memories and call them up at will, replaying the images over and over again in my head with perfect color, picture, and sound every single time. That was one of the cool things about my magic. But the flip side to it and one of the not-so-cool things was that sometimes the memories just came out of nowhere and flooded my mind whether I wanted them to or not. Either way, it was like having a photographic memory, only a lot freakier—especially given some of the bad, bad stuff I'd seen.
But they weren't really
my
memories. When I'd let go of the arrow, I'd been thinking about Daphne's memories, what she'd done and how she'd felt. I'd picked up her bow in her dorm room last week and had gotten a whole bunch of flashes of the Valkyrie competing at various archery tournaments.
I thought about Daphne again, this time really focusing on her, picturing her at one of the competitions—how she'd held her bow, how she'd lined up her arrow and pulled back the string, the electric thrill of victory she'd felt every time her arrow had hit the target dead center. Then I lifted the bow and concentrated on my own shot.
Once again, my own arrow zoomed straight into the center of the target.
“All right,” Kenzie said, clapping his hands. “It looks like we're finally making progress with something.”
He grinned at me, and I returned his smile, even though I could see Oliver scowling behind him. I still didn't understand exactly what I'd done, how I'd used Daphne's memories to help myself, but at least I'd hit the target again. Yeah, it was kind of weird, but in a good way. It was certainly better than a lot of things I'd experienced since coming to the academy.
I turned around to see if Logan had noticed my success—and saw him French-kissing Savannah in the gym doorway. The Amazon had her arms around his neck, and Logan had his wrapped around her waist, pulling her even closer to him. They kissed for another few seconds before Savannah drew back. She grabbed the front of Logan's shirt and yanked him out of the gym. I didn't know where they were headed, but it was obvious what they were going to do—sneak in a make-out session before morning classes started.
Cold, bitter, aching hurt frosted my heart, piercing it the way my arrow had the target a few seconds ago.
“Gwen?” Kenzie asked, his voice soft and kind.
For once, even Oliver was quiet, instead of stinging me with some barbed remark.
Not everyone at the academy knew about my massive crush on Logan, but it had no doubt become painfully obvious to Kenzie and Oliver, since they'd watched me train with Logan for weeks now. Plus, they'd just seen my reaction to him leaving me behind to go tongue wrestle with another girl.
“I'm fine,” I snapped, hating the fact that they knew how much I cared about Logan, hating the fact that I still felt this way in the first place. “Let's keep practicing.”
Kenzie handed me another arrow. He didn't say a word. Neither did Oliver.
Still channeling Daphne's memories and my own anger, I put five more arrows dead center into the target before training time was over.
 
“You
have
to come to Winter Carnival, Gwen. It's a Mythos Academy tradition.
Everybody
will be there.”
I ignored Daphne and stabbed another miniscule piece of fruit in the delicate, white china bowl in front of me. The fruit was a vibrant yellow color, with a strange, pointed shape. Definitely not kiwi. Maybe a star fruit? I brought it up to my nose and sniffed, but all I could smell was the sharp, sweet tang of the honey-vanilla-lime dressing. The weird fruit didn't look like it would kill me if I ate it. Then again, a lot of things at the academy seemed far nicer than they really were.
Across from me, Daphne cut another dainty bite of an egg white omelet topped with chunks of fresh, buttery lobster; sautéed spinach; and thick crumbles of Feta cheese. The Valkyrie was actually eating lobster for breakfast—and enjoying every single bite of it. Yucko.
Lobster was actually one of the tamer things served in the dining hall. Caviar, escargot, and veal were among the daily offerings for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, along with tons of other fancy, froufrou foods. Even the regular dishes—like lasagna, fried chicken, or the fruit salad I was eating—always featured weird ingredients, strange sauces, and bizarre toppings. But the other kids loved all the exotic foods, since they'd grown up eating the expensive entrées with their obscenely rich parents. The Mythos students scarfed down snails the way kids at my old public high school had inhaled greasy pizzas, crispy fries, and thick cheeseburgers.
The lack of simple, identifiable,
normal
food was one of the things I hated about the dining hall—and one of the many things I hated about Mythos Academy in general.
“Gwen? Are you even listening to me?” Daphne snapped her fingers in front of my face, causing pink sparks of magic to flutter around us like tiny fireflies.
“I don't have to listen,” I said, putting my fork down in the bowl and pushing it, and the mystery fruit, away. “All you've been talking about for the last two weeks is this weekend getaway all the students are invited to.”
“Not just any getaway,” Daphne said. “
Winter Carnival
. Trust me. It's one of the best events of the year.”
“Why?” I groused. “Because everyone gets to go to some fancy ski resort for the weekend, where they can drink, smoke, and have sex with limited interference from the professors?”
Daphne grinned, her black eyes bright with excitement. “Exactly.”
I didn't see how the carnival would be any different from what went on at the academy on a daily basis, but I didn't say anything. The kids might all be at Mythos to supposedly learn how to fight and use their magic to help protect the world, but they liked to party hard while they did it. Given the fact that everyone's parents were filthy, filthy rich, they could easily afford to. Apparently, back in the day, all the various gods and goddesses had rewarded their warriors with gold, silver, and diamonds the size of my fist. The wealth had trickled down and multiplied through the generations, which is why the Mythos students had the very best of everything, from designer clothes to expensive cars to custom-made jewelry and weapons.
Back at my old high school, a party had been a sixpack of wine coolers that somebody's college-age sister had bought on the sly. Here at Mythos, the kids whose parents owned Dionysian wineries sent them
cases
of the stuff.
“Come on,” Daphne wheedled. “I'll need somebody to hold my hair back while I puke my guts out. Some of the parties can get pretty wild.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Too wild for a mighty Valkyrie such as yourself to handle?”

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