Jennifer Estep Bundle (49 page)

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Authors: Jennifer Estep

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But the most important thing was the fact that the Reaper was after
me
. He wanted to kill
me
. Not anyone else, just
me
.
I might not be able to put an arrow through his heart, but I was Gwen Frost, that weird Gypsy girl who touched stuff and saw things. I used my magic to find things that were lost and to learn people's secrets. Well, the Reaper's real identity was just something else to uncover, just another puzzle to solve, just another secret waiting to be revealed.
No matter what I'd promised Metis, Nickamedes, and even Daphne, I was going to do everything in my power to find out who the Reaper was and take him down—before he tried to kill me again.
Chapter 16
Professor Metis, Nickamedes, and Coach Ajax finished up their hushed talk and left the infirmary, probably to start tracking down the Reaper. Daphne went out with them, so she could let Carson know that I was fine. I didn't ask the Valkyrie if she was going to talk to Logan—or if the Spartan had even asked her whether I was okay or not. I didn't want to know if he hadn't.
Half an hour later, Metis came back into the infirmary and handed me a cell phone, since my own had been swept away by the snow. “Your grandmother, as promised.”
“Thank you,” I said. “And I'm sorry for, well, everything. But mainly for not telling you about the Reaper in the first place. You told me a while back you'd always look out for me, because of your friendship with my mom. I should have trusted you the way she would have.”
Metis looked at me a second, then gave me a curt nod. Her face was still tight with worry, but her green gaze was a little softer than it had been before. She might not like it, but I think Metis understood why I hadn't told her about the Reaper. I hoped so anyway. I also hoped she could forgive me for keeping my mouth shut—and the other things I planned on doing to discover the Reaper's real identity, just as soon as she and the Powers That Were let me out of this hospital bed.
The professor stepped back outside and shut the infirmary door behind her, giving me some privacy.
I raised the phone to my ear. “Hi, Grandma.”
“Hi, pumpkin,” Grandma Frost's voice flooded the line, as warm, soft, and comforting as a hug. “Are you okay?”
“I'm fine. Really, I am.”
“Tell me what happened.”
I drew in a breath and told Grandma everything that had happened since I'd left her house on Wednesday afternoon. When I finished, she stayed quiet for a few seconds.
“Do you want me to come get you, pumpkin? Bring you home with me?” she asked, worry making her voice sound low and strained.
Part of me really, really wanted to say yes. To let Grandma Frost come get me and take me back to her house, just like she had when I was a little girl and I'd woken up scared and crying in the middle of the night the first time I slept over at a friend's house when my mom was out of town.
But the other part of me wondered how much danger I would be putting my grandma in if I let her do that. Word would get out if I'd left the hotel before the other kids, and it wouldn't be too hard for the Reaper to track me back to my grandma's house. He already knew where it was since that was where he'd tried to kill me in the first place.
Besides, I wasn't a little girl, and I didn't want to act or be treated like one. Yeah, I was only seventeen, but I'd grown up a lot since coming to Mythos. Like it or not, Reapers, mythological monsters, and the evil god Loki were part of my life now. I couldn't just pretend they didn't exist anymore. If I didn't stand up for myself against them now, if I didn't try to fight back against the Reaper who was trying to kill me, I didn't know if I'd ever be able to—and Nike would have placed her trust in me for nothing.
I wanted to be worthy of the faith the goddess of victory had in me—and all the other Frost women who had been Nike's Champions over the years. I wanted to fight against the bad guys and the darkness in them that I'd seen.
“I want to stay here at the resort,” I finally said. “But I'm not going to lie to you. I want to stay, so I can figure out what's going on and who the Reaper really is before he hurts someone else.”
Grandma Frost let out a long, weary sigh, like she'd known that's what I was going to say all along. Maybe she had, given her Gypsy gift of seeing the future. “I don't like it, but I understand, Gwen.”
I blinked. Grandma hardly ever called me Gwen. I was always “pumpkin” to her.
She let out a sharp, rueful laugh. “You're growing up, just the same way your mom did: wanting to help people, just like she did. Wanting to be worthy of the Gypsy magic that Nike has entrusted our family with.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I do. How did you know?”
“Because I felt the same when I was your age, and I'm not going to stand in your way now. Just be careful, Gwen. More careful than you've ever been before because I—I don't want to lose you.” Her voice cracked on the last two words. “I don't think I could bear to lose you like I did your mom.”
“I'll be careful,” I whispered back. “More careful than you can imagine.”
“I love you, pumpkin,” Grandma said. “You call me whenever you need me. Any time, day or night, and I'll come running.”
All the emotions I was feeling clogged up my throat, making it hard to talk, but I forced out the words. “I know you will, and I love you, too.”
“Bye, pumpkin.”
“Bye, Grandma.”
She hung up. I ended the call and curled up into a small ball on the hospital bed. Despite the fact that I knew I was doing the right thing by staying at the resort, I couldn't keep the tears from leaking out of the corners of my eyes—and wishing that I could go back to just being Grandma's little girl again.
 
Late that afternoon, the professors finally let me leave the infirmary and go back to my room with Daphne on the thirteenth floor of the resort. Coach Ajax put his heavy hand on my shoulder and walked me through the hotel lobby, like I was some kind of invalid—or criminal. I couldn't decide which one was more embarrassing.
Quite a crowd had gathered there to witness my walk of shame. Well, that and the fact that they were stuck inside the hotel until the Powers That Were at the resort made sure the slopes had stabilized and were safe once more. Of course, pretty much all the Mythos kids had seen the avalanche come hurtling down the mountain toward me during the carnival. And if they hadn't, then their friends had texted them all the juicy details, along with the cell phone photos they'd snapped during the avalanche.
Still, it was kind of weird having everyone stare at me, since, you know, most of the students at the academy barely acknowledged my existence, unless they were mocking me or wanted to hire me to find something they'd lost. But I shouldn't have been worried about being the center of attention. Once the kids in the lobby realized I was fine, they all turned away and started gossiping and texting on their phones again.
Everyone except for Logan.
The Spartan stood by a coffee cart in the lobby, with Kenzie and Oliver by his side. Logan's gaze met mine across the massive room. I hadn't noticed how tense he'd been before, but seeing that I was okay must have taken some kind of burden off his shoulders, because he visibly relaxed. One moment he looked all dark and dangerous and on edge and keyed up for battle. The next he was just Logan again—fun, flirty, sexy Logan. Once the Spartan relaxed, so did Kenzie and even Oliver, who for once didn't give me a dirty look. Instead, Oliver actually looked ... concerned, like he'd been worried about me too. Strange.
But really, I only had eyes for Logan. The intense expression on his face made my heart quiver and my whole body sing. Nobody could fake that kind of concern—
nobody
. Maybe he really did care about me after all. Maybe Logan really did feel the same way about me that I felt about him... .
Then Savannah stepped around the cart, holding two cups of steaming hot chocolate in her hands. She headed straight for Logan. Even though he didn't turn around and look at her, I realized nothing had changed at all. He was still with Savannah, and I was still being lovestruck and stupid.
Disgusted, I looked away. A flash of movement caught my eye, and I spotted Preston waving at me. He leaned up against the far wall of the hotel lobby, half hidden behind a cedar tree and well away from all the other kids who'd come to gawk at me. Ajax stopped a second to talk to Coach Lir. Preston waved at me again, and I used Ajax's distraction to slip away and walk over to him.
“Hi, there,” I said.
“Hi.” Preston's face was tight with worry. “How are you? I heard what happened. I'm so sorry, Gwen. That must have been awful. I was down here waiting for you, and there was just this tremendous noise. I looked out the window and saw the avalanche rushing down the mountain. I can't imagine how terrible it was for you to be in the middle of it.”
I shrugged. I didn't really want to talk about it right now, and I definitely didn't want Preston to think of me as the girl who got caught in the avalanche. No, I wanted him to think of me as Gwen, the cute girl he'd just met. A Reaper might be trying to kill me, but I'd be damned if he'd ruin this for me, too.
“Since we never got to have lunch, do you want to do something tomorrow?” Preston asked. “Maybe go skiing or something? If you feel like it?”
My heart lifted at his words, but then I remembered that I was under house arrest, so to speak. I sighed. “I'd love to, but the profs want me to stay in the hotel tomorrow. . . just in case I'm more shook up than I'm letting on.”
I winced at the lie. That sounded totally lame, but I supposed it was better than telling Preston the truth about the Reaper. Even though we were only going to be at the resort another day, I didn't want to scare him off.
His face darkened with disappointment. “Oh.”
“But maybe we could have lunch tomorrow?” I suggested. “We wouldn't have to leave the hotel to do that.”
Preston thought about it a second, and his face brightened. “Sure. That'll work. I'll text you again in the morning, and we'll figure out the details, okay?”
I smiled at him. “It's a date. Again. This time, I promise I'll keep it.”
He let out a little laugh. “Don't worry. I know you will, Gwen. I'll make sure of it. I won't let you get away again.”
A flash of movement caught my eye, and I realized Ajax had finished up his conversation and was walking through the lobby looking for me. “Well, I have to go. I'll see you tomorrow, okay?”
Preston nodded. “You can count on it.”
He gave me a quick smile, then left the lobby, keeping to the edges of the crowd as he headed down the hallway where some of the restaurants were located, as well as the new construction site. Preston was probably going to have dinner with his friends. I thought it was really cool that he'd come down here to see how I was doing. Most guys wouldn't have bothered to, not for a girl they'd just met yesterday.
Coach Ajax finally spotted me and came over. “Who were you talking to? I didn't get a good look at him.”
“Oh, just a guy I met from the New York academy.”
“Well, come on then,” Ajax rumbled. “Metis and Nickamedes want you tucked in your room for the rest of the night, and so do I.”
Ajax rode up with me in the elevator and walked me down the hall to my room. He even made sure Daphne was waiting inside and that the room was free of Reapers before he left.
To my surprise, Daphne had taken Vic out of his scabbard and laid him out flat on my bed. I flopped down beside the sword, and his twilight-colored eye snapped open.
“You're supposed to take me with you when you go off having adventures, Gwen,” Vic said in his British accent. “Not get to have all the bloody fun by yourself.”
“Trust me, Vic, surviving the avalanche wasn't much fun. Neither was shoving a tree branch through a Fenrir wolf's leg.”
“What?!” Vic and Daphne shrieked in unison.
I sat there on the bed and told them about the wolf and how it had actually seemed to ... like me after I helped it. That was the only part of the story I hadn't shared with Metis and the other profs, instead saying that I'd thought the wolf had been carried away by the snow. Maybe it was crazy, but I didn't want them to hunt down the wolf and kill it, even though I knew that's what they were determined to do. Sure, maybe the creature had wanted to make me a chew toy to start with, but I didn't think it would hurt me now. Maybe. Probably. Well, okay, I really had no idea what the wolf would or wouldn't do, but I didn't want to be the cause of its death.
Daphne shook her head, her blond hair spilling over her shoulders. “You've been watching too many Disney movies, Gwen. Fenrir wolves are trained to kill—that's all they know how to do. That's all they're good for.”
“Well, if they can be trained to kill, then they can be trained to do other things, right?” I insisted in a stubborn tone. “I mean, they're not
born
bad, are they? Metis said they weren't necessarily evil, that they have free will, just like we do.”
Daphne looked at me like I was spouting nonsense. Maybe I was. “Yeah, maybe Fenrir wolves have free will, but the Reapers have tortured all the goodness out of them, just like they have the Nemean prowlers, Black rocs, and all the other creatures they use. Face it, Gwen. That wolf was trained by a Reaper, which makes it just as twisted and evil as the Reaper is.”
“Yep,” Vic chimed in. “Twisted, evil, and deserving of death. If you'd had me with you, then I could have taken care of the oversized puppy all by myself.”

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