Jennifer Estep Bundle (75 page)

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Authors: Jennifer Estep

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Chapter 12
Finally, at about eight thirty, students started filing out of the library for the night. The latest juicy gossip had been spread, the frantic texts had been sent, and it was time to get some rest before everyone did the same thing again tomorrow.
Nickamedes was still sulking in his office, which meant that I could finally leave the checkout counter and search for the dagger. And I knew just the place to start.
The library seemed to be deserted, and even Raven had closed down her coffee cart and left for the night, but I decided to be as incognito as possible. So I grabbed a metal cart full of books that needed to be shelved and pushed it back into the stacks. The wheels
squeak-squeak-squeaked
with every turn I made, but since all the wheels on all the stupid carts squeaked, I figured the sound would help me blend in. It would have been strange if the wheels
hadn't
screeched.
For the next ten minutes, I pushed the cart back and forth in the stacks, shelving all the books that needed to be put away, before steering the cart over to a set of stairs that led up to the second floor. I looked around again, but I didn't see or hear anything. Of course, that didn't mean much in the library, which in my experience was one of the most dangerous places on campus. I grabbed the last book off the cart and climbed the stairs, like the slender volume belonged in the stacks up there instead of downstairs in the main collection. Actually, it did go in the archives on the second floor.
If there was one word that described the statues ringing the second floor balcony, it was
impressive
. All of the gods and goddesses stood thirty feet tall and were carved out of marble so white and smooth that it just gleamed. I felt very small and very shabby in comparison to the elegant carvings. My sneakers slapped softly against the floor as I hurried along the balcony, and every few steps I paused and looked around, listening for any footsteps or rustles of clothing behind me.
Nothing. I heard and saw nothing.
Finally, I reached the statue of Sigyn. To my surprise, the Norse goddess stood in the spot right next to Nike's statue. How had I not noticed that before? Then again, on the rare occasions that I did venture up to the second floor, I always came to see Nike, not any other goddess.
The statue of Sigyn was just as tall and imposing as the others were. The Norse goddess of devotion wore a long gown, her bare feet just peeking out from underneath the draped folds. Strangely enough, the gown looked torn and tattered in places, as if her statue had been continuously chipped away over the years, although I don't see how that could have happened in the library. Her hands and arms looked especially pitted and pockmarked. A spiderweb swooped from one side of the statue to the other, looking like a glistening silver necklace that had been strung around the goddess's throat. Sigyn's features were pretty enough, but there was such sorrow in her face, as if she was somehow responsible for all the sadness in the world. It made me want to reach out and comfort her.
I stood there for several seconds, just staring into Sigyn's stone eyes, before shaking my head and coming back to myself.
“All right, Gwen,” I muttered. “Focus.”
I put the book I'd been carrying down on the floor. Then, I drew in a breath, leaned forward, and brushed my fingers against the cold stone, waiting for my psychometry to kick in, for the images and memories to fill my mind.
Instead of flashing on the statue and all the people who'd seen and walked by it over the years, I felt nothing—nothing at all. No flickers of feeling, no memories, nothing. It was like no one had ever touched the statue—not even the artist who'd carved it in the first place.
I frowned. My Gypsy gift always let me see
something,
always let me feel
something
whenever I touched an object, no matter how big or small it was. The only time I hadn't flashed or couldn't flash on an object was when it was an illusion, and there was nothing really there to start with. That's how Jasmine had tricked me into thinking she was dead—she'd created an illusion of her body lying on the library floor.
I rapped my fist on the stone, and the dull
thump-thump-thump
of my knuckles on the marble echoed around the balcony. Nope, the statue was as real as I was. Maybe nobody had touched it in so long that all the memories attached to the statue had faded away. That could happen sometimes with objects, like if they were put into storage and weren't used for long periods of time.
Since I hadn't gotten any vibes off the stone, I decided to keep searching the old-fashioned way—I ran my hands up and down the statue and tapped my knuckles on every spot I could reach, searching for a secret compartment. Okay, okay, so maybe I'd watched too many old
Scooby-Doo
cartoons over winter break, but I figured it was worth a shot.
Nothing—I found nothing. Sigyn's statue was solid marble. I even dragged a ladder over to the statue so I could reach even higher, but I still came up empty. I didn't know why the Reaper girl had marked Sigyn's statue on her map, but the dagger wasn't here. Maybe the dagger wasn't in the library after all.
Disappointed, I climbed off the ladder, dragged it over to the wall, and put it back in its spot next to a tall, skinny bookcase. Similar ladders could be found all over the library to help kids reach books on high shelves. I also retrieved the book I'd laid on the floor at Sigyn's feet, glanced at the call number on the spine, and headed toward the spot where it should be shelved.
I found the appropriate case and slid the book into its proper slot. I was just turning around to head down the stairs to the first floor when a silver plaque on the wall beside the case caught my eye. A
RCHITECTURAL
C
OLLECTION
#1–13. The plaque made me think of the essay I had to write for myth-history. While I was up here, I might as well grab a couple of reference books, since Metis wanted
real
sources for the essay.
One by one, I tugged books off the shelves and opened them up, scanning the tables of contents. I didn't get any real vibes off the books, just faint, vague flashes of other students flipping through the faded pages. Most of the books hadn't been touched in years, and whatever memories were associated with them had long since faded away.
What I did stir up was all the dust that had gathered on the volumes. Soon, clouds of dust motes swirled in the air around me, reminding me of the sparks of magic Daphne gave off. I'd texted the Valkyrie again while I'd been working, telling her that I'd found a possible location for the dagger and was going to check it out, but she hadn't responded, not even to text me back and say she was busy tonight. I didn't know what was going on with my best friend, which worried me.
Most of the books focused on the academy buildings, rather than the statues, but I finally found a few that seemed useful, including one that had a gryphon embossed on the front cover in silver foil. I looked at the title.
The Use of Gryphons, Gargoyles, and Other Mythological Creatures in Architecture
. Well, that certainly sounded pretentious enough for Metis's class. I flipped through the pages and saw several photos of stone gryphons, including one that showed the two statues outside the Library of Antiquities. Jackpot. I closed the book and tucked it under my arm. Who knew? Besides using it for a reference source, maybe something in the book would tell me why the statues seemed to be watching me all the time—
The
squeak
of a sneaker made me freeze.
It was a small, soft sound, one that I wouldn't have heard at all, if it hadn't been so absolutely quiet on the second floor. I looked down and noticed a shadow sliding up on the floor beside me, creeping closer and closer. I kept my head bent, like I was still scanning the shelf in front of me, and tightened my grip on the gryphon book. The shadow kept coming and coming, until it was right next to me. I whirled around and raised the book up high, ready to bring it down as hard as I could on whomever was sneaking up behind me.
But there was no one there—no one at all.
I snapped my head back and forth, looking around the balcony. Nobody appeared, and nothing moved, not even the statues. I really, really wanted to call out and ask if there was someone there, but since that was how everyone always died in horror movies, I decided to keep my mouth shut. Instead, gripping the gryphon book even tighter, I tiptoed over to the stairs, eased down them, and stepped back out onto the first floor.
I slid through the stacks, my eyes scanning left and right as I headed toward the checkout counter. Yeah, Nickamedes might be a pain, but listening to him yell at me was better than standing around waiting for a Reaper to sneak up and attack me. I was
so
getting tired of fighting for my life in the library.
I didn't see anything but books, books, and more books, but for some reason, I felt like I wasn't alone, like there was another presence hidden among the tall stacks, creeping around in the shadows. Worse than that, my head started to pound, as if a set of invisible fingers were slowly stabbing their way deep into my brain.
Gypsy ...
A raspy voice echoed through the library.
Oh, Gypsy ... I'm coming to kill you... .
I froze again, my heart leapfrogging up into my throat and choking me from the inside out. It wasn't the whispered words that creeped me out so much; it was the person who'd said them who really frightened me—Preston Ashton, when he'd been stalking me through the construction site at the Powder ski resort. Even worse, Preston had threatened to go after my grandma and kill her the same way he'd helped the Reaper girl murder my mom.
But Preston couldn't possibly be running around campus. He just couldn't. Preston was locked up in the academy prison in the bottom of the math-science building. I wasn't sure where the idea came from, but suddenly I was thinking of the prison and all the locks and magical wards you had to go through to even get to the door, calling up my memories of them and visualizing them in my mind. The pounding in my head intensified, and for a moment, I had trouble letting go of the images, but there was nothing to worry about. Preston was trapped so far underground he could never claw his way out.
Right?
Gypsy ...
The voice kept echoing through the library, growing louder and louder with every cold, raspy whisper. Maybe the voice was supposed to scare me and make me start screaming. And yeah, part of me was shaking with fear. But then I thought about what I'd seen at the coliseum. Creepy voices were one thing—flesh-and-blood Reapers were another. After the attack yesterday, someone's trying to scare me with whispers seemed like child's play—
a bloody annoyance,
as Vic would say, more than a real threat.
“All right, creepy voice,” I muttered. “Let's see how raspy you are when my hands are around your throat.”
Still holding on to the gryphon book, I kept sneaking through the stacks, stopping to look and listen every few feet, and trying to pinpoint exactly where the voice was coming from. I didn't see anything, but the voice kept whispering over and over again, like a bell that was stuck inside my head, bringing a fresh wave of pain with it every single time it chimed. I gritted my teeth, trying to pretend I didn't hear the sound and ignore the growing ache in my skull.
For a second, I wondered if it was all in my head, but I pushed that thought away. I'd seen a lot of Bad, Bad Things over the years with my Gypsy gift, one of the worst being a girl who was being abused by her stepdad. If I had actually lost my mind and was just imagining all this, well, there were worse things I could be thinking about than a creepy voice saying it was going to kill me.
I kept roaming through the stacks, peering around the edges of the bookshelves, looking for the source of the voice. I was just about to give up and go back to the checkout counter, when something rustled a few shelves over.
Still gripping the gryphon book, I slithered in that direction. My sneakers barely made a scuffle on the marble floor, but I still paused every few seconds, looking and listening. Finally, I reached the section where I'd heard the rustle. I peeked through the books just in time to see a figure rounding the far corner, his back to me.
“Gotcha,” I muttered.
I darted around the corner of the bookshelf, raced down the aisle, and headed out into the main library space. A figure was walking in the other direction toward the checkout counter. I raised the book high, ready to bring it down and bash him on the head from behind—
He must have heard the whisper of my sneakers, because at the very last second, he turned and grabbed my wrist. A moment later, I was flying through the air. The next thing I knew, I was lying on my back on the floor, aching all over and desperately trying to breathe and remember what I'd been doing in the first place.
Something scuffed, a shadow fell over me, blocking out the light, and a pair of boots planted themselves beside my head. Not good—so not good. I flailed around on the floor, my fingers searching for the gryphon book, which had fallen out of my hands, but I didn't feel it anywhere. Cold, sweaty panic filled me. I needed that book. I needed some sort of weapon to fight off a Reaper, to keep Preston from killing me like he'd promised—

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