Kiss of Frost (6 page)
Authors: Jennifer Estep
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic, #Action & Adventure, #Survival Stories, #Paranormal, #General
It quivered there, wobbling back and forth ever so slightly, just like the ones I’d shot into the target in the gym this morning. A foot closer, and it would have drilled straight into my skull.
That’s when my brain caught up with my eyes, and I realized that, you know, someone was actually
shooting at me
.
shooting at me
.
I immediately dropped to my knees and crabbed backward among the stacks, dragging the metal cart along with me and wincing at all the freaking noise it made. I didn’t know if I was out of the archer’s line of sight or not, but surely, he couldn’t shoot at me through the cart—could he? Were there magical bows and arrows that could do that sort of thing?
Shit, shit, shit! Why did this always happen to me? You’d think the library would be one of the safest, most boring places at Mythos instead of one of the deadliest. This was the second time someone had tried to kill me in here. I
so
needed to work somewhere else on campus.
so
needed to work somewhere else on campus.
I huddled in the stacks, my back against a bookshelf, knees tucked into my chest, and the cart positioned in front of me. My breath puffed out of my mouth in sharp, short, ragged gasps. It took me several seconds and some deep, deep gulps of air before I was able to notice anything but the crazy
thump-thump-thump
of my heart and the blood roaring in my ears. I forced myself to focus, to listen, and to keep the panic to a minimum. You know, so I could maybe
hear
whether or not the mysterious archer was nocking another arrow in his bow and coming my way with it.
thump-thump-thump
of my heart and the blood roaring in my ears. I forced myself to focus, to listen, and to keep the panic to a minimum. You know, so I could maybe
hear
whether or not the mysterious archer was nocking another arrow in his bow and coming my way with it.
Silence—I heard nothing but absolute, still, dead freaking silence.
I stayed where I was. The seconds ticked by, going past one minute, then two, but I still didn’t hear anything. Whoever the archer was, I hoped he was long gone by now, but I wasn’t going to be stupid enough to just go about my business, like everything was normal. I might not be a highly trained warrior like all the other kids, but even I knew that assuming the bad guy was gone would be a quick, dumb way to die.
As quietly as I could, I shoved the metal cart away and crawled to the opposite end of the aisle, keeping close to the shelves and the floor. I paused there and listened some more. When I didn’t hear anything, I slowly stuck my head around the corner.
Empty—the library was completely empty.
Nobody was studying at the tables. Nobody was packing up their stuff. Nobody was walking toward the double doors with a backpack slung over their shoulder. Even Mrs. Raven, the woman who manned the coffee cart, had already left for the night.
I bit my lip. Just because I didn’t see anyone didn’t mean the library was empty. That arrow had come from somewhere. Someone had shot it at me, and I had no way of knowing whether or not he was still in here—
A hand clamped down on my shoulder. I shrieked and threw myself to the left, banging my shoulder on the opposite bookshelf. I grabbed one of the thick books, whipped back my arm, and turned around on my knees, ready to throw the heavy volume at whomever was behind me, then surge to my feet and run like crazy.
Nickamedes stood in the middle of the aisle, his hands on his hips.
“Gwendolyn?” The librarian frowned. “Are you okay?”
I scrambled to my feet, for once extremely grateful to see him. So much so that I would have hugged him if it wouldn’t have been just too weird. Nickamedes opened his mouth to say something else, but I held up my hand.
“Shh!” I hissed.
Nickamedes’s confused frown turned into a glacial glare at my shushing, but I ignored him and concentrated. Once again, I didn’t hear anything. No rustles, no whispers of clothing, no footsteps hurrying away.
“I ask again. Are you okay?” Nickamedes said in a snide tone. “Or are you having some sort of ... episode?”
“No, no, I’m not okay,” I said, moving past him and stalking to the end of the aisle. “I’m not okay because of that—”
I rounded the corner and pointed at the end of the bookshelf, but my words died on my lips.
The arrow was gone—vanished, like it had never even been there to start with.
“Gwendolyn? Is something the matter?” Nickamedes stepped out from the stacks behind me.
My mouth opened, closed, and opened again, but no words came out.
No, I’m not okay,
I wanted to say.
Someone just tried to put an arrow through my skull
.
No, I’m not okay,
I wanted to say.
Someone just tried to put an arrow through my skull
.
But I couldn’t tell him that. Not without proof. Nickamedes hated me. He’d never believe someone had just taken a shot at me in the library. And even if he did, well, he might not care all that much.
I clamped my lips together and stood there, anger, embarrassment, and fear making my cheeks burn.
Nickamedes raised his black eyebrows in a way that clearly said he thought I’d lost what little sense I had. “Well, I’m done with my e-mails. Go get your things together, and I’ll turn off the lights and lock up for the night.”
He walked back to his office, but I stayed where I was, feeling crazy, scared, and frustrated, all at the same time. I blew out a breath and turned back to the bookshelf, as if the arrow would somehow magically reappear. It didn’t, of course, but I realized that maybe I hadn’t been imagining things after all.
Because there was a nick in the wood that hadn’t been there before.
The deep, ugly, starlike shape looked like it had grooved maybe four inches into the dark, glossy wood. Whoever had shot the arrow must have yanked it out while I’d been looking around the far side of the bookshelf. That was the only explanation I could come up with. But if that was the case, why hadn’t he fired another arrow at me when I’d had my back turned? Had the archer heard Nickamedes moving around in his office and had been scared off? If so, I was going to have to start being a lot nicer to the uptight librarian—a whole lot nicer.
But right now I wanted answers, and I knew of one way to maybe get them. My hand trembling, I brought my fingers up to the groove. I hesitated a second, then pressed them to the splintered wood, knowing that my psychometry would kick in and show me exactly what had happened.
THUNK!
An image of the arrow slamming into the bookcase filled my mind—but nothing else. No clue as to who had shot it or why. Disappointing but not surprising. I’d need the actual arrow itself for that or the bow that it had been launched from. Those were the tools the archer had touched, the things he’d used when he’d tried to kill me. The bookshelf was just where the arrow had landed. That’s why there weren’t any emotions attached to it—just the sudden violence of the arrow slamming into the thick wood.
Frustrated, I dropped my hand.
“Gwendolyn!” Nickamedes called out to me from one of the doors in the glass office complex. “You either come get your bag right this second or leave it here for the night!”
There was nothing else I could do—not tonight, not without the bow, the arrow, or some other sort of proof—so I turned away from the splintered bookshelf and headed over to the checkout counter.
I grabbed my messenger bag and slung it over my shoulder, but I wasn’t really thinking about what I was doing. Instead, I was replaying the day’s events in my head. First, the SUV, and now the arrow in the bookcase. It all added up to only one conclusion.
Someone was trying to kill me. But it wasn’t in the gym this time, and it wasn’t just for practice.
No—this time, it was for real.
Chapter 6
“Someone’s trying to kill you? Really?” Daphne asked a half an hour later.
I shrugged. “Kill, maim, or injure. Isn’t it all the same thing to Reapers?”
We were in my dorm room, eating the chocolate-strawberry cookies Grandma Frost had baked earlier today. Well, Daphne was eating the cookies. I didn’t have an appetite for them. Knots still twisted and tangled together in my stomach from almost getting skewered in the library.
After Nickamedes had locked the front doors, I’d run all the way from the Library of Antiquities on the upper quad down to Styx Hall, where my dorm room was. With every step, I’d expected an arrow to zoom out of the shadows and rip through my heart.
But nothing had happened.
I’d made it to my dorm in one piece, used my student ID card to get inside, and had gone straight up to my room, which was stuck in a separate turret on the third floor. The room featured all your standard dorm furniture—a bed, a desk, some bookshelves, a TV, a small fridge—although I’d added my own personal touches. A couple of framed photos of my mom stood on my desk, along with a small statue of Nike. Vic, who was currently sleeping in his scabbard, hung on the wall above the desk, right next to my posters of Wonder Woman, Karma Girl, and The Killers.
Normally, I considered my dorm room a safe haven from the craziness that was Mythos Academy. Not tonight, though. I huddled on my knees on the floor, my purple and gray plaid comforter wrapped around me, and peered through the bottom of one of the picture windows set into the wall. There didn’t
seem
to be anyone lurking on the dorm’s lawn, but then again, it was pitch-black outside now.
seem
to be anyone lurking on the dorm’s lawn, but then again, it was pitch-black outside now.
“Why do you think it’s a Reaper who tried to kill you?” Daphne asked.
“Who else could it be? Besides, Professor Metis told me that Jasmine’s family might come after me because I was involved in her death.”
“True,” Daphne agreed. “You did spectacularly piss off her family. Not to mention Reapers in general.”
The Valkyrie lounged on my bed, eating a cookie with one hand while she typed on her laptop with the other. The motion made the charms on the silver bracelet around her right wrist jangle together. Carson had bought the bracelet for Daphne weeks ago, back when he was trying to work up the courage to ask out the Valkyrie. Now, it was one of her most prized possessions.
“Reapers don’t like it when one of their own dies,” Daphne added. “Payback is, like, their life. Are you going to tell Professor Metis what happened?”
Metis was my myth-history professor, and she’d sort of become my mentor. She’d also been my mom’s best friend, back when they’d both gone to Mythos. The professor had told me that my mom had saved her life more times than she could count and that she owed it to my mom to look out for me while I was here.
My eyes flicked to my desk, and I crawled over to it and grabbed a framed photo off the top. Two girls grinned up at me from underneath the glass, their arms around each other. My mom and Professor Metis, back when they’d been about my age.
Not too long ago, Metis had given me this photo of them as teenagers. Every time I slipped the picture out from behind the glass and ran my fingers over the slick paper, I felt all the love that my mom and Metis had had for each other. They’d been more like sisters than friends. Knowing someone else had cared about my mom as much as I did made me feel a little less alone and made my grief and guilt over her death a little easier to bear.
“What am I going to tell Metis?” I said, putting the photo back on the desk. “That somebody tried to run me over near my grandma’s house and then took a shot at me in the library? I don’t have any proof that either one actually happened. I didn’t get a look at the license plate on the car, and I don’t have the arrow. She might just think I was being paranoid.”
“I don’t think so,” Daphne said, drumming her fingers on top of her keyboard and making pink sparks flicker in the air. “Metis is more understanding than most of the profs are. I think she’d believe you.”
I shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. You should have seen the look that Nickamedes gave me—like I’d just escaped from Ashland Asylum or something. Who knows? Maybe I have.”
I tried to smile at my own stupid joke, but I couldn’t quite make my lips turn up all the way. Knowing that someone was trying to kill me didn’t put me in a smiling mood.
Daphne shook her head, her blond hair spilling over her shoulders. “I don’t think you’re crazy. If you think there’s a Reaper after you, then there probably is. They pretty much live to kill us, you know, just like we do them.”
“Great. Way to make me feel better.”
Daphne rolled her black eyes. “Oh, suck it up, Gwen. It’s not the end of the world. We’re all here learning how to fight Reapers. You’re just getting a crash course in it, that’s all. Some of the kids would actually be jealous of you. The Spartans certainly would. Sometimes I think Logan and his friends would go off hunting Reapers if Coach Ajax and the other profs would let them.”
In addition to being the best fighters at Mythos, the Spartans also had a reputation for being the most bloodthirsty. They actually liked to be in the thick of battle and killing things—it was part of their DNA or something. I guess that’s just what happened when you could pick up normal, everyday objects—the cookies Daphne was noshing on, the stapler on my desk, the small replica of Nike next to it—and automatically know how to kill people with them. Logan, Kenzie, and Oliver could grab any one of those things, kill me with it, and not think twice doing it. Seriously. That’s the kind of freaky stuff they instinctively knew how to do.
“Well, it’s a course I’m going to flunk,” I groused. “Maybe I’ll just hide up here in my room until Christmas break. Sooner or later, the Reaper will have to lose interest in me.”
“Reapers
never
lose interest. Once you’re on their hit list, they won’t stop coming until you’re dead—or they are.” Daphne shook her head again. “And you can’t stay here, especially not this weekend. Everyone’s going to the Winter Carnival, even the professors and the academy staff. You’d be on campus all by yourself. If there
is
a Reaper out there gunning for you, you’d just give him an early Christmas present. You know what a total joke the dorm security is.”
never
lose interest. Once you’re on their hit list, they won’t stop coming until you’re dead—or they are.” Daphne shook her head again. “And you can’t stay here, especially not this weekend. Everyone’s going to the Winter Carnival, even the professors and the academy staff. You’d be on campus all by yourself. If there
is
a Reaper out there gunning for you, you’d just give him an early Christmas present. You know what a total joke the dorm security is.”
I sighed. “So what do you think I should do?”
“Talk to Metis,” Daphne said. “Tell her what’s going on and ask her if she’s heard anything about Jasmine’s family. If they’re still in hiding or if the Pantheon has caught up to them yet and has thrown them in prison where they belong.”
I nodded my head, and we were silent for a few moments.
“You know, it’s just too bad that I didn’t have a bow and arrow tonight,” I finally groused. “I could have thought of you and defended myself against the Reaper.”
“What do you mean?”
I told the Valkyrie how I’d done better during archery practice this morning just by thinking of her, by calling up the memories I had of her at the tournaments she’d won.
“Really? That’s cool.” Daphne tapped her fingers against her lips, deep in thought. “I wonder if you could do that with other things, too.”
“What do you mean?”
She gestured at her bulging book bag on the floor. “I’ve been reading up on various magical theories and powers while I wait for my own magic to quicken. There are lots of stories about folks tapping into other people’s powers. Most of them have some kind of mental magic, like you do. Telepathy or something that lets them see into other people’s minds. So if you can call up the memories of my archery tournaments, who’s to say you couldn’t do that with other things? Or even with other people?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I never thought of my magic like that before. Usually I just get flashes off objects. I don’t actually
do
anything with the memories I see.”
do
anything with the memories I see.”
“Well, maybe you should try to, to see if it works,” Daphne said. “Either way you might as well start packing your bags for the carnival. Because I’m not leaving you here by yourself, not with a Reaper lurking around. You’re going to the carnival, even if I have to drag you kicking and screaming onto the bus myself.”
Daphne’s pretty features took on a determined, stubborn look, and more pink sparks of magic flickered in the air around her. We might have only been friends for a few weeks now, but I knew she meant what she said. And with her Valkyrie strength, she’d have no problem twisting my arm—literally—to get me to do exactly what she wanted.
“All right, all right,” I groused again. “I’ll talk to Metis tomorrow, and I’ll go to the stupid Winter Carnival with you. Just don’t expect me to like it.”
Daphne grinned, and then stuffed another cookie into her mouth.
I stuck to my regular schedule the next day, Thursday; weapons training, bright and early, with Logan, Kenzie, and Oliver; breakfast in the dining hall with Daphne; then a full day of classes. I eyed all the other students, wondering which one of them might really be a Reaper, but no one paid me any more attention than usual. Which is to say, nobody noticed me at all. I wasn’t exactly one of the popular kids, and I certainly wasn’t pretty enough for the guys to check me out that way. Most people—like Helena Paxton and her snotty friends in the library last night—just thought of me as Gwen Frost, that weird Gypsy girl.
Finally, sixth period rolled around, and I slid into my seat in Professor Metis’s myth-history class. Carson’s desk was right in front of mine, and he turned around to talk to me. Carson was Daphne’s boyfriend, but he was my friend, too, since I’d helped hook them up in the first place. He was just an all-around nice, sweet guy with a tall, lanky, six-foot frame and dusky brown hair and skin. He also happened to be a total band geek, and was the drum major for the Mythos Academy Marching Band, even though he was only seventeen and a second-year student, like me. Carson was a Celt, and had a magical talent for music, like some kind of warrior bard, although I’d never really asked him about it, what kind of power he had, or what he could do with it.
“Are you excited about the Winter Carnival?” Carson asked, pushing his black glasses up his nose and peering at me with his dark brown eyes. “This will be your first one, right, Gwen?”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “And I’m just thrilled to death about it.”
Carson frowned, picking up on my sour mood, but before he could say anything else, the bell rang, signaling the start of class. A few seconds later Professor Metis stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. Metis was of Greek descent, like so many of the kids and profs at Mythos. She was a short woman with a stocky body, bronze skin, and black hair that was always pulled back into a high, tight bun. Today she wore a heavy fisherman’s sweater that was the same color green as her eyes behind her silver glasses.
“Good afternoon, everyone. Please open your books to page 251,” Metis said. “Today we’re going to focus on some of the creatures that aided Loki during the Chaos War, and some species that the Reapers still use today.”
I winced. Monster talk, in other words. Definitely
not
my favorite subject. Reapers were bad enough, but they were just people in the end. Okay, okay, people with magic, weapons, and seriously bad attitudes, but still, just people. It was the monsters—the mythological nightmares the Reapers trained to do their evil biddings—that really creeped me out. I’d been face-to-face with a Nemean prowler, and I’d seen exactly how big, long, and sharp the killer kitty-cat’s teeth and claws were. It was like a black panther on steroids. Prowler super-, superdangerous. Gwen not so much. That was all I really needed to know.
not
my favorite subject. Reapers were bad enough, but they were just people in the end. Okay, okay, people with magic, weapons, and seriously bad attitudes, but still, just people. It was the monsters—the mythological nightmares the Reapers trained to do their evil biddings—that really creeped me out. I’d been face-to-face with a Nemean prowler, and I’d seen exactly how big, long, and sharp the killer kitty-cat’s teeth and claws were. It was like a black panther on steroids. Prowler super-, superdangerous. Gwen not so much. That was all I really needed to know.
But there was no getting out of class, so I cracked open my myth-history book to the appropriate page.
“Now,” Professor Metis began, “you all know about the Reapers of Chaos, those who serve the evil god Loki, and how they and Loki tried to enslave everyone centuries ago. Their actions resulted in the long, bloody Chaos War, which had almost destroyed the entire world. Eventually, the members of Pantheon banded together to battle Loki and his Reapers. Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, defeated Loki in single combat, and she and the other gods trapped him in a magical, mythological prison far removed from the mortal realm.”
Metis looked at first one student, then another, making sure we were all paying attention. “We’ve also talked about how the Reapers are trying to free Loki, so the god can plunge the world into a second Chaos War... .”
As the professor started her lecture, I once again thought about Jasmine Ashton and how she’d been a Reaper, along with the rest of her family. Before she’d died, Jasmine had told me there were other Reapers at the academy—something that made my stomach quiver with dread even now. It was bad enough to know Reapers existed in the first place. It was another scarier thing to realize you went to class with them and had no idea who they were—or when they might decide to try and kill you.
Reapers were the reason why all the kids were at Mythos to start with. The students were the descendants of all the ancient warriors who’d helped defeat Loki the first time around, and they were here in case the god ever got free again. All of the Mythos students had been training since birth to learn how to use whatever skills or magic they had, so they could fight Reapers. Of course, I wasn’t a warrior like the other kids—not exactly—but I had my own magic: my psychometry, given to me by Nike herself.
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