Touch of Frost Page 8

Page 8

 

  Two of the Valkyries Jasmine had been friends with were in my first-period English lit class, and I thought that they might ask to be excused, to go back to their dorm rooms for the rest of the day and just process what had happened to their friend-to just feel sad and grieve and cry for her. But the two girls opened up their textbooks, got out their laptops, and started working on the latest critical thinking essay like the rest of us. Like everything was normal. Like nothing out of the ordinary had taken place. If it hadn't been for the faint headache that I still had, I would have thought that I'd imagined everything that had happened last night.

  My eyes went from face to face, but everyone was just as calm and collected as the two Valkyries were. Nobody cried. Nobody looked upset. Nobody seemed scared at all that one of their classmates had been murdered last night.

  Last year at my old school, David Jordan, a popular football player, had been working his after-school job at a convenience store when he'd been shot to death during an armed robbery. The next day at school, people had been hysterical. Crying, weeping, screaming, wondering why David had been shot, why he'd had to die, what he'd ever done to deserve something like that, something so violent and awful and random. The school had brought in grief counselors to talk to all of David's friends and everyone else who'd been shaken up by his death.

  Jasmine Ashton had been the most popular girl in my second-year class. Yeah, she wasn't the first student at Mythos to die, according to Professor Metis, but Jasmine's death had to be one of the most unexpected, the most shocking. But everyone was so calm about it.

  It was creepy.

  And it was the same everywhere that I went all day long. Oh, the kids talked about Jasmine and her gruesome murder, but not in the way that I expected.

  "So who do you think will be homecoming queen now that Jasmine's gone?" the girl sitting in front of me whispered in my fourth-period chemistry class. "Because the dance is on Friday and we already voted for all the kings and queens last week. "

  The petite Amazon sitting across from her shrugged. "Oh, the profs will just give it to the runner-up, which has to be Morgan McDougall. She was Jasmine's number two. Besides, you know how Morgan is. She'll be more than happy to wear that tacky crown, even if it wasn't really hers to start with. "

  The two girls giggled at their cattiness.

  Then, the one in front of me leaned closer to her friend. "Speaking of something else that wasn't hers to start with, I heard that Morgan and Samson Sorensen were getting very cozy at lunch today. Really comforting each other, if you know what I mean. "

  That caught the Amazon's interest. "Really? That's quick work, even for a total slut like Morgan. Tell me more. . . . "

  The talk was the same all day long. Who would be homecoming queen, if Morgan and Samson were hooking up, even who was going to get to move into Jasmine's primo dorm room whenever her parents cleared out her stuff. Apparently, the Ashtons were vacationing on some remote island off the coast of Greece and the school higher-ups hadn't been able to reach them yet to tell them about their daughter's death. But everyone had a cell phone these days, even parents. It sounded to me like the Ashtons just didn't want to be bothered with Jasmine's murder. They probably didn't want to cut their sweet vacation short to come deal with everything.

  Finally, in myth-history class, I couldn't stand it any longer. I tapped Carson Callahan on the shoulder and asked him about it.

  "What is wrong with people here?" I muttered. "The girl was murdered. In the library, where we all have to go practically every single day. And nobody even talks about it, except to wonder who's going to be the stupid homecoming queen now and which Valkyrie's going to sink her claws into Samson Sorensen next. Nobody cares. Not about Jasmine anyway or who might have killed her or the fact that maybe he's still here on campus hiding out somewhere. "

  Carson gave me a sad look, like he and everyone else knew a secret that I didn't. "Do you know how many kids I've grown up with who have died, Gwen? Lots of them. So many that I've lost count. We go to Mythos for a reason. We're warriors, and warriors die. That's just how things are. Sure, some of the kids have car accidents or get drunk at the beach and drown or whatever. And sometimes, they're in the wrong place at the wrong time and get ripped to shreds by Nemean prowlers or murdered by Reapers. Sometimes, they're even Reapers themselves, and you have to kill them before they kill you. "

  I'd never thought that a band geek like Carson could be so blase about something like this. That he could talk about kids dying and killing other kids like it was all okay. Like it was the way that things were supposed to be.

  I just looked at him. "But doesn't it bother you? What happened to Jasmine? Or at least the fact that it happened here?"

  He shrugged. "Sure it does. But nobody ever said that Mythos was a hundred percent safe. Kids sneak out past the sphinxes all the time. It's not that much of a stretch to think that a Reaper could sneak in if he really wanted to. Besides, Jasmine wasn't exactly the nicest girl around. She was kind of a bitch, if you really want to know, always being mean to and putting other people down just to make herself look cool. But nobody ever said or did anything about it because her parents are so loaded and so powerful. "

  "But-"

  Carson sighed. "Look, I know you're new, Gwen, but pretty much everybody here has lost someone that they love, someone that they care about a whole lot more than a spoiled bitch like Jasmine Ashton. "

  There was a harshness in his voice now, a tightness in his face, and a strained sadness in his brown eyes that I recognized.

  "Who have you lost?"

  "My uncle," he said. "He was killed fighting a group of Reapers last year. He was out having dinner with his girlfriend when it happened. "

  "But why? What did he do to them? Did he have an artifact or something they wanted?" I asked, thinking of the stolen Bowl of Tears.

  "Nothing," Carson said in a cold voice. "He didn't have a thing that they wanted. They just saw him and killed him because they're Reapers and they like hurting people, especially warriors like us. They kill us before we can kill them because they know that we're a threat to them, that we're all here learning how we can stop them and Loki for good-forever. But not everyone gets to live to see that day, whenever it comes. "

  The raw pain in his face made me wince.

  "Carson, I'm sorry. I didn't know. "

  "Now you do," he said in a quiet voice, and turned back around.

  Carson didn't speak to or look at me during the rest of class. I couldn't blame him. I'd been trying to understand, trying to figure out why things were so different here, and I'd put my foot right in my mouth.

  After myth-history, I walked over to the Library of Antiquities. As I crossed the quad, I realized that the other kids had felt something over Jasmine's murder after all. I could see it in the way that they huddled together in tight groups, in the strain on so many of their faces, in the way they talked just a little too fast and laughed just a little too loud. Yeah, they'd felt Jasmine's death just as much as I had and were trying to deal with it-even if it wasn't in the way that I'd expected.

  I didn't know if that made me feel better or worse.

  Apparently, I wasn't the only one who was curious, freaked out, or whatever, because there was a much, much larger crowd in the library than usual. Almost every table was full, and almost every student was sneaking glances at the spot where I'd found Jasmine's body.

  There wasn't anything to see. The broken case and the shattered glass had been cleaned up, along with Jasmine's blood. And, of course, her body was gone, too. There was nothing there, not even some flowers, teddy bears, or a few lit candles to remember the dead Valkyrie. After David Jordan's murder, people had turned his locker into a shrine, with photos and cards and stuff. But not here at Mythos.

  Eventually, the crowd cleared out and I found an open spot at the end of one of the long library tables. I pulled out my books and tried
to study, tried to focus on the report that I had to write for Professor Metis's myth-history class, but I couldn't concentrate. It didn't help that all the kids around me were still talking about Jasmine.

  ". . . got what she deserved, if you ask me," one girl whispered. "Jasmine always thought that she was better than everyone else. "

  "Oh yeah," another guy agreed. "It's a terrible thing, but at least I won't have to put up with her in Ancient Languages anymore. She always made fun of me. "

  "Me too, but what really freaks me out is the fact that there was a Reaper in the library. " The girl shuddered. "They're not supposed to be able to even get on campus, much less steal something from the library. That bothers me a lot more than Jasmine ever did. "

  I knew the other kids were grieving, venting, or whatever in their own way. And yeah, maybe Jasmine had been a spoiled bitch, like Carson had said. But still, somebody should care that she was dead. I mean really care. Somebody should be sad that she was gone. Somebody should want to know exactly what happened to her and why. Somebody should try to make sure that it didn't happen again to some other kid.

  Paige Forrest's face flashed through my mind, and I remembered the way that she'd looked at me that day. There had been a . . . desperation in her eyes. In that moment, in the second before I'd touched her hairbrush, part of me, some small part of me, had realized that Paige was hiding something-something big, something huge. And I'd wanted to know what her secret was, the way that I always did, so I'd picked up her hairbrush. I'd just never imagined how truly terrible Paige's secret was.

  Thinking so much about Paige triggered a rush of images and feelings, and I saw it all again in my head. Paige's stepdad brushing her hair, then making her lie back on the bed so he could touch her. I felt it all again, too-all of Paige's shame and fear and helplessness. Once I saw something, once I flashed on an object or a person, those feelings, those memories, were a part of me forever and I always remembered them, could always see and feel them. I supposed it was a Gypsy version of a photographic memory. I could call up specific memories and focus in on them, examining every little thing that I'd seen, felt, or heard. But other times, they just hit me like Paige's were doing right now, whether I wanted them to or not. In a way, I supposed that it was a punishment for me being so damn nosy sometimes.

  I dug my nails into my palms, willing Paige's memories away before I started screaming again. I drew in slow, deep breaths and focused on another image-my mom. Remembering her face, her voice, her smile, her laugh, trying to pull every single detail into supersharp focus. A trick that she'd taught me to deal with the unwanted memories. Think about something good and forget the bad as much as you could.

  It didn't always work, but this time it did. Paige's ugly memories faded from my mind and got locked away in a dark, distant corner of my brain, right alongside all the other bad stuff that I'd seen and felt over the years.

  Still, the flashes of feeling made me think about what I'd done to help Paige. Yeah, I'd wanted to know her secret, but I'd also told my mom what was going on. And, in some small way, I'd helped my mom stop Paige's stepdad from hurting her. I thought about what Professor Metis had said last night-about how proud my mom would have been that I'd tried to help Jasmine when most people would have just run away.

  And, in that moment, I made my decision.

  Maybe it was crazy. Maybe it was this nagging feeling I had that there was something more to all this than just stealing a magical bowl. Maybe it was stupid or silly or just plain wrong.

  But I wanted to know more about Jasmine. Specifically why she'd been in the library so late last night. What had really happened to her and who was responsible for it.

  Maybe . . . maybe I needed to do it for myself, to know why it had happened, to know why whoever had stolen the Bowl of Tears had killed Jasmine but had left me alive. Maybe it was some kind of weird survivor's guilt or something.

  But somehow, someway, I was going to find out the answers to my questions. After all, I was Gwen Frost, that Gypsy girl who saw things. The girl you hired to find whatever was lost. I was good at figuring things out. Uncovering the truth about Jasmine's murder shouldn't be too difficult.

  Besides, this was one secret that I was determined to discover-no matter what.

  Chapter 7

  I couldn't concentrate where I was sitting on the main library floor with all the other students who'd come to gawk, so I moved over to a table tucked into one of the corners in the stacks-the same corner that had the case with the strange sword in it.

  I threw my messenger bag onto the table, then went over and stared down at the sword. The weapon looked the same as it had last night. Silver metal, long blade with faint writing on it, a man's face carved into the hilt.

  I waited a minute, but the eye on the hilt didn't suddenly pop open and stare at me again. Good. Maybe I wasn't going crazy after all.

  I sat down at the table, dragged a notebook out of my bag, and got to work, writing down everything that I knew about Jasmine Ashton. The more I knew about her, the easier it would be to figure out why she'd been in the library last night-and who might have killed her.

  I didn't know much.

  Jasmine was pretty, popular, and a total mean girl. A Valkyrie who loved designer clothes and whose family had deep, deep pockets. And . . . and . . . and that was it. That was all that I knew about her. That was the complete sum total of her existence to me. I didn't even know what her other power was, besides her inherent Valkyrie strength.

  For a moment, I was depressed. This was stupid. It wasn't like I was Veronica Mars or Batman or somebody, able to figure out complex mysteries with just a few clues. Maybe it had been some random bad guy who'd killed Jasmine after all, some Reaper of Chaos who'd just been after the Bowl of Tears so he could do Bad, Bad Things with it.