Dark Frost

Ajax let out a curse and turned away from the paper. Metis sighed and rubbed her head, as though it was suddenly aching. Nickamedes stayed where he was, though, still staring down at the paper, a thoughtful look on his face.

"What is it?" I asked. "What's wrong?"

"It's a map," Nickamedes said.

I rolled my eyes. Well, yeah, I could see that. But a map of what? Where? And why was it so important?

As if hearing my snide thoughts, the librarian looked up at me. "It's a map of the Library of Antiquities."

I frowned. "The library? Why would the Reaper girl have a map of the library?"

Nickamedes kept staring at me, and the answer popped into my head.

"The library," I whispered. "The Reapers think the Helheim Dagger is hidden somewhere in the Library of Antiquities."

"Apparently so."

I looked at Nickamedes. "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Well, is it hidden somewhere in there?" I demanded. "Have you known where it was this whole time?"

My voice got louder and sharper with every word. Logan walked over and put his hand on my shoulder, telling me to take it easy, but too many awful things had happened today for me to do that.

Nickamedes stiffened, then straightened up to his full height and peered down his nose at me. "I assure you that the dagger is not in the library. I know every inch of the place, and I would have discovered it long ago."

"Really? Like you knew that Jasmine Ashton was hiding in a storage room on the fourth floor with the Bowl of Tears last semester?" I sniped. "If I remember right, you thought some anonymous Reaper bad guy had stolen the bowl and smuggled it out of the library. But things didn't turn out that way, did they?"

Nickamedes's cheeks flushed an angry red, and he opened his mouth, ready to argue with me some more. Metis stepped in front of him, putting her hand on his chest.

"Enough," she said. "That's enough, both of you. Bickering among ourselves isn't going to solve anything. I'm sure Nickamedes is right and that the dagger isn't hidden in the library. Otherwise, someone would have stumbled across it years ago."

"But that's why the Reapers were here today, isn't it?" Coach Ajax rumbled in his deep voice. "Because most of the weapons and artifacts on display were on loan from the library. For whatever reason, the Reapers think the dagger is hidden in the library. They must have thought that Nickamedes didn't recognize it, that maybe it was labeled as something else and he packed it up and brought it to the coliseum to be displayed. At the very least, the Reapers knew they'd have an easier time breaking in here than they would the library."

"Well, who knows what the great mind of Grace Frost came up with," Nickamedes muttered in a snide tone. "Or where she hid the dagger to start with. I never understood some of the choices she made. Grace was a fool, if you ask me, about a great many things."

Anger exploded like fireworks in my chest at his harsh words. "And what would you know about my mom?" I snapped, my hands curling into fists. "She's dead, remember? Murdered by the Reapers because she was trying to keep the dagger safe from them. So don't you dare say another word about her!"

Nickamedes eyed me, his blue gaze dark. Logan tightened his grip on my shoulder, his fingers pressing into my skin through the fabric of my clothes. The librarian looked at me another second before his gaze skipped over to his nephew. Nickamedes's lips pulled down into another frown.

"The dagger isn't in the library," he insisted once more. "I don't even know why we're bothering to discuss this. I'm going to see if the parents of the injured students have arrived yet."

The librarian grabbed the office door and slammed it behind him as he stalked out of the room and down the hallway.

"What is with him and his bad attitude?" I muttered.

Metis shook her head. "It's a long story."

The professor stared at the map again, looking at all the Xs marked on it. Now that I knew it was a map of the library, I recognized some of the spots covered by the Xs. The checkout counter where I worked, the spot where the Bowl of Tears had once stood, the coffee cart set up to provide snacks to the students. Strange. Hundreds of kids tromped by those places every single day. I would have thought the Reapers would have marked more out-of-the-way spots, places more likely for my mom to have hidden the dagger and for it to have stayed safe all these years.

We looked at the map for a few more minutes before Metis took it over to the copier in the corner and made several duplicates of it, probably to give to the Powers That Were at the academy. Once that was done, the professor held out the original piece of paper to me, a clear question in her eyes.

I sighed. I didn't feel like using my Gypsy gift. Not now, not after everything that had happened, but I didn't have a choice. I needed to find the dagger before the Reapers did, and my psychometry magic was the best chance I had of doing that.

So I sat down on a chair, closed my fingers around the paper, and waited for the memories and emotions associated with the map to fill my mind.

The first image that popped into my head was one of the Reaper girl. She wore the same black robe and rubber mask she'd had on today, and she stood in an opulent living room. Dark wooden furniture, heavy, antique sofas, large paintings on the walls, crystal vases full of red and black roses. I watched as the Reaper girl leaned over the map, which was spread out on a table in front of her.

"Are you sure the dagger's in the library?" she asked.

She turned her head, and I realized that she was talking to a man. He wasn't wearing a robe and mask like she was, so I could see his face, but he wasn't one of the academy professors or staff members, so I had no idea who he was.

"I'm sure," he said. "All the locating spells we've done confirm it. The Helheim Dagger is hidden somewhere in the Library of Antiquities."

The Reaper girl looked up at a painting on the wall, one that showed a Black roc. I'd seen pictures of the gigantic bird in my myth-history book before, but this painting showed exactly how large and fierce it was. The roc was big, just as big as other mythological creatures like Nemean prowlers and Fenrir wolves, with curved, black talons that were capable of plucking a man off the ground-or tearing him to pieces. Its entire body was a glossy black, although this painting emphasized the bloody red tinge to the creature's feathers and the red spark that burned in the depths of its liquid black eyes.

The Reaper girl stared out at the rest of the room, and I realized that practically every piece of furniture and knickknack had an image of the bird painted on or carved into it. The chairs, the tables, several vases, a pair of bookends, even a marble statue in the corner. Someone was a little obsessed.

"Well, then," the Reaper girl said in a smirking voice. "If the dagger's in the library, I guess we should go get it, shouldn't we?"

The two of them started discussing where the dagger might be hidden and how they could go about pinpointing its exact location. Apparently, whatever security spells Nickamedes had placed in and around the library were blocking the bad guy's magic, which was why he couldn't be more specific about the dagger's location.

I frowned. Maybe I wasn't concentrating hard enough, but it seemed like there was something slightly off about the memories attached to the map. Something obvious I was missing. Something that didn't seem quite ... real, like it wasn't a genuine memory or feeling. But try as I might, I couldn't figure out what it was.

Slowly, the flickers and flashes of images and feelings faded away, telling me that I'd gotten all the memories I could from the map. I opened my eyes and looked at the others.

"The Reapers have used some kind of magic mumbo jumbo to track the dagger," I said. "They can't zoom in on its exact location, but they've narrowed it down to somewhere in the library."

"If they think it's hidden in the library, then they'll do whatever it takes to breach campus security so they can search for it themselves," Ajax said. "I need to tell Nickamedes about this. Raven, too."

Metis nodded, and Ajax left the office to go look for the others. Then, the professor let out a weary sigh, sounding just as tired as Ajax had a few minutes before.

"What's wrong?" Daphne asked. "This is good, right? That we know where the dagger is?"

A grim smile curved Metis's lips. "Yes and no. It's good that we have a place to start looking for the dagger, but the library is enormous, and it could be anywhere inside. Even if you had an army of people at your disposal, it would still take years to thoroughly, completely search all seven floors, not to mention the patios and balconies outside and the surrounding grounds."

"There's something else, isn't there? Something else bad?" Carson asked.

Metis looked at him and nodded. "The bad is that not only do we now know where the Helheim Dagger is, but the Reapers do, too-and they'll do whatever it takes to find it first."

I thought of all the awful things I'd seen today. The Reapers storming into the coliseum and killing everyone within arm's reach; Carson getting stabbed; Daphne screaming; Morgan crouching over Samson's dead body; the blood that now seemed to coat everything inside the coliseum.

Metis was right. The Reapers wanted the Helheim Dagger, and they didn't care what they had to do or whom they had to kill to find it.

Which meant that everyone at Mythos Academy was in serious, serious danger.

Chapter 5

We left the office and went back out to the main floor. The bodies had been cleared away, but the Mythos students who'd survived the attack clustered together in small groups, watching the men and women in the black coveralls take photographs and do other forensic-type stuff. Raven stood next to one of the pillars, supervising the evidence collection and cleanup.

Some of the kids who lived in or near the city were waiting for their parents to come get them and take them home, while others were going straight to the academy. I'd called my Grandma Frost and told her what had happened, and she was on her way here. She'd dropped Daphne and I off at the coliseum earlier, where we'd met Carson, who had taken a cab from the academy.

Logan, Daphne, Carson, and I drifted over to one side of the coliseum, not standing with the other kids, but not too far away from them either. Some of the students were still crying or just sitting on the floor with dazed looks on their faces. A few, like Abigail Rose, a smart Valkyrie who was in my English lit class, were trying to help the others. Abigail moved through the crowd, passing out bottles of water and tissues and keeping everyone calm. She noticed me watching her and gave me a small smile, which I returned.

My eyes scanned over the other students. To my surprise, more than a few looked back at me, and I realized that people were staring at my friends and me.

By now, everyone knew we'd fought a group of Reapers and had killed several of them. To the others, I suppose that made us heroes, although all we'd been trying to do was just survive. The four of us had been lucky we'd been in the weapons room. If we'd been out here on the main floor, we would have been injured like the other kids were-or worse.

One girl in particular kept staring at me. She was about my size, with a body that was lean and strong. Her hair was a rich, auburn color and frizzed out like crazy, just like mine did, but she had the most amazing golden eyes, like two perfect topazes had been set into her face. Even with a red, runny nose, splotchy face, and tears sliding down her cheeks, she was still quite beautiful. She wore designer clothes like all the kids at Mythos, but she kept tugging at her sleeves, like her shirt was too tight, even though it hung loosely from her shoulders. The girl noticed me watching her. Her cheeks flushed, and she looked away.

"Who's that?" I asked, jerking my head in the girl's direction.

Daphne looked over my shoulder. "Oh, that's Vivian Holler. She's a second-year student, too. An Amazon, I think. She's friends with Savannah and Talia."

"I don't think I've seen her before."

Daphne shrugged. "Vivian's kind of quiet from what I know. Doesn't say much, reads a lot, gets good grades, but isn't so good with weapons. Kind of like you, Gwen."

"Gee. Thanks," I said in a dry tone.

Daphne rolled her eyes and laid her head on Carson's shoulder. She hadn't let the band geek get more than a few steps away from her since the attack. Carson hugged Daphne to his chest, and a few pink sparks of magic shot off her fingertips and flickered in the air between them. Whatever else had happened today, at least Carson was okay. I don't know what Daphne would have done if he'd died. I don't know what I would have done.

Logan grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the others.

"You know, this isn't how I wanted school to start," Logan said. "Or how I pictured seeing you again after the break, Gypsy girl."

He gave me a small, sad smile. No, nothing about today had gone the way I'd hoped it would.

"Me either." I bit my lip. "Do you-do you think this is my fault? The attack?"

Logan frowned. "Why would you say that?"

My stomach twisted, but I drew in a breath and forced myself to get the words out. "Because I haven't found the Helheim Dagger yet like Nike wants me to. Maybe if I'd found it by now, none of this would have happened. Maybe no one would have gotten hurt today. Maybe Carson wouldn't have almost died. Maybe-maybe Samson and the other kids would still be alive."

The Spartan put his hands on my arms. The heat of his body chased away some of the chill that had sunk into my bones. "That's crazy and you know it, Gypsy girl. None of this is your fault. This is how it's been ever since the other gods trapped Loki in that prison realm. The Reapers have been trying to free him, and they've been killing warriors like us ever since. Even if they hadn't been looking for the dagger, they probably would have come here today anyway, just so they could attack the other students and steal the artifacts. So don't you ever think for one second that any of this is your fault." ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">