Quite a crowd had gathered there to witness my walk of shame. Wel , 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 cel phone photos they'd snapped during the avalanche.
Stil , 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 actuAll y looked ... concerned, like he'd been worried about me too. Strange.
But reAll y, 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 reAll y did care about me after All .
Maybe Logan reAll y 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 stil with Savannah, and I was stil 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 wel 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 reAll y 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 kil 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 totAll y lame, but I supposed it was better than tel ing 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'l work. I'l text you again in the morning, and we'l figure out the details, okay?" I smiled at him. "It's a date. Again. This time, I promise I'l keep it."
He let out a little laugh. "Don't worry. I know you wil , Gwen. I'l 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. "Wel , I have to go. I'l 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 hAll way where some of the restaurants were located, as wel as the new construction site.
Preston was probably going to have dinner with his friends. I thought it was reAll y 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 finAll y 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."
"Wel , 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 actuAll y 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 kil 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. Wel , okay, I reAll y 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 spil ing over her shoulders. "You've been watching too many Disney movies, Gwen. Fenrir wolves are trained to kil -that's All they know how to do. That's All they're good for."
"Wel , if they can be trained to kil , 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 wil , just like we do."
Daphne looked at me like I was spouting nonsense.
Maybe I was. "Yeah, maybe Fenrir wolves have free wil , 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." I rol ed my eyes, but the sword didn't notice. Neither did the Valkyrie. Instead, Daphne and Vic stared arguing about who was more evil, the Reapers or the mythologicAll creatures they trained, and the best ways to kil them All . I tuned them out. They hadn't been there, and they hadn't seen how much pain the wolf had been in. They hadn't felt its emotions the way I had. No matter what they claimed, the creature wasn't All evil. Somewhere underneath All those teeth and claws was a heart that beat just like mine.
No, the wolf wasn't a complete monster, even if its Reaper master had trained it to be that way.
Once Daphne and Vic quit arguing, the three of us spent the next hour lounging around and talking. Wel , the Valkyrie did most of the talking, tel ing me about how she and the other kids at the Winter CarnivAll had heard the explosion and then seen the avalanche rush down the mountain toward me. Since the carnivAll had been set up back on the plateau, everyone there had been wel out of the path of the roaring snow.
"Everyone was seriously freaked out," Daphne said.
"Including Logan."
My heart skipped a beat, even though I kept my face calm.
"ReAll y? I find that hard to believe."
"Oh yeah," the Valkyrie said. "He totAll y wanted to go with Ajax and start looking for you. Carson and I did too, but Metis and the other profs wouldn't let us. They kept everyone at the carnivAll until the snow had settled. But Logan, man, I thought he was actuAll y going to punch Nickamedes at one point. The two of them were screaming at each other, and Kenzie and Oliver had to grab hold of Logan to keep him from going after the librarian." I laughed. "Now that I would have liked to have seen.
Yeah, maybe Logan was worried about me. I mean, we are friends, in a weird sort of way. But it doesn't matter, because I saw him hanging out with Savannah down in the lobby a few minutes ago, just like always. So nothing's changed. Besides, I ran into Preston downstairs. We're going to have lunch tomorrow, and I'm going to forget All about Logan-at least for the rest of the weekend." Daphne opened her mouth, but her phone started vibrating on the nightstand. She bent over to see who was texting her. She hit a few buttons, and a guilty look fil ed her pretty face.
"So, that was Carson and ... there's this party tonight,"
Daphne said, not quite looking at me.
"And let me guess. I can't go because it's out in the alpine vil age somewhere and I'm not supposed to leave the hotel, right?"
Daphne winced and nodded.
"Go," I said. "Have fun with your boyfriend. I'm going to stay right here with Vic, read my comic books, and eat junk food for the rest of the night."
"Are you sure?" Daphne asked, biting her glossy lip. "I don't mind staying here with you and just hanging out... ."
"Go," I repeated in a firm voice. "Go to the party, get drunk, and totAll y make out with Carson. I'l be fine. I promise. Believe me, after what happened today, I have zero desire to party tonight."
It took some more prodding on my part, but eventuAll y, Daphne brushed out her hair, put on some more lip gloss, and left to go hook up with Carson. As soon as the door locked behind her, I walked over to my gray duffel bag and pul ed out a pen and notebook. Then I settled myself on the bed, with Vic propped up on a pil ow beside me.
"What are you doing?" the sword asked. "Because that doesn't look like a comic book to me."
"Nothing much," I said. "Just trying to figure out who wants me dead."
Chapter 17
For a moment, Vic peered at me with his one eye, then his slash of a mouth curved back into a ful -on smile. I almost thought he would have nodded in approvAll if he could actuAll y, you know, move his half of a head.
"Finally, Gypsy," he chirped in his English accent. "I was wondering how long you were going to let something like that slide. It's a major breach of etiquette you know, not striking back at your enemies in a timely fashion." Etiquette? What kind of etiquette was there in someone trying to murder me? Sometimes I just didn't understand Vic at All . I shook my head.
"It's not that I've been letting it slide exactly," I said. "It's just that I don't have much to go on. I couldn't see who was driving the car that tried to hit me, and I didn't get the license plate. The same thing happened in the library. I didn't see who fired the arrow, and I didn't get much of a vibe on the hole it left behind in the bookshelf. And yeah, I touched the Fenrir wolf, but not long enough to reAll y get a major whammy off it or see who its master is. Mostly, the wolf was stil thinking about the avalanche, just like I was."
"So what are you going to do?" Vic asked.
I shrugged. "I thought I'd make a list of everyone who might have a grudge against me and go from there. It always works on TV."
Vic rol ed his eye. "Why are you playing bloody detective again instead of just going out there and using me to get some answers? Put me up against someone's throat, and I'l make him start talking reAll quick."
I arched an eyebrow and gave the sword a look.
"What?" he growled. "It'd be much more fun than listening to you and the Valkyrie natter on about what some other bloody girl was wearing."
"Shut up, Vic," I said. "I need to think." The sword let out a loud harrumph and snapped his eye shut, his mouth turning down into a pout. And people thought teenagers were moody. Please.
We had nothing on ancient, bloodthirsty, talking swords.
Vic kept his eye shut, enjoying his snit, so I sat there on the bed and started making my list. It took me about five seconds.
What can I say? It was a short list with only one name on it: Jasmine Ashton's family. Okay, okay, so it wasn't reAll y a name, but the Ashtons were the only ones with any reason to kil me. At least, that I knew of.
Since my list idea wasn't working, I decided to go back to the beginning and see if I could remember anything strange or weird, anything out of place, anything out of the ordinary. But reAll y, there was nothing. It had just been a regular week at Mythos Academy until someone had tried to kil me.
