Mythos Academy Bundle: First Frost, Touch of Frost, Kiss of Frost & Dark Frost

Book 0: Mythos Academy

by Jennifer Estep

Genres: YA Contemporary; YA Fairy Tales & Folklore

Synopsis

First Frost

I am Gwen Frost, and I have a Gypsy gift. It's called psychometry – that's a fancy way of saying that I see images in my head and get flashes of other people's memories off almost everything I touch, even guys.

My gift makes me kind of nosy. Okay, okay, maybe a lot nosy--to the point of obsession sometimes. I want to know everything about everyone around me. But even I don't want to know the secrets my friend Paige is hiding or the terrible loss that will send me to a new school – Mythos Academy, where the teachers aren't preparing us for the SATs, but to battle Reapers of Chaos. Now I have no friends and no idea how my gift fits in with all these warrior whiz kids. The only thing I do know is that my life is never, ever going to be the same. . .

Touch of Frost

My name is Gwen Frost, and I go to Mythos Academy -- a school of myths, magic and warrior whiz kids, where even the lowliest geek knows how to chop off somebody's head with a sword and Logan Quinn, the hottest Spartan guy in school, also happens to be the deadliest.

But lately, things have been weird, even for Mythos. First, mean girl Jasmine Ashton was murdered in the Library of Antiquities. Then, someone stole the Bowl of Tears, a magical artifact that can be used to bring about the second Chaos War. You know, death, destruction and lots of other bad, bad things. Freaky stuff like this goes on all the time at Mythos, but I'm determined to find out who killed Jasmine and why – especially since I should have been the one who died...

Kiss of Frost

Logan Quinn was trying to kill me.

My Spartan classmate relentlessly pursued me, swinging his sword at me over and over again, the shining silver blade inching closer to my throat every time. A smile tugged up his lips, and his ice-blue eyes practially glowed with the thrill of battle. . .

I'm Gwen Frost, a second-year warrior-in-training at Mythos Academy, and I have no idea how I'm going to survive the rest of the semester. One day, I'm getting schooled in swordplay by the guy who broke my heart--the drop-dead gorgeous Logan who slays me every time. Then, an invisible archer in the Library of Antiquities decides to use me for target practice. And now, I find out that someone at the academy is really a Reaper bad guy who wants me dead. I'm afraid if I don't learn how to live by the sword--with Logan's help--I just might die by the sword. . .

Dark Frost

I've seen so many freaky things since I started attending Mythos Academy last fall. I know I'm supposed to be a fearless warrior, but most of the time, I feel like I'm just waiting for the next Bad, Bad Thing to happen. Like someone trying to kill me--again.

Everyone at Mythos Academy knows me as Gwen Frost, the Gypsy girl who uses her psychometry magic to find lost objects--and who just may be dating Logan Quinn, the hottest guy in school. But I'm also the girl the Reapers of Chaos want dead in the worst way. The Reapers are the baddest of the bad, the people who murdered my mom. So why do they have it in for me? It turns out my mom hid a powerful artifact called the Helheim Dagger before she died. Now, the Reapers will do anything to get it back. They think I know where the dagger is hidden, but this is one thing I can't use my magic to find. All I do know is that the Reapers are coming for me--and I'm in for the fight of my life.

Release date: July 1, 2012

Publisher: Kensington

Print pages: 840

Sample

“Can I borrow your hairbrush?”

Paige Forrest stared at the long mirror mounted over the row of sinks that lined one wall of the girls’ locker room. Gym class had ended three minutes ago, and all the girls were busy yanking off their sweaty T-shirts and shorts and changing back into their real clothes—the skinny jeans and tight, cropped tops they wore to impress themselves, each other and, most important, the cute boys at Ashland High School.

Everyone except for Paige, who stood frozen in front of the mirror. She was pretty with her long black hair and pale green eyes, but I didn’t think that Paige was looking at herself with the normal vanity of a sixteen-year-old girl. For one, Paige wasn’t putting on a fresh coat of lip gloss or mascara or dusting her face with sparkling powder like the other girls crowded at the mirror were. She wasn’t gossiping with the girls around her or wondering what disgusting, gray mystery meat was going to be served in the cafeteria today. She wasn’t even texting on her phone or checking her messages.

No, Paige was leaning over the sink and peering into her own eyes as if she could see something in herself that everyone else couldn’t—something horrible, from the pained, twisted expression on her face.

The look made me want to know what she was hiding.

I was kind of nosy that way. Okay, okay, so I was a lot nosy that way. Okay, okay, so I was exceptionally, exceedingly, unstoppably nosy—to the point of obsession sometimes. I wanted to know everything about everyone around me. Why? Well, I blamed it on my Gypsy gift.

I was a Gypsy with psychometry magic. A fancy way of saying that I saw images in my head and got flashes of other people’s memories and feelings off almost everything that I touched. A favorite necklace, a beloved book, a cherished photo of a family trip to the beach. I could get a vibe off anything that someone had a personal attachment or connection to, and I could see and feel exactly what that person had felt whenever she’d worn that necklace, read that book, or looked at that photo.

I didn’t know exactly why I had magic or why I was even considered a Gypsy in the first place, but I liked the power that my psychometry gave me. I liked knowing what everyone around me was really thinking, from whether a girl was truly my friend or talked about me behind my back to whether a boy was really into me or was actually thinking about another girl instead. Like Drew Squires, my one and only boyfriend. Thanks to my psychometry, I’d flashed on Drew while we were kissing and felt him pretending that I was Paige. I’d dumped him on the spot.

Yeah, sometimes the things I saw and felt hurt, but I still loved knowing other people’s secrets. And judging from the weird look on her face, Paige was hiding something—something big.

“Paige?” I asked again, a little louder this time, my voice rising over the chatter of the other girls, the squeak of shoes on the floor, and the constant slams of the locker doors.

Paige partially snapped out of whatever trance she’d been in and met my eyes in the mirror.

“Gwen? Gwen Frost?” she asked in a daze, almost as if she didn’t recognize me.

I looked at my own reflection in the mirror. Sure, my wavy brown hair was a loose, sweaty mess right now, which is why I wanted Paige’s hairbrush to start with, so I could pull my hair back into a ponytail. My winter-white skin was all flushed and splotchy from attempting to play basketball during gym class, and my violet-colored eyes were a little strange-looking to start with. Okay, okay, my eyes were very strange-looking to start with.

But Paige and I had gone to school together since kindergarten. Sometimes we even hung out when our mutual friends got together on the weekends. She should know exactly who I was—especially since she’d hired me to find her missing cell phone.

Phones, keys, wallets, laptops, crumpled bras, and bunched-up boxers. For the right price, the kids at Ashland High School hired me to find things that were lost, stolen, or otherwise not where they were supposed to be. Yeah, I used my Gypsy gift to make extra money instead of fighting some great, ancient evil with my magic. Sue me for being an entrepreneur and not wanting to work at some greasy fast-food dive like other kids did.

Thanks to my psychometry magic, it was easy for me to find stuff. Usually, all I had to do was run my fingers over a girl’s desk or look through her purse to get a good idea of where she might have left her cell phone or dropped her favorite bracelet. And if I didn’t immediately see where the lost object was, then I kept touching stuff until I did. Kind of like Nancy Drew following a trail of psychic bread crumbs to wherever they led her.

People left psychic vibes everywhere, on everything they touched, and those vibes revealed everything from what they’d had for lunch to what they really thought of their best friend’s new boyfriend. Most of the time, the girl either secretly thought the guy was a total jerk or she wanted him for herself. All I had to do to tap into those vibes, to see people’s actions, to feel their true emotions, to discover their secrets, was stretch my fingers out and touch all the objects around me, big and small.

In Paige’s case, she’d promised me twenty bucks if I could find her phone before her mom realized it was missing. So two weeks ago, after school, I went over to Paige’s house, walked around her room, and ran my fingers over her desk, bookcases, and nightstand. Mostly, images of Paige filled my mind—sitting at her desk doing homework, looking at the collections of fairy tales she loved to read, stashing some Oreos in the back of her nightstand, even though she wasn’t supposed to have sweets. All the things she did in her room on a regular basis and all the emotions that went along with them—dull boredom over the homework, bright happiness looking at the books, sly satisfaction at sneaking her favorite treat right under her mom’s nose.

Paige had thought I was a little strange, pacing back and forth across her room and poking into all her stuff, but eventually, another image had popped into my head, one of Paige’s little sister swiping the phone off the nightstand so she could snoop through Paige’s text messages. I’d told Paige what I’d seen, and sure enough, we’d gone down the hall to her sister’s room and found her using the stolen phone.

Paige blinked, finally shaking off the rest of her daze.

“Gwen Frost,” she murmured again, her voice a little stronger this time.

She turned away from the mirror, and her eyes dropped to the wooden bench I was sitting on. Paige had already fixed her hair, which looked sleek and perfect as always, and she’d put her brush down on the end of the bench, less than a foot away from my hand. Paige stared and stared at the hairbrush, her green eyes bright and glittering, and she had that weird, twisted look on her face again.

What was wrong with her? Was Paige high or something? It wasn’t unheard of for kids to get totally wasted on pot or something worse, even in our rather tame North Carolina high school. But Paige had seemed fine in gym class, shooting layup after layup, since she was one of the stars of the girls’ basketball team. I hadn’t been so lucky, because I was a total train wreck when it came to basketball. Today, I’d managed to bang myself in the head with the ball when I’d tried to shoot a freaking free throw—with the whole class watching, of course. Even the coaches had snickered and rolled their eyes at me. Yeah, I was just that kind of loser, a book-smart Gypsy girl who sucked at pretty much every sport you could think of and probably a couple that hadn’t even been invented yet.

“So can I use your hairbrush or not?” I asked, getting a little impatient.

I’d already swapped my gym clothes for my usual sneakers and jeans. I’d also unzipped my purple hoodie and put it on over my T-shirt of Karma Girl, one of my favorite superheroines. Maybe I wasn’t a budding fashionista like some of the other girls were, but I didn’t want to go back to class with my hair frizzed out to epic proportions.

Paige hesitated, and a strange emotion flashed in her eyes, almost like a warning. “Sure.”

“It’s okay, Gwen,” my friend Bethany Royal piped up from her spot on the far end of the bench. “You can borrow mine.”

Paige kept staring at me, and I looked back at her, even more suspicious now. She was definitely hiding something—something huge. Maybe it was the fact that Drew had pretended I was Paige when he’d kissed me. Maybe I was a little more angry, jealous, and hurt over that than I wanted to admit. Maybe I wanted to find some way to get back at Paige, even though I knew it wasn’t her fault that Drew liked her instead of me.

But at that moment, I wanted to know Paige’s secret more than anything else. I felt like I needed to know it for some reason. And all I had to do to discover exactly what she was hiding was just pick up her hairbrush—the one sitting oh-so-close to my fingers.

“No, that’s okay,” I told Bethany. “Paige’s brush is right here.”

Still looking at Paige, I reached out, curled my fingers around the brush’s handle, and waited for my psychometry magic to kick in, for the feelings and memories to hit me the way they always did.

An image immediately popped into my mind—one of Paige sitting on her bed, wearing a thick pink robe and clutching the hairbrush in her hand so hard that her knuckles were white against the brown wooden handle. After a moment, the door to Paige’s room opened, and her stepdad came inside. Paige had shown me a picture of him when I’d been over at her house searching for her cell phone, and he was a nice, normal-looking guy. He shut the door behind him, and Paige’s grip tightened on the brush even more.

Her stepdad came over to the bed, sat down beside Paige, and tugged the brush from her hand. Paige obediently turned to the side, and her stepdad started brushing her hair. Okay, that was a little weird. I mean, it wasn’t like Paige was a little girl who couldn’t take care of her own hair, so why would her stepdad comb it out for her? For the first time, I began to get a bad, bad feeling about what I was going to see.

It seemed like Paige’s stepdad brushed her hair forever, although it was only a second in my mind. Then, when he finished, he gave the brush back to Paige, who put it on her nightstand. Paige lay down on the bed, her hands clenched together over her stomach, her knuckles white once more.

I thought her stepdad would pull the covers up over her, tell her good night, and leave the room.

Instead, he pried Paige’s hands apart and opened her robe, almost like he was unwrapping a present. Then he took off his pants, lay down beside her, and started touching Paige in all the places that he shouldn’t.

And that’s when I started screaming.

I screamed and screamed and screamed. But I couldn’t stop the memories from filling my mind, couldn’t stop myself from seeing what Paige’s stepdad was doing to her, couldn’t stop myself from feeling all of Paige’s fear and hurt and pain and helplessness. One by one, her emotions hit me, like daggers driving deeper and deeper and deeper into my heart—into my very soul.

It was horrible.

The most horrible thing I’d ever seen and felt with my psychometry magic—and I couldn’t get it to stop. All around me, the other girls pressed themselves up against the dented metal lockers, wondering what was wrong with me. But all I could do was scream and scream and scream some more.

Paige stared at me the whole time, a grim look on her face, as if she knew exactly what I was experiencing. Maybe she did. After all, I’d used my Gypsy gift to find her phone. Maybe Paige had figured out what I could do, how I could see and feel all the things that people tried to hide.

All the terrible, terrible things.

I don’t know how long I screamed, but eventually I slipped off the wooden bench and hit the cold cement floor, the hairbrush still clenched in my fingers, my knuckles just as tight and white around it as Paige’s had been. I tried to let go of the brush and found that I couldn’t—and I couldn’t stop screaming either.

White spots started to flash in front of my eyes, then black ones. Eventually, the black spots bled together and turned into a solid wall. The wall toppled over, slamming into my mind, and I welcomed the crushing darkness.

The low, steady beep-beep-beeping woke me. I frowned. What was up with my alarm clock? It didn’t sound like that. And why was my bed suddenly so hard and lumpy? And the sheets so stiff and scratchy? I felt like my brain was stuffed with cotton, but slowly, the day came back to me. My suckitude at basketball. Changing in the locker room. Talking to Paige. Picking up her hairbrush. Seeing what her stepdad was doing to her.

A whimper slipped out of my throat before I could stop it.

“Easy, Gwen. You’re okay now. You’re fine, baby.”

A warm hand stroked my cheek, and a soft wave of love and concern washed over me, like a fleece blanket wrapping around me and keeping me safe from everything—including the horrible things I’d seen today.

“Mom,” I whispered, recognizing her gentle touch.

I opened my eyes to find Grace Frost leaning over me. My mom had the same features that I did—brown hair, pale skin, violet eyes—but she was beautiful in a way that I longed to be and knew I was not. Even wearing a simple black pantsuit, there was a, well, grace about my mom, an elegance that I just didn’t have.

“What happened?” I asked.

I sat up and realized that I was lying in a hospital bed, wearing a paper-thin gray gown covered with purple polka dots. Plastic tubes snaked from my left wrist over to some machines that beeped out my heart rate and other vital signs. Off to my right was an open door. Beyond that, nurses walked up and down a drab hallway, while patients attached to IVs shuffled along behind them.

“You had an epileptic seizure,” my mom said. “At least, that’s what the doctors think.”

I shook my head and winced as a dull ache started throbbing behind my eyes. “It wasn’t a seizure. It was my Gypsy gift. It just . . . I just . . . freaked out.”

Concern filled my mom’s eyes. She was a Gypsy just like me, which meant that she had a gift like me. In my mom’s case, she knew if someone was telling the truth or not just by listening to their words. Basically, my mom was like a living, breathing lie detector. Yeah, her magic made it hard on me whenever I wanted to get away with something that I shouldn’t. Still, my mom’s Gypsy gift came in handy, especially since she was a police detective. My mom had dedicated her life and her magic to helping people. She was the bravest person I knew, and I wanted to be just like her.

In a shaky voice, I told her about picking up Paige’s hairbrush and the terrible things that I’d seen Paige’s stepdad doing to her. My mom’s face got a little tighter and her violet eyes grew a little darker with every word I said. By the time I finished my story, I could almost feel the anger coming off her in cold waves.

“Did Paige say anything to you?” my mom asked. “Did she ever mention her stepdad to you before?”

I shook my head. “No. We’re not that close, and I didn’t see him around when I went over to her house to find her phone.”

My mom had opened her mouth to ask me another question, when a series of familiar jingle-jingle-jingles sounded. A moment later, an older woman wearing a purple silk shirt and black pants and shoes stepped into the room. At least, that’s what I thought she was wearing. It was kind of hard to tell since layers of colorful scarves covered her body, wrapping around her in a rainbow of fluttering fabric. Bright, gleaming silver coins dangled off the fringed ends of the scarves and jangled together with every step she took. Another scarf held her iron-gray hair back off her wrinkled face. The scarf was the same violet color as her eyes—as all our eyes were.

“Hello, pumpkin,” Grandma Frost said in a warm, cheery voice, coming over to stand beside the bed. “How are you feeling?”

“Better, Grandma,” I said. “I have a headache, though.”

For a second, Grandma’s eyes took on an empty, glassy look, and something stirred in the air around her—something that seemed old, watchful, and knowing all at the same time.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll be fine in another hour or two,” Grandma murmured in an absent tone.

I knew she was having one of her visions. Geraldine Frost had a Gypsy gift just like my mom and I did. In my grandma’s case, she could see the future, something that she used to make extra money, telling fortunes out of her house. Grandma was an entrepreneur, like me.

After a moment, Grandma Frost’s eyes focused again, and the invisible force that had been swirling around her vanished. She looked at me and smiled.

“I’m afraid we have a problem,” my mom said, staring at my grandma. “A big one.”

My mom told my grandma about Paige’s stepdad abusing her. Soon, my grandma was radiating the same cold anger as my mom.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

My mom looked at me. “I’m going to go talk to Paige, and I’m going to see what I can find out about her stepdad. Whether he has a record, whether he’s ever done this before. Don’t worry, Gwen. No matter what happens or what I find out, I’m going to help your friend. The gods wanted you to pick up Paige’s hairbrush so you could see what she was going through. Now they want me to help her.”

Mom was a little weird that way, always talking about gods and goddesses as if they were real and not just characters in the mythological stories that she’d read to me when I was a kid. Ares, Athena, some warrior chicks named Nike and Sigyn. Mom called all the gods and goddesses by name, like she knew them on a personal basis or something. Yeah, it was totally embarrassing whenever she said something about the gods in front of my friends, but I loved her too much to be mean and tell her so. Most of the time, anyway.

“I’ll stay here and deal with the doctors,” Grandma Frost said. “You go help that poor girl, Grace.”

My mom nodded and turned back to me. “Bye, baby. I’ll be home tonight as soon as I can.”

She touched my cheek, and once again, I felt the warmth of her love wash over me, taking all my troubles with it. My mom smiled, then left the room.

Grandma Frost stayed with me in the hospital. The doctors wanted to run some more tests, mainly brain scans, to try to figure out why I’d had such a freak-out in the locker room. Of course, Grandma couldn’t exactly tell them the truth—that my Gypsy gift had made me see something so awful that my brain had basically been overloaded with pain and gone haywire. They’d probably want to scan her brain then, if she started talking about my psychometry.

Mom and Grandma didn’t hide the fact that we were Gypsies who had magic, but they didn’t exactly advertise it, either. We used our gifts, but we didn’t explain them to people or brag about the things we could do. The magic was just a part of us, along with our violet eyes and the Frost family name, and no one had ever really asked many questions about our powers—except me.

It took some arguing on Grandma Frost’s part, but since the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with me, they eventually discharged me that afternoon.

Grandma took me to her house, which was located a few streets over from the downtown district in Asheville. I stayed with Grandma on the nights that Mom had to work late, so I had my own room there. Grandma insisted that I stay in bed for the rest of the day, but she let me call Bethany.

“Gwen!” Bethany shrieked in my ear. “Are you okay? What was wrong with you?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m at my grandma’s house. The doctors think I had a seizure or something. They ran some tests, but they said I’ll be fine. I’ll be back at school tomorrow. I don’t even get a day off.”

“Well, whatever it was, it was freaky,” Bethany said. “Especially since you kept right on screaming even after you passed out. You were yelling and thrashing around like you were possessed or something the whole time. Everyone at school’s talking about it.”

I winced. “They are?”

“Oh, yeah,” Bethany said. “Everybody was texting about it.”

I sighed. So now I was going to be even more of a freak than I already was. Gwen Frost, the seizure girl. Great. There went any chance I had of finding a date for the sophomore prom, which was coming up in a few days. I might have dumped Drew, but I was still going to the prom, since my mom had found the perfect dress for me.

“What about Paige?” I asked.

“What about her?” I could hear the confusion in Bethany’s voice. “She was just as scared as the rest of us were.”

I wondered about that, especially when I remembered the weird look Paige had given me before I’d picked up her hairbrush, but I didn’t ask Bethany any more questions about Paige. She wouldn’t know the answers, anyway.

I talked to Bethany a few more minutes before Grandma came into my room and said that I needed to get some rest. I told Bethany I’d see her tomorrow and hung up. I spent the rest of the day lazing in bed and reading the comic books I had stashed in my messenger bag. Grandma Frost had stopped at school and picked up my bag on the way home from the hospital. She’d also gotten my homework assignments for the classes I’d missed, but I’d do those later. I figured I deserved to slack off a little.

Grandma made a great dinner of spicy, Southwestern chicken, black bean salsa, and roasted sweet potatoes. For dessert, we had sticky-sweet apple enchiladas sprinkled with cinnamon sugar and topped with vanilla bean ice cream. I didn’t eat much, though. I was too busy thinking about Paige and what might be happening to her.

My mom finally called late that night.

“It’s done,” she said in a weary voice. “I told Paige that I was your mom and got her to talk to me. She told me exactly what you saw with your psychometry, and I arrested her stepdad.”

I let out a tense breath. “So Paige is okay now?”

“She will be,” my mom said. “Paige’s mom is out of town on a business trip, so Paige and her sister are staying with some relatives. I called her mom, and she’s on her way back home right now. She was horrified by what I told her. She had no idea that was going on. Nobody did, except for Paige. Her stepdad threatened to start doing the same thing to her little sister if Paige told anyone what he was doing to her.”

We didn’t say anything for several seconds.

“You did a good thing today, Gwen,” my mom finally said in a gentle voice. “A really good thing. I’m proud of you.”

“For what? Freaking out and screaming my head off?”

“You know what I mean,” my mom said. “You used your psychometry magic to help someone else. That’s why we have our Gypsy gifts in the first place, you know. To help others—and ourselves, if we need to.”

No, I didn’t know, because Mom and Grandma Frost never talked about stuff like that. They never mentioned why we were Gypsies or where our magic came from in the first place. On the rare times when I tried to talk to them about it, they got all vague and uptight, just like they did whenever I asked about my dad, Tyr, who’d died from cancer when I was two.

I opened my mouth to ask my mom once again about who we were and why we could do the things we did, but she cut me off.

“Anyway, I’ve still got a ton of paperwork to finish,” my mom said. “Don’t wait up for me. I’ll talk to you in the morning. I love you, Gwen.”

For a second, I again thought about asking her about our magic, but I knew she wouldn’t answer me. She never did. Besides, she’d had a long day, helping Paige. My mom sounded tired, so I decided not to bother her tonight.

“Love you, too,” I said, and hung up.

I didn’t know then that this would be the last time I ever talked to her.

I took a shower, threw on my pajamas, and crawled into bed. Grandma Frost came and tucked me in, just like she used to when I was a little girl. She turned out the light, and I snuggled under the covers and went to sleep.

My dreams were strange that night, filled with swords and shadowy figures and a pair of burning red eyes that seemed to follow me no matter how hard I tried to get away from them. In my dreams, I ran and ran and ran, carrying a silver sword in my hand, but the eyes were always there, always chasing me. When I finally stopped running and turned to face them, the eyes kept coming, washing over me like clouds of choking smoke before they swallowed me whole—

I woke up sweating, a scream lodged in my throat, my legs thrashing, my heart beating crazily in my chest. Thump-thump-thump. It took me a few seconds to realize that it had just been a dream and that I was safe and warm at Grandma Frost’s house. I shivered. For some reason, the fact that it was only a dream didn’t make it any less creepy. Not tonight.

I rolled over and looked at the clock beside the bed. Three thirty-seven in the morning, but I knew I couldn’t go back to sleep, not with the image of those burning eyes still fresh in my head. The weird thing was, I couldn’t figure out where they had come from.

Whenever I touched an object, whenever I flashed on the images and feelings associated with it, they became a part of me, and I could always remember what I’d seen. It was sort of like having a photographic memory. Sometimes, when I was asleep, my mind surfed through all those memories, showing me random bits and pieces of them, like I was watching clips from a dozen movies at once.

But I’d never seen a pair of red eyes before—and I definitely would have remembered those eyes and their cruel, burning glow.

Still a little fuzzy with sleep, I got out of bed and headed toward the bathroom. Voices sounded from below, drifting up the stairs to me—low, soft, urgent. Mom must have finally made it home and was talking to Grandma. Good.

When I finished in the bathroom, I headed downstairs to the kitchen, where Mom and Grandma always had their late-night conferences over homemade hot chocolate and whatever sweet treat my grandma had baked that day.

But they weren’t in the kitchen, even though the lights were on. Weird. I didn’t hear the voices talking anymore, either, so I walked down the hallway and into the front of the house.

Grandma Frost was slumped against the front door, her hand on the knob like she’d just closed it behind someone.

“Grandma?” I whispered, a bad, bad feeling ballooning up in my stomach. “Is something wrong?”

After a moment, Grandma Frost turned to stare at me. Tears dripped down her cheeks, filling in every single wrinkle in her skin, and she suddenly looked a hundred years old.

I wasn’t psychic, not like my grandma was. I couldn’t see the future, but somehow, I knew what she was going to say before she opened her mouth.

“There’s been a terrible accident,” Grandma Frost began.

I didn’t hear the rest of her words.

I had started screaming again.

The next few days—no, the next few weeks—ground by in a grief-filled haze. My mom had been in a car wreck on her way home from the police station that night. A drunk driver had come out of nowhere and T-boned her car before driving off. Supposedly, my mom had died instantly. She’d been hurt so badly in the wreck that Grandma Frost refused to let me see her body, and the casket was closed at her funeral.

Really, though, the only thing I could think about was the fact that my mom was dead—and that it was all my fault.

If only I hadn’t picked up Paige’s hairbrush after gym class, if only I hadn’t wanted to know what she was hiding, if only I hadn’t wanted to know so badly what her secret was.

If only I’d used Bethany’s hairbrush instead, none of this would have happened. I never would have seen what Paige’s stepdad was doing to her, and my mom would never have been out so late that night. My mom would have been home with me and not in the path of that stupid drunk driver.

Of course, the flip side was that Paige’s stepdad would still have been abusing her and no one would have known about it. No one would have helped Paige.

I didn’t know which idea made me sicker: my mom dying because I’d been so damn nosy, or Paige being hurt again and again because I hadn’t been. The ugly, guilty thoughts kept spinning around and around in my head, like a crazy carousel that I couldn’t stop and couldn’t get off, no matter how much I wanted to.

I didn’t do much of anything after that. I didn’t go back to school. I didn’t do homework. I didn’t talk to my friends. I barely ate, and I hardly slept. I just stayed in my room at Grandma Frost’s house and cried.

And cried and cried and cried some more.

Grandma did everything she could to make me feel better. She cooked me special meals and baked me special desserts and held me when I cried. She told me over and over again that it wasn’t my fault, that it was just a quirk of the gods, a cruel twist of fate that even she hadn’t seen coming with all her psychic powers. Gods or not, fate or not, nothing she said changed my mind.

My mom’s death was my fault—and all the guilt and blame were mine to bear.

Alone. Forever.

One morning, about three weeks after my mom’s funeral, a knock sounded on the front door.

It was e