Touch of Frost

Book 1: Mythos Academy

by Jennifer Estep

Genres: YA Fantasy

Synopsis

The new girl at a school for mythical warriors is out to solve her classmate’s murder in the New York Times bestselling author’s YA fantasy series debut.

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. 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. That kinda puts us on the verge of death, destruction and lots of other bad, bad things. Now I'm determined to find out who killed Jasmine and why – especially since I should have been the one who died.

Release date: January 28, 2011

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 384

Sample

“I know your secret.”

Daphne Cruz leaned closer to the mirror over the sink and put another coat of pale pink gloss onto her lips, pointedly ignoring me the way all the pretty, popular girls did.

The way everyone did at Mythos Academy.

“I know your secret,” I repeated in a louder voice.

I pushed away from the statue of a sea nymph that I’d been leaning against, strolled over to the door that led out of the girls’ bathroom, and locked it. I might not care who knew Daphne’s dirty little secret, but I was willing to bet that she would before we were through. That’s why I’d made sure that all of the white marble stalls were empty and waited for the rest of Daphne’s friends to leave their spots on the cushioned settee in the corner before I’d approached her.

Once Daphne was satisfied that her lips were glossed to a high sheen, she dropped the tube into the depths of her oversize pink Dooney & Bourke purse. Next, she drew out a hairbrush and went to work on her smooth, golden locks. Still ignoring me.

I crossed my arms over my chest, leaned against the door, and waited. The intricate raised figures of warriors and monsters carved into the heavy wooden door pressed against my back, but I ignored the odd lumps and bumps. The two hundred bucks I was getting for this job meant that I could afford to be patient.

After another two minutes, when her hair had been brushed a dozen times and she realized that I wasn’t actually, you know, leaving, Daphne finally deigned to turn and look at me. Her black eyes flicked over my jeans, graphic T-shirt, and purple zip-up hoodie, and she let out a little snort of disgust, obviously offended that I wasn’t wearing the latest designer threads like she was. That I didn’t have the matchy-match look down pat that she and her friends had going on.

Apparently, today’s theme had been argyle, because the pattern was on everything that Daphne wore, from her pink cashmere sweater to her black pleated skirt to the printed black and pink tights that showed off her legs. The contrast of light and dark colors made her perfect, amber skin look that much more luminous. So did the shiny lip gloss.

“You know my secret?” Daphne repeated, a sneer creeping into her voice. “And what secret would that be?”

So the Valkyrie wanted to be snotty. Not a problem.

I smiled. “I know you took the charm bracelet. The one that Carson Callahan was going to give to Leta Gaston as a will-you-go-to-the-homecoming-dance-withme present. You snatched it off the desk in his dorm room yesterday when he was helping you with your English lit paper.”

For the first time, doubt flickered in Daphne’s eyes, and disbelief filled her pretty face before she was able to hide it. Now, she was looking at me—really looking at me—trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted. After a moment, her eyes narrowed.

“You’re that Gypsy girl,” Daphne muttered. “The one who sees things.”

That Gypsy girl. That’s what everyone at Mythos Academy called me. Mainly because I was the only Gypsy trapped here in this school for magical warrior freaks. The middle-class girl whose strange ability had landed her here among the rich, popular, and undeniably powerful. Like Daphne Cruz, a spoiled, pampered wannabe princess who also happened to be a Valkyrie.

“What’s your name?” Daphne asked. “Gail? Gretchen?”

Wow. I was impressed that she even knew it started with a G.

“Gwen,” I told her. “Gwen Frost.”

“Well, Gwen Frost,” Daphne said, turning her attention back to her purse. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Her voice and face were both just as smooth as the gilded silver mirror in front of her. I might have even believed her, if her hands hadn’t clenched the tiniest bit as she put her hairbrush back into her purse. If I hadn’t known just how good girls like her could lie.

Just how good everyone could lie.

I reached into my gray messenger bag and drew out a clear plastic bag. A small silver charm shaped like a rose glinted inside. I might as well have shown her a bag full of pot from the way Daphne visibly recoiled.

“Where—where did you get that?” she whispered.

“Carson hadn’t finished putting all the charms on Leta’s bracelet when he showed it to you during your tutoring session yesterday afternoon,” I said. “I found this one way, way back behind his desk in his dorm room. It fell down there when you grabbed the bracelet and stuffed it into your purse.”

Daphne let out a laugh, still keeping up the act. “And why would I do something like that?”

“Because you’re crazy about Carson. You don’t want him to ask out Leta. You want him for yourself.”

Daphne slumped over, her hands dropping to one of the sinks that lined the wall below the mirror. Her fingers curled around the silver faucets, which were shaped like Hydra heads, before sliding down to the basin. Her French-manicured nails scraped across the white marble, and pale pink sparks of magic shot out of her fingertips. Daphne might only be seventeen like me, but Valkyries were incredibly strong. I knew that if she wanted to, Daphne Cruz could rip that sink out of the wall easier than the Hulk could.

Maybe I should have been scared of the Valkyrie, of the weird princess pink sparks, and especially of her strength and what she could do to me with it. But I wasn’t. I’d already lost one of the people I cared about most. Everything else dulled in comparison to that.

“How do you know all that?” Daphne asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

I shrugged. “Because, as you put it, I see things. And as soon as I found this charm, I knew that you were the one who took the bracelet.”

I didn’t tell Daphne anything else about my Gypsy gift, about my ability to know an object’s history just by touching it, and she didn’t ask.

Instead, the Valkyrie kept staring at me with her black eyes. After about thirty seconds of silence, she came to some sort of decision. Daphne straightened, reached into her bag once more, and drew out her wallet. It matched her designer purse.

“All right,” she said. “How much will it take for you to give me that charm and forget about this whole thing? A hundred dollars? Two?”

This time, my hands were the ones that clenched into fists. She was trying to buy me off. I’d expected nothing less, but the gesture still made me angry. Like everyone else at Mythos Academy, Daphne Cruz could afford the very best of everything. A few hundred dollars was nothing to her. She’d spent that much on her freaking purse.

But a few hundred dollars wasn’t nothing to me. It was clothes and comic books and a cell phone and a dozen other things that girls like Daphne never had to worry about.

“Carson’s already paid me,” I said.

“So?” she said. “I’ll pay you more. However much you want.”

“Sorry. Once I give my word to somebody, I keep it. And I told Carson that I would find the charm bracelet for him.”

Daphne tilted her head to the side like I was some strange creature that she’d never seen before, some mythological monster masquerading as a teenage girl. Maybe it was stupid of me, not taking her up on the cash that she was so willing to give me. But my mom wouldn’t have taken Daphne’s money, not if she’d already made a promise to someone else. My mom, Grace, had been a Gypsy, just like me. With a gift, just like me.

For a moment, my heart ached with guilt and longing. My mom was gone, and I missed her so much. I shook my head, more to push the pain aside than anything else.

“Look, just give me the bracelet. That’s all I want. That’s all Carson wants.”

Daphne’s lips tightened. “He—he knows? That I took the bracelet? And why?”

“Not yet. But he’s going to if you don’t give it to me. Right now.”

I opened the top of the plastic bag and held it out to her. Daphne stared at the rose charm glinting inside. She bit her pink lip, smearing her gloss on her teeth, and looked away.

“Fine,” she muttered. “I don’t know why I even took it in the first place.”

I did because I’d flashed on Daphne when I’d touched the charm. As soon as my fingers had brushed the silver rose, an image of the blond Valkyrie had popped into my head. I’d seen Daphne sitting at Carson’s desk, staring at the bracelet, her fingers tightening around the metal links like she wanted to rip them in two.

And I’d felt the other girl’s emotions, too, the way that I always did whenever I touched an object or even another person. I’d felt Daphne’s hot, pulsing jealousy that Carson was thinking about asking out Leta. The warm, soft, fizzy crush that Daphne had on Carson herself, despite the fact that he was a total band geek and she was part of the popular crowd. Her cold, aching despair that she didn’t like someone the rest of her snobby friends would approve of.

But I didn’t tell Daphne any of that. The less people knew about my gift and the things I saw and felt, the better.

Daphne yanked the bracelet out of her bag. Carson Callahan might be a band geek, but he had money, too, which was why the bracelet was a heavy, expensive thing loaded down with a dozen charms that jingled together. Daphne’s nails scraped against one of the charms, a small heart, and more pink sparks of magic fluttered like fireflies in the air.

I held out the bag again, and Daphne dropped the bracelet inside. I closed the top and tied off the plastic, careful not to touch the jewelry itself. I didn’t want another slide show into Daphne Cruz’s psyche. The first one had almost made me feel sorry for her.

But any sympathy I might have had for Daphne vanished when the Valkyrie gave me the cold, haughty stare that so many mean girls before her had perfected.

“You tell anyone about this, Gwen Frost, and I’ll strangle you with that ugly purple hoodie you’re wearing. Understand me?”

“Sure,” I said in a pleasant tone. “But you might want to pull yourself together before you go to your next class, Daphne. Your lip gloss is smeared.”

The Valkyrie’s eyes narrowed, but I ignored her venomous dirty look, unlocked the bathroom door, and left.

I stepped out of the bathroom and into the hallway. Somewhere deeper in the building, a bell chimed, warning me that I had five minutes to get to my next class, so I fell in with the flow of students walking toward the west wing of the English-history building.

From the outside, Mythos Academy looked like an elite Ivy League prep school, even though it was located in Cypress Mountain, just outside of Asheville, up in the high country of western North Carolina. Everything about the academy whispered of money, power, and snobbery, from the ivy-covered stone buildings to the perfectly manicured grassy quads to the dining hall that was more like a five-star restaurant than a school cafeteria. Yeah, from the outside, the academy looked exactly like the kind of place rich people would send their spoiled trust fund babies to in preparation for them going on to Yale, Harvard, Duke, or some other acceptably expensive college.

Inside, though, it was a different story.

At first glance, everything looked normal, if a bit stuffy and totally old-fashioned. You know, suits of polished armor lining the halls, each one clutching a sharp, pointed weapon. Stone carvings and expensive oil paintings of mythological battles covering the walls. White marble statues of gods and goddesses standing in the corners, their faces turned toward each other and hands held up over their mouths, as if they were gossiping about everyone who passed by their perches.

And then, there were the students. Ages sixteen to twenty-one, first-year students all the way up to sixthyears, all shapes, sizes, and ethnicities, with books and bags in one hand and their cell phones in the other, texting, talking, and walking all at the same time. Each one wearing the most expensive clothes their parents could afford, including Prada, Gucci, and, of course, Jimmy Choos.

But if you looked past the designer duds and flashy electronics, you’d notice other things. Strange things. Like the fact that so many of the students carried weapons. Swords, bows, and staffs mostly, all stuffed into what looked like fancy leather tennis bags. Color-coordinated to match the day’s outfit, of course.

The weapons were just accessories at Mythos. Status symbols of who you were, what you could do, and how much money your parents had. Just like the colorful sparks and flashes of magic that crackled in the air like static electricity. Even the lowliest geek here knew how to chop off somebody’s head with a sword or could turn your insides to mush just by muttering a spell or two.

It was like going to school in an episode of Xena: Warrior Princess.

That’s what all the kids at Mythos Academy were—warriors. Real, live mythological warriors. Or at least the great-great-whatever descendants of them. The girls were Amazons and Valkyries, for the most part, while the boys tended to be Romans or Vikings. But there were other warrior types mixed in as well—Spartans, Persians, Trojans, Celts, Samurais, Ninjas, and everything in between, from every ancient culture, myth, or fairy tale that you’d ever heard of and lots that you hadn’t. Each one with their own special abilities and magic, and the egos to match.

As a general rule, though, everyone was rich, beautiful, and dangerous.

Everyone except for me.

Nobody looked at me and nobody spoke to me as I trudged toward my sixth-period myth-history class. I was just that Gypsy girl, and not rich, powerful, popular, pretty, or important enough to register on anyone’s social radar. It was late October now, almost two months into the fall term, and I had yet to make a friend. I didn’t even have a casual someone I could sit with at lunch in the dining hall. But my friendless state didn’t bother me.

Not much had, since my mom’s death six months ago.

I slid into my seat in Professor Metis’s myth-history class just before the bell chimed again, indicating that everyone should be where they were supposed to be by now.

Carson Callahan turned around in his seat, which was in front of mine. “Did you find it yet?” he whispered.

Carson was a tall guy, six feet even with a bony, lanky frame. He always reminded me of a triangle, because he was all sharp angles, from his ankles to his knees to his elbows. Even his nose was straight and pointed. His hair and skin were a dusky brown, and the square frames of his black glasses made his eyes look like malted milk balls set into his face.

I could see why Daphne liked him, though. Carson was sweet and cute, in that shy, quiet way that geeks so often are. But Carson Callahan wasn’t just any kind of geek—he was a hard-core band geek and the drum major of the Mythos Academy Marching Band, even though he was only seventeen and a second-year student like me. Carson was a Celt and supposedly had some sort of magical talent for music, like a warrior bard or something. I didn’t know what exactly. For the most part, I tried not to notice such things. I tried not to notice a lot of things at Mythos—especially the fact of how very much I didn’t belong here.

I handed Carson the bagged bracelet, careful not to let my fingers touch his so I wouldn’t flash on the band geek. Because in addition to feeling Daphne’s emotions, I’d also gotten a glimpse of Carson’s when I’d fished the rose charm out from behind his desk yesterday. I didn’t just see the person who had touched something last—I could flash on everyone who’d ever handled an object. Ever.

Which meant that I knew who Carson really wanted to give the silver bracelet to and that it wasn’t Leta Gaston like he claimed.

“As promised,” I said. “Now, it’s your turn.”

“Thanks, Gwen.”

He put a hundred-dollar bill, the back end of my finder’s fee, onto my desk. I took the money and slid it into my jeans pocket.

As a general rule, I ignored all the other Mythos students, and they ignored me—at least until they needed something found. It was the same gig that I’d done back at my old public high school to earn extra cash. For the right price, I found things that were lost, stolen, or otherwise unavailable. Keys, wallets, cell phones, pets, abandoned bras, and crumpled boxers.

I’d overheard an Amazon in my calculus class complaining that she’d lost her cell phone, so I’d offered to find it for her, for a small fee. She’d thought I was nuts—until I fished the phone out of the back of her closet. Turned out that she’d left it in another purse. After that, word had spread around campus about what I did. Business wasn’t exactly booming yet, but it was picking up.

Since my Gypsy gift let me touch an object and immediately know, see, and feel its history, it wasn’t too hard for me to find or figure things out. Sure, if something was lost, I couldn’t actually, you know, touch it—otherwise, the item wouldn’t be missing in the first place. But people left vibes everywhere—about all sorts of things. What they had for lunch, what movie they wanted to see tonight, what they really thought of their so-called best friends.

Usually, all I had to do was skim my fingers across a guy’s desk or rummage through a girl’s purse to get a pretty good idea about where he’d last left his wallet or where she’d put down her cell phone. And if I didn’t immediately see the exact location of the missing item, then I kept touching stuff until I did—or got an image of who might have swiped it. Like Daphne Cruz snatching the charm bracelet off Carson’s desk. Sometimes, I felt like Nancy Drew or maybe Gretel, following a trail of psychic bread crumbs until I found what I was looking for.

There was even a name for what I could do—psychometry. A fancy, froufrou way of saying that I saw pictures in my head and got flashes of other people’s feelings—whether I wanted to see them or not.

Still, part of me enjoyed knowing other people’s secrets, seeing all the things big and small that they so desperately tried to hide from everyone, including themselves sometimes. It made me feel smart and strong and powerful—and determined not to do totally stupid things, like let a guy take pictures of me in my underwear.

Tracking down lost cell phones might not be the most glamorous job in the world, but it was way better than slinging greasy fries at Mickey D’s. And it certainly paid much more here at Mythos than it had at my old public high school. Back there, I would have been lucky to get twenty bucks for a lost bracelet, instead of the cool two hundred that Carson had given me. The bonus cash flow was the only thing I liked about the stupid academy.

“Where was it?” Carson asked. “The bracelet?”

For a moment, I thought about ratting out Daphne and telling Carson about her massive crush on him. But since the Valkyrie hadn’t been overtly mean to me in the bathroom, just vaguely threatening, I decided to save that bit of information for a time when I might really need it. Since I didn’t have money, strength, or great magical power like the other kids at the academy, information was the only real leverage that I had, and I saw no reason not to stock up.

“Oh, I found it behind your desk in your dorm room.” The rose charm anyway. It had been wedged deep down between the desk and the wall.

Carson frowned. “But I looked there. I know I did. I looked everywhere for it.”

“I guess you just didn’t look hard enough,” I said in a vague tone, and pulled my myth-history book out of my bag.

Carson opened his mouth to ask me something else when Professor Metis rapped on her podium with the old-fashioned slender silver scepter that she also used as a pointer. Metis was of Greek descent, like so many of the profs and kids at Mythos were. She was a short woman with a thick, stocky body, bronze skin, and black hair that was always pulled back into a high, tight bun. She wore a green pantsuit, and silver glasses covered her face.

She looked all stern and serious, but Metis was one of the better professors at Mythos. She at least tried to make her myth-history class interesting by sometimes letting us play games and do puzzles and stuff, rather than just memorizing boring facts.

“Open your books to page one thirty-nine,” Professor Metis said, her soft green gaze flicking from student to student. “Today, we’re going to talk some more about the Pantheon as its warriors battled to defeat Loki and his Reapers of Chaos.”

But today wasn’t going to be a fun day. I rolled my eyes and did as she asked.

In addition to going to school with all the mythological warrior kids, I also had to learn about their whole stupid history. And, of course, there was a group of good magic guys who had banded together and called themselves the Pantheon whose sole purpose was to fight a group of bad magic guys called Reapers who wanted to, well, bring about the Chaos.

So far, Professor Metis had been pretty vague about what exactly the Chaos was, and I hadn’t exactly been paying rapt attention to all the mumbo-jumbo magic stuff. But I was guessing it involved death, destruction, and blah, blah, blah. I’d much rather read the comic books that I had stashed in the bottom of my messenger bag. At least they had some basis in reality. Genetic mutations could totally happen.

But gods and goddesses duking it out? Using warrior whiz kids to fight some ancient battle today in modern times? With mythological monsters thrown in just for fun? I wasn’t sure I believed all that. But everyone here at Mythos did. To them, myths weren’t just stories—they were history, facts even, and they were all very, very real.

While Professor Metis droned on once again about how absolutely evil the Reapers were, I stared out the window, looking at my reflection in the glass. Wavy brown hair, a smattering of freckles on my winter white skin, and eyes that were a curious shade of purple, made more so by the hoodie I was wearing.

Violet eyes are smiling eyes, my mom had always said in a teasing voice. Her eyes had been the same color as mine, although I’d always thought they’d made her look beautiful and me just like a freak.

A dull ache flooded my heart. Not for the first time, I wished that I could rewind time and go back to the way things had been before I’d come to Mythos Academy.

Six months ago, I’d been a normal teenager. Well, as normal as a girl with a strange ability could ever be. But the Gypsy gift ran in the Frost family. My grandma, Geraldine, could see the future. My mom, Grace, had been able to tell whether or not people were lying just by listening to their words. And I had the ability to know, see, and feel things just by touching a person or an object. But our Gypsy gifts had always been just that—gifts, small things that we could do—and I hadn’t thought too much about them, where they had come from, or if other people had magic like ours.

Until the day that I picked up Paige Forrest’s hairbrush after gym class.

We’d been in the locker room changing after playing basketball, which I hated because I totally sucked at it. Seriously, sucked out loud at it. Like, sucked so bad that I’d managed to hit myself in the head with the ball when I was trying to shoot a free throw.

After class, I’d been hot and sweaty and had wanted to pull my hair back into a ponytail. Paige’s brush had been lying on the bench between us. Paige wasn’t one of my close friends, but we were i. . .