Jennifer Estep - Kiss of Frost

He walked back to his office, but I stayed where I was, feeling crazy, scared, and frustrated, all at the same time. I blew out a breath and turned back to the bookshelf, as if the arrow would somehow magically reappear. It didn't, of course, but I realized that maybe I hadn't been imagining things after all.

Because there was a nick in the wood that hadn't been there before.

The deep, ugly, starlike shape looked like it had grooved maybe four inches into the dark, glossy wood. Whoever had shot the arrow must have yanked it out while I'd been looking around the far side of the bookshelf. That was the only explanation I could come up with. But if that was the case, why hadn't he fired another arrow at me when I'd had my back turned? Had the archer heard Nickamedes moving around in his office and had been scared off? If so, I was going to have to start being a lot nicer to the uptight librarian-a whole lot nicer.

But right now I wanted answers, and I knew of one way to maybe get them. My hand trembling, I brought my fingers up to the groove. I hesitated a second, then pressed them to the splintered wood, knowing that my psychometry would kick in and show me exactly what had happened.

THUNK!

An image of the arrow slamming into the bookcase filled my mind-but nothing else. No clue as to who had shot it or why. Disappointing but not surprising. I'd need the actual arrow itself for that or the bow that it had been launched from. Those were the tools the archer had touched, the things he'd used when he'd tried to kill me. The bookshelf was just where the arrow had landed. That's why there weren't any emotions attached to it-just the sudden violence of the arrow slamming into the thick wood.

Frustrated, I dropped my hand.

"Gwendolyn!" Nickamedes called out to me from one of the doors in the glass office complex. "You either come get your bag right this second or leave it here for the night!"

There was nothing else I could do-not tonight, not without the bow, the arrow, or some other sort of proof-so I turned away from the splintered bookshelf and headed over to the checkout counter.

I grabbed my messenger bag and slung it over my shoulder, but I wasn't really thinking about what I was doing. Instead, I was replaying the day's events in my head. First, the SUV, and now the arrow in the bookcase. It all added up to only one conclusion.

Someone was trying to kill me. But it wasn't in the gym this time, and it wasn't just for practice.

No-this time, it was for real.

"Someone's trying to kill you? Really?" Daphne asked a half an hour later.

I shrugged. "Kill, maim, or injure. Isn't it all the same thing to Reapers?"

We were in my dorm room, eating the chocolatestrawberry cookies Grandma Frost had baked earlier today. Well, Daphne was eating the cookies. I didn't have an appetite for them. Knots still twisted and tangled together in my stomach from almost getting skewered in the library.

After Nickamedes had locked the front doors, I'd run all the way from the Library of Antiquities on the upper quad down to Styx Hall, where my dorm room was. With every step, I'd expected an arrow to zoom out of the shadows and rip through my heart.

But nothing had happened.

I'd made it to my dorm in one piece, used my student ID card to get inside, and had gone straight up to my room, which was stuck in a separate turret on the third floor. The room featured all your standard dorm furniture-a bed, a desk, some bookshelves, a TV, a small fridge-although I'd added my own personal touches. A couple of framed photos of my mom stood on my desk, along with a small statue of Nike. Vic, who was currently sleeping in his scabbard, hung on the wall above the desk, right next to my posters of Wonder Woman, Karma Girl, and The Killers.

Normally, I considered my dorm room a safe haven from the craziness that was Mythos Academy. Not tonight, though. I huddled on my knees on the floor, my purple and gray plaid comforter wrapped around me, and peered through the bottom of one of the picture windows set into the wall. There didn't seem to be anyone lurking on the dorm's lawn, but then again, it was pitch-black outside now.

"Why do you think it's a Reaper who tried to kill you?" Daphne asked.

"Who else could it be? Besides, Professor Metis told me that Jasmine's family might come after me because I was involved in her death."

"True," Daphne agreed. "You did spectacularly piss off her family. Not to mention Reapers in general."

The Valkyrie lounged on my bed, eating a cookie with one hand while she typed on her laptop with the other. The motion made the charms on the silver bracelet around her right wrist jangle together. Carson had bought the bracelet for Daphne weeks ago, back when he was trying to work up the courage to ask out the Valkyrie. Now, it was one of her most prized possessions.

"Reapers don't like it when one of their own dies," Daphne added. "Payback is, like, their life. Are you going to tell Professor Metis what happened?"

Metis was my myth-history professor, and she'd sort of become my mentor. She'd also been my mom's best friend, back when they'd both gone to Mythos. The professor had told me that my mom had saved her life more times than she could count and that she owed it to my mom to look out for me while I was here.

My eyes flicked to my desk, and I crawled over to it and grabbed a framed photo off the top. Two girls grinned up at me from underneath the glass, their arms around each other. My mom and Professor Metis, back when they'd been about my age.

Not too long ago, Metis had given me this photo of them as teenagers. Every time I slipped the picture out from behind the glass and ran my fingers over the slick paper, I felt all the love that my mom and Metis had had for each other. They'd been more like sisters than friends. Knowing someone else had cared about my mom as much as I did made me feel a little less alone and made my grief and guilt over her death a little easier to bear.

"What am I going to tell Metis?" I said, putting the photo back on the desk. "That somebody tried to run me over near my grandma's house and then took a shot at me in the library? I don't have any proof that either one actually happened. I didn't get a look at the license plate on the car, and I don't have the arrow. She might just think I was being paranoid."

"I don't think so," Daphne said, drumming her fingers on top of her keyboard and making pink sparks flicker in the air. "Metis is more understanding than most of the profs are. I think she'd believe you."

I shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. You should have seen the look that Nickamedes gave me-like I'd just escaped from Ashland Asylum or something. Who knows? Maybe I have."

I tried to smile at my own stupid joke, but I couldn't quite make my lips turn up all the way. Knowing that someone was trying to kill me didn't put me in a smiling mood.

Daphne shook her head, her blond hair spilling over her shoulders. "I don't think you're crazy. If you think there's a Reaper after you, then there probably is. They pretty much live to kill us, you know, just like we do them."

"Great. Way to make me feel better."

Daphne rolled her black eyes. "Oh, suck it up, Gwen. It's not the end of the world. We're all here learning how to fight Reapers. You're just getting a crash course in it, that's all. Some of the kids would actually be jealous of you. The Spartans certainly would. Sometimes I think Logan and his friends would go off hunting Reapers if Coach Ajax and the other profs would let them."

In addition to being the best fighters at Mythos, the Spartans also had a reputation for being the most bloodthirsty. They actually liked to be in the thick of battle and killing things-it was part of their DNA or something. I guess that's just what happened when you could pick up normal, everyday objects-the cookies Daphne was noshing on, the stapler on my desk, the small replica of Nike next to it-and automatically know how to kill people with them. Logan, Kenzie, and Oliver could grab any one of those things, kill me with it, and not think twice doing it. Seriously. That's the kind of freaky stuff they instinctively knew how to do.