Covington frowned. “You want to go the ruins? With your . . . students?”
Ajax nodded. “I know what you’re thinking, and believe me, I know how dangerous the ruins are supposed to be. But it’s the only place where the ambrosia flowers grow, and Nickamedes will die without them. So can you help us? Please?”
Covington studied his friend. “And if I don’t?”
Ajax gave him a level stare. “Then, we’ll go on our own.”
Covington kept staring at Ajax, then his hazel eyes roamed over the rest of us. We all looked back, showing him the same determination to go to the ruins with or without his help. When he realized we were serious, he nodded.
“Okay, okay, I’ll help. Don’t worry about that.” He hesitated. “It won’t be easy, though. I know someone who can guide you to the ruins, and I’ll be happy to accompany you myself, but I don’t know of any other professors or staff members who would be willing to go. Especially not tomorrow.”
“What’s wrong with tomorrow?” Ajax asked.
“A storm is blowing in,” Covington said. “We’re supposed to get a foot of snow sometime in the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Maybe more.”
Of course it was supposed to snow. As if this wouldn’t be hard and dangerous enough already. I wondered if the Reapers had looked at the weather forecast and had factored in the brewing snowstorm when they’d decided to try to poison me. Probably. I wouldn’t put it past them. That would be just the twisted sort of thing that Vivian and Agrona would think of—to make us all suffer as much as possible while we tried to get the antidote for Nickamedes.
“Well, we’ll just have to risk the storm. And the fewer people who know where we’re going, the better,” Ajax said. “The Reapers already know we’re here and that we have to go to the ruins to get the ambrosia flowers. But just because we’re walking into a trap doesn’t mean we can’t be careful.”
Covington nodded. “Understood. I’ll start making the arrangements immediately. We’ll leave tomorrow.”
He stood up, and so did Ajax. The two men shook hands. Covington gave us all a polite nod, then left the conference room.
“So not only do we have to hike up to some creepy ruins, but now, it’s going to snow buckets on us too? Terrific,” Daphne said.
“Afraid you’ll get your pink snowsuit all messed up?” Oliver teased.
She glared at him. “The only thing that’s going to get messed up is your face, Spartan. The second I shove my fist through it.”
Oliver raised an eyebrow. “Bring it on, Valkyrie.”
“Enough,” I said. “That’s enough. It’s bad enough we know the Reapers are lurking around waiting to attack us again. Can we please not snipe at each other too?”
Daphne turned her glare to me, but I glared right back at her. After a moment, she sighed.
“All right,” she said. “All right. I’m just a little stressed.”
“We all are,” Carson said in a soft voice. “But we’ll be okay, as long as we stick together.”
I flashed him a grateful smile. We were all silent for a moment before Ajax spoke.
“Well,” he said. “I have to help Covington with the arrangements. You guys can hang out in the library while we work.”
I nodded. Hopefully, we would have a quiet day here, and I could gather my thoughts and prepare for what was to come tomorrow—another trap set by the Reapers, most likely.
Chapter 15
We trooped back out into the main part of the library. Covington waved at Ajax, and the two men disappeared into the glass office complex behind the checkout counter. My friends and I settled ourselves in the cushioned chairs in front of the fireplace. Even though no logs were burning, everyone else seemed perfectly happy to lean back in the chairs, close their eyes, and doze, but I couldn’t sit still. Too much on my mind, too many things to worry about, and too many unanswered questions.
So I took off my coat, pulled Vic out of my messenger bag, and belted the sword around my waist, just in case there were any more Reaper attacks today. I also spent a few minutes fiddling with my bag and making sure that Ran’s net was still safely tucked away inside, even though I doubted I’d have need of it anytime soon. After that, there wasn’t anything left for me to do but start pacing back and forth through the chairs and study tables.
“Relax, Gwen,” Oliver finally said, cracking one eye open at me. “Try to get a little rest. We’ll have a tough enough day tomorrow.”
“I know, I know,” I grumbled. “But I hate that we have to sit here all day. I’m going to call my grandma and see how Nickamedes is doing.”
Oliver nodded and went back to his dozing. I pulled my cell phone out of my jeans pocket and headed for the edge of the stacks. I stopped there, making sure to keep the others in sight, then hit the number that would speed-dial Grandma Frost. She answered on the second ring.
“Hello, pumpkin.” Her warm, familiar voice flooded the line. “I thought it was about time for you to call.”
“Hi, Grandma. How are you? How are Metis and Nickamedes?”
“We’re all okay,” she said. “I’m in the infirmary, sitting with Nickamedes and reading a book. He’s asleep right now.”
“How is he?”
“The same,” she said. “No better, no worse.”
“And Metis?”
“She’s in the next room, sleeping. She’s wearing herself out, coming in here and healing him every few hours, but so far, she’s keeping the poison at bay.”
I let out a breath. Well, that was something, I supposed.
“How are you, pumpkin?” Grandma Frost asked. “Where are you now?”
I filled her in on everything that had happened since we’d left the academy, including the Reaper attack on the train.
“There was something else,” I said, finishing up my story. “I met someone today. A girl. Her name is Rory Forseti.”
Grandma didn’t say anything. For a moment, the only sound was the faint buzz of static over the line.
“Grandma? Did you hear me?”
After a moment, she sighed. “I heard you, pumpkin. I thought you might run into Rory out there.”
My hand tightened around the phone. “Her last name is Forseti—just like my dad’s was. Am I—are we—related?”
For a moment, I thought that Grandma wasn’t going to answer me, but she finally let out another soft sigh.
“Yes,” she said. “She’s your cousin. Her father and your father were brothers.”
My dad, Tyr, had died when I was two. My mom and grandma had always claimed that he’d passed away from cancer, but ever since I’d learned about the mythological world, I’d had a sneaking suspicion that he’d been killed, probably by Reapers, just like my mom had been murdered by Vivian. But so much had been going on that I hadn’t thought to ask my grandma about him.
I didn’t have any real memories of my dad, and my mom had only had a few photos of him that she’d shared with me. From the pictures I’d seen, Tyr Forseti had been a tall man with sandy hair, blue eyes, and a face that always seemed to have a hint of sadness in it, even when he had his arms wrapped around my mom and was smiling for the camera.
“Are there any others?” I asked. “Any other Forsetis?”
“No, as far as I know, Rory is the last Forseti. Her parents are both dead, and she lives with her mother’s sister, her aunt,” Grandma said.
“Why didn’t you tell me about her?”
“Tyr . . . your father . . . didn’t get along with the rest of his family,” she answered. “Let the girl explain it all. It’s more her story to tell than mine anyway, especially since she has to live with the consequences of it every day.”
I frowned. “Consequences of what—”
Something rustled off to my left. I hadn’t been paying attention to where I was walking, and I’d drifted back into the stacks while I’d been talking to Grandma Frost. Now, I was about halfway down one of the aisles, with books all around me.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see someone watching me from the next shelf over.
I couldn’t tell much about the figure. The stacks were actually shelves that had been carved out of the lumber logs, and the thickness of the wood cast deep shadows. The figure seemed to be tall, so I assumed it was a guy. He appeared to be wearing dark clothes, judging from the glimpses of his jeans and long coat that I got through the rows of books that separated us, but he was standing too far back in the shadows for me to get a good look at his face.
I was going to change that, though. No doubt he was some spy sent here to follow me and my friends since the Reapers had failed to kill us on the train. Maybe if I could sneak up on him, I could question him and get some answers as to what the Reapers were up to and why—and where Vivian and Agrona were hiding. Logan might not be here, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me from tracking them down—and making Vivian and Agrona pay for what they’d done to him.
“Pumpkin?”
“I have to go, Grandma,” I said. “I’ll call you again later tonight, okay?”
“Just be careful. I love you, pumpkin.”
“I love you too.”
I hung up the phone. But instead of putting it away, I kept fiddling with it. I started pacing up and down the aisle, as though I were totally distracted and checking my text messages, even though I didn’t have any. With every pass I made, I crept a little closer to the end of the aisle—and so did the guy on the other side.
He was keeping pace with me, and I was going to make him pay for it. When I was in range, I planned to grab Vic, charge around the end of the bookshelf, and put the sword up against the Reaper’s throat. Okay, okay, so it wasn’t much of a plan, but it was better than letting some Reaper creep spy on me and report back to Vivian and Agrona.
I finally got close enough to the end of the aisle to put my plan into action. I hit a few more buttons on my phone, scrolling through screen after screen, before sliding it back into my jeans pocket. I took a step forward, like I was going back to the center of the library, but at the last second, I pivoted, grabbed Vic from his scabbard around my waist, raised the sword high, and darted around the end of the bookcase and over into the next aisle, ready to attack whomever was watching me . . .
Empty—the aisle was completely, utterly empty.
I looked right and left and in front and behind me, but no one was there. I even peered through the rows of books, looking into the stacks on either side, but those aisles were as empty as this one was.
“Gwen?” Vic asked. He’d woken up when I’d abruptly yanked him out of his scabbard. “What are you doing? Are there Reapers to fight?”
I let out the breath I’d been holding. The Reaper must have realized that I was onto him and had slipped away into the stacks. He could be anywhere by now—if he’d really even been there to start with.
I thought I’d seen someone watching me, but now, I didn’t know. Because it had been a long day already, and I was still jumpy and on edge from the Reaper attack this morning. Maybe someone had been watching me—or maybe I was imagining things the way I so often did. Either way, there was nothing for me to do but go back to my friends.
“Gwen?” Vic asked again. “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing,” I told the sword. “It’s nothing. Just a false alarm. Go back to sleep.”
Vic yawned again, and his eye snapped shut once more.
I sighed. I didn’t know what was worse—the Reapers or my paranoia. With Vic still in my hand, I turned to head back to my friends—and slammed into someone creeping up behind me.
Chapter 16
Still thinking about the mystery figure, I immediately went into attack mode and raised Vic high. The only problem was that hitting the figure had thrown me off balance, and I staggered back. My shoulder slammed into one of the bookcases, making me wince with pain—and drop Vic.
The sword skittered across the floor. I threw myself down and forward, reaching, reaching, reaching for Vic—
A black boot came down on top of the sword, stopping it from skidding any farther along the floor. My head snapped up, and I realized it wasn’t a Reaper looming over me—it was Rory Forseti.
“Geez, Princess. Kind of hard to fight when you’re on your knees on the floor, isn’t it?” Rory sniped.
I let out a breath and scrambled to my feet. “You scared me.”
Rory’s eyes dropped to Vic. “Apparently so.”
She leaned down and grabbed the sword. Instead of handing Vic back to me, she held up the weapon, studying the hilt. I tensed, wondering if maybe she really was a Reaper after all—and if she was about to use my own weapon against me.
Vic’s eye snapped open, and he regarded Rory with a cold, suspicious glare. “What you looking at, chickie?” he asked.
Rory jumped and almost dropped the sword. Her eyes bulged, and all of the color drained from her face. Vic had just given her a good scare. I snickered.
That snapped Rory out of her fright. She glared at me. Still, it took her a moment to work up the courage to raise Vic once more and peer even closer at the weapon.
“There’s—there’s some guy’s face in the hilt of your sword,” she said, an awed note in her voice.
Vic rolled his eye. “Well, aren’t you the observant one?”
I held out my hand. “His name is Vic, he talks, and he belongs to me.”
“Yes, if you don’t mind, chickie, hand me back to the Gypsy,” he said. “I want to get the rest of my nap in, just in case we run across any more Reapers today.”
Eyes wide, Rory stared at Vic a moment longer before carefully passing him over to me. I took the weapon from her and slid the sword back into the scabbard strapped to my waist.
We stood there, staring at each other, and I studied her again. Black hair, green eyes, round face, pretty features. I wondered if she looked like her mom or her dad—my uncle.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I snuck out of weapons training in the gym. I was bored.”
Of course she was bored. Rory was like Logan, Oliver, Kenzie, Nickamedes, and Coach Ajax; she didn’t need a weapon to fight—or kill. She’d already proven that on the train when she’d whaled on all of those Reapers with just a crossbow and then the broken bits of it.
Rory kept looking at me, her eyes scanning my features just like I’d done to her. I leaned against the shelf closest to me and stared right back at her. There were so many things I wanted to ask her—about her parents, about my dad, about why all the other kids had looked right through her as if she didn’t even exist. But I decided to play it cool, so I kept my mouth shut, even though I wanted to know all of her secrets—all of our family’s secrets—just the way I always did.
“So you’re the famous Gwen Frost,” she finally said.
“And you’re a Forseti.”
Her mouth tightened. “You got something against the Forsetis?”
“That depends. You got something against me?”
Her scowl deepened. “Why would you say that?”
“Because it seems like you think you know everything there is to know about me, and I don’t know anything about you.” I drew in a breath. “Except for the fact that we’re cousins.”
Rory didn’t bat an eye at the news. “Yeah. So your dad and my dad were brothers. So what? It’s not like that makes us family. Not really.”
“But don’t you want to know about me?” I asked. “About my dad? About the rest of my family?”
She let out a bitter laugh. “Not if they’re anything like my parents. And besides, I know all about you already. Everybody’s been talking about you for weeks now. Ever since we heard about that Reaper attack at the coliseum near the North Carolina academy. Supposedly, you’re some kind of great warrior, Nike’s Champion, and all that.” She sniffed. “I haven’t been impressed so far.”
My eyes narrowed. “Is that why you saved my life on the train? Because you weren’t impressed? Because you didn’t think I could defend myself?”
Her eyes glittered with a cold, hard light. “I saved your life because the Reapers wanted you dead. Anything they want, I want the opposite.”
“Really?” I asked. “Then why did the other kids talk about you like you were working with the Reapers when we got off the train? Why would they think that when you had just helped me and my friends defeat a bunch of them?”
She tilted her head to the side and looked at me. “You really don’t know, do you? About the Forsetis?”
“My dad died when I was two. I don’t even remember him, and my mom didn’t talk about him a lot.”
Rory let out another bitter laugh. “Of course she didn’t. Be glad about that. She did you a favor.”
Every word this girl said only made me angrier. “Look. All I want is some information about my dad. And you too, if you want to share. My mom was murdered by Reapers last year, so it’s just been me and my grandma ever since. But now I come here, and I find out that I have a cousin—one who seems to know a lot more about my dad than I do. Can you blame me for being curious?”
After a moment, she gave me a grudging nod. “No, I suppose not.”
“So why don’t you lose the attitude and tell me what you know?”
She studied me for several moments, staring into my face as if she could judge whether or not I was telling the truth just by looking at me, and I started to wonder what other magic she might have besides her Spartan fighting skills. Maybe she was even a Gypsy like me, gifted with magic by one of the gods.
“You want to know about the Forsetis?” Rory snapped. “Get your friends, Princess, and I’ll show you exactly what the family name means around here.”
Rory and I walked out of the stacks. My friends were still sitting in front of the fireplace, trying to nap, but they all sat up at the sound of our footsteps on the floor. They looked at Rory, then me.
“Well, well, well,” Oliver said. “Looks like Gwen’s made a new friend.”
“Shut it, Spartan,” Rory snapped. “Or I’ll make you eat your own fist.”
Oliver straightened up in his chair. “I’d like to see you try.”
I rolled my eyes at them. “Again, with the sniping. Can we please cut it out?”
Oliver and Rory ignored me and kept right on glaring at each other. Rory opened her mouth, probably to challenge Oliver to a fight, but a door in the glass office complex squeaked open, cutting her off. Ajax and Covington stepped outside and walked over to the fireplace.
“Is something wrong?” the librarian asked, looking from me to Rory and back again.
“Oh, everything’s just fine and dandy,” I said. “In fact, Rory just offered to show me and my friends around campus while you and Ajax work.”
Covington frowned. “She did?”
Rory started to open her mouth again, but I clapped her on the back, almost sending her tumbling into Alexei’s lap.
“You bet she did,” I said.
Rory scowled at my lie, but she didn’t contradict me. “Yeah. That’s me. Campus tour guide.”
Covington frowned, as if he was searching for a reason not to believe her. Rory glared at him, her fists clenched as though she’d like nothing more than to step forward and punch him. I wondered at her hostile reaction to him. What did she have against the librarian?
But in the end, Covington’s face smoothed out. “Well, why don’t you show Gwen and the others around and then go over to the dining hall and get some lunch? Ajax and I should be finished by the time you’re done.”
Rory rolled her eyes, but she didn’t say anything else. Instead, she deliberately turned away from Covington, like he hadn’t even spoken to her.
I looked at Ajax, who nodded. While my friends and I gathered up our things, Ajax gestured for me to come over to him.
“Be careful,” he said. “You don’t know this girl. We might be on campus now, but that doesn’t mean we’re safe.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be careful. We’ll all stay together. We’ll walk around campus awhile, then go get some lunch, like Covington suggested. Everything will be fine.”
“Okay,” the coach rumbled. “Just stick together and keep your weapons with you at all times. If you need anything—anything at all—Covington and I will be here in the library.”
“Got it.”
Ajax told us to leave our luggage in one of the librarians’ offices, although we all kept our weapons like he’d said. I also slung my messenger bag over my shoulder to take with me since Ran’s net was in the bottom of it, along with Oliver’s drawing of the artifacts.
“Come on,” Rory muttered when we’d finished putting everything away. “Let’s get this over with.”
She walked out of the library, and we all fell in step behind her.