Nike reached out and put her hands over mine. I stared up into her eyes—eyes that were neither purple nor gray but instead the soft color of twilight. And I felt that power in her gaze envelop me again. A cold, hard power, but one that was not unpleasant.
“Now, go,” Nike said. “Save the Spartan boy.”
I looked up at her. “But how am I supposed to do that? I don’t even know how to fight—”
The goddess smiled at me and stepped back, her body suddenly shimmering and melting the way that twilight always did as it gave way to true night—or the approaching dawn.
“Wait!” I said. “Tell me what I’m supposed to do—”
But Nike had already vanished, taking her wisdom along with her.
With a gasp, I snapped back to reality. I stood in the same spot I had before, right in front of the glass case that had held the sword—the sword that I was still holding in my hand.
“Can we get on with killing things then?” Vic repeated in a slightly petulant tone, and I noticed that he had a really cool British accent. “It’s been so long since I’ve tasted blood. I’m famished.”
I blanched and not just because it was totally
freaky
how the sword’s mouth moved underneath my palm. “You actually
like
the taste of blood—”
A sharp whistling sound behind me made me throw myself to the side. A sword slammed down onto The Case, cleaving it in two and sending glass and bits of wood everywhere. I scrambled to my feet to find Jasmine already turning toward me, her sword held high once more.
Jasmine smirked at the weapon in my hand. “That little toothpick won’t save you, Gypsy.”
“Toothpick?” Vic muttered in an indignant voice. “Did she just call me a bleeding toothpick? Kill her! Kill her now!”
“If you’ve got any tips on how to do that, I would be more than happy to listen to them,” I snapped, raising Vic up in response. “Because I totally suck at this sort of stuff in gym class.”
“Oh, fantastic,” Vic muttered. “Just bloody fantastic. The goddess has given me to a bleeding
pacifist—
”
I would have pointed out that I wasn’t a pacifist, just totally uncoordinated, but Jasmine came at me again, her sword moving in a silver blur. Block, block, block. That was all that I could do to keep her frenzied attacks from cutting into me. Still, the Valkyrie was a lot stronger than I was, and every one of her blows felt like somebody was hitting me with a sledgehammer. The sheer force of them jarred my whole body, making it hard for me to just keep standing upright.
I desperately tried to remember all the things that I was supposed to have learned in those mock fights in gym class. Tried to swing my sword and move my feet the way that I remembered Coach Ajax showing us how to do.
But try as I might, I couldn’t touch Jasmine. I couldn’t even nick her with my sword. I was doing pretty good just to keep her from killing me. I’d seen enough fights in gym to realize that unless I did something drastic, Jasmine was going to ram her blade through my heart very, very soon.
I stared into her face, watching her eyes, trying to guess what she was going to do next, how she was going to come at me next. Her once-blue eyes were still completely red, just like the prowler’s were. If anything, the color had darkened since she’d started attacking me, and it looked like blood had filled the sockets where her eyes were supposed to be. Jasmine’s pink lips were drawn back into a snarl, but there was a vague blankness in her face, the same sort of blankness that was in Morgan’s features. It was like part of Jasmine wasn’t even here anymore, like someone or something outside her body had taken control of her and was fueling her, feeding her power just so she could kill me.
I was willing to bet that something was the Bowl of Tears.
Jasmine swung at me again, and I stepped back out of reach. She slipped on a book that had fallen off the shelves while we’d been fighting, and I used the chance to leap over her and run back to the center of the library.
“What are you doing?” Vic said. “Why are you retreating? The fight’s back that way!”
“Shut up, Vic!” I said over the noise of the blood roaring in my ears and my bare feet slapping against the cold marble floor. “Unless you want to go back into that case for another decade or two.”
Vic shut up.
I skidded to a halt in front of Morgan, who was still lying on the table staring up at nothing. By this point, the blood in the Bowl of Tears had bubbled up to the surface, looking like a crimson volcano about to erupt. Whatever was going to happen next, it wasn’t going to be good. I couldn’t beat Jasmine, but I could destroy that . . . that . . . that evil
thing.
“Here goes nothing,” I muttered, and raised Vic up over my head with both hands.
Jasmine skidded around the corner of the bookcase, her sword still clutched in her hand. She froze when she saw what I was about to do.
“No!” Jasmine screamed. “Don’t!”
Too late. I slammed the sword down as hard as I could onto the Bowl of Tears. The second the sword touched the Bowl, a scream filled the library, sounding so loud and high and full of pain that it seemed to tear the very air itself into pieces. Crimson light erupted from the Bowl, burning so bright that I had to look away from it.
After that, I wasn’t really sure what happened. The light kept burning, the voice kept screaming, and a blast of heat hit me, so hot that it felt like it would sear all the skin from my body. But for some reason, the sword in my hands stayed as cold as ice. I tightened my grip on Vic and brought the blade up, as if it would protect me from the intense light and heat.
Somehow, it did.
As soon as I brought up the sword, the light and heat lessened, as though the weapon had turned into some kind of shield or something. I backed up a few steps and forced myself to open my eyes, to look at what was happening.
A swirling crimson cloud of . . . of . . . of
magic
hung in the library in front of me, centered over the Bowl of Tears. The cloud arced up, as if it was trying to escape, but I could see that the end of it was like a tornado, swirling around faster and faster and eating everything above it. Like a cartoon genie being forced back into its bottle, whether it wanted to go or not.
Just before the last of the magic cloud got sucked down into the Bowl of Tears, an enormous pair of red eyes popped open and swirled around in the middle of it. The eyes fixed on me, narrowing to angry slits, and a blast of emotion hit me—one of absolute rage and hate and evil. I cried out and staggered back from the force of it. The eyes stared at me another second before they and the rest of the magic cloud disappeared into the Bowl.
I shivered, because I knew, I just
knew,
that those eyes had been real. That they’d belonged to someone who’d seen me. Who hated me. Who wanted me
dead
more than anything else.
Loki,
a voice whispered in the back of my mind. The evil god might be trapped in a prison realm, but somehow, Loki had been able to peer into the library tonight—and I’d felt just how much he wanted to destroy me. I shivered again.
The magic cloud vanished. So did the crimson light. The screams, the noise, the magic, everything. It was all gone, and the library was still and quiet once more.
Then, the Bowl of Tears slipped off of Morgan’s chest, fell to the marble floor, and shattered into a thousand pieces.
Chapter 23
The remains of the Bowl of Tears turned black, shriveled up, and started evaporating, just the way that the Nemean prowler outside the library had when Logan had killed it—
Logan.
I turned around, but I didn’t see the Spartan anywhere in the library. What I did see was Jasmine coming at me once more, her sword still clutched in her hands.
“You’ve ruined everything!” she screamed. “My revenge, my sacrifice to Loki, everything!”
The Valkyrie kept coming at me, and I backed up. Only this time, my foot was the one that slipped on a fallen book. I hit the floor hard, and Vic, the sword, fell from my hand and skittered across the cold marble.
“Can’t believe she bloody dropped me
again . . . ,
” I heard him mutter.
On my hands and knees, I scrambled after the weapon, but it just kept sliding farther and farther away from me. Finally, it stopped, and I saw Vic glaring at me in disapproval.
I’d just reached for the sword when two black stiletto boots planted themselves in front of me. Uh-oh. I looked up to find Jasmine standing over me.
“Time to die, Gypsy,” she muttered, and raised her sword high, ready to bring it down on my head and kill me for good this time—
A spear flew through the air and punched all the way through the middle of Jasmine’s chest. The Valkyrie’s mouth opened in a perfect
O,
and surprise flashed in her eyes. Her sword slipped from her fingers, and she stumbled back against the table where Morgan was lying. Jasmine stared at me, her beautiful face full of pain and disbelief, and she crumpled to the library floor. Dead. This time, I knew that the slick crimson blood rapidly pooling under her body was real.
It was awful.
“Now
that’s
what I’m talking about,” Vic crowed in a chipper voice.
“Shut up, Vic,” I whispered.
I picked up the sword, got to my feet, and turned around.
Logan Quinn stood behind me.
Deep ugly red lines slashed down his cheek from where the Nemean prowler had clawed him, and his black tuxedo jacket and white shirt hung in tatters on his body. More claw marks covered his chest, and I could see blood dripping out of the wounds. The Spartan’s metal shield was still strapped to his arm, although it had been torn into two separate pieces by the prowler. Still, despite his injuries, pride filled Logan’s ice blue eyes, warming them.
In that moment, he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
I ran over to him and held out my arms. I wanted to hug him, kiss him, touch him—and then I remembered that I couldn’t. That my Gypsy gift, my psychometry, wouldn’t let me. Not without flashing on him. Not without seeing what had just happened between him and the prowler. Not without me learning all of Logan’s secrets. And I didn’t want to do that. Not now, not like this.
I stood there a moment, my arms outstretched. Then, I slowly dropped them to my sides.
“Are you okay?” I whispered. “Where’s the prowler?”
“Dead. Its body is back in the stacks. It didn’t evaporate since it was the real deal this time and not just an illusion.” Logan put his fingers up to the bloody wounds on his face and winced. “Well, since I’m alive and Jasmine and the prowler aren’t, I’d say that qualifies as okay. You?”
I shrugged. There was no way to tell him all the crazy things that had happened in the library tonight and all the things that I was feeling, especially when I stared into his eyes.
“Thank you,” I said in a quiet voice. “I don’t know how you found me or why, but thank you. Jasmine and her prowler would have killed me, if it hadn’t been for you.”
He gave me a crooked smile that made my heart speed up. “I couldn’t let you just walk out of the dance all pissed off, now could I?”
“But . . . but why come after me at all?” I asked, my eyes never leaving his.
Logan stared at me. After a moment, he drew in a breath. “Because I—”
“What is going on in here?” a sharp voice called out.
Startled, I raised my sword up even as my head snapped around to the double doors at the back of the library. To my surprise, they were open once more and three people crowded into the doorway—Professor Metis, Coach Ajax, and Nickamedes. I spotted Daphne and Carson lurking behind them, trying to see what was going on inside.
Nickamedes stepped into the library and walked toward me, his face even paler than usual and his mouth wide open in shock. The librarian had a right to be stunned. It looked like a bomb had gone off in here. Thousands of books littered the marble floor, dozens of shelves had been knocked over, tables and chairs had been upended and sliced to ribbons by the Nemean prowler—and that was just the damage I could see from where I was standing.
And then, there was the biggie—Jasmine Ashton slumped against one of the tables, her sightless eyes staring up at the ceiling, Logan’s spear through her chest, her blood coating the floor around her. Right above her, Morgan McDougall was still stretched out on top of the table, like some comatose fairy princess waiting for her handsome prince to come and wake her up with a kiss.
I winced. This was so not going to be fun.
Sure enough, Nickamedes rounded on me and stabbed his finger in my direction. “What have you done to my library, Gwendolyn?”
There was a lot of explaining to do after that. A
lot
of explaining. I told Professor Metis and the others about everything that I’d found out about Jasmine’s plot to use the Bowl of Tears to control Morgan. How Jasmine had wanted to get revenge on her slutty best friend for sleeping with Samson. How Jasmine had claimed that she and her whole family were Reapers who served Loki.
I didn’t tell them about seeing Nike, though, and that the goddess had told me that I was her Champion. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about all that—or if it had even been real to start with and not something that I’d just imagined.
Sometime in the middle of it all, Morgan woke up from whatever kind of zombie trance Jasmine had put her in. The Valkyrie blinked, sat up, looked at all of us, and demanded to know what was going on—and exactly who had stolen her homecoming tiara, ruined her designer dress, and scratched up her face. Coach Ajax took her aside and tried to explain things to her. The Valkyrie still looked confused, though. Just like I felt.
While everyone was busy with Morgan, I showed Professor Metis the sword I’d grabbed out of The Case in the back of the library. The one that Nike had given back to me during my dream, vision, or whatever that had been. Sometime during the commotion, Vic had closed his eye, and he wouldn’t open it back up or talk no matter what I did or said or how I pleaded with him to show Metis that he was in fact kind of alive.
“It’s okay, Gwen,” Professor Metis said, staring at the sword with a strange look on her face. “I believe you about the sword.”
I glared down at the spot where Vic’s closed eye was. “So what do you want to do about it? Do you want to take it and stick it back in one of the artifact cases?”
Metis shook her head. “No, I think you should hang on to the sword, Gwen. At least for now. We’ve got a lot to do tonight, and it would just get lost in the mess anyway. We’ll talk about it later, okay?”
I shrugged. I supposed I could hang on to Vic. Even if the fact that the sword could look at and talk to me was kind of bizarre.
“I think you were very brave tonight, Gwen,” Metis said, her green eyes soft and kind in her face. “Trying to help Morgan. Your mother would be very proud of you.”
I frowned, wondering once again at the familiar tone in Metis’s voice when she’d talked about my mom. But then I thought of how I’d seen my mom’s face when I’d first picked up the sword, of how she had seemed to smile at me. Emotion clogged my throat, and I just nodded. I thought my mom would be proud of me, too. And that made me happier than anything else had in a long time.
Metis smiled at me, then walked over to Ajax and the still-stunned Nickamedes. The three of them huddled together, talking about who they needed to call, how long it would take to clean up the mess in the library, and what to do with Jasmine’s body—the real one—this time. I wondered if they would put it in cold storage in the morgue, like Jasmine had claimed they’d done to her other body, the illusion she’d created to fool us all.
Thirty minutes later, I stood off to one side and watched while a couple of men dressed in dark coveralls loaded Jasmine into a black body bag and zipped it shut. Despite the fact that she’d tried to kill me, I still felt sorry for the Valkyrie.
Her best friend had betrayed her, and her boyfriend had cheated on her. She’d faked her own death to make them feel guilty about what they’d done, but it had backfired, and she’d realized just how little they really cared about her. Just how little everyone had cared about her. So Jasmine had decided to make her best friend pay for everything, especially her hurt feelings.
Jasmine Ashton had been the richest, most beautiful and popular girl in our class, and she’d had everything that she could possibly want—except real friends.
Speaking of friends, I was pretty sure that I had at least a couple now, although my feelings for Logan had zoomed way past the friendship point and had turned into something else completely. The Spartan stood a few feet away, talking to Daphne and Carson about everything that had happened.
Professor Metis was over there, too, looking at Logan’s injuries. She took his hands in hers and stared into the Spartan’s eyes. After a few seconds, a golden glow enveloped Logan. As I watched, the ugly cuts on his face slowly closed shut like they’d never even been there to start with. So did the deeper, bloodier ones on his chest. Metis had told me about her magic and how she could heal people. It looked like Logan would be just fine in a few minutes.
But I didn’t feel like joining them yet. Somebody should stay with Jasmine just a little while longer.
A minute later, Daphne said something in a soft voice to the others and walked over to me. The Valkyrie stood beside me, a blank expression on her face as we watched one of the men start scrubbing Jasmine’s blood off the marble floor.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know she was your friend.”
Daphne shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t think that I ever really knew Jasmine. I never would have thought that she could have done any of this.”
I wondered if anyone here at Mythos had known what Jasmine was really like—or if they would even care that she was dead for real this time.
“It’s not your fault, you know,” Daphne said in a low voice. “Jasmine made her own choices, just like she always did. She wanted revenge on Morgan, and she decided to go all Reaper on everyone to get it. You and Logan were only defending yourselves. That’s the way things are here at Mythos. People come, people go, and some people die.”
“Maybe,” I replied. “But Morgan and Samson broke her heart and then lied to her about everything. They thought it was funny, like a game or something, sneaking around behind Jasmine’s back. So I still feel sorry for her, you know?”
“Yeah,” Daphne said. “I know.”
We didn’t say anything for a few minutes.
“Well,” Daphne said. “The homecoming dance is still going strong, but Carson, Logan, and I are going to head over to Carson’s dorm. He has some Dionysian wine that his dad shipped him in special from Napa.”
I raised an eyebrow. “The band geek has liquor?”
Daphne smiled. “Who knew? Seems like there’s a lot of things about Carson that I don’t know. But now, I get to find out, thanks to you. So you want to come with or what?”
“Sure,” I said. “Just give me a minute.”
Daphne nodded, and she went back over to Carson and Logan. Metis had finished healing Logan, and the three students said their good-byes to the professor, headed toward the double doors, and walked out of the library. Metis watched them a few seconds before going back over to Ajax, who was still trying to console Nickamedes about the huge mess in the library.
No one saw me slip to the back of the library where the sword case had been. I looked at the remains of the glass and wood before slowly raising up my head.
And there she was on the second-floor balcony, the one filled with the statues of all the gods and goddesses. Nike’s statue stood right above the smashed antiques case, as if she’d been watching over it—and me—this whole time. Maybe she had. The thought comforted me the same way that hugging Grandma Frost always did.
Nike looked the same as she had when I’d seen her. A long, loose gown flowing around her body, wings arching up over her back, a cold, terrible sort of beauty filling her face. I don’t know why I’d never noticed her standing up there before. Maybe because I hadn’t been looking. Maybe because I hadn’t been ready.
“Ahem,” a voice coughed.
I looked down at the sword in my hand. I’d completely forgotten that I’d been holding on to the weapon this whole time. It was weird, but it felt almost like a natural extension of my arm now. A part of myself, even.