Well, that answered my question about why the gods and goddesses didn't fight things out among themselves. They'd agreed not to and were using the rest of us to do their bidding instead, which was so totally Clash of the Titans. Being a Champion sounded exactly like something that Metis would do. Not the killing or guarding part, but the mentoring others. Although if the professor had been trying to do that for me, it wasn't sinking in yet.
I shifted on the bed. Maybe everything that Daphne had said was true, but it still didn't explain why I was here and what I had to do with myths, gods, the Chaos War, or any of the rest of it. I was just a Gypsy girl who touched stuff and saw things. Hardly special at all. Not like Logan and his killer warrior skills, or Daphne and her incredible strength and sparking fingers.
Some kind of alarm beeped, and Daphne's black eyes flicked to the clock in the corner of the room. "It's seven o'clock already. Carson is probably waiting for me downstairs. How do I look?"
She twirled around, making her dress swing out in an arc around her, before she smoothed it back down into place.
"You look beautiful," I said in a truthful voice. "Now go have a great time."
Daphne smiled at me, grabbed her purse off the bed, and went over to the door. She stopped and looked back over her shoulder at me.
"Thanks for coming over, Gwen," she said. "I had fun."
I smiled at her. "Me too."
"Can I call you later?" the Valkyrie asked in a shy voice. "If it's not too late?"
"You'd better," I warned in a tough voice. "Because I want to hear all about what a good kisser Carson is."
Daphne laughed and held out her hand. I got up, and she looped her arm through mine, resting her hand on my hoodie sleeve.
Arm in arm, we left her room, the beginnings of a real friendship shimmering in the air between us, just like the bright pink sparks fluttering up from the Valkyrie's fingertips.
Chapter 17
I escorted Daphne down the stairs. Carson was waiting in the main common room.
He wore a classic tux that made him look like a tall, lanky penguin, but I didn't say anything to Daphne. Because the band geek's face lit up at the sight of the Valkyrie, just like hers did when she saw him. More pink sparks flashed around Daphne's fingers, and if Carson's grin got any wider, his lips would pop off his face.
"Hi," Daphne said in a soft voice, stopping in front of him.
"Hi," Carson whispered back. "You look beautiful."
Daphne blushed. Carson kept staring at her. Neither one moved or said another word. Finally, I cleared my throat to make the band geek get on with things.
"Oh! This is for you." Carson jerked forward and held out a plastic box with a single pink rose inside, as if he'd just remembered that he'd been holding it all along.
"Thank you." Daphne took out the flower, handed me the empty box, and slipped the simple corsage over her wrist.
I got a little flash off the box, an image of Carson clutching it in his sweaty hands and wondering if he'd picked out the right color rose. It was a sweet, nervous feeling, that he'd be worried so much about something so small. I could feel that Carson wanted everything to be perfect tonight, right down to the corsage.
The two of them stood there staring at each other, before Carson cleared his throat.
"Well, I guess we should be going. We wouldn't want to be late." He frowned. "Or would we? What's cooler?"
Daphne laughed. "I'll tell you all about it on the way over to the dining hall."
Carson held out his arm, and Daphne slipped hers through his. The Valkyrie turned to wave at me; then the two of them left the dorm. I watched them go and smiled. They really did make a cute couple.
Now that they were gone, I had no reason to stick around Valhalla Hall. But instead of heading over to my own dorm, I turned and walked back up the stairs to the second floor. Everyone had left for the dance already, and the dorm was still and quiet, like no one lived here at all.
Nobody saw me use my driver's license to pop the lock and slip back into Jasmine's room.
It looked exactly the same as it had the first time that I'd been in here a few days ago. Bed. Vanity table. Desk. TV. Bookshelves. I pulled out Jasmine's desk chair and sat down, still holding the empty corsage box in my hands. My eyes scanned over the room, hoping for a clue or a vibe or something that would tell me what had really happened to her.
But everything was exactly the way that I'd left it during my last break-in. Pictures of Jasmine stilled lined the mirror over the vanity table. Makeup still cluttered the glass surface. And her bookcase was still full of reference books with titles like Common Valkyrie Powers, Mastering Your Magic, and Manipulating Magical Illusions.
I stared at the books a minute. Something about them stirred a faint memory in the back of my mind, some vague, half-formed thought. My eyes kept going back to the last book. Illusions, illusions ... it was something to do with illusions and magic. Something that I'd seen or felt or heard someone say. But even as I reached for it, I could feel it slipping away. Whatever it was, the memory, thought, or idea wasn't ready to come to the surface of my mind yet. Sooner or later, it would, though. They always did.
I didn't know why I'd come in here. What I thought I'd find, if anything. It just seemed ... sad. That someone could be forgotten so easily so soon, even if Jasmine hadn't been the nicest person at Mythos Academy. Nobody ever wanted to be forgotten.
But there were no real answers to be found in the quiet room, so I got up and left.
I made it back to my own dorm, went inside the turret, and closed the door. Everyone who lived here was at the dance, too, and my dorm was just as quiet as Valhalla Hall. I was probably the only person left inside. Alone again. Naturally.
I flopped down onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling. There were things that I could do. Read the last of the new comics that I had, take a shower, watch some lame reality show, eat the rest of Grandma Frost's almond sugar cookies.
I still had that report due for Metis's myth-history class, the one where we had to pick a god or goddess and write an essay on them. Maybe I'd choose Nike, I thought. The Greek goddess of victory seemed to be in the thick of things when it came to Loki, Reapers, and the Chaos War.
Instead of reaching for my myth-history book, I found myself sitting up and staring at my closed closet door. After a few seconds, I heaved myself up off the bed, went over, and opened it. My usual assortment of jeans, graphic T-shirts, hoodies, and sneakers filled the closet, along with a few other things. My heavy purple plaid winter coat. A couple of pairs of dressy black pants. Thick gray fishermen's sweaters for when the weather got really cold. The scratchy black dress that I'd worn to my mom's funeral.
I didn't have a black dress back then, and Grandma Frost had taken me shopping the day before the burial to get one. I'd picked out the very first dress that I'd seen in my size, not caring what it looked like or who saw me in it. I'd hated the fact that I'd had to wear it at all, that my mom was dead and never coming back.
My fingers hovered over the fabric, but I didn't touch it. I didn't want to remember that day and how miserable I'd felt in that dress, how devastated I was that my mom was gone forever because she'd been trying to help one of my friends instead of staying home where she belonged with me. How her accident was all my fault because I'd been so damn nosy and so determined to learn another girl's secret. I never wanted to put that dress on again. Just looking at it made my stomach twist with a sick, guilty feeling, like I was responsible for my mom's death instead of some anonymous drunk driver... .
I slid the metal hanger aside, careful not to touch the black fabric, and pulled out the garment buried in the very back of the closet-the prom dress that my mom and I had bought the weekend before she'd died.
It was a curious shade, somewhere between purple and gray-that same soft violet color that my mom always teasingly claimed my eyes were. The gown had a kind of Greek goddess vibe to it-cap sleeves with a high empire waist and a long, flowing skirt. Silver sequins ran across the dress in a slim band where the waist was and rimmed the circular neck, adding a bit of soft shine to it.
I drew in a breath, pulled out the dress, and brushed my fingers against the fabric.
There were no weak feelings, no faint flashes, associated with the dress. Instead, all at once, I was assaulted with images. Mom and me laughing in the food court at the mall over the chocolate milk shakes we'd ordered for lunch. The two of us flipping through rack after rack of dresses, trying to find just the right one. Always coming up empty, but still having a good time together. Mom deciding to try a little boutique she knew across town as a last resort. And finally, the look on my mom's face when she'd spied this dress and shown it to me.
I closed my eyes and concentrated, trying to bring the images into even sharper focus. My fingers stroked the silken fabric of the dress, and I breathed in, almost imagining that I could smell the sweet, soft lilac perfume that my mom had always worn. I'd liked it so much that she'd given me a bottle of it for my last birthday, but I hadn't worn it since she'd died. It just reminded me of how much I missed her.
Slowly, the waves of feeling and the images started to fade, the way they sometimes did with an object like this. If they weren't used, or in this case worn, emotions and feelings leaked out of items over time, like water dripping out of a cup with a hole in the bottom of it, until there was nothing left. Sometimes, the old images were imprinted with new thoughts, feelings, and emotions as new experiences were had or new people used the object in question. Sometimes, they just faded away altogether, leaving nothing behind but faint echoes of who and what had been before.
I started to put the dress back in the closet, but the images that I'd just seen, the feelings that I'd just experienced, wouldn't let me.
Maybe it was the way I'd felt when I'd first tried it on, like I'd be the prettiest girl at the sophomore prom. Maybe it was the smile on my mom's face when she'd seen the dress, when she realized how perfect it would look on me. Maybe it was knowing that a little piece of her that I'd thought I'd lost forever had been right here hanging in my closet the whole time.
But suddenly I wanted to go to the homecoming dance, and I wanted to wear this dress, if for no other reason than it would have made my mom happy. Grandma Frost was right. It was time to start living again.
Morgan had said the same thing about Jasmine, that that's what Jasmine would have wanted everyone to do after her death. Except in my mom's case I knew that it was true, that it was what Grace Frost would have wanted for me, her daughter.
I could feel it in the fabric of the perfect dress that she'd bought for me.
And I realized that's what I wanted, too.
So I slipped the dress off the hanger and put it on the bed. The sequins winked up at me like eyes, each one blinking with encouragement.
"Here goes nothing," I muttered, unzipping my hoodie and letting it fall to the floor.
Chapter 18
By the time I got ready, it was after eight, which meant the dance had been going on for an hour already. I'd missed the part where the homecoming king and queen would be announced for each class, the couples the other students had voted for two weeks ago. But like Morgan had said, who else was it going to be in our second-year class besides her and Samson now that Jasmine was gone?
I stared at myself in the mirror in the bathroom. Violet dress and eyes, wavy brown hair loose around my shoulders, freckles splashed across my winter white skin. I didn't look like a beautiful fairy princess like Daphne had, but at least I didn't come off as a total slut like Morgan either. I didn't know what I was, other than that Gypsy girl who saw things. But I was determined to have a good time tonight-or at least fake it well enough so that no one else would know the difference but me.
I left my dorm and walked across the campus quad. Everyone else was already at the dining hall, so the quad was even more deserted than before. A cold breeze gusted across the lawn, bringing the fall chill with it, along with the faintest bite of winter. I wrapped my arms around myself, wishing that I'd thought to grab a coat before I'd left my room, but I didn't want to go back for one now. If I did, I doubted that I'd make the effort to come back and go to the dance at all.
Finally, I reached the dining hall. The front doors were open, the light spilling outside and banishing some of the shadows. Several students stood around the entrance, a few of them taking drags off cigarettes or something stronger when they thought no one was looking. Some kids were drinking, too, and the sour stench of beer mingled with the clouds of sweet, choking smoke.
I walked past the other students and went inside. To my surprise, the dining hall had been completely transformed since lunchtime. The usual round lunch tables were gone, replaced by a single long banquet table that stretched down the left wall. Crimson and pumpkincolored autumn leaves twined with greenery and baby's breath clustered around an enormous ice sculpture shaped like a giant cornucopia. Candles also flickered on the banquet table, highlighting the gourmet food that covered the surface. More leaves and greenery hung from the ceiling, along with strings of silver and gold lights that bathed the area in a soft, romantic glow. Even I had to admit that it was all very classy, very elegant, and very beautiful.
I'd missed the harvest ritual, which had been held before the dance had started, but I could see the remnants of it. Tall bronze rods topped with beeswax candles burned in the open-air garden, and golden bowls full of fresh-picked grapes, oranges, almonds, and olives sat at the feet of the various statues of the gods there, including Dionysus and Demeter. Everything in the garden seemed to have a warm bronze tinge to it tonight, including the goblets full of wine that had been placed next to the bowls of fruits and nuts, and the air smelled sharp and sweet, like citrus. I waited a moment, wondering if I'd feel the same kind of invisible force that I had at the bonfire last night. But whatever presence that might have been summoned by the ritual had vanished already. I let out a breath. No more magic mumbo jumbo tonight. Good.
