Jennifer Estep Bundle by Jennifer Estep Read Free Book Online Page A

“Gail? Gretchen?”
    Wow. I was impressed that she even knew it started with a G.
    â€œGwen,” I told her. “Gwen Frost.”
    â€œWell, 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.
    â€œWhere—where did you get that?” she whispered.
    â€œCarson 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?”
    â€œBecause 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.
    â€œHow 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.
    â€œAll 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.
    â€œCarson’s already paid me,” I said.
    â€œSo?” she said. “I’ll pay you more. However much you want.”
    â€œSorry. 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