Touch of Frost by Jennifer Estep Read Free Book Online

weeks. Where were you?”
    I couldn’t exactly tell him that I’d slipped off the academy grounds to go see Grandma Frost, since, you know, students weren’t supposed to leave campus during the week. It was one of the Big Rules, after all. I didn’t want to get Grandma in trouble—or worse, not be able to go see her anymore. I’d already learned that it was better to sneak around Nickamedes and the other Powers That Were at Mythos than it was to confront them head-on. So I just shrugged.
    “Sorry,” I said. “I was busy doing stuff.”
    Nickamedes’s blue eyes narrowed at my vague, smart-ass answer, and his lips pressed into a thin line. “Well, let me tell you about the newest piece that I pulled out of storage this morning. Several classes have been assigned to study it this semester, so I’m sure you’ll be getting a lot of questions about it.”
    The library was full of glass cases filled with dusty pieces of junk that had supposedly belonged to some god, goddess, mythological hero, or even monster. You couldn’t walk down the aisles without tripping over them. Every other week, Nickamedes pulled something else out of storage and put it on display. Part of my job was to know enough about whatever it was to help the other kids find reference books and more information on it.
    I sighed. “What is it this time?”
    Nickamedes crooked his finger, telling me to follow him. We walked to the left past several tables full of students. A large glass case sat in an open space in the middle of the library floor. Resting inside was a simple bowl that looked like it was made out of dull, brown clay. Boring . At least some of the swords looked cool. This? A total snooze.
    “Do you know what this is?” Nickamedes said in a hushed tone, his eyes bright.
    I shrugged. “It looks like a bowl to me.”
    Nickamedes’s face scrunched up, and he muttered something under his breath. Probably cursing my lack of enthusiasm again. “It’s not just any bowl, Gwendolyn. This is the Bowl of Tears.”
    He looked at me like I should have known what that was. I shrugged again.
    “The Bowl of Tears is what the Norse goddess Sigyn used to collect the snake venom that dripped onto her husband, Loki, the first time that he was imprisoned by the other gods, long before the Chaos War. Whenever Sigyn emptied the Bowl, the venom would drip onto Loki’s face and burn him, making him cry out. His screams of pain were so great that the earth shook for miles around him. That’s why it’s called the Bowl of Tears. It’s a very important artifact, one of the Thirteen Artifacts that the Pantheon and the Reapers fought over and with during the last great battle of the Chaos War. . . .”
    It was all very blah, blah, blah, and my eyes immediately glazed over. More stupid gods and goddesses. I didn’t see how Nickamedes kept them all straight. I was having a hard enough time just trying to pick one for my report that was due for Professor Metis’s myth-history class.
    Finally, after five long, long minutes of spouting nonstop facts, Nickamedes wound down. A professor who’d been sitting at a nearby table came up and asked him a question, and the librarian moved off to answer the other man. I shook my head, trying to banish the drowsiness that I felt, and went back to my spot behind the counter.
    For the next three hours I checked out books, answered questions, and did other menial tasks. The library was the one place where the other Mythos students were actually forced to notice and speak to me, if only so they could get their homework done.
    Since students weren’t supposed to go off campus during the week, the library was also a place to Hang Out and Be Seen, and lots of kids liked to sneak off and hook up in the stacks. I’d found more than one used condom when I’d shelved books. Yucko. Doing it against a case full of musty books wasn’t exactly the way that I wanted to lose my virginity, but it was all the rage at Mythos. This month,