Free Kiss of Frost by Jennifer Estep Page A

but before he could say anything else, the bell rang, signaling the start of class. A few seconds later Professor Metis stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. Metis was of Greek descent, like so many of the kids and profs at Mythos. She was a short woman with a stocky body, bronze skin, and black hair that was always pulled back into a high, tight bun. Today she wore a heavy fisherman’s sweater that was the same color green as her eyes behind her silver glasses.
    “Good afternoon, everyone. Please open your books to page 251,” Metis said. “Today we’re going to focus on some of the creatures that aided Loki during the Chaos War, and some species that the Reapers still use today.”
    I winced. Monster talk, in other words. Definitely not my favorite subject. Reapers were bad enough, but they were just people in the end. Okay, okay, people with magic, weapons, and seriously bad attitudes, but still, just people. It was the monsters—the mythological nightmares the Reapers trained to do their evil biddings—that really creeped me out. I’d been face-to-face with a Nemean prowler, and I’d seen exactly how big, long, and sharp the killer kitty-cat’s teeth and claws were. It was like a black panther on steroids. Prowler super-, superdangerous. Gwen not so much. That was all I really needed to know.
    But there was no getting out of class, so I cracked open my myth-history book to the appropriate page.
    “Now,” Professor Metis began, “you all know about the Reapers of Chaos, those who serve the evil god Loki, and how they and Loki tried to enslave everyone centuries ago. Their actions resulted in the long, bloody Chaos War, which had almost destroyed the entire world. Eventually, the members of Pantheon banded together to battle Loki and his Reapers. Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, defeated Loki in single combat, and she and the other gods trapped him in a magical, mythological prison far removed from the mortal realm.”
    Metis looked at first one student, then another, making sure we were all paying attention. “We’ve also talked about how the Reapers are trying to free Loki, so the god can plunge the world into a second Chaos War... .”
    As the professor started her lecture, I once again thought about Jasmine Ashton and how she’d been a Reaper, along with the rest of her family. Before she’d died, Jasmine had told me there were other Reapers at the academy—something that made my stomach quiver with dread even now. It was bad enough to know Reapers existed in the first place. It was another scarier thing to realize you went to class with them and had no idea who they were—or when they might decide to try and kill you.
    Reapers were the reason why all the kids were at Mythos to start with. The students were the descendants of all the ancient warriors who’d helped defeat Loki the first time around, and they were here in case the god ever got free again. All of the Mythos students had been training since birth to learn how to use whatever skills or magic they had, so they could fight Reapers. Of course, I wasn’t a warrior like the other kids—not exactly—but I had my own magic: my psychometry, given to me by Nike herself.
    I’d recently learned that all my ancestors had served Nike in some way, including my Grandma Frost and my mom, Grace. As a result, the goddess had gifted us with magic, which is what makes us Gypsies. My grandma had told me there were other Gypsies out there, other people with magic from the gods, but I’d never met any of them. I wasn’t so sure I wanted to either, since Grandma Frost had told me that not all Gypsies were good—some were just as evil as the gods they served.
    Now, I was Nike’s Champion, picked by the goddess herself, and trying to carry on my family’s tradition, with no real clue how I was supposed to keep Bad, Bad Things from happening to me or anyone else.
    “... the more you know about the creatures that the Reapers use, the