Free Touch of Frost by Jennifer Estep

help Jasmine like you did. Most people would have just screamed and run away.”
    I shrugged. I hadn’t thought it was brave. It had just been instinct more than anything else. A foolish one, since I’d gotten knocked out and Jasmine had died anyway.
    “It was just like something your mother would have done,” Metis said in a low voice.
    I stared at her, wondering at the familiar tone in her voice. It almost sounded like she knew my mom. But how could she? As far as I knew, Grace Frost had never even set foot in the academy—
    “She was a police detective, right?” Metis added.
    “Yeah,” I said, wondering how the professor knew that. I’d never told anyone at Mythos anything about my mom. “She was a cop. A good one.”
    But now she’s gone, and it’s all my fault. Tears filled my eyes, my throat closed up, and I couldn’t finish my thought. The usual stab of loss and guilt pierced my heart, overpowering everything else.
    Deep down, I knew that I didn’t have anything to do with the drunk driver who’d T-boned my mom’s car and then driven off, leaving her to die in the wreck. It had been an accident, a stupid, stupid accident, and nothing more.
    Still, I wondered what my life would have been like right now, right this very second, if I hadn’t seen the awful things that Paige’s stepdad had been doing to her.
    I couldn’t help but think that my mom, Grace, would still be alive. That I’d be across town in our old house, in my old bed. That tomorrow I would have gotten up and gone to my old school with all of my old friends. Instead of being stuck here at Mythos Academy, where a girl had just been murdered and danger and bad guys lurked around every corner, according to Metis.
    I couldn’t help but think that my life would be so much better. So much simpler. So much closer to normal than this freak-show world that I was trapped in.
    Metis opened her mouth like she wanted to say something else, but I turned around so she wouldn’t see the hot tears that burned my eyes.
    “Well, go in and try to get some rest now,” she said in a soft voice. “And feel free to call me, if you need to talk about anything, anything at all.”
    “Yeah,” I said. “Sure. Thanks, Professor.”
    Instead of looking back at her, I opened the door and stepped inside the dorm, shutting Metis and everything else out for the night.

Chapter 6
     
    Jasmine Ashton’s murder was the talk of Mythos Academy the next day.
    But not in the way that I expected.
    All the professors announced the news in their first-period classes. My finding Jasmine’s body wasn’t mentioned. The official story was that Nickamedes had been the one to discover her in the library, along with the smashed case and the fact that someone had stolen the Bowl of Tears. The professors assured all the students that Jasmine had apparently been in the wrong place at the wrong time and that since the Bowl was gone, whoever had killed her was probably long gone along with it. But, just to be on the safe side, students should stick together in groups and find a professor immediately if they saw anything suspicious.
    After that, there was a campuswide moment of silence for Jasmine, so we could all pray for her soul or whatever they did at Mythos.
    Two of the Valkyries Jasmine had been friends with were in my first-period English lit class, and I thought that they might ask to be excused, to go back to their dorm rooms for the rest of the day and just process what had happened to their friend—to just feel sad and grieve and cry for her. But the two girls opened up their textbooks, got out their laptops, and started working on the latest critical thinking essay like the rest of us. Like everything was normal. Like nothing out of the ordinary had taken place. If it hadn’t been for the faint headache that I still had, I would have thought that I’d imagined everything that had happened last night.
    My eyes went from face to face, but everyone was just as calm and