Free Touch of Frost by Jennifer Estep Page A

collected as the two Valkyries were. Nobody cried. Nobody looked upset. Nobody seemed scared at all that one of their classmates had been murdered last night.
    Last year at my old school, David Jordan, a popular football player, had been working his after-school job at a convenience store when he’d been shot to death during an armed robbery. The next day at school, people had been hysterical. Crying, weeping, screaming, wondering why David had been shot, why he’d had to die, what he’d ever done to deserve something like that, something so violent and awful and random. The school had brought in grief counselors to talk to all of David’s friends and everyone else who’d been shaken up by his death.
    Jasmine Ashton had been the most popular girl in my second-year class. Yeah, she wasn’t the first student at Mythos to die, according to Professor Metis, but Jasmine’s death had to be one of the most unexpected, the most shocking. But everyone was so calm about it.
    It was creepy.
    And it was the same everywhere that I went all day long. Oh, the kids talked about Jasmine and her gruesome murder, but not in the way that I expected.
    “So who do you think will be homecoming queen now that Jasmine’s gone?” the girl sitting in front of me whispered in my fourth-period chemistry class. “Because the dance is on Friday and we already voted for all the kings and queens last week.”
    The petite Amazon sitting across from her shrugged. “Oh, the profs will just give it to the runner-up, which has to be Morgan McDougall. She was Jasmine’s number two. Besides, you know how Morgan is. She’ll be more than happy to wear that tacky crown, even if it wasn’t really hers to start with.”
    The two girls giggled at their cattiness.
    Then, the one in front of me leaned closer to her friend. “Speaking of something else that wasn’t hers to start with, I heard that Morgan and Samson Sorensen were getting very cozy at lunch today. Really comforting each other, if you know what I mean.”
    That caught the Amazon’s interest. “Really? That’s quick work, even for a total slut like Morgan. Tell me more. . . .”
    The talk was the same all day long. Who would be homecoming queen, if Morgan and Samson were hooking up, even who was going to get to move into Jasmine’s primo dorm room whenever her parents cleared out her stuff. Apparently, the Ashtons were vacationing on some remote island off the coast of Greece and the school higher-ups hadn’t been able to reach them yet to tell them about their daughter’s death. But everyone had a cell phone these days, even parents. It sounded to me like the Ashtons just didn’t want to be bothered with Jasmine’s murder. They probably didn’t want to cut their sweet vacation short to come deal with everything.
    Finally, in myth-history class, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I tapped Carson Callahan on the shoulder and asked him about it.
    “What is wrong with people here?” I muttered. “The girl was murdered. In the library, where we all have to go practically every single day. And nobody even talks about it, except to wonder who’s going to be the stupid homecoming queen now and which Valkyrie’s going to sink her claws into Samson Sorensen next. Nobody cares. Not about Jasmine anyway or who might have killed her or the fact that maybe he’s still here on campus hiding out somewhere.”
    Carson gave me a sad look, like he and everyone else knew a secret that I didn’t. “Do you know how many kids I’ve grown up with who have died, Gwen? Lots of them. So many that I’ve lost count. We go to Mythos for a reason. We’re warriors, and warriors die. That’s just how things are. Sure, some of the kids have car accidents or get drunk at the beach and drown or whatever. And sometimes, they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time and get ripped to shreds by Nemean prowlers or murdered by Reapers. Sometimes, they’re even Reapers themselves, and you have to kill them before