My hopeful mood lasted until Daphne and I met Carson in one of the ski shops off the hotel lobby. The two of them wandered up and down the crowded aisles, looking at all the equipment and trying to decide if they wanted to ski today or go tubing instead.
Like everything else I'd seen so far at Powder, the shop had the best of everything. All shapes, sizes, and styles of skis stood in racks against the wall, their bright, shiny surfaces as slick and smooth as glass. Puffy coats, pants, and gloves, all branded with designer logos, took up the middle of the shop, while sunglasses, hats, and scarves crowded together in a counter next to the back wall. Neoncolored inner tubes dangled from the ceiling, looking like oversize doughnuts.
I followed my friends through the shop, feeling small, shabby, and lost. I'd never really been an outdoorsy type, preferring to stay in my room and read comic books or watch television. All this nature was a little tough to take. Seriously. What was so fun about standing outside in the cold, trying not to fall and break your legs as you zoomed down a mountain?
Finally, Daphne and Carson picked out some skis, boots, and clothes and then looked at me, expecting me to do the same. Which meant that it was confession time.
"I, um, don't ski."
Daphne frowned. "What do you mean you don't ski?" I cringed. "I mean, I don't know how to ski. I've never
been. That's one of the reasons why I didn't really want to come to the resort this weekend."
Her mouth dropped open. "How can you live in the mountains and not know how to ski? Practicallyeveryone at the academy comes to Powder or flies out to Aspen at least once or twice a year… "
The Valkyrie's voice trailed off as she realized that I'd never been to Aspen either or to any of the other fancy places she had.
I stared at a pair of sunglasses and shifted on my feet, miserable embarrassment making my cheeks burn. The fact that the sunglasses had a twelve-hundred-dollar price tag on them didn't help matters. Most of the time, it didn't bother me that I didn't have the expensive clothes, cars, and jewelry the other kids had. I understood what my mom and grandma had been trying to do, how they'd been trying to give me a normal life for as long as possible and to teach me not to take money for granted. Besides, Grandma gave me an allowance, and I made plenty of cash on my own finding lost items for the Mythos kids. I had more than enough money to buy clothes, rent skis, and do whatever else I wanted to this weekend at Powder. But when Daphne talked about jetting off to the Hamptons or the Bahamas or wherever, yeah, sometimes I got a little jealous of all the interesting places she'd been to, all the things she'd done that I hadn't.
Carson gave me a knowing, sympathetic look, which only made me even more miserable. I didn't want my friends to feel sorry for me, and I definitely didn't want them to think of me as poor Gwen, that Gypsy girl who'd never been anywhere or done anything cool.
Daphne tapped her fingers against her lips, throwing pink sparks of magic everywhere. Thinking hard. "Okay, so you don't know how to ski, but maybe we can fix that. What if we try the archery thing?"
"What archery thing?" I asked, confused.
"Come on," she said. "I have an idea."
"This is a bad, bad idea," I muttered. "This is never going to work."
"Oh, suck it up, Gwen," Daphne said. "You haven't even tried it yet."
We'd left the shop thirty minutes ago and now stood on top of one of the beginner bunny slopes, outfitted with skis, boots, gloves, and goggles. Daphne looked cute in her pale pink ski suit, and Carson was perfectly at ease in his dark green one. I just felt like an oversize marshmallow. Seriously. The pants Daphne had picked out for me had so much air trapped in them that they made me feel twice my normal size, and the jacket puffed up so high that I had to keep my chin tucked down, just so I could see where I was going. The only thing good about the suit was the color, which was a pretty shade of purple.
The clothes were bad enough, but then there were the skis. I basically had two narrow, slick boards strapped to my feet, and I felt like I was going to fall down at any second. Not to mention the fact that I kept whacking myself in the legs with the stupid ski poles every time I moved. Getting on the chair lift to come up here had been an adventure by itself. And now Daphne actually expected me to take off down the hill.
Okay, okay, so it wasn't much of a slope. The hill flowed down at a gentle angle for several hundred feet before leveling out again. The area was deserted except for the three of us. Just like Daphne had said, everyone else at Mythos knew how to ski, and the other kids had gone up to the steeper, more difficult runs. Still, I was sure I could break something on the way down the bunny slope.
"Are you ready?" Daphne asked, pulling off one of her pink gloves.
"Sure," I muttered, and yanked off one of mine as well. "Might as well get it over with."
Then I reached out, clasped Daphne's hand, and waited for the images to come.
A few weeks ago, Daphne and I had sat down and done this very same thing. She was my best friend, after all, and we were always brushing up against each other. Since I hadn't wanted my psychometry to kick every single time I accidentally touched her, I'd decided to just get it all over with in one major whammy.
It was another quirk of my magic. If I flashed on someone all at once, or often enough over a period of time, I sort of got used to their vibes and could touch them more freely. Oh, I'd still flash on Daphne if my skin was in contact with hers for more than a few minutes, but I wouldn't get a major whammy unless she was really upset or emotional about something.
So Daphne had come over to my dorm room one night, and we'd sat on my bed and clasped hands. She hadn't seen or felt anything, since she didn't have that kind of magic-touch magic, it was sometimes called.
But I had.
All sorts of images of the Valkyrie had filled my mind, everything from her growing up to her first day at Mythos to her French-kissing Carson after one of their recent dates. Yeah, that last one had kind of grossed me out a little.
And I'd felt all of Daphne's feelings, too-every last one of them. I'd felt how strong she was, how fierce, how brave, how loyal. And yeah, even how she could be a total, rich-girl snob and a major bitch from time to time. But all those images, all those feelings, good and bad, added up to Daphne-and I was glad she was my best friend.
"Are you seeing anything?" Daphne asked.
Carson looked back and forth between us.
"Not yet," I growled, tightening my grip on her hand and closing my eyes. "Now quit talking and start concentrating."
"But you should be able to seesomethingby now," Daphne said, totally not listening to me. "If you can use my memories to help you with archery, why can't you use them to help with something else? I know I'm right about this. I'm always right."
The reason we were standing on the bunny slope and holding hands in the first place was because of Daphne's theoryabout my psychometry-her idea that I could use my magic to pick up other memories and other skills from people, just like she'd talked about in my dorm room two nights ago. Basically, the Valkyrie figured if I could use my psychometry to tap into her archery prowess, then maybe I could pick up some of her skiing skills, too. That way, she, Carson, and I could go skiing together, instead of them leaving me behind on the bunny slope all by myself.
Daphne's theory made sense, I supposed. Thanks to my Gypsy gift, I remembered every single thing I'd ever seen from touching an object or another person-all the images, all the vibes, all the lights, sounds, and flashes of feeling. I'd just never really thought about using them in this specific way before, about trying to specifically call them up like this —
Suddenly an image popped into my head of Daphne standing on top of a tall slope. She let out a loud whoop, pushed off with her poles, and raced down the mountain. And I felt all the things that she had: her knees moving from side to side, the spray of snow against her legs, the cold air burning her lungs, even the blur of the ice-crusted pine trees as she zipped past them.
And then, as quickly as it had come, the image vanished, leaving nothing behind but the empty echo of the wind in my head.
I opened my eyes to find Daphne and Carson staring at me.
"Well?" Daphne asked. "Did it work?"
"We're about to find out," I said.
I let go of her hand, put my glove back on, and plodded over to the edge of the hill.
"Come on, Gwen. You can do it," Carson called out in an encouraging voice.
I didn't know aboutthat,but I was going to at least try. And if I broke something on the way down, well, Daphne said the resort had awesome hot chocolate.
"Here goes nothing," I muttered, dug my poles into the snow, and pushed off.
And immediately wished that I hadn't. Everything happened so freakingfast. The snow was so packed and slick that it seemed like I was going a hundred miles an hour down the slope the second I took off. Plus, the sun glinted on the snow just so, throwing out dazzling sprays of light in every direction.
For a moment, hot, sweaty panic filled me, but I pushed it away and forced myself to focus, to call up Daphne's image, just like I had during archery practice with Kenzie and Oliver. I could do this. Iwoulddo this.
Daphne, Daphne, Daphne-I chanted the Valkyrie's name in my head and once again pictured her in her ski suit, sliding down that steep hill and loving every second of it.
In an instant everything changed.
My legs grew stronger and steadier underneath me. My arms dropped down to where they were supposed to go instead of wildly flailing around. My knees started moving from side to side to help control my speed, and I started leaning into the turns, such as they were on the bunny slope.
I drew in a breath and realized that skiing was kind of… fun.
Before I knew it, I was at the bottom of the hill. I moved the skis first right, then left, sending up a shower of snow and sliding to a stop, like I'd been on the slopes all my life instead of just a few minutes.
At the top of the hill, Daphne and Carson jumped up and down and screamed and waved at me. I lifted a shaky hand and waved back, a crazy grin on my face. I hadn't thought it would really work, but somehow, it had. It looked like there was a little more to my Gypsy gift than I'd thought. I'd have to tell Grandma Frost about it the next time I saw her, if she didn't already know. These days, Grandma always seemed to know more than she told me-about everything.
Daphne made a motion with her hand, pointing at the ski lift. She wanted me to ride back up there, probably so we go up to the next hill and see if I could do the same thing all over again. I waved back, telling her that I understood, and trudged off in that direction.
Several lifts snaked up the mountain at Powder, hauling students, profs, and everyone else up to the various ski, snowboard, and tubing runs, but there was only one lift at the base of the bunny slope. Since it didn't have nearly as many chairs on it as the others, I had to stand there and wait for it to come back around.
And that's when a low, ominous growl whispered behind me.
I froze, my blood suddenly as cold and icy as the surrounding snow. I knew that sort of growl. I'd heard it twice before in my life now, and both times, I'd almost died.
Riding over to the resort, meeting Preston, flashing on Daphne, trying to ski. I'd had a busy morning. So busy I'd forgotten about the fact that there was a Reaper who was trying to kill me-and that he just might send a monster to do the job.
I slowly turned around. At first I didn't see it, but then a movement in the thicket of pine trees at the far edge of the slope caught my eye. I strained to spot it in the shadows and then wished that I hadn't.
It looked like an overgrown wolf. Even though the creature was hunkered down in the snow, I could still see how very massive it was. It seemed to be roughly the same size as a Nemean prowler, with a body that would come up past my waist and was longer than I was tall. Something flicked in the trees behind it, and it took me a second to realize it was the creature's tail, slowly lashing from side to side and slapping snow everywhere.
Its fur was the color of crumbled ash-not quite black but not really gray either-and strands of red glinted in its thick, shaggy coat. The bloody tinge matched the color of the monster's eyes-a deep, dark, blistering red that seemed like it could burn right through anything, including me.
My breath caught in my throat. I'd only seen a drawing of it in my myth-history book, that weird, weird drawing that had moved and oozed ink all over the page, but I knew exactly what the monster was: a Fenrir wolf.
The wolf's lips drew back in a silent snarl, showing me its razor-sharp teeth. I knew that hidden somewhere in the shadows would be the creature's long, curved, black claws — ones that could tear through almost anything. Wood, skin, muscle, bone.
All put together, the Fenrir wolf was a nightmare come to life.
And now it was here to kill me.