'Damn straight,' Daphne crowed. 'Now, come on. Let's go dump our bags in our room. I told Carson that we'd meet him as soon as we could.'
'Yes, master,' I sniped.
We grabbed our luggage and headed toward one of the elevators. I looked for Preston, but I didn't see him in the crush of people hanging out in the lobby. Still, I couldn't help but think that maybe Daphne was right-finding a cute guy to take my mind off Logan was the best thing I could do this weekend.
Chapter 8
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? Practically
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.
