Kiss of Frost

what I was thinking.Creepy.

Then another awful thought filled my mind. 'No one else was hurt, were they? By the avalanche?'

'No,' Metis said. 'All the other students were either at the carnival or at the hotel. You were the only one walking down the slope at the time.'

I sighed with relief. No one else had gotten hurt. Good. That was good.

Metis and Nickamedes looked at each other. The librarian raised his black eyebrows, like he was asking the professor a question. Metis shook her head the tiniest bit, telling the librarian no to whatever it was he wanted.

'What?' I asked. 'What's going on? The two of you aren't telling me something. Teachers and parentsalwayshave that guilty look when they're holding something back.'

Metis drew in a breath. 'You're right, Gwen. I really don't know how to say this, but there is some… evidence that the avalanche wasn't an accident.'

I frowned. 'What are you talking about? Sure, I saw the flames and heard the explosion or whatever, but there has to be some kind of explanation right? The chair lift catching on fire or something?'

Nickamedes stared at me, his eyes as cold and hard as chips of ice. 'Oh, there's an explanation, all right, Gwendolyn. Mainly, that someone caused the avalanche- on purpose.'

Chapter 15

Despite all the craziness that had been going on the past few days, Nickamedes's words still stunned me.

'You think it was-it was deliberate?' I asked, cold dread pooling in the bottom of my stomach. 'Why?'

Nickamedes stared down his nose at me. 'Mountains do not blow themselves up, Gwendolyn. After we got you down here safely to the infirmary, Ajax and I went back up the mountain. We found some burn marks and other things that indicate that someone deliberately set off an explosion at the top of the mountain, which was what caused the avalanche.'

The Reaper. I knew it was the mysterious Reaper who was trying to kill me. First, the SUV outside my Grandma Frost's house, then the arrow in the library, and now, the Fenrir wolf and the avalanche. Somehow, the Reaper had seen me leave the carnival and start down the mountain. I didn't know if he'd planned the explosion and the avalanche in advance or not, but he'd seen an opportunity to kill me, and he'd taken it.

And he'd almost succeeded. If I'd hadn't run for the pine trees, if I'd been just a second or two slower in getting there, if I hadn't tied myself to the tree…

If, if, if.

If any of those things had gone wrong, the avalanche would have swept me away-forever.

What was even worse was the fact that this time the Reaper hadn't cared who else he might have hurt. If there had been anyone else going down the mountain the same time I had been, if Daphne and Carson had decided to have lunch with Preston and me… My stomach twisted, and I thought I was going to be sick.

The door to the infirmary banged open, and Daphne barged inside, pink sparks of magic flashing around her, like a thousand tiny fireflies winking on and off.

'Sorry, Aurora,' Coach Ajax said, sticking his head into the room. 'I couldn't keep her out any longer.'

'Gwen!' Daphne said, rushing over to me.

She bumped Nickamedes out of the way, her Valkyrie strength pushing the librarian back several steps. He gave her a sour look, and his mouth pinched down into a frown.

Daphne grabbed my hand, and her concern for me flooded my body. It was a nice feeling-in a panicked, anxious kind of way.

'I'm fine,' I said, squeezing her hand tight. 'Really, I'm fine.'

Her face relaxed a little bit. 'You'd damn well better be. You're my best friend.'

'And you're mine,' I whispered back, hot tears stinging my eyes. 'You're my best friend, too.'

Daphne gripped my hand even tighter, her Valkyrie strength crunching my bones together, but I didn't pull away. I knew I'd have bruises tomorrow, but I didn't care. Right now, I was happy to let her warm, happy relief flood my body. We stayed like that for a few seconds, before the Valkyrie's gaze flicked around the room.

'What's going on?' she asked. 'What's with the big professor powwow?'

Metis smoothed a stray piece of her black hair back into her bun. 'Nickamedes and I were just filling Gwen in on what happened during the avalanche and what we think might have caused it.'

'You mean the explosion,' Daphne corrected her. 'Somebody totally set a bomb off on top of the mountain, didn't they? I mean, the flames were just shooting up and up into the air like they were never going to stop.'

Nickamedes and Metis exchanged another look, obviously debating how much they wanted to tell Daphne- and whether they thought the Valkyrie would spread the gossip around to all the other students. But they decided to trust her or just realized that I would tell her later anyway, because Nickamedes finally nodded.

'Yes, we do believe it was some kind of deliberate explosion meant to specifically cause the avalanche,' the librarian said.

Daphne rolled her eyes. 'Well, of course, it was. When Reapers try to kill people, they always bring out the big guns.'

* * *

Busted. I was totally, completely busted.

I knew the second the words came out of Daphne's mouth that there was no taking them back-or wiggling my way out of an explanation.

'Reapers?' Nickamedes asked in a sharp tone. 'What Reapers?'

Daphne frowned, a puzzled expression on her pretty face. 'TheReaper. The one who's trying to kill Gwen. The one who almost ran her over with a car and then took a shot at her in the Library of Antiquities the other night…'

The Valkyrie's voice drifted off as she realized just how intently Nickamedes and Metis were staring at her. She looked at them a second before turning her gaze to me. 'You didn't tell them about the Reaper? You told me you were going to talk to Metis!'

'And I changed my mind,' I muttered. 'I have the right to do that, you know. Free will and all. We talked about it just the other day in myth-history class.'

Daphne put her hands on her hips and glared at me. The pink sparks flashing around her fingertips crackled and coalesced into tiny streaks of lightning, showing me just how pissed she was at me right now.

'And I told you that you don't mess around when it comes to Reapers, especially when one of them is trying to kill you,' the Valkyrie snapped.

Metis stepped around the hospital bed and put a hand on Daphne's arm. 'I think the two of you need to tell us what's going on. Right now.'

Yep, there was no way out of this-not with the professor staring at me, her green eyes sharp and narrow