I argued with Linus some more—okay, okay, until I started to lose my voice—but I didn’t change his mind. The Protectorate leader saw this as a way to finally turn the tide against the Reapers, and he wasn’t about to pass it up. Part of me understood where he was coming from, but the other part of me thought he was just being stupid. If he was smart, if the Protectorate was smart, then Linus, Nickamedes, and Metis would figure out some way to destroy the candle for good, so that Loki could never, ever get his hands on it. Not put it out in the main part of the library for all the Reapers to see— and start plotting a way to steal it and take it to the evil god.
But there was nothing I could do, and an hour later, I found myself leaning against one of the walls of the library’s office complex, watching Nickamedes hand a glass case over to Raven, who was one of the more unusual staff members at the academy.
Raven was an old woman with a face full of wrinkles and long white hair that seemed to melt into her floorlength white gown. In contrast, her eyes were as black, bright, and shiny as a Black roc’s, while faint, white scars marred her hands and arms, as though she’d been in a fire long ago. Today, she had a black leather belt bristling with hammers, screwdrivers, and other tools slung low around her hips. It matched the black combat boots she always wore. Apparently, putting together artifact cases was another one of her many odd jobs around the academy, like running the coffee cart in the library, sitting in the infirmary, or watching over any Reapers who were being kept in the prison at the bottom of the math-science building.
Raven was stronger than she looked because she lifted up the heavy glass case with no visible effort and carefully set it on top of Sol’s candle. Raven secured the glass to the wooden stand, locking the artifact away. She dusted off her hands, turned, and realized I was watching her. She paused a second, then nodded at me. I nodded back. I’d never heard Raven utter so much as a single word, and a nod was about as friendly as she’d ever been to me. I always meant to ask Nickamedes or Metis if they’d ever actually heard her speak, or if she even could speak, but I’d never gotten around to it.
Still, I stared at Raven as she walked past me. For a moment, her face seemed to flicker like, well, a candle flame, as though she was wearing a mask of wrinkles, and there was a younger, prettier face lurking underneath her old, wizened features. I blinked, and the image was gone, snuffed out like that same candle flame, and Raven was simply Raven again.
Nickamedes moved off to talk to Linus, who was standing in front of the checkout counter, talking to some of the Protectorate guards. But I stayed where I was by the offices, my gaze still locked on the candle. I couldn’t believe how innocent, how ordinary, it looked sitting there on its black velvet stand.
Linus had decided to place the candle in one of the most visible sections in the entire library, right in the middle of the main floor, close to the checkout counters. When I’d first come to Mythos, another artifact case had stood in that exact same spot, one that had held the Bowl of Tears. A Reaper named Jasmine Ashton had tried to use that powerful artifact to get revenge on Morgan McDougall for messing around with Jasmine’s boyfriend.
Seeing Sol’s candle in the exact same spot gave me a creepy sense of déjà vu. Because Jasmine had almost succeeded in using the Bowl of Tears to sacrifice Morgan to Loki and kill me the night of the homecoming dance. And now, here was another powerful artifact, sitting right out in the open, just begging the Reapers to come and steal it.
I glanced around the library, my gaze taking in the other kids hunched over their books at the study tables, browsing through the stacks, and standing around the coffee cart, waiting for Raven to unbuckle her tool belt and get back to fixing their lattes, espressos, and hot chocolates. Everything looked perfectly normal, perfectly ordinary, perfectly innocent, but I still couldn’t help but wonder if the Amazon texting on her phone a few feet away was telling Vivian that the candle was on view. Or if the Viking leaning against the checkout counter fiddling with a tablet was e-mailing the information to Agrona. Or if one of the members of the Protectorate gathered around Linus was dreaming up a way to kill all of the other guards and take off with the candle.
But the really frustrating thing was that there was nothing I could do about any of those things—not until Vivian, Agrona, and the other Reapers decided to strike. “Come on, now, Gwen,” a low voice said. “Staring at the candle won’t change anything. If you ask me, you’re simply attracting more attention to it. And yourself too.” I glanced down at Vic, who was hanging from my belt as usual. The sword stared at the candle, his purple
eye bright against the white marble all around us. “Look around,” Vic said, still keeping his voice low
so that I was the only one who could hear him. “Everyone’s wondering what you’re doing.”
I glanced around again and realized he was right. All of the other kids had been doing their own thing, but now, more than a few had turned in my direction, wondering what I was doing staring at some boring old artifact. If only they knew that this boring old artifact might mean the difference between whether we all lived, died, or spent what was left of our lives as Loki’s slaves. “Okay, okay,” I grumbled. “I’m leaving. But I want
to go on record as saying that this is a Bad, Bad Idea.” Vic rolled his eye. “Well, obviously. But there’s noth-
ing we can do about it tonight, so why don’t you quit worrying and go see the Spartan in the infirmary?”
He was right. There was nothing more I could do here, and I did want to check on Logan. So I pushed away from the glass wall, went around the checkout counter, and headed for the doors that led out of the library.
Still, right before I left the main space, I couldn’t help but glance over my shoulder one more time. For a moment, it seemed like the candle glowed with a brilliant inner light, making it burn as bright as a star underneath the smooth glass. I blinked, and the light was gone. The candle was simply a candle again.
I shivered, dropped my gaze from the artifact, and left the library.
Chapter 8
Despite my unease, the night passed by in a quiet fashion. Metis gave Logan, Sergei, and everyone else who’d been more seriously injured in the Reaper attack a clean bill of health and let everyone leave the infirmary bright and early the next morning. After weapons training in the gym, Logan and I wound up in the dining hall to eat a quick breakfast before trudging to our morning classes.
Like everything else at Mythos, the dining hall was way more upscale than what you’d find at a regular high school. White linens and fine china covered the tables, instead of plastic trays and sporks, while paintings of mythological feasts decorated the walls, and suits of armor stood guard in the corners. But the dining hall’s most interesting feature was the open-air indoor garden that lay in the center of the room, complete with statues perched among the almond, orange, and olive trees planted in the black soil and the curling tendrils of the grapevines that wound around, through, and over everything. Since this was where all of the students chowed down, the statues were mostly of food and harvest gods, like Dionysus and Demeter, instead of the fierce mythological creatures that adorned the outsides of the buildings. But once again this morning, the statues had strangely neutral expressions on their stone faces, instead of cocking their heads to the side and leaning forward, as though they were listening to all of the student gossip, the way they usually did.