Touch of Sibyl

Chapter Thirty.five

"Someone's trying to kill you? Really?" Nica asked a half an hour later.

I shrugged. "Kill , maim, or injure. Isn't it all the same thing to Reapers?"

We were in my dorm room, eating the chocolate-strawberry cookies Grandma had baked earlier today. Well , Nica was eating the cookies. I didn't have an appetite for them. Knots still twisted and tangled together in my stomach from almost getting skewered in the library.

After Nickamedes had locked the front doors, I'd run all the way from the Library of Antiquities on the upper quad down to Styx Hal , where my dorm room was. With every step, I'd expected an arrow to zoom out of the shadows and rip through my heart.

But nothing had happened.

I'd made it to my dorm in one piece, used my student ID card to get inside, and had gone straight up to my room, which was stuck in a separate turret on the third floor. The room featured all your standard dorm furniture-a bed, a desk, some bookshelves, a TV, a small fridge-although I'd added my own personal touches. A couple of framed photos of my mom stood on my desk, along with a small statue of Nike. Vic, who was currently sleeping in his scabbard, hung on the wall above the desk, right next to my posters of Wonder Woman, Karma Girl, and The Killers.

Normally, I considered my dorm room a safe haven from the craziness that was Mythical Academy. Not tonight, though. I huddled on my knees on the floor, my purple and gray plaid comforter wrapped around me, and peered through the bottom of one of the picture windows set into the wall . There didn't seem to be anyone lurking on the dorm's lawn, but then again, it was pitch-black outside now.

"Why do you think it's a Reaper who tried to kill you?" Nica asked.

"Who else could it be? Besides, Professor Tin told me that Jessy's family might come after me because I was involved in her death."

"True," Nica agreed. "You did spectacularly piss off her family. Not to mention Reapers in general." The Valkyrie lounged on my bed, eating a cookie with one hand while she typed on her laptop with the other. The motion made the charms on the silver bracelet around her right wrist jangle together. Carlos had bought the bracelet for Nica weeks ago, back when he was trying to work up the courage to ask out the Valkyrie. Now, it was one of her most prized possessions.

"Reapers don't like it when one of their own dies," Nica added. "Payback is, like, their life. Are you going to tel Professor Tin what happened?"

Tin was my myth-history professor, and she'd sort of become my mentor. She'd also been my mom's best friend, back when they'd both gone to Myth's. The professor had told me that my mom had saved her life more times than she could count and that she owed it to my mom to look out for me while I was here.

My eyes flicked to my desk, and I crawled over to it and grabbed a framed photo off the top. Two girls grinned up at me from underneath the glass, their arms around each other. My mom and Professor Tin, back when they'd been about my age.

Not too long ago, Tin had given me this photo of them as teenagers. Every time I slipped the picture out from behind the glass and ran my fingers over the slick paper, I felt all the love that my mom and Tin had had for each other. They'd been more like sisters than friends. Knowing someone else had cared about my mom as much as I did made me feel a little less alone and made my grief and guilt over her death a little easier to bear.

"What am I going to tell Tin?" I said, putting the photo back on the desk. "That somebody tried to run me over near my grandma's house and then took a shot at me in the library? I don't have any proof that either one actual y happened. I didn't get a look at the license plate on the car, and I don't have the arrow. She might just think I was being paranoid."