Everyone was so excited about the dance that there was almost no mention of Jasmine Ashton. Only a couple of days had passed since she'd been murdered, and it was like it had never even happened. Everyone else seemed to have forgotten about the Valkyrie already, even though she'd been the most popular girl in our class.
It made me sad and angry at the same time. Especially since I couldn't seem to let go of it. I still couldn't forget seeing Jasmine that night, her dead blue eyes staring up at me like she wanted me to help her.
I still couldn't forget the fact that it should have been me lying there in all those pools of blood.
Lunchtime rolled around. I got my usual grilled chicken salad, along with a bottle of Honeycrisp apple juice and a piece of chocolate-crusted key lime cheesecake that was depressingly small. Seriously. The pale, creamy sliver wasn't even as wide as two of my fingers put together. I loaded everything onto a clear glass tray and retreated to an empty table in the quietest, most remote corner of the dining hall that I could find.
I ignored the salad and all of its elaborately cut veggies, cracked open the sweet, tart apple juice, and drained half of it in one gulp. Not hard, since the drink portions were almost as meager as the dessert ones. I eyed the plastic container, wishing that I'd gone ahead and gotten two juices like I'd really wanted to instead of just one-
A tray plopped down across from me, making me jerk back in surprise and almost drop my juice on the floor.
Daphne Cruz dumped her enormous purse onto the table. Her bag covered up Jasmine's mythology book, which I'd been planning on reading more of at lunch. But that wasn't the strangest thing Daphne did. She actually sat down at my table.
Like-like we were friends or something.
I eyed the Valkyrie, wondering if she'd somehow been possessed or something. If somebody had dripped her blood into Loki's Bowl of Tears and made her a willing slave-
"So," the Valkyrie said, cracking open the lid on her Perrier. "This is where you eat lunch. All the way in the back here. What are you? A vampire who's afraid of sunlight or something?"
Vampires? Were vampires real, too? I wondered, but I didn't want to look stupid and ask, especially since I didn't know what Daphne was doing here in the first place.
"Yeah," I said in a guarded voice. "You caught me. I've got this whole superhero thing going on, so I sit way back here to keep the paparazzi and rabid fans at bay."
Daphne eyed me. After a moment, the Valkyrie's glossy pink lips crinkled up into a smile. "You've got a weird sense of humor. Superheroes are so over."
"Yeah, but the actors who play them in the movies are still so rich. I think they'll get over the heartbreak of losing your approval."
Daphne snorted out a laugh, then picked up her fork and started stabbing her eggplant Parmesan to death. I waited a minute, then looked around the dining hall, wondering if this was some kind of joke. But I didn't see anyone looking in my direction and laughing behind their hands.
What I did see was Morgan McDougall and a couple of the other Valkyrie princesses all sitting at their usual table, deep into their lunchtime gossip and ogling every cute guy who walked by. But Daphne didn't look over at her friends, and they didn't seem to notice her sitting in the corner with me.
"Are you actually ... going to eat lunch with me?" I asked.
"No," Daphne said, breaking a buttery breadstick in half and dipping it into the spicy marinara sauce on her plate. "I'm a figment of your imagination. You're only imagining that I'm sitting here eating with you. Because I'm just so freaking awesome that people daydream about being seen with me."
"Funny," I muttered.
The Valkyrie smiled at me and took a bite of her breadstick.
"But why?" I asked. "You hate me."
Daphne chewed and swallowed. "I wouldn't say hate, exactly. You're kind of like fungus, Gwen. After a while, you just start growing on people."
"So I'm mold. Wonderful. So why don't you just scrub me off and go sit with your Valkyrie friends like usual?"
"Because," Daphne said, dropping her black eyes to her Caesar salad. "The other night when you weren't looking, I forwarded all of Jasmine's e-mails to my account. And I found some things on there that I didn't like-things about me."
"Like what?"
Daphne sighed and pushed her salad away, like she'd lost her appetite. "Like the fact that Jasmine and Morgan were making fun of me behind my back. They knew about my crush on Carson, and they thought it was hysterical. And that was some of the nicer things they said about me. And it wasn't just them. Claudia, Kylie, Seraphina ... all of them were swapping e-mails about me and each other. None of us seem to actually like each other very much."
"So?" I asked. "Isn't that what mean girls do? I mean, the Valkyries are the queen bees of Mythos. You girls make the kids on Gossip Girl look tame. Doesn't it all kind of go with the territory?"
"Maybe." Daphne shrugged. "But I'm sick of it. I've known those girls since first grade, and they all just get shallower and stupider every single year. I think it's time that I made some new friends."
She drew in a breath and looked at me. "You did something really cool for me last night, hooking me up with Carson. I don't know why I was so scared of what everyone else would think about me and him, but I'm not anymore. And I'm not going to forget what you did for me, Gwen."
"So you've decided that I'm it then?" I asked. "That I'm your new BFF? Overnight? Just like that?"
For the first time, doubt flickered in Daphne's black eyes. "Hey, if you want to sit over here in the corner all by yourself and pout about how you don't have any friends, fine with me. I was just trying to be nice."
She grabbed her tray and started to get to her feet to storm off, but I held up my hands in a placating gesture.
"No, no, no," I said. "Wait; sit back down. I'd ... love some company. Please. Stay."
Daphne stared at me another minute, then sank back into her chair. Geez. The Valkyrie was a little volatile. I'd have to remember that: Don't piss off Daphne, or she'll rip your heart out of your chest.
The Valkyrie clacked her nails on her fork, and pink sparks flashed and fluttered in the air the way that they always did when her fingertips scraped against something.
"Why do your fingers do that?" I asked. "Why all the pink sparks everywhere?"
Daphne shrugged. "It's a Valkyrie thing. It's just part of our magic."
"Magic? What kind of magic?"
"You know that all Valkyries are strong, right?"