I waited for a lull in the traffic, crossed the street, and walked down to the bus stop at the end of the block. I only had to wait five minutes before the bus rumbled by on its midafternoon route, taking tourists and everyone else who wanted to ride from Cypress Mountain down into the city. Twenty minutes and several miles later, I got off in a neighborhood that was a couple of streets removed from the artsy downtown Asheville shops and restaurants.
If Cypress Mountain was some whacked-out version of Mount Olympus with its population of rich warrior whiz kids, then Asheville was definitely where the poor mere mortals lived. Older, well-worn homes lined either side of the street, mostly two- and three-story houses that had been cut up into apartments. I knew the area well. My Grandma Frost had lived in the same house all her life, and my mom and I had only been a few miles away in one of Asheville's modest middle-class subdivisions. At least when I'd started going to Mythos I hadn't had to move across the country or anything. I don't think I could have survived being that far away from Grandma Frost. She was the only family I had left now that my mom was gone. My dad, Tyr, had died from cancer when I was two, and the only memories I had of him were the faded photos my mom had shown me.
I walked to the end of the block and skipped up the gray concrete steps of a three-story house painted a soft shade of lavender. A small sign beside the front door read: Psychic Readings Here.
I opened the screen door, then used my key to let myself inside. A heavy black lacquered door off to my right was closed, although the murmur of soft voices drifted out from behind it. Grandma Frost must be giving one of her readings. Grandma used her Gypsy gift to make extra cash, just like I did.
I walked through the hallway that ran through the middle of the house and veered left, going into the kitchen. Unlike the rest of the house, which featured dark paneling and somber gray carpet, the kitchen had a bright white tile floor and sky blue walls. I slung my messenger bag onto the table and dug the hundred that Carson Callahan had given me out of my jeans pocket. I stuffed the money into a jar that looked like a giant chocolate-chip cookie. It matched the empty tin in my messenger bag.
Ever since I'd started going to Mythos, I always gave half of whatever money I made to Grandma Frost. Yeah, my grandma had plenty of money of her own, more than enough to take care of us both. But I liked helping out, especially since my mom was gone. Besides, giving Grandma the money made me feel like I was doing something useful with my Gypsy gift, besides just finding some girl's lost bra that she should have known better than to take off in the first place.
My eyes flicked over the other bills inside the cookie jar. Grandma had had a good week giving her readings. I spotted two more hundreds in there, along with a couple of fifties and a few twenties.
The voices kept murmuring in the other room, so I raided the fridge. I fixed myself a tomato sandwich sprinkled with salt, pepper, and just a dash of dill weed. A thick slice of sharp cheddar cheese and a layer of creamy mayonnaise completed the sandwich, along with my favorite, yeasty sourdough bread. For dessert, I sliced off a piece of the sweet, spongy pumpkin roll that Grandma had stashed in the fridge. I licked a stray bit of cream cheese frosting off the knife. Yum. So good.
In addition to our Gypsy gifts, all of the Frost women had raging sweet tooths. Seriously, if it had sugar or chocolate (or preferably both) in it, Grandma and I would totally eat it. My mom had been the same way, too. Grandma also happened to be an awesome cook and an even better baker, so there was always something gooey and sinful in her kitchen, usually fresh out of the oven.
I ate my dinner, scraping every last one of the pumpkin roll crumbs up off my plate with a fork, then cleaned up. Once that was done, I pulled out one of my Wonder Woman comic books and settled myself at the kitchen table, waiting for Grandma Frost to finish with her client.
Yeah, maybe liking superheroes made me even more of a geek than I already was, but I enjoyed reading comics. The art was cool, the characters were interesting, and the heroine always won in the end, no matter what bad stuff happened along the way. I only wished real life was like that-and that my mom had somehow walked away from her car accident the way that I'd read about so many heroes doing over the years.
The old, familiar pain pricked my heart, but I pushed away my sad thoughts and dove into the story, losing myself in the adventure until I almost forgot about how much my own life sucked-almost.
I'd just finished reading the last page when my grandma stepped into the kitchen.
Geraldine Frost wore a gauzy silk purple blouse, along with a pair of loose black pants and slippers with curled pointed toes that made her look like a genie. Not that you could really see what Grandma was wearing, since scarves covered her from head to toe. Purple, gray, emerald green. All those colors and more flowed through the thin layers of fabric, while fake silver coins jingled together on the long, fringed edges.
Rings studded with gems stacked up on her gnarled fingers, while a thin silver chain flashed around her right ankle. Her iron gray hair fell to her shoulders, pushed back by another scarf that she was using as a headband. Her eyes were a bright violet in her tan, wrinkled face.
Grandma Frost looked like what I'd always thought a real Gypsy should-and exactly like what her clients expected when they came to get their fortunes told. Grandma always claimed that people paid her as much for her appearance as for what she revealed to them. She said that looking the part of the wise old mysterious Gypsy always made for better tips.
I didn't know exactly what made us Gypsies. We didn't act like any Gypsies I'd ever read about. We didn't live in wagons or wander from town to town or cheat people out of their money. But I'd been called a Gypsy ever since I could remember, and that's how I'd always thought of myself.
Maybe it was the fact that I was a Frost. Grandma had told me that it was a tradition for all the women in our family to keep that name, since our Gypsy gifts, our powers, were passed down from mother to daughter. So even though my parents had been married, I'd inherited my mom, Grace's, last name of Frost, instead of my dad, Tyr's, last name of Forseti.
Or maybe it was the gifts themselves that made us Gypsies, the strange things that we could do and see. I didn't know, and I'd never gotten a real answer from my mom or grandma about it. Then again, I'd never even thought to ask until I'd started going to Mythos, where everyone knew exactly who they were, what they could do, where they came from, and how big their parents' bank balances were.
Sometimes, I wondered just how much Grandma Frost knew about the academy, the warrior kids, Reapers, and the rest of it. After all, she hadn't exactly protested when Professor Metis had come to the house and announced my change in schools. Grandma had been more resigned than anything else, like she'd known that Metis was going to show up sooner or later. Of course, I'd told my grandma all about the weird things that went on at Mythos, but she never blinked an eye at any of them. And every time I asked Grandma about the academy and why I really had to go there, all she said was for me to give it a chance, that things would eventually get better for me.