Whatever. If he didn't like me, he could have just said so.
Instead he'd given me some lame excuse that he had a deep, dark secret that would scare me off. I'd once picked up a girl's hairbrush and had seen her stepfather sexual y abusing her. I was wil ing to bet Logan's secret wasn't nearly as horrible as that, but nothing I'd said had convinced him otherwise. Nothing I'd said had convinced him to take a chance on me-on us.
"Gwen? You want to shoot that arrow sometime today?"
Kenzie said. "We've only got fifteen minutes of practice time left."
"Sure," I muttered, turning toward the target.
Savannah's soft laughter drifted across the gym, making my anger burn a little hotter. If I'd been a Valkyrie, like my best friend, Daphne Cruz, princess pink sparks of magic would have been shooting out of my fingertips. That's what happened whenever Daphne got pissed about something
-and I was plenty pissed at myself right now for stil caring about Logan when he'd made it perfectly clear he didn't feel the same way about me.
I raised the arrow up to eye level and peered down the length of it at the target. Part of me was thinking about Logan, but the other part was thinking about Daphne and how she would have turned around and put an arrow in the Spartan's ass from al the way across the gym. Daphne was great with a bow. In fact, she was one of the best shots at Mythos and the captain of the girls'
archery team. An image flickered in my mind then, one of Daphne using the bow, instead of me-
"Any time now, Gwen," Kenzie said in an impatient voice.
"Yeah, come on, Gwen, while we're al stil young," Oliver sneered.
My anger flared up to supernova level at Oliver's snarky tone, so much so that I didn't think-I just let go.
THUNK!
The arrow hit the target dead center-perfectly in the middle of the black bul 's-eye. And this time it stayed there instead of thumping off and fal ing to the floor.
Beside me, Kenzie blinked. "How did you do that?" I frowned. "I don't know."
I real y didn't. Yeah, I might have been hitting the target al along, but only the outside edge, and none of my other arrows had even come close to sticking in it. But this one?
It had practical y skewered the target, with only the back half of the shaft now visible.
"Wel , whatever you were doing, do it again," Kenzie said, passing me another arrow.
"If you even can," Oliver chimed in.
I nocked another arrow and tried to remember what I'd just done. I'd been thinking about Daphne, of course, but it felt like more than that. It had almost seemed like I was ...
channeling her somehow. Or at least my memories of her.
My psychometry let me remember every single person and every single object I'd ever touched. Once I flashed on someone or something, those vibes, feelings, and emotions became part of me. I could think about those memories and cal them up at wil , replaying the images over and over again in my head with perfect color, picture, and sound every single time. That was one of the cool things about my magic. But the flip side to it and one of the not-so-cool things was that sometimes the memories just came out of nowhere and flooded my mind whether I wanted them to or not.
Either way, it was like having a photographic memory, only a lot freakier-especial y given some of the bad, bad stuff I'd seen.
But they weren't real y my memories. When I'd let go of the arrow, I'd been thinking about Daphne's memories, what she'd done and how she'd felt. I'd picked up her bow in her dorm room last week and had gotten a whole bunch of flashes of the Valkyrie competing at various archery tournaments.
I thought about Daphne again, this time real y focusing on her, picturing her at one of the competitions-how she'd held her bow, how she'd lined up her arrow and pul ed back the string, the electric thril of victory she'd felt every time her arrow had hit the target dead center. Then I lifted the bow and concentrated on my own shot.
Once again, my own arrow zoomed straight into the center of the target.
"Al right," Kenzie said, clapping his hands. "It looks like we're final y making progress with something." He grinned at me, and I returned his smile, even though I could see Oliver scowling behind him. I stil didn't understand exactly what I'd done, how I'd used Daphne's memories to help myself, but at least I'd hit the target again.
Yeah, it was kind of weird, but in a good way. It was certainly better than a lot of things I'd experienced since coming to the academy.
I turned around to see if Logan had noticed my success
-and saw him French-kissing Savannah in the gym doorway. The Amazon had her arms around his neck, and Logan had his wrapped around her waist, pul ing her even closer to him.
They kissed for another few seconds before Savannah drew back.
She grabbed the front of Logan's shirt and yanked him out of the gym. I didn't know where they were headed, but it was obvious what they were going to do-sneak in a make-out session before morning classes started.
Cold, bitter, aching hurt frosted my heart, piercing it the way my arrow had the target a few seconds ago.
"Gwen?" Kenzie asked, his voice soft and kind.
For once, even Oliver was quiet, instead of stinging me with some barbed remark.
Not everyone at the academy knew about my massive crush on Logan, but it had no doubt become painful y obvious to Kenzie and Oliver, since they'd watched me train with Logan for weeks now. Plus, they'd just seen my reaction to him leaving me behind to go tongue wrestle with another girl.
"I'm fine," I snapped, hating the fact that they knew how much I cared about Logan, hating the fact that I stil felt this way in the first place. "Let's keep practicing." Kenzie handed me another arrow. He didn't say a word.
Neither did Oliver.
Stil channeling Daphne's memories and my own anger, I put five more arrows dead center into the target before training time was over.
"Yo u have to come to Winter Carnival, Gwen. It's a Mythos Academy tradition. Everybody wil be there." I ignored Daphne and stabbed another miniscule piece of fruit in the delicate, white china bowl in front of me. The fruit was a vibrant yel ow color, with a strange, pointed shape. Definitely not kiwi. Maybe a star fruit? I brought it up to my nose and sniffed, but al I could smel was the sharp, sweet tang of the honey-vanil a-lime dressing. The weird fruit didn't look like it would kil me if I ate it. Then again, a lot of things at the academy seemed far nicer than they real y were.
Across from me, Daphne cut another dainty bite of an egg white omelet topped with chunks of fresh, buttery lobster; sauteed spinach; and thick crumbles of Feta cheese. The Valkyrie was actual y eating lobster for breakfast-and enjoying every single bite of it. Yucko.