Chapter 20

Nobody ever really dies in a comic book, not even the bad guy. At least not for long.

The words that I'd spoken to Logan last night whispered in my mind, mocking me as I stared at Jasmine. Because the girl standing in front of me was definitely not dead. My eyes fell to her throat, which was just as smooth as mine. Nope, definitely not dead. I had a feeling the same wouldn't be said about me, though, before the night was through.

"You're-you're alive," I finally said.

The Valkyrie let out a soft giggle that bounced off the library walls. "So I am, Gypsy. So I am. Be a good girl, go stand next to Morgan, and I'll explain it all to you. The only problem with plans like this is that there's never anyone around to gloat to."

My eyes slid past Jasmine to the open door at the far end of the stacks, as I wondered if I could run past her and sprint out it before she, oh, I don't know, killed me until I was dead, dead, dead. But the prowler saw what I was looking at and let out another evil hiss.

I wet my lips. "Is that thing an illusion? Like the one last night was?"

Jasmine walked over and put her hand on the creature's back, stroking its black fur. The prowler's bloodred eyes brightened, and it let out a little purr of pleasure that made me wince.

"Oh no, Gypsy. This prowler is very real. But it wouldn't really matter, either way. Illusions can tear you to shreds just as much as real teeth and claws can."

Daphne had said something similar to me outside the library last night, but I hadn't quite believed her. How could something that wasn't even real hurt you? But I was beginning to realize there was a lot about myths and magic that I just didn't understand.

I didn't have any choice but to do what Jasmine told me. Otherwise, the prowler-real or illusion-would rip me to shreds, something that I desperately did not want to happen. So I walked down an aisle and rounded the corner, stepping into the main, open part of the library.

Morgan stood to my left in the same spot where the glass case had been that had once housed the Bowl of Tears. The Artifact that had supposedly been stolen the night Jasmine had supposedly died.

The Bowl that Morgan was now holding.

It looked the same as I remembered it. Small, round, brown, plain. A simple bowl with no paint, carvings, or extras of any kind on it. No gold, no jewels, nothing. Still, just looking at it tonight made me sick to my stomach. I didn't always have to touch an item to get a vibe off it. If an object had enough emotion tied to it, had enough memories embedded in it, then it could radiate those feelings, sort of like an aura. Like Daphne and her sparking pink fingers.

And tonight the Bowl radiated cold, black evil.

"Stop," Jasmine said.

The prowler hissed in time to her command.

I paused where I was, next to one of the study tables. A couple of books lay on the edge of the table, the ones that Nickamedes had come out of the stacks with earlier today. For whatever reason, the librarian hadn't put the books away. I leaned back against the table and casually put my hand on the top one. I got the same vibe that I always did off the library books-one of old knowledge. It wasn't much and it certainly wasn't a weapon, but it was something at least. I'd take every little thing I could get right now, starting with an explanation.

"So you faked this whole thing," I said, turning to face Jasmine. "The theft of the Bowl, your body, all the puddles of blood. All of it was just an illusion, right?"

"Well, well, well," Jasmine said. "The Gypsy has a brain after all. You're right, of course. I faked everything you saw that night, and a lot of stuff since then."

Jasmine moved past me to where Morgan stood, still staring blankly ahead. The prowler paced around the library tables, moving back and forth and weaving through them like they were some sort of giant kitty-cat obstacle course. But the creature never took its red eyes off me, not even for a second.

Jasmine stopped in front of Morgan, staring at her best friend, hate burning in her blue gaze. The Valkyrie reached up and plucked the homecoming queen tiara off Morgan's head. Morgan stared straight ahead, no emotion flashing on her face, no sort of acknowledgment of what was going on flickering in her hazel eyes at all.

I'd been right when I'd thought that Morgan had been possessed. Jasmine was using the Bowl of Tears to control her best friend. For the first time, I noticed there was something in the Bowl that Morgan was holding-something dark, red, and sticky looking. Blood.

"How did you do it?" I asked. "How did you get Morgan's blood in the Bowl? I know you had to do that, had to drip her blood into it and chant some kind of magic mumbo jumbo. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to control her the way that you are."

Jasmine kept staring at the crystal crown in her hands. "Oh, that was actually the easiest part. There was a blood drive on campus a couple of weeks ago. Morgan and I both gave blood. It was easy to swipe the bag with hers in it when the nurse wasn't looking."

Geez, what was she? Some kind of freaking criminal mastermind or something? Because that's not something I would ever think to do, especially not to my supposed best friend.

Jasmine turned the tiara this way and that, watching the crystals catch the light and wink it back at her. She scraped her nails against it, and ugly red sparks flickered in the air around her. Then, the Valkyrie snapped the crown in two with her hands. Crystals zipped through the air, and I flinched at the sharp cracks they made as they hit the marble floor.

"I always wondered what it would be like to be homecoming queen with Samson by my side," Jasmine murmured. "I hoped you enjoyed it, Morgan. Because it's the last thing you're ever going to enjoy."

Jasmine took one end of the splintered crown and raked it down Morgan's face, drawing blood. Then, the Valkyrie twisted the pointed end, digging it into her best friend's skin that much more. Red sparks winked around the two of them like fireflies, flashing on and off, warning of danger, hate, death.

I bit back a scream and started forward to try to do something to help Morgan. But the prowler let out a warning growl, and I stopped where I was.

It didn't matter anyway, because Morgan didn't move a muscle. She didn't flinch, scream, or even cry out in pain. It was like she was a lifeless doll, frozen in place. I wondered if she even felt Jasmine shredding her face with the crown, or if her mind was gone forever.

Jasmine yanked the bloody end of the crown out of Morgan's face and drew her arm back, getting ready for another strike.

"Stop!" I called out. "Stop hurting her! She's your friend! Your best friend!"

Jasmine turned and stared at me, as if she'd forgotten that I was even standing in the library with the two of them. "Correction: She was my best friend before she started screwing my boyfriend behind my back six months ago."

Jasmine threw the end of the bloody crown down and stalked around Morgan, her face as dark as a storm cloud. I didn't know what the Valkyrie would do next, but I had to do my best to distract her. I didn't want her hurting Morgan again. Or worse, killing the other girl in front of me.

"Is that why you're doing all this?" I asked in a shaky voice. "Just because your boyfriend cheated on you?"

"He didn't just cheat on me," Jasmine snapped. "He did it with her. My supposed best friend. For months. And they both lied to my face about it the whole time. I was getting suspicious, you know? Samson was acting strange, kind of distracted. He cut a couple of our dates short, wouldn't answer his phone in front of me, that sort of thing. I thought that he might be cheating on me, that he might be seeing someone else on the side, so I told Morgan about it. Actually confided in her about it. And do you know what she said?"

I shook my head.

"That I shouldn't worry. That Samson was crazy about me and had told her so himself. That he was cutting our dates short because he loved me so much and it was hard for him to control himself around me when we were together. I can't believe I fell for her bullshit." Jasmine let out a bitter laugh.

She paced around Morgan again, muttering something under her breath. I reached my hand behind me, my fingers curling around the edge of the book. The prowler circled around a table and paced back this way, stalking away then toward me, its bloodred eyes fixed on my face the whole time.

"Do you know what the worst part is?" Jasmine asked. "The reason Samson slept with her in the first place. Do you know why he slept with her?"

I shrugged. The ripped photo of the couple had shown me a lot of things, but that hadn't been one of them.

"Because I wouldn't," she muttered. "I wanted to wait, and Samson said he did, too. That we weren't ready yet. That it was better to take things slow and wait for the right moment. That it would be more romantic that way. And the whole time, the two of them were screwing like rabbits behind my back."

"I found that picture of Morgan and Samson. The one that you tore up and dumped in your trash can. How did you even find out about them?" I asked in a calm voice, even as my eyes scanned the library, trying to figure a way out of this mess. But nothing came to mind, no way that I could get myself or Morgan out of here. Not alive, anyway.

Jasmine shrugged. "Morgan lied to me about where she went on summer break. She said that she and her family were going to their house in the Bahamas for a month. But a week later my brother texted me that he'd seen Morgan up in the Hamptons. Why would Morgan lie? It made me suspicious, especially since Samson's parents have a summer home there. So I borrowed my daddy's jet and flew up there. I snuck out to Samson's house, and I saw them together on the beach. They were all over each other. It was disgusting."

"But that was in the summer," I said. "That was months ago."

Jasmine gave me a cold, satisfied smile. "I know. The two of them never suspected a thing. They never even had a clue that I knew about them."

"So what?" I asked. "You've spent the last few months planning how to fake your own death to get back at your best friend for sleeping with your boyfriend? Don't you think that's a little extreme?"

Jasmine's blue eyes narrowed in her face, and she opened her mouth, probably to bark out some command to the prowler to come over and kill me, but I cut her off.

"I mean, yeah, it completely sucks, and I can totally understand why you would want revenge. The two of them hurt you real bad. They deserved to be punished."

Jasmine nodded. "Exactly. I loved Samson; I really did. But he's a guy, after all, and he's always thinking with his dick. I expected this sort of thing from him. But Morgan and I grew up together. She's almost like a sister to me, which made her betrayal all the worse. That's why she's going to pay for screwing my boyfriend."

I guess that explained why Samson wasn't standing next to Morgan, all zombied out the way that she was. Kind of sexist of Jasmine if you asked me, only blaming the other girl and not her precious boyfriend, too. From what I'd seen, Samson had been a very willing participant. In his own way, he was just as big a slut as Morgan was.

"So why not do something a little more ... reasonable to them?" I asked. "Why fake your own death? What was the point?"

"Because I wanted them to miss me," she snapped in an angry voice. "I wanted to hurt them. I wanted them to feel guilty about what they'd done. I wanted the guilt to eat them alive until they couldn't stand to even look at each other. Only ... it didn't."

No, it didn't. I thought of how the whole school, how all the other students, had just gone on with their lives after Jasmine's supposed death like it had never even happened. Morgan and Samson had been happy that she'd died so they could finally be together out in the open. Everyone else had just been relieved that Jasmine wasn't around to terrorize them anymore. Everyone but me. The Gypsy girl who saw things and decided to stick her nose into someone else's business yet again, to try to learn all of Jasmine's secrets. And look how well that was working out for me.

"How did you do it?" I asked. "And why here in the library?"

Jasmine shrugged. "Illusion powers run in my family. My mom's really good at creating them, and she taught me tons of them over the summer when my magic finally quickened. It was easy to make one of my own body just lying there with my throat cut open. My mom used to create dozens of dead body and zombie illusions every year for Halloween when I was a kid and we'd have a haunted house."

So I was right. I hadn't gotten a vibe off Jasmine's body or blood that night because there hadn't been anything there to start with. Nothing real, anyway.

"But if it was all an illusion, how did your blood wind up all over my clothes?" I asked.

I still had the purple hoodie and jeans crumpled up in the bottom of my laundry basket. The last time that I'd looked, the bloodstains had still been on them.

"Because once a person believes in an illusion, it's real to them. Once you believe in something, you give it life and form and substance. You thought you saw my blood, so it ended up all over your clothes. Just like Metis, Ajax, and Nickamedes thought they saw my body, so they packed it up and put it in cold storage in the basement of the math-science building. That's where they keep all the bodies, you know."

No, I hadn't known that, and I kind of wished she hadn't told me. A morgue in math-science? Creepy.

I jerked my head at the pacing prowler. "And what about your kitty cat there? How did you get it onto campus? When? And why?"

Jasmine shrugged. "Another illusion. I made it look like a hungry stray cat that came onto campus looking for food tonight. The sphinxes on the main gates didn't even glance twice at it, much less attack it like they're supposed to do to intruders. Nickamedes isn't quite as clever with his spells as he thinks he is. As for why, well, I thought that it might be good to have the real thing handy since your Spartan boyfriend killed my illusion last night."

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