Midnight Frost

her settle down inside it. Then, I shrugged into my jacket and grabbed my gloves and scarf. I also plucked Vic off the wall and belted the sword and his scabbard around my waist. Unlike in my dream, I wasn’t going to be so stupid as to not take a weapon with me, even if my destination wasn’t that far away and campus was supposedly safer these days.
    “Where are we going?” Vic asked.
    “You’ll see.”
    I opened the door and left my dorm room.
    For real, this time.

Chapter 2
    I’d told Alexei I was staying put in my room for the rest of the night, so he’d gone back to his own dorm instead of standing guard outside my door. Good. I didn’t want him to know where I was going. I didn’t want anyone to know. Seriously, it was that sad and pathetic.
    I didn’t bother crawling out a window like I had in my dream. Instead, I walked down the steps and right out the front door of Styx Hall.
    One thing that was the same in real life as in my nightmare was the weather. Because of the cold, snow, and blustering winds, campus was as deserted as I’d imagined it had been—except for the members of the Protectorate.
    Men and women of all shapes, sizes, and ethnicities could be seen patrolling the academy grounds, standing guard under trees and peering into the shadows that had spread out over the landscape. After the Reaper attack at the band concert, security on campus had been seriously beefed up, and members of the Protectorate could be seen here twenty-four-seven now. I doubted it would help, though. Try as they might, the Protectorate couldn’t be everywhere at once. Sooner or later, the Reapers would strike here again, and all I could do was to wait for it to happen—and try to survive.
    Another thing that was the same was Aiko, who was standing below my windows, just as she had in my dream. I waved at the Ninja, and she lifted her hand and waved back. I liked Aiko. She read comic books and graphic novels, just like I did.
    I stepped onto the path outside my dorm and hurried across campus. Aiko watched me go but didn’t follow, since her orders were to keep an eye on my dorm—not necessarily on me. That was Alexei’s job. I felt bad about not keeping my promise to him to stay inside, but I couldn’t sit in my room for the rest of the night. Not after the nightmare. So I headed toward Hephaestus Hall, one of the boys’ dorms.
    All of the Mythos dorms required a student ID card in order to get inside, and your card only let you in to the dorm where you lived. But if you leaned on the front bell long enough, someone would eventually get fed up enough to buzz you inside without checking to make sure you really belonged there. We kids were totally lazy that way. I only had to hold down the bell for thirty seconds before the door clicked open.
    “Enough already!” a male voice rumbled from deeper inside the dorm. “We’re trying to watch the game!”
    I grinned, opened the door, and stepped through before the guy came to investigate. Judging from the alternating cheers and groans I heard coming from the common room, everyone in the dorm was watching the game, which made it easy for me to climb the steps to the fifth floor. I paused at the top of the stairs, wondering if someone might actually be in his room, studying, but everything was still and quiet. Since the coast was clear, I crept down the hallway until I reached the last door.
    I stopped and cocked my head to the side, listening, but no sounds came from the other side. Then again, I hadn’t expected them to—I knew exactly how empty this particular room was. I reached into my messenger bag and drew out my wallet. It only took me a minute to slide my driver’s license in between the lock and the frame and pop open the door. I slid through to the other side and shut the door behind me.
    The room was dark, so I hit the switch on the wall. Lights blazed on, revealing the same furniture that all of the kids had. A bed, a desk, some bookcases, a flat-screen TV mounted on one of the walls. The only thing that was different about the room was all the trophies he’d won. Dozens of little gold men holding swords, spears, and other weapons peeped out at me from the desk, the bookcases, and a shelf above the bed. There was even a life-sized trophy stuffed in the corner, a staff clutched in his hands like the man was about to step forward and bash me over the head with it. I shivered and looked away. Somehow, the fact that none of the trophies actually