Midnight Frost

Daphne had done of healing him.
    “Hey,” I said, stretching my hand out to him once more. “You might want to take it easy—”
    But it was too late.
    With a loud screech, the gryphon flapped his wings and darted up into the air. Daphne and I scrambled to our feet. The creature hovered in midair for a moment before letting out another screech, zooming up, bursting through the tops of the pine trees, and disappearing into the cloudy gray sky far, far above.
     
    All I could do was crane my neck up and look at where the gryphon had been. I’d wanted to spend more time with the creature, but he was a wild thing, just as Covington had said. I should be grateful the gryphon had let me, Daphne, and Rory help him. At least now he was free of the trap and his leg was healed. I would have to be satisfied with that. Plus, it had been rather amazing to watch him blast up into the sky like a rocket.
    “Well, that was weird,” Rory said. “Do you guys do stuff like that all the time?”
    Daphne and I looked at each other, then at her.
    “More often than you might think,” Daphne said.
    Rory wandered over, squatted down, and looked at the snare-snap I’d kicked to the side. Daphne and I stared at the device too. As Rory had said, it looked like a bear trap—but with more teeth. The gryphon’s blood glistened on some of the sharp, pointed edges, making me sick to my stomach.
    Daphne nudged me with her shoulder. “You going to do your thing on that? It might give us a clue about the Reapers.”
    I didn’t want to use my psychometry on the trap, but she was right. So I crouched down, reached out, and touched part of the metal that was free of blood. Images of the gryphon struggling to get free of the trap flickered through my mind, but I pushed them aside, trying to see who had planted the trap in the first place. For several moments, the only memories I saw were of the trap lying on the forest floor, hidden under a pile of leaves and then the snow that had fallen on top of them. I concentrated, going even further back.
    A pair of hands popped into my head. I focused in on the memory, trying to pull it into even sharper detail, but all I saw was someone placing the trap in the woods, then piling the leaves on top of it. Frustration surged through me because I didn’t even see the person—only their hands. Even worse, they were wearing black gloves, so I couldn’t get any sort of sense about whom the hands belonged to, whether it was a man, a woman, a kid my own age.
    I opened my eyes, let go of the trap, and got to my feet.
    “Anything?” Daphne asked.
    I shook my head and put my gloves back on. “Nothing. Just some Reaper putting the trap here.”
    Rory stared at the trap, then kicked it and sent it flying into a nearby tree. She glared at the metal like she wished she could somehow kill it. Daphne and I glanced at each other, but we kept quiet. We knew all about being angry at the Reapers and not being able to do anything about it.
    Daphne reached down and grabbed her bow. “Well, if we’re all done playing veterinarian, we should leave. We need to get back to the others.”

Chapter 23
    Rory, Daphne, and I walked back to the stream. Apparently, everyone had been busy doing their own thing, and no one seemed to notice how long we’d been gone. Oliver didn’t even look up from his phone when we walked past him. He was texting again . I was surprised that he’d found a signal this high up on the mountain, but, hey, good for him.
    Five minutes later, everyone was ready to go, and we started back up the steep, winding trail. I looked left and right and even peered up into the clouds above, but I didn’t see the baby gryphon anywhere. I also didn’t spot the mysterious shadow that had been in the forest earlier, following alongside us. Maybe it had just been a curious animal after all, wondering what the humans were doing hiking through its turf.
    Except for a few brief snatches of conversation, everyone was quiet. My friends kept scanning the forest on either side of the trail, and Ajax kept sneaking glances over his shoulder, as though he expected someone or something to come up on us from behind. We all had our weapons close at hand too—in case the Reapers decided to attack before we reached the ruins.
    But the minutes slipped by and turned into an hour, with no sign of the Reapers. I was about to whine and ask how much farther it was when we crested a high ridge. The others slowed and then stopped, and