the black shadows. Or maybe that was just because I’d stolen a laptop and other personal stuff from a dead girl’s room and now I was feeling all guilty about it.
I swiped my ID card through the machine and went inside the dorm. A few girls, Amazons mostly, hung out in the common area downstairs, texting on their cells, watching TV, or both. Once again, nobody paid any attention to me as I went up the stairs. I doubted they realized that I lived here at all.
My dorm room was the only one on the third floor, stuck in a separate little round turret that had been added onto the building for whatever reason. The walls were straight, although the roof rose up like a pyramid above my head. A couple of large picture windows were set into the turret, including one with a padded window seat that had an awesome view of the campus and the Appalachian Mountains that towered above it.
My room had the same stuff in it as Jasmine’s did—a bed, a desk, some bookcases, a tiny TV—although mine were nowhere near as nice or expensive as hers. Still, I liked it. Grandma Frost had helped me decorate it with all my stuff from home, like my posters of Wonder Woman, Karma Girl, and The Killers. My superthick, purple and gray plaid comforter covered my bed, along with the big, fluffy pillows that I liked, while several Swarovski crystal ornaments shaped like snowflakes dangled in the windows.
The snowflakes were an inside joke between us. With a last name like Frost, it was kind of inevitable. I couldn’t even remember when it had started, but every year for Christmas, Grandma gave me something with a snowflake on it and I did the same for her. Last year, I’d bought her a snowflake-patterned scarf, and she’d given me the snowflake ornaments in return.
They were my favorite things in the room, along with the picture of my mom that sat on my desk, right next to the latest comic books that I was reading.
I opened the small fridge tucked in at the foot of my bed and grabbed a carton of milk and some pieces of the pumpkin roll that Grandma Frost had sent me back to the academy with. Then, I fished Jasmine’s laptop out of my bag, along with the book and the photo that I’d taken from her room, and put everything on my scarred wooden desk. While I scarfed down the milk and the pumpkin treat with its sweet cream cheese filling, I plugged the laptop into the wall and waited for it to boot up.
It took forever, or maybe it just seemed that way because I was in such a hurry to start surfing through Jasmine’s files. Finally, the welcome screen popped up—and asked me for a password.
I finished off my milk and cracked my knuckles. Then, I flexed my fingers and put my hands down onto the keyboard, waiting for the vibes and flashes to hit me, to fill my mind the way they always did.
Nothing happened.
I frowned. No, that wasn’t quite true. Stuff happened. A couple of images of Jasmine sitting at her desk downloading music and shopping online flashed before my eyes. And I felt . . . satisfaction—the kind of smug satisfaction that came from getting exactly what you wanted no matter how expensive it was. Jasmine must have really been lusting after those cute black stiletto boots that she’d bought last week.
The problem was that I didn’t get the big whammy that I usually did when I touched someone’s stuff. Maybe I should have expected it. Computers were one of the everyday items that I could touch without getting much of a vibe off of, especially the ones in the library that were used by tons of kids. Maybe Jasmine just hadn’t used her laptop enough to leave much of an impression of herself behind. Maybe there wasn’t anything interesting on here. Maybe she didn’t have any deep, dark secrets.
Maybe I’d just broken into a dead girl’s dorm room for nothing.
I closed my eyes, reaching for my Gypsy gift once more, straining to see something, to feel something, anything that might give me a clue as to who had murdered Jasmine.
I swiped my ID card through the machine and went inside the dorm. A few girls, Amazons mostly, hung out in the common area downstairs, texting on their cells, watching TV, or both. Once again, nobody paid any attention to me as I went up the stairs. I doubted they realized that I lived here at all.
My dorm room was the only one on the third floor, stuck in a separate little round turret that had been added onto the building for whatever reason. The walls were straight, although the roof rose up like a pyramid above my head. A couple of large picture windows were set into the turret, including one with a padded window seat that had an awesome view of the campus and the Appalachian Mountains that towered above it.
My room had the same stuff in it as Jasmine’s did—a bed, a desk, some bookcases, a tiny TV—although mine were nowhere near as nice or expensive as hers. Still, I liked it. Grandma Frost had helped me decorate it with all my stuff from home, like my posters of Wonder Woman, Karma Girl, and The Killers. My superthick, purple and gray plaid comforter covered my bed, along with the big, fluffy pillows that I liked, while several Swarovski crystal ornaments shaped like snowflakes dangled in the windows.
The snowflakes were an inside joke between us. With a last name like Frost, it was kind of inevitable. I couldn’t even remember when it had started, but every year for Christmas, Grandma gave me something with a snowflake on it and I did the same for her. Last year, I’d bought her a snowflake-patterned scarf, and she’d given me the snowflake ornaments in return.
They were my favorite things in the room, along with the picture of my mom that sat on my desk, right next to the latest comic books that I was reading.
I opened the small fridge tucked in at the foot of my bed and grabbed a carton of milk and some pieces of the pumpkin roll that Grandma Frost had sent me back to the academy with. Then, I fished Jasmine’s laptop out of my bag, along with the book and the photo that I’d taken from her room, and put everything on my scarred wooden desk. While I scarfed down the milk and the pumpkin treat with its sweet cream cheese filling, I plugged the laptop into the wall and waited for it to boot up.
It took forever, or maybe it just seemed that way because I was in such a hurry to start surfing through Jasmine’s files. Finally, the welcome screen popped up—and asked me for a password.
I finished off my milk and cracked my knuckles. Then, I flexed my fingers and put my hands down onto the keyboard, waiting for the vibes and flashes to hit me, to fill my mind the way they always did.
Nothing happened.
I frowned. No, that wasn’t quite true. Stuff happened. A couple of images of Jasmine sitting at her desk downloading music and shopping online flashed before my eyes. And I felt . . . satisfaction—the kind of smug satisfaction that came from getting exactly what you wanted no matter how expensive it was. Jasmine must have really been lusting after those cute black stiletto boots that she’d bought last week.
The problem was that I didn’t get the big whammy that I usually did when I touched someone’s stuff. Maybe I should have expected it. Computers were one of the everyday items that I could touch without getting much of a vibe off of, especially the ones in the library that were used by tons of kids. Maybe Jasmine just hadn’t used her laptop enough to leave much of an impression of herself behind. Maybe there wasn’t anything interesting on here. Maybe she didn’t have any deep, dark secrets.
Maybe I’d just broken into a dead girl’s dorm room for nothing.
I closed my eyes, reaching for my Gypsy gift once more, straining to see something, to feel something, anything that might give me a clue as to who had murdered Jasmine.
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