Jennifer Estep Bundle by Jennifer Estep Page A

exactly protested when Professor Metis had come to the house and announced my change in schools. Grandma had been more resigned than anything else, like she’d known that Metis was going to show up sooner or later. Of course, I’d told my grandma all about the weird things that went on at Mythos, but she never blinked an eye at any of them. And every time I asked Grandma about the academy and why I really had to go there, all she said was for me to give it a chance, that things would eventually get better for me.
    Sometimes, I wondered why she was lying to me—when she never had before.
    â€œHey there, pumpkin,” Grandma Frost said, dropping a kiss on top of my head and brushing my cheek with her knuckles. “How was school today?”
    I closed my eyes, enjoying the soft warmth of her skin against mine. Because of my Gypsy gift, because of my psychometry magic, I had to be careful about touching other people or letting them touch me. While I got vivid enough vibes from objects, I could get major flashes, major whammies of feeling, from actually coming into contact with someone’s skin. Seriously. I could see everything that they’d ever done, every dirty little secret that they’d ever tried to hide—the good, the bad, and the seriously ugly.
    Oh, I wasn’t like a complete leper when it came to other people. I was usually okay when it came to small, brief, casual touches, like passing a pen to someone in class or letting a girl’s fingers brush mine when we both reached for the same piece of cheesecake in the lunch line.
    Plus, a lot of what I saw depended on the other person and what he was thinking about at the time. I was pretty safe in class, at lunch, or in the library, since mostly the other kids were thinking about how totally boring a certain lecture was or wondering why the dining hall was serving lasagna for like the hundredth time that month.
    But I was still cautious, still careful, around other people, just the way that my mom had taught me to be. Despite the fact that part of me really liked my gift and the power it gave me to know other people’s secrets. Yeah, I was a little dark and twisted that way. But I’d learned a long time ago that even the nicest-seeming person could have the blackest, ugliest heart—like Paige Forrest’s stepdad. It was better to know what people were really like than to put your trust in someone who just wanted to hurt you in the end.
    But there was nothing to be afraid of with Grandma Frost. She loved me, and I loved her. That’s what I felt every time she touched me—the softness of her love, like a fleece blanket wrapping around me and warming me from head to toe. My mom had felt the same way to me, before she’d died.
    I opened my eyes and shrugged, answering Grandma’s question. “The same, more or less. I did make two hundred bucks by finding a bracelet. I put a hundred of it in the cookie jar, just like usual.”
    Grandma hadn’t wanted to take my money when I’d started giving it to her, but I’d insisted. Of course, she wasn’t actually spending any of it, like I wanted her to. Instead, Grandma put all the money that I gave her into a savings account for me—one that I wasn’t supposed to know about. But I’d touched her checkbook one day when I’d been looking through her purse for some gum and had flashed on her setting up the account. I hadn’t said anything to Grandma about it, though. I loved her too much to ruin her secret.
    Grandma nodded, reached into her pocket, and pulled out a crisp hundred of her own. “I made a little money, too, today.”
    I raised my eyebrows. “You must have told her something good.”
    â€œHim,” Grandma corrected. “I told him that he and his wife are going to be the proud parents of a baby girl by this time next year. They’ve been trying to have a baby for two years now, and he was starting