For a second, that burning pair of red eyes filled my mind again. Despite the spring sunlight, a shiver slid up my spine and not just because of the creepy dream I’d had last night. No, I was worried about what I might find at Mythos Academy in the fall—all the secrets I might uncover.

Secrets about myself—and maybe my magic, too.

“Is this really necessary?” I grumbled.

A week had passed since Grandma Frost and Professor Metis had informed me that I’d be going to Mythos Academy in the fall. Earlier this morning, Metis had shown up at my grandma’s house and announced that it was time for me to take a tour of the school. Ignoring my sullen protests, the professor had driven the two of us up to Cypress Mountain, past an enormous iron gate, and onto the academy grounds.

Now we stood on the edge of what Metis was calling the upper quad—the heart of Mythos Academy. The picturesque quad looked like something you’d find at an Ivy League prep school or college campus. Enormous trees boasting thick, green, leaf-laden branches, iron benches nestled underneath them in the shade, a smooth carpet of grass rolling out in all directions.

“Can’t I just look at photos of the academy online?” I grumbled some more. “You e-mailed me the link and the password for the school Web site already.”

“Yes, Gwen, it is really necessary, and no, you cannot just look at pictures online,” Professor Metis said. “This is the same orientation we give to all the first-year students, and you’re getting it, too, even though at seventeen you’ll be classified as second year. Now, come along. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover today.”

Metis stepped onto a gray cobblestone pathway that made an enormous circle around the quad and started walking at a slow, leisurely pace. I sighed and trudged after her.

“These five buildings are where you’ll be spending most of your time. English-history, math-science, the dining hall, the gym, and of course, the Library of Antiquities,” Metis said.

She pointed out the appropriate structures as we passed them, but they all looked the same to me—dark gray stone buildings covered with curling green ivy vines. Each one featured a variety of towers and balconies, making them look like part of some Gothic horror movie set instead of a posh private school. I half expected jagged lightning to suddenly crackle in the sky overhead, zoom down, and slam into the top of one of the pointed towers.

That didn’t happen, but the more I stared at the buildings, the more I realized there was something . . . sinister about them. Not so much the buildings themselves, I thought, but rather the statues that covered them.

Gryphons, gargoyles, dragons, a hulking Minotaur. It took me a minute to realize that all the statues were carved into the shapes of mythological monsters right out of the bedtime stories my mom used to read me. The statues were made of the same dark gray stone as the buildings themselves, but for some reason, their teeth and claws and talons glinted in the warm spring sunshine. I thought the architect had taken the name Mythos Academy a little too literally. Mythological monsters didn’t exist, no matter how real and lifelike the statues looked or how their open, lidless eyes seemed to follow my every movement . . . right? I wasn’t so sure of the answer now. I shivered and dropped my gaze from a pair of particularly fierce-looking gryphons planted on either side of the library steps.