Starcrossed
: Chapter 15

The meadow went on and on and on—endlessly. There was only one type of flower that grew here—a small blossom so pale it was nearly transparent. No bees buzzed around these flowers and none of them altered from their precise alignment unless Helen brushed against them. They were infertile things that had no scent, sustained no life with their nectar. They were never going to bear fruit.

The terrain she plodded through was no longer hilly nor toilsome, the temperature was neither hot nor cold, and no sharp stones or thorny bushes cut her feet, but still, the place was intolerable. Helen may as well have stood in one spot for weeks, staring at the same uninspiring flower and breathing the same stale air, as walk. The land she had entered was unchanging, repetitive, pointless, and the longer she stayed there the more numb she became.

It was a meadow of misery.

Helen woke up and couldn’t remember what day it was. Did it matter? she wondered, but then she remembered that if it was Saturday she wouldn’t have to go to school. That meant she wouldn’t have to put up with any more of the random awkward questions she kept getting from eager girls trying to determine whether she and Lucas were still dating. The vultures were circling, painting their lips or flexing their muscles, all of them hoping to be the first to land on one or the other of the carcasses.

If it was Saturday, Helen wouldn’t run the risk of seeing Lucas from afar as he went from class to class. She wouldn’t have to recognize the graceful curve of his shoulder or the curious tilt of his head rising over the throngs of nondescript shapes that made up the rest of the population. If it was Saturday, she could go to the Delos house knowing that he wouldn’t be there while she trained. But if it was Saturday, that only left her with a different pile of crap to shovel for the next sixteen or seventeen hours—all day she’d have to be where he wasn’t.

Helen rolled over on the air mattress, looked at the clock, and saw that it was indeed Saturday. Nine and a half days had passed since Noel had banned her from Lucas’s presence, and Helen was still waiting to feel something—but all she felt was numb. She heard Ariadne stir and then scoot over to the edge of the bed to look down at her where she lay on the air mattress.

“Morning,” Ariadne said with a wan smile. “How’d you sleep?”

Helen answered by throwing the covers off to reveal the untouched jingle bells still wrapped around her ankles. They were exactly as they’d been when the two girls went to bed, but under the bells, Helen’s feet were dirty, swollen, and red from what looked like weeks of walking.

“Again?” Ariadne asked, dismayed. “You have to be floating out of the window, because I swear I didn’t hear a thing, and I barely shut my eyes last night!”

“It’s not your fault,” Helen said, shaking her head and unstrapping the useless bells. For a moment, Helen considered telling Ariadne about her vivid nightmares. They all knew she had them, but Helen hadn’t shared what her dreams were about with anyone since she’d told them to Kate. Helen took a breath, intending to confide in Ariadne, and then stopped herself. Would Ari think she was going crazy like Cassandra? Helen decided she should keep her mouth shut. “You know, I really don’t see the point in you spending every night here if I’m wafting out the window as soon as you nod off.”

“Don’t even start with that, because it isn’t going to happen,” Ariadne said peevishly. She threw her covers off and stood. “Lucas is probably gonna kill me dead enough as it is,” she mumbled nonsensically as she headed to the bathroom.

“Oh, hey! Sorry!” Jerry said with surprise as he ran into a scantily clad Ariadne in the hallway.

“Hi,” Ariadne growled at Jerry as she slammed the bathroom door.

Helen tossed the silly bells under the bed and looked up at her dad, who was peeking timidly around her door.

“I didn’t know Ariadne was here. Again,” he said.

“Yup,” Helen replied, like it was obvious.

“Okay,” he said wavering in and out of the doorway. “And you’ll be at her house all day, I suppose? Working on that project for school still?”

“Yup.”

“Okay,” he said, confusion scrunching his brow. “Uh . . . Happy birthday?”

“Thanks,” Helen replied with a nod. Then she stared at him until he went away.

“Did I hear your dad say it was your birthday?” Ariadne asked with wide eyes as she came back into the room.

“Uh-huh,” Helen said. “Not a word to anyone. I just want to practice and then come home and go to back to bed.”

“No! We should do something!” Ariadne protested. “We should take the day off and go shopping, then maybe go out for dinner!”

“I’m sorry, Ari, but I can’t. I just woke up and I’m already exhausted,” Helen replied, hearing her voice sound low. “Practice, then back to bed. That’s all I want for my birthday.”

Ariadne shook her head sadly and stared at Helen while she made up the inflatable bed she insisted on sleeping in every night. Helen could see that Ariadne wanted to argue, wanted to insist that Helen at least try to enjoy herself on her birthday, but thankfully, she gave in.

Helen could barely keep her eyes open, and she was starving. She wondered again if she actually had walked for days, like she did in her dream, or if there was something wrong with her mentally. Noel’s words about love being able to drive a person mad came back to haunt Helen. Were her all-too-vivid nightmares what Noel had meant? And then she had to consider if, at that point, it might not be a comfort to go stark, raving mad.

Creon stepped onto the dock from the private yacht his father had supplied for him and his team. The trip across the Atlantic from Spain to Nantucket had been long and tedious, but necessary. They required tools that would never make it through customs, even on a privately owned plane, and what was more, they could never fly their quarry back, anyway. That would be foolish. She needed to be properly secured no matter how much the preparation inconvenienced Creon and his team.

His father had explained it all to him—how years ago he’d had the chance to kill her, but that he had fallen under the spell of her face—the Face. Creon was surprised that his father had been weaker than him, but that, too, was a sign of the coming of Atlantis. The Scion generations were fated to get stronger and stronger, to be born with more and more talents until finally, a generation was to come that could defeat the gods. His father’s moment of weakness, as unfortunate as it was, had its benefits. In that moment, Tantalus had learned of her phobia for the water. Creon’s quarry feared and hated the ocean, and that was an advantage for the Hundred Cousins. By using a boat to transport her, she would be virtually imprisoned by an element she could not control, and considering how powerful she was, they needed to give her prison as many layers of walls as they could replace.

As he disembarked, Creon turned to tell his crew to stay on the yacht and wait for his return. He wanted to make it clear to them that he was in charge by keeping them as far away from the action as possible. Any one of his dear cousins might be tempted to take whatever opportunity they could to insert themselves into the annals of Scion history by stealing his Triumph. Creon couldn’t allow that to happen, not even by accident. After all of the risks he’d taken, after all of his patience, he would finally be the one to bring his House the glory that it deserved. He was destined to be equal to the heroes of old, like Hercules or Perseus. Maybe even better, because Creon would do more than kill a hydra or a gorgon. Much more. He would be the giver of immortality to his family, and to his father.

Only one life stood in his way, and that life would be delivered to Tantalus, Head of the House of Thebes and future ruler of Atlantis, by Creon, his son and Heir, who would receive the honor for the capture. And maybe he would also be given the hauntingly beautiful prize that he deserved—his quarry’s daughter.

Ariadne and Helen drove to the compound in total silence. When they stopped behind Matt at a light in town Ariadne waved. They could both see his eyes and forehead pinched up with worry as he stared at Helen in his rearview mirror.

“I know you’re sad, but you shouldn’t ignore Matt like that,” Ariadne said with a little heat. “He’s one of the best people I’ve ever met, and you’re hurting him.”

“You’re right. I’m being selfish,” Helen said. She felt blank inside. Empty. “I know it, and I hate it, but I just can’t seem to stop.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Ariadne stammered apologetically, her eyes on the road. “I know what you’re sacrificing, and I know why. But you know what? I think you need to cry, even just once. Maybe then you could let it out and feel a little better.”

Helen had tried to cry, but no tears came. Instead, all that she felt was this creeping nothing inside her. She knew she should care about how Matt felt, but she didn’t even care how she felt, not even when she was fighting for her life against Hector on the mat. Their workouts had become brief and brutal. Now that Helen no longer had an emotional block against using her bolts she was learning how to control them and let them out bit by bit. Only someone who didn’t mind getting fried could fight her hand to hand. Now, coupled with the power of the cestus, which made her impervious to any weapon, Helen had become nearly undefeatable.

Toward the end of their session that day Hector tried to put her in a Kimura and she electrocuted him for the third time. He dropped unconscious to the mat. After a moment, she approached him and nudged him with her toe.

“Are we done here?” she asked him with raised eyebrows when he came around.

“You still don’t know how to fight,” he mumbled as he wiped blood off of his lips.

“You bit through your tongue,” Helen said flatly. “You should probably take a break.”

Helen went to her corner to drink some water. She saw Claire, Jason, Cassandra, and Ariadne all staring at her from outside the fight cage. Jason was the first to move. He took two long strides, jumped fluidly over the metal fence, and landed next to his shaking brother.

“I think that’s enough, Hector,” Jason said. “She doesn’t need any more training.”

“She can’t even throw a punch!” Hector protested, slurring his words.

“She doesn’t need to,” Cassandra said with finality. “She doesn’t need to learn to punch or hold a sword or shoot an arrow to defend herself. She’s already ten times more lethal than you are, Hector, and if you keep trying to replace a way to beat her you’re going to end up brain-dead. These sessions are over.”

Cassandra stood up and walked out of the dojo.

“She’s still vulnerable!” Hector shouted after Cassandra’s retreating figure. “There are a million ways to subdue her once you replace a way to get around her bolts!”

“Enough, Hector,” Jason said gently. “Cassandra’s right. Figure out her vulnerabilities and train her to deal with them, but the dojo work is done. Hand-to-hand combat is not something she ever has to fear.”

“So no more chaperone?” Helen asked, raising her eyes from her empty water bottle. The Delos kids looked at each other, shrugging.

“I guess not,” Hector finally concluded. “At least not until Cassandra foresees a threat. Then, I don’t care how lethal you are, one of us will be with you at all times again.”

“May I go until then?” Helen asked, looking at Hector and waiting politely for permission. He nodded. She bowed to him and then jumped into the air.

“Wait, Lennie!” Claire shouted up at her. “We were going to throw you a party. Kate made you a cake!”

Helen saw Claire, saw how worried she was, but she couldn’t do what Claire wanted. She couldn’t pretend to be cheerful. Not for a few hours while everyone threw her a party, not for half an hour to let them at least sing “Happy Birthday” and scarf down some cake, and not even for the five minutes it would take to explain to Claire why she couldn’t do any of those things.

“Love you,” she called out to her best friend before she flew away. She thought she heard Jason say something like “Lucas is the same” while she pulled open the door and soared out, but she might have imagined it.

She didn’t have a destination or a time limit—she only knew that she wasn’t allowed off island. She’d given Lucas her word, and she wasn’t about to break it now. Helen needed so desperately for their promises to be true, she wasn’t willing to break any of them—not even the one that might bring her some comfort. She might never get to go to Patagonia with Lucas, but the least she could do to keep faith between them was to not fly over the ocean until he told her it was okay.

She could, however, go right to the edge. She’d avoided Great Point for the past week—not because she was worried she’d break down and cry if she went there, but because she was worried she wouldn’t. She was starting to get frightened that she would never going to feel anything again. That she would become as sterile and lifeless as one of those pale flowers she saw in her nighttime wandering. She had enough sense to ask herself why she was reacting the way she was, but not enough clarity to discover the answer. Until she saw Lucas sitting on top of the lighthouse.

He was perched right on the edge of the catwalk that wrapped around the glass dome at the top of the lighthouse, watching the last bit of the day drag itself down behind the horizon. A storm was gathering over the water, and the fruit-punch colors of the sunset seemed to be trying to claw their way out of the rain clouds. His skin was painted with that dying light and he was, as always, beautiful.

Then Helen understood why she was pent up like a dam instead of bawling like a waterfall. She wasn’t sad. She was furious.

As she flew toward him, he saw her and stood. Helen didn’t land on the catwalk. Instead, she floated in front of him, claiming the air for herself. For a moment, they just stared at each other, both of them too overwhelmed to break the silence with speech.

“What are you doing here?” Lucas said at last, his sunken eyes wide and hungry for the sight of her. Helen ignored his stupid question and said the first thing that came to mind.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded, angry and hurt and not sure what she wanted to hear from him. “Right from the start. Why couldn’t you at least explain to me why we couldn’t be together?”

“If you wanted to know, why didn’t you just answer the phone one of the thousand times I’ve called you this past week?” he demanded in return, just as angry and hurt as she was.

“Stop it! Stop asking me questions when you’re the one with all the answers!” she bellowed at him, finally feeling the hitch and sting of tears in her throat.

The dam was about to burst, and she knew that what was going to come out would be ugly, red-faced sobbing. She had to get as far away from Lucas as possible. She summoned one of the turbulent storm winds to yank her body away and take her wherever it chose, but Lucas felt her recklessness. He dove into the air and caught her before she could be chewed up by the storm she was so drastically underestimating. As soon as he had her safe again in his arms he broke down and kissed her.

Helen was so stunned she stopped crying before she had a chance to start and nearly fell out of the sky. Still the better flyer, Lucas caught her and supported her as they tumbled on the wind, holding and kissing each other as he guided them safely back down to the catwalk. As their feet touched down, the light inside the lighthouse switched on and projected the shadows of their embracing figures out onto the choppy waves of the ocean.

“I can’t lose you,” Lucas said, pulling his mouth away from hers. “That’s why I didn’t tell you the whole truth. I thought if you knew how bad it was you’d send me away. I didn’t want you to give up hope. I can’t do this if you give up on us.”

“I don’t want to give up,” Helen cried. “But there can never be an us, Lucas. You should have told me that.”

“Don’t say never,” he said. He brushed his face against her neck, no longer kissing her, but unable to let her go completely. “Nothing is forever, and there are no absolutes. We’ll replace a way.”

“Lucas,” Helen said, frowning and pushing against his chest until he let her go. She sat down on the catwalk and pulled him down next to her so they could talk. “We would hate ourselves. And eventually, we’d hate each other.”

“I know that!” he said, his voice rising desperately. “I’m not talking about running off and doing whatever we want!”

“Then, what?” Helen asked softly, calming him down. “What are we supposed to do?”

“I don’t know yet,” he admitted. He leaned back against the glass wall of the lighthouse and pulled Helen against his chest. “But I will not go through another week like this last one.”

“Me neither,” she said. She rested against him, fully relaxing for the first time in days. “I don’t care how hard being together is, nothing is worse than being apart.”

“What was it you told me? Decide what you can’t do and then do the opposite?” he asked with an amused smile, pressing his lips against her forehead. “At least now we know we can’t be apart.”

“It was like being dead,” she said fearfully, as if even mentioning the numbness she had felt would allow it to creep back into her body.

“For me too,” he said in a strange, strangled voice.

“What about your mother? She won’t allow us to be together.”

“We’ll have to talk with her. We’ll have to talk to my whole family.”

“And if they still want to separate us?”

“Then we run,” Lucas said, his voice low and even.

Neither of them said anything for a while. They just watched the beacon light flash across the foaming waves of the storm-churned ocean. Helen could hear his heart pounding, but his grip on her only tightened as if he was already bracing himself for the battle he would have to fight to keep her close to him.

“They’ll chase us,” she whispered. “They’ll think we’ve started the war.”

“I know,” Lucas said. “But we won’t. We’ll keep the Truce, even if they don’t believe that we can.”

“We don’t have to make the same mistakes that they did,” Helen said defiantly. “It makes me so angry that everyone assumes that even though we know what would happen, we’ll still go out and do the same stupid thing.”

Lucas laughed, but there was no joy in the sound.

“It’s almost as if we don’t need to live our lives or feel our feelings at all, because someone already told us what the ending was going to be,” he said bitterly. She could feel him tensing with indignation, until a new and serious thought stilled him. “Are you really willing to do this? You know that it would mean you’d have to leave your father behind?”

“I know,” she said, knowing full well she’d be hurting her father far worse than her mother ever did, but also knowing that she would do it for Lucas—for both of them.

“I understand if you can’t do this—” he began, but Helen cut him off.

“If they won’t let us stay together, we have no choice. We have to run away.”

“It won’t be forever,” he said, trying to console her as well as himself. “Just until we can figure out a way around this. And we will figure it out. There has to be a way.”

“I’ve thought of something,” Helen said, her whole body going still. She felt Lucas tense.

“I think I know where you’re going with this, and I don’t think I want to hear you say it,” he said uncertainly.

“What if I wasn’t a virgin?” Helen said quickly, just to get it over with.

“I’m not sharing you, Helen,” he replied immediately. “Besides, it won’t work.”

“I’m serious, we have to consider it,” she insisted, struggling in his arms until he loosened his grip enough for her to lean back and look at him. “Tell me the truth. Would you stop wanting me if I was with someone else first?”

“Of course not,” he said, smiling tenderly at her. “And I don’t just want you, Helen. I love you. Big difference.”

“Okay, look. I hate to even think about this, but I’ll do it,” Helen pleaded as Lucas started to shake his head vehemently. “I love you, too, and I’ll do whatever I have to do if it will let us be together. What? Why are you shaking your head? You’re not the only one making this decision, you know.”

“Tricks like that won’t work, not unless you just want something physical. Is that all you want from me? Sex?” he teased.

“Of course not, you know that!” Helen said in frustration, shoving him away from her. “I just told you I loved you!”

“That’s why it won’t work,” he said. He took her hands and pulled her closer to him. “If you and I were to be together the way we want, or at least the way I want—” he began uncertainly.

“And what do you want, exactly?” Helen interrupted urgently.

“I want it all. Everything we talked about. I want us to go to school, learn a dozen languages, live all over the world. Most of all, I want us to be together.”

“I do, too!” Helen said excitedly as if she had found a way out. “And we can do all that without ever getting married!”

“We’d share everything,” he said, shaking his head like Helen wasn’t understanding him. “And because of that, we’d be considered a married couple in the eyes of the gods, regardless of who took your virginity. I want a whole life with you, and because I want that, you would be my wife. I can’t even pretend I would settle for less.”

“You’re saying that it’s our commitment to each other that will define us to the gods, not a white dress or a ring?” Helen asked, already knowing the answer.

“Exactly,” he said. Then he suddenly laughed at a thought. “Also, it’d be kinda hard to be together if I was in prison.”

“What are you talking about?” Helen asked, suddenly alarmed. “Why would you go to prison?”

“For killing the guy that took your virginity,” he replied. “You I would forgive. But the guy? Dead man.”

Helen smirked at Lucas like she didn’t believe him, but she wisely decided not to question his sincerity.

“Then what’s the plan?” She sighed, resting back against him. “We can’t be together and we definitely can’t be apart.”

“We stick together and play by the rules until we can rewrite them. We’re going to replace a way to make this work. I promise.”

“Isn’t that hubris?” she asked, raising her eyes to his. “Thinking we can beat the Fates?”

“I don’t care what it is anymore. I need to hope,” he responded before he allowed himself to kiss her.

Helen fell against him, and this time she was able to enjoy his mouth without the shock that came along with the unexpectedness of their first kiss. This time she could pay attention to him, feel him responding to her. Far sooner than Helen wanted, Lucas pulled back, pinched his eyes together like it hurt, and gently pushed her hands off of him.

“You have to stop,” he said, forcing himself to laugh, even if it was a shaky, watered-down laugh.

“Sorry. I don’t know what I’m doing yet,” Helen said through her tingling lips.

“Could have fooled me,” he mumbled as he took both of her hands and stood up, pulling her to her feet with him. “I think a little cold air will do us good.”

“Where to? Venice?” Helen asked with a cheeky grin.

“Sure. Because that’s exactly what you and I need—a more romantic setting,” he replied sarcastically. “Sorry, Sparky, but I’m taking you home to your father before I start a war.”

He leapt into the air and spun back to face her, holding out a hand like they were in an old movie and he was asking her to dance. She groaned at how gorgeous he was, then joined him with a smile, taking his hand and rolling her body over the playful eddies he carved into the wind for her.

Moments later, they were landing in Helen’s yard and strolling toward the door, hand in hand. Just as Helen was about to go inside the house, Lucas stopped her.

“You actually thought I didn’t know, didn’t you?” he asked her incredulously. “Happy birthday.”

“I totally forgot!” Helen exclaimed with a bemused smile.

“I didn’t,” he said, kissing her. He looked up at the brightly lit house, and they both listened briefly to an emergency weather report blaring away on the TV. “Your dad’s waiting for you. You’d better go in.”

“Yeah. Kate made me a cake,” Helen said. She grimaced, guilty over how she’d treated her family this past week.

“Tomorrow, first thing, I’ll be back to get you,” Lucas promised as he brushed his mouth lightly against hers. “Then we’ll go to my house and tell my family. Together.”

“Right. We still have to plead our case,” Helen said. Wrapped around each other, they kissed for a few more moments, stalling for time that the storm wouldn’t give them. Finally, Lucas pulled away. Glancing around at every shadow suspiciously, he told her to hurry into the house. It was dark out and he was unwilling to leave her unguarded for even a moment. Helen ran inside and closed the front door behind her, peering out the window in time to see Lucas fly away. She called out for her father as she walked into the family room.

“Jerry isn’t here, Helen,” said a woman’s voice behind her. Helen spun around, already calling up a bolt, but the woman grabbed her tightly by the wrists and shook her head.

“That won’t work on me,” she said. Electricity danced across her flawless face, making her long, blonde hair crackle and fluff, and circling the pupils of her warm brown eyes.

“Oh my god,” Helen said, looking at the heart-shaped charm that fell neatly into the groove at the base of her attacker’s throat.

The woman ripped off Helen’s identical necklace with one hand and jabbed a needle into her neck with the other. Helen felt her muscles go limp and refuse to follow her commands. The world faded into a pale gray haze, and even though she kept trying to see, her eyes could only chase the bright squiggles that tracked across the backs of her eyelids. She was losing consciousness so fast, Helen knew that she had to have been given a powerful drug, maybe even a lethal one. The last thing Helen felt was her attacker tenderly supporting her body as it swooned to the floor. Helen couldn’t see, couldn’t move, but for just one moment longer she could still hear.

“My sweet little girl,” the woman whispered, and then Helen experienced nothing, not even nightmares.

Lucas was only halfway home when the wind tried to throw him down to the ground and the sky started to flash with the first bolts of lightning. He landed immediately, and had to go the rest of the way on foot rather than get electrocuted or crushed. He wondered if Helen could fly through the lightning and if she would be able to control it so that he could fly with her in a storm if the situation ever arose. That would be beautiful, he thought as he walked through the garage and into the kitchen, flying through lightning-bright clouds.

As soon as he opened the door, he stopped, sensing something wrong.

“Didn’t you bring Helen with you?” Cassandra asked nervously as he stood in the doorway. “I could have sworn I saw you together today.”

Lucas looked around the room and saw Jerry and Kate, the promised cake bristling with unlit candles, and Claire sitting wide-eyed next to Jason.

“I just left her at home to be with you two,” he said gesturing to Jerry and Kate. Panic washed down his legs, nearly making his knees buckle.

Lucas ran out the kitchen door, past the cars in the garage, and ripped the outside door off its hinges as he leapt up into the apoplectic sky. Jumping up twenty feet, Jason tackled him out of the air and dragged him back down, pinning Lucas’s weightless body to the ground.

“Sorry, brother, but the storm is too big. We drive tonight,” Jason said.

“There was someone waiting for her inside her house!” Lucas yelled, taking on mass and throwing Jason off of him.

“We know, you idiot! This afternoon, while you had your phone shut off, Cassie saw that Creon came back to the island,” Jason said, latching on to Lucas to make sure he didn’t change states again and fly off. “But Creon isn’t the one at her house!”

“Then who is it?” Lucas asked, visibly calming down. He and Jason stood up and waited for Hector to pull his truck out.

“Cassandra was getting little images all day long, but she didn’t understand them. One of the things she saw was a woman tailing Creon as he came back to the island. She had this habit of tucking her hair behind her ear with her pinkie finger,” Jason began. The truck pulled out and Lucas and Jason jumped onto it. They eased themselves inside as the truck sped off into the punishing wind and rain.

“Then Cass said she kept seeing flashes of several different women, over and over,” Jason continued. “She didn’t know why she was having visions about women that she didn’t recognize and that didn’t seem to have anything to do with each other. It took a while, but Cass finally noticed that they all had exactly the same way of putting their hair behind their ear, like a nervous tic. Because of that, Cass realized that they were all the same person, and the most persistent vision she kept having was of one of these women waiting for Helen at her house like she lived there.”

“The woman let herself into Helen’s house with her own key and turned on the TV like she’d done it a million times, so at first Cass didn’t think there was any danger. Probably a relative Helen never mentioned, right?” Hector interjected. “It wasn’t until just a few seconds before you walked in the door that she put it all together and knew that she had been seeing Helen’s attacker all day long. We tried to call you. . . .”

“But I had my phone shut off,” Lucas finished for him, adding a foul curse on the end. “What did the woman waiting at Helen’s house look like?” Lucas asked urgently, trying to get a mental image of the threat. “Is she that brunette? Or the old woman who attacked Kate?”

“Neither. Cassandra said she was unbelievably beautiful. Like Helen,” Jason replied.

“Not just beautiful like Helen—you’re telling it wrong, dumb-ass,” Hector interrupted. He wove through traffic like a madman, blowing through red lights and passing cars illegally. “Cassie said this woman looked almost exactly like her. But whoever she is, Cass is certain this woman is not on Creon’s side. He doesn’t even know he’s being followed, which may or may not be good for us.”

“Why the hell wasn’t someone guarding the house?” Lucas shouted in frustration, too upset to think about what Cassandra’s vision meant yet.

“It’s my fault,” Hector said, and then continued before his little brother could argue. “Shut up, Jase, I’m the one who allowed her to go off on her own after practice. It was my call, and I made it, even though I knew in my gut it was wrong.”

Lucas wanted to rip Hector’s face off for taking the blame when he knew whose fault it really was. He should have checked his phone, he should have checked the house, he should have paid more attention to Helen’s safety and less attention to her soft hands and warm skin. He scrubbed his hands over his face and made himself take a series of deep breaths. He needed to trust Hector to get them there, and then he needed to focus and be ready for whatever they encountered. If he was going to be at all useful, he was going to have to shut up and calm down.

When they got to Helen’s house, the TV and the lights were off and the front door was locked. Lucas flew up to Helen’s bedroom window, which he knew she always forgot to latch. He let himself in and then went downstairs to open the front door for the others. Nothing was taken and nothing was disturbed in the entire house. It was as if Helen hadn’t even put up a fight.

“She must have known the woman and gone with her willingly,” Hector said, tossing up his hands. “It’s the only reason this place isn’t melting.”

“Unless whoever kidnapped her is just that good,” Jason added.

“What are you talking about?” Hector said derisively. “Helen’s a full-on monster now with her lightning. I don’t care who this evil twin is, no one is that good.”

“Twin,” Lucas repeated, thinking. “It could be that simple. She’d have the same lightning, the same strength, and a lot more experience.”

The brothers looked at him as he got down on his hands and knees and examined the floor. He reached under an end table and came up with a drained hypodermic needle.

“That rules out Helen going willingly. Whoever she was, she came prepared. And she must have known about the cestus and how it works, or she never would have been able to penetrate Helen’s skin,” Lucas said, his breath catching only slightly when he said her name.

He handed the needle to Jason and dropped back down to examine the floor one last time, in case he missed something. When he was satisfied, he stood up and looked through his cousins instead of at them, still thinking. Then he went to the windows by the door and looked out at the raging storm. Lucas watched mini mudslides slosh down Helen’s driveway and out into the street and knew that any path Helen might have left would be long gone.

“Was there anything else in Cassandra’s vision?” Lucas asked hopefully.

“The last thing she said was that she thought Helen would still be safe tomorrow morning,” Jason replied, shaking his head doubtfully. “Cass had a brief flash of Helen standing in a window that looked like some kind of hotel on Nantucket, but she couldn’t be sure.”

“Maybe Cass has seen something else,” Hector said as optimistically as he could. He opened his phone and tried to dial, but a no signal sign was flashing on his screen. “Check your phones,” he said to his brother and cousin. Neither of them could connect a call, either.

Lucas went into Helen’s kitchen and checked her landline for a dial tone, but it was dead. As he joined his cousins back in the entryway, the power in the house went out. Jason went over to the window and looked at the other houses in the area.

“The whole block is out,” he said. “And massive lightning bolts are headed this way. I guess we’re stuck here for a while.”

“You two stay here in case Helen gets free and makes her way back,” Lucas said as he turned for the door.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Hector demanded, grabbing Lucas by the shoulder and trying to turn him around.

“Don’t,” Lucas warned quietly. They stared at each other until Hector finally backed down and removed his hand from Lucas’s shoulder.

“Just stay out of the sky,” he cautioned. “You’re no good to her dead.”

Lucas strode off into the dark storm without responding. He was frustrated with not being able to fly and trying to think of where to start. If he could get airborne he could see around, get his bearings and look for anything suspicious, but the storm had him completely grounded. It suddenly occurred to him that if he had just drugged a girl who was known on sight by most of the locals of a tiny island, he would want to get off that island as soon as possible, and if Lucas was grounded, all air travel was almost certainly canceled as well. The only way to get Helen off island would be by boat, and even that was a long shot. Going out on the water would be suicide.

He ran to the dock, where he learned that the last ferry had left over an hour earlier and that the coast guard had officially suspended all travel in and out of the marina and airport while the storm lasted. New England was going to get pummeled with a good old-fashioned nor’easter that night, and the impassable weather would probably last into the next day. Lucas relaxed a little when he heard that. He’d left Helen less than an hour earlier, after the last ferry had already departed, so the chances were high that she was still on island. Hopefully, she was in a hotel, and relatively safe.

He wasted a few more hours wandering in and out of every motel and bed-and-breakfast near the ferry, asking if two women had checked in that evening. Unfortunately, although there were a lot of people stranded on the island and filling up the hotels due to the storm, there were none that fit Helen’s description. Lucas knew it was futile. No Scion would be stupid enough to walk into a hotel with an unconscious girl slung over her shoulder and ask for a room. Whoever had taken Helen may have broken in someplace, or even bribed someone at the desk, but either way, Lucas knew they weren’t going to announce themselves. He was chasing his own tail, but still, he couldn’t give up. He checked back at home, found out what Cassandra had seen in her next vision while he’d been gone, and then ran back into the storm before his father could even start to argue.

The wind was so strong it was tearing down trees and taking apart the stoic Nantucket architecture. Even Lucas, as strong as he was, had to switch over into his supermassive state to stay anchored to the ground as bits and pieces of people’s houses tumbled down the streets around him. His bare face was getting lashed by the swirling debris in the air, and the sideways rain was clawing at his eyes. All night he wandered around outside every hotel, inn, and bed-and-breakfast he could think of, looking in the windows with eyes that could see in even the dimmest of light, hoping for a glimpse of Helen.

He knew he wouldn’t get it. Cassandra had told him that Helen would be standing in a hotel window the next morning, but he still couldn’t make himself stop. He wouldn’t stop, because if by some miracle he did replace her, take her out of that hotel, and bring her back to her family, he could prove Cassandra wrong. All he needed was to beat Fate once and he would know that he was the master of himself—not just a prewritten story that gets reread every now and again to amuse the cosmos—but a truly blank slate that he would be allowed to fill with whatever future he decided to write for himself. If he could just replace Helen that night and bring her home, then he knew that someday they would beat Fate, and that they could be together.

He walked all night.

Helen’s head was pounding and there was a sour, chalky taste in the back of her mouth, like she had chewed an aspirin and didn’t rinse afterward. Her eyes felt swollen and puffy, and the skin on her face felt clammy and hot, but she didn’t feel as dehydrated as she usually did when she visited the dry lands. This was different. She’d been drugged, she suddenly remembered, by a woman. A woman that looked just like her, but older.

“Take a sip,” said a voice as Helen felt a straw being pressed to her lips. Her eyes flipped open and she saw the woman again, leaning over her and holding a glass of water.

“Who are you?” Helen asked, her voice crackling. She jerked her mouth away from the suspicious glass of liquid and felt her arms strain against bonds. She was tied to a bed. Still unbearably weak from whatever drug she had been given, Helen knew it would be a while before she was strong enough to break free. She looked around frantically. She was in a hotel room that was lit by candles. It was still night, and she could hear wind and rain battering the window behind the closed curtain.

“Look at me, Helen! Who do you think I am?” the woman asked so forcefully it momentarily stopped Helen from panicking. “Here, I know you’ll need proof. I would.”

The woman took out an envelope full of pictures. They were pictures of herself, when she was in her late teens. In one picture she was holding a tiny baby. In another she was sitting and talking to a young Mrs. Aoki while two baby girls, one blonde, one black-haired, played together on the floor. In yet another she was kissing Jerry over her swollen, pregnant belly.

“Beth,” Helen whispered, her eyes darting over the pictures that she had spent a hefty portion of her childhood searching for.

“My real name is Daphne. Daphne Atreus. I guess it would be too much to ask for you to call me ‘Mom,’ huh?” Daphne said with a wry smile.

Helen gestured to her bound wrists. “You guessed right,” she replied, starting to get angry. “You want to tell me why you knocked me out and tied me up?”

“Because we are out of time, and if I were you I would hate me so much I wouldn’t even give me a second to explain,” Daphne replied with a loving look on her face. “Unless I had been knocked out and tied down first.”

Helen glared at her, furious and still groggy from the drug. “What do you want from me?”

Daphne’s face and body began to shift, not just changed in mood, but in shape. One moment Helen was looking at an older version of herself, and the next moment she was looking at a woman in her sixties with salt-and-pepper hair. Before Helen could even gasp, the dowdy woman disappeared and was replaced by a brunette in her late thirties. Then that woman disappeared and Helen was looking at her mother again. She held up Helen’s heart-shaped necklace in one hand and touched her own identical necklace with the other.

“There are a lot of things I need to tell you about who you are and where you come from. Things that are going to hurt you,” Daphne said in a direct, almost brutal way. “But I don’t have any choice. Creon is on this island right now, and he is coming for you.”