Helen’s eyes opened. She didn’t feel like she was waking up, and she suspected it was because she hadn’t really been sleeping. It felt more like she’d been hit on the head and lost consciousness for a few hours, and was now coming around. Like a jump cut in a movie, one moment Helen was looking at Orion’s last text and the next she was looking at the bath mat on the floor. The sun was up, her hair was dry, and she could hear her dad getting out of bed.
Helen could tell from the jittery, clammy feeling all over her body that although her brain had checked out for a few hours, she hadn’t gotten what she needed. She hadn’t descended, which was a relief, but she also hadn’t dreamed. That was very bad. Persephone had told her that she didn’t have much time, and Helen didn’t know how much longer she could last without dreaming.
Hearing Jerry opening his closet spurred Helen into action. She jumped up and dismantled the nest she’d made herself the night before, then hastily began brushing her teeth to give her father the illusion that she’d just beaten him to the bathroom.
It was Monday, a new week, and Helen’s turn to do the cooking. She rushed into her frozen room dreading what she was going to find, but was pleasantly surprised that it had mostly thawed. Something clicked in her head. The intense cold must have something to with how she had been turning her bed into a portal to the Underworld. Since she hadn’t descended the night before, the cold had dissipated a bit. It was still a meat locker in there and everything was damp with melt water, but at least she didn’t have to take a hair dryer to her dresser to get the drawers open, like she’d had to the day before.
So far she’d been able to hide just how cold it had gotten in her room from her father, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep it from him much longer. Helen decided that there wasn’t anything she could do about that. She just hoped he stayed out of her room. She had other things to worry about, not the least of which was the Myrmidon that was probably watching her at that moment. Helen shrugged off this disturbing thought as best she could, but still went into her closet before she took off her clothes.
She got dressed as quickly as possible, shivering the few seconds she was forced to spend exposed, and then ran downstairs to warm up at the stove as she cooked breakfast. For a while, she turned up the gas on the stove like it was a campfire. When the air all around her wavered with the heat, she sighed happily and closed her eyes, but something wasn’t right. She didn’t feel like she was alone. Her eyes snapped open, and she looked around. The air continued to dance in front of her for a few moments, and then it settled.
Doubt began to creep in. She wasn’t hearing voices, but she still felt like there was another presence in the kitchen, and that was obviously impossible. Helen knew she was losing it. She didn’t have much time left, but there was nothing she could do about it until that night. She turned back to the stove and got to work on breakfast.
When she was done making pumpkin pancakes she glanced at the clock. Her father was running a bit late, so she put in a bit of extra effort and sprinkled powdered sugar over the top of the stacks through an old bat-shaped cutout, like they used to do when Helen was a kid. When she was finished she looked up at the clock again. She was just about to go to the bottom of the stairs to call up for Jerry when she heard him come down.
“What took you so . . .” Helen stopped dead when she saw her father.
He was wearing a tattered black dress with red-and-white-striped stockings, a black wig, and his face was painted green. In his hand was the traditional pointy witch’s hat with a fat silk sash and a silver buckle on the front. For a moment she just stared at him with her mouth hanging open.
“I lost a bet with Kate,” he said sheepishly.
“Oh, man. I gotta get a picture of this.” Her shoulders were shaking with laughter as she grabbed her phone. She snapped a quick shot of her dad before he could run away, and sent it immediately to pretty much everyone she’d ever met. “Is it Halloween today? I’ve lost track.”
“Tomorrow,” he said, sitting down to eat his pancakes. “I’ve got two whole days in drag and then I’m never celebrating Halloween again.”
Halloween was always a busy time at the News Store, and despite Jerry’s grumbling about having to wear a dress, Helen knew he loved to celebrate all the holidays. Helen asked her dad if he needed help at the store, but he told her there was no way he was letting her come in.
“You look greener than I do,” he said with worry. “Do you need to stay home from school today?”
“I’ll be all right,” Helen said with a shrug and looked down at her breakfast to hide the guilt she felt. She honestly didn’t know if she was going to be all right or not, and she couldn’t look at her father and lie.
Claire cruised up to the house in her nearly silent car, rolled down the passenger window, and blasted the song on the radio rather than honking.
“I’d better go before the neighbors call the cops,” Helen said to her father as she gathered up her stuff and ran out of the house.
“Come right home after school; you need your rest!” Jerry shouted after her. Helen waved in a noncommittal way from the door, knowing that she couldn’t. She had to train with Ariadne for her return to the Underworld. The clock was ticking for Helen, and she had a lot of promises to keep before it stopped.
Lucas watched Helen run out her front door and jump into Claire’s car. She looked exhausted and skinny, but even so, her smile for Claire was bright and beautiful and full of love. That was Helen. No matter what she was going through, she had this nearly magical way of opening her heart for others. Just being near her made him feel loved, even if he knew that her love wasn’t directed toward him anymore.
She’d almost caught him again that morning, and he was starting to suspect that he was scaring her. Somehow, she could still sense him. Lucas had to figure out why, because he certainly wasn’t going to stop guarding her. Not until he was certain that Automedon was gone for good.
Claire and Helen started shrieking as they drove off, murdering one of Lucas’s favorite Bob Marley songs. Helen had the worst singing voice. It was one of the things he liked the most about her. Every time she warbled like a cat that just got stepped on, he wanted to pick her up and . . . yeah.
Reminding himself that Helen was his cousin, he dropped his light-cloak and soared up into the air so he could switch on his phone and start his day. He had a text message waiting.
I know you were down there w/us. And I think I know how u did it, read the text. We need to talk.
Who is this? Lucas replied, already knowing who it was. Who else could it be, after all? But he didn’t want to give the guy an inch. He couldn’t. He was too angry.
Orion.
Making him text it was even worse. Seeing that guy’s name and picturing Helen say it just ate him up inside. The rage was getting worse every day, and he had to take a moment to stop himself from chucking his phone across the Atlantic.
Great. What do you want? Lucas replied when his hands had unclenched enough to type. It was bad enough he had to let Helen go, but did he also have to get texts from the guy who got to spend every night with her?
You need to be a dick—I get it. But there’s no time. Helen is dying.
“You’re in a good mood!” Helen chirped.
“I am!” Claire practically screamed.
“Ooh, don’t tell me! Flushed cheeks, dewy eyes . . . Could you be love? Oh, yeah!”
Helen sang the final part of the Bob Marley song that Claire had been howling. It perfectly summed up Claire’s ecstatic mood, and Claire joined her for the “oh, yeah” part, answering Helen’s tacit question.
“What can I say? He really is sort of a god.” Claire sighed and giggled gloriously as she careened down the street.
“What happened?” Helen screeched, vicariously giddy. It felt so good to laugh again, Helen forgot about everything else in her life but Claire’s glowing face.
“He FINALLY kissed me! Last night,” she practically sang. “He climbed up the side of my house! Can you believe it?”
“Um, yeah?” Helen grinned and shrugged.
“Oh, right, I guess you can,” Claire said, waving it off good-naturedly. “So, anyway, I opened my window to yell at him and tell him that he was going to wake my grandma—you know how she can hear a dog fart two houses down. But he said he had to see me. That he couldn’t stay away from me anymore, and then he kissed me! Is that not the best first kiss ever?”
“Finally! What took him so long?” Helen laughed. The laugh turned into a yelp as Claire stomped on the brakes to obey a stop sign. Horns honked at them from either side of the street.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Claire drove on, ignoring the fact that she’d nearly caused a horrendous traffic accident. “He thinks I’m too fragile, that I don’t know the danger I’m in—blah, blah. Like I haven’t spent my entire life around a Scion. Ridiculous, right?”
“Yeah. Ridiculous,” Helen said as she grimaced in fear at both Claire’s nonchalant attitude toward Scions and her daredevil driving. “You know what, Gig? Love doesn’t make you immune to car wrecks.”
“I know that! God, you sound just like Jason,” Claire responded, her entire being melting a bit as she said his name. She pulled into her parking spot in the school lot, shut off her car, and turned to Helen with a sigh. “I am so in love.”
“Apparently!” Helen grinned. She knew she wasn’t Jason’s favorite person anymore, but regardless of how he’d been treating Helen, she could see that Claire needed her support in this. “Jason really is a great guy, Gig. I’m so happy for you two.”
“But he’s not Japanese,” she said, her face falling. “How am I supposed to bring him home to my parents?”
“Maybe they won’t mind so much,” Helen said with a shrug. “Hey, they got used to me, right?”
Claire gave her a dubious look, held out her hand palm down, and tipped it left and right as if to say “fifty-fifty.”
“Really?” Helen exclaimed. She couldn’t believe it. “We’ve been friends our entire freaking lives and your parents still don’t like me?”
“My mom loves you! But, Lennie, you have to understand, you’re really tall and you smile a lot. That’s kind of not cool with Grandma.”
“I can’t believe it,” Helen muttered crankily as she got out of the car and headed across the parking lot. “I’ve spent more time with that old bat . . .”
“She’s traditional!” Claire said in defense.
“She’s racist!” Helen countered, and Claire backed off because she knew Helen was sort of right. “Jason is perfect for you, Gig. Don’t you dare let the fact that he isn’t Japanese ruin this! That guy was willing to die for you.”
“I know,” Claire said, her voice getting hoarse with emotion. She stopped dead, even though everyone else was rushing into school to avoid being late. Helen stopped with her, moved by Claire’s rare show of vulnerability. “I was so scared down there, Len. So lost and thirsty, you know? And then . . . there he was. I still can’t believe he actually came to get me in that horrible place.”
Helen waited for Claire to calm down. The rawness of the emotions surrounding Claire’s near-death experience reminded Helen of how awful the Underworld actually was. Orion had changed the Underworld so drastically for her that she didn’t consider it punishment to be down there anymore. As long as she was with him, she could almost enjoy it.
“But I don’t love him just because he saved me,” Claire continued, breaking Helen out of her thoughts about Orion. “Jason is one of the best people I’ve ever met. I would admire him regardless.”
“Then forget what your grandmother thinks,” Helen said with a firm nod.
“Ugh, I wish I could! But the old boot never shuts up,” Claire groaned as she tugged on the door and walked in with Helen, both of them laughing again. Helen had forgotten how great it felt to just goof off with Claire. She began her day in high spirits.
The rest of the morning, however, was like a slow dive into a state of exhaustion. Helen had to keep shaking herself awake, and several times her teachers reprimanded her for nearly dozing off. Somehow she managed to stumble through the morning and met back up with Claire at lunch.
Sitting at their usual table, Helen saw Matt on the other side of the cafeteria and signaled for him to join them. As he made his way over, Claire elbowed Helen and pointed out all the girls staring and whispering as Matt passed.
He had a cut on his lip and scrapes on his knuckles that were obviously from fighting. His shirt, which had been a bit too loose a month ago, looked a little tight now. Through the slightly strained material it was easy to see that his chest and shoulder muscles were positively shredded. He’d lost the baby fat in his face, making him look more chiseled and grown-up; he even walked different, like he was ready for anything.
“Oh my God,” Claire said with a look of disbelief on her face. “Lennie, is Matt a stud?”
Helen nearly snarfed her sandwich and had to hastily swallow her bite to answer. “Right? Matt’s, like, a total babe all of a sudden!”
Claire and Helen paused, looked at each other, and said, “EEEWWW!” at exactly the same time before bursting out laughing.
“What is it?” Matt asked when he got to the table, giving them both weird looks. He pointed to Helen’s sandwich and took a guess. “Cucumber and vegemite?”
“No, ding-dong, it’s not the sandwich,” Claire said, wiping her eyes and still winding down from the laugh. “It’s you! You’re officially a hottie now!”
“Oh, shut it,” he said as a blush instantly colored his face and neck. His eyes darted over to where Ariadne had stopped to chat with another classmate, and then quickly looked away.
“You should make a move,” Helen said in a low voice to Matt while Claire was busy waving Ariadne over.
“And get shot down?” he replied sadly, and shook his head. “Hell no.”
“You don’t know—” Helen began, but Matt cut her off firmly.
“Yeah, I do.”
When Ariadne joined them, Helen had no choice but to let it go, but she honestly couldn’t see what Matt’s problem was. She knew for a fact that Ariadne cared about him, and maybe all Matt needed to do was take a chance and just kiss her, like Jason had with Claire. Again Helen was reminded of Orion and the memory of how his lips felt.
“Helen?” Ariadne said.
Helen looked up and saw everyone staring at her. “Yes?” she said, bewildered and a bit startled.
“You didn’t hear a word any of us just said, did you?” Cassandra asked.
“Sorry,” Helen replied defensively. When did Cassandra get here? she wondered.
“Did you dream last night?” Cassandra asked, like she was repeating herself. Helen shook her head. Cassandra sat back in her chair and folded her arms, her naturally bright red lips pursed in worried thought.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Claire said to Helen, looking both concerned and guilty.
“I don’t know,” Helen mumbled. “I haven’t dreamed in so long I guess I forgot to mention it.”
“Well, Orion didn’t,” Cassandra said in her eerily calm way. Then her face changed dramatically and she leaned toward Helen, looking exactly like a normal girl for a second. “Is Orion always so . . .” She broke off, unable to frame her question properly.
“Funny? Pig-headed? Huge?” Helen fired off in rapid succession, trying to answer Cassandra’s question with whatever Orion-ish word popped into her cluttered head.
“Is he really big?” Ariadne asked curiously. “Like the original Orion?”
“He’s enormous,” Helen answered quickly, trying not to blush. A few more descriptive words bubbled up inside of her head as she thought about Orion, but she kept those to herself. “Help me out here, Cass. Is he always so what?”
“Unpredictable,” Cassandra finally decided.
“Yeah. That’s actually a great word to describe him. Wait, how can you know that?”
“I didn’t see him coming,” she said, more to herself than anyone else.
“What are you talking about? Did he text you or something?” Helen asked, growing more and more confused. “I never gave him your number.”
“Lucas did.” Cassandra acted like everyone knew this.
“What?”
“Orion texted my brother first thing this morning.”
“How did Orion get . . .” Helen stumbled horribly, and stopped breathing. She couldn’t say both Orion’s and Lucas’s names in the same sentence for the life of her.
The bell rang, and everyone else gathered their things while Helen stared off into space, unable to get past the thought of Lucas. Helen knew she was so sleep deprived that she had become cerebrally impaired, but even so, she knew that it was Lucas’s name and not Orion’s that had dealt the knockout punch to her nervous system.
“Why didn’t you say something, Len?” Claire asked in a hurt voice. She automatically grabbed Helen’s dangling arm and dragged her along to her next class when Helen didn’t respond to the bell.
“Say what?” Helen mumbled, still in a daze.
“This morning! You didn’t say one thing about how you’re, you know . . . you let me go on and on about Jason, like it was nothing.”
“Gig, don’t,” Helen said gently. “I’d so much rather hear about how happy you are than talk about how messed up I am. Really. It helps me to hear that good things are still happening in the world, especially when they’re happening to you. I want you to be insultingly happy for the rest of your life, no matter what happens to me. You know that, right?”
“God, you’re really dying, aren’t you?” Claire gasped quietly. “Jason said so, but I didn’t believe him.”
“I’m not dead yet,” Helen said through a weak laugh as she backed into the room. “Get to class, Gig. I’m sure I’ll survive social studies, at least.”
Claire waved sadly at her and then trotted down the hall while Helen went in and sat at her usual seat. She watched in shock as Zach came and sat next to her. He tried to say something but she cut him off.
“I can’t believe you actually have the nerve,” Helen said. She got up and took her stuff, but Zach grabbed her arm as she walked past.
“Please, Helen, you’re in danger. Tomorrow . . .” he said in an urgent whisper.
“Don’t touch me,” Helen hissed, pulling her wrist out of his grip.
Zach’s face fell and his eyes looked up at her desperately. For a moment, Helen felt bad for him. Then she thought about how he’d almost gotten Hector killed at the track meet and her softening heart turned back into stone. She might have known Zach since grade school, but those days were long gone. Helen moved to another desk and didn’t look at him again.
After school, Helen and Claire ran track and then went to the Delos compound together. When they got there no one was around. Not even Noel, who had left a message taped to the refrigerator informing any hungry person who came into the kitchen that there was nothing to eat and she’d be back in a few hours with groceries. Claire and Helen grimaced at each other when they read the note, then they raided the cupboards for anything they could find to quiet their rumbling post-run tummies. Over their pilfered snack, they sorted out why the house was so darn empty.
Pallas and Castor were still in New York, deep in the never-ending bickering of Conclave. According to their last letter, there was still no decision about permanently getting rid of the Myrmidon, although they had ruled that he wasn’t allowed to take up residence on the island. Which was useless, anyway, because it turned out that this whole time he’d been living on a yacht. Jason and Lucas were at football practice, and since Cassandra’s cello was missing from the library, Helen and Claire assumed that she and Ariadne were at school rehearsing for the play.
Somehow, the two Delos girls had gotten roped into playing the music for the winter production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Neither of them had the time, but Cassandra was especially peeved about it. She no longer saw the point in trying to appear normal when her underdeveloped body and her uncanny stillness so obviously signaled that she wasn’t. Helen knew that maintaining appearances was important, but she had to agree. No amount of volunteering could make Cassandra seem like a normal fourteen-going-on-fifteen-year-old, so why torture the poor girl with theater?
“Hey, Gig?” Helen mused while she and Claire polished off the last of Jason’s hidden stash of chocolate chip cookies. “How much do you weigh?”
“Right now? Probably about a thousand pounds,” Claire said, brushing cookie crumbs off her lap. “Why?”
“I want to try something that might be kind of dangerous. Are you game?”
“I’m so game I should change my name to Yahtzee,” Claire replied smoothly with a hell-raiser grin.
Horsing around the whole way, Helen led her out to the arena while Claire continually tried and failed to hip-bump, trip, and or shoulder-throw her much larger and supernaturally strong friend. When they finally got out to the middle of the sand, after much staggering and giggling, Helen grew serious, telling Claire to hold still. She stood close to Claire, and concentrated on her petite friend’s mass.
“Len, that tickles!” Claire giggled. “What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to make you weightless so I can finally show you what it feels like to fly,” Helen murmured, her eyes still closed. “Maybe put your hands on my shoulders?”
Claire eagerly did as Helen asked. She’d always wanted to know what Helen and Lucas experienced when they soared effortlessly into the air, but until now, Helen had been too uncertain of her ability to agree to try it with Claire. Lucas had warned her that carrying a passenger would be difficult, but that didn’t scare Helen so much anymore. She figured if she didn’t try it now, she might never get the chance again.
As soon as Claire leaned into Helen, the two of them floated up about ten feet in the air. Claire gasped with awe.
“I feel . . . It’s amazing!” Claire’s voice wavered with elation, and although Helen was still concentrating on all the variables that kept the two of them aloft, she had to smile.
Flying really was amazing, and despite what Lucas had said, Helen was surprised to find that lifting Claire was complicated, but not draining. She knew Lucas wouldn’t mislead her about something like this, so she had no choice but admit to herself what he’d been telling her all along. She was stronger than he was. Emboldened, Helen rose even higher.
“What the hell are you doing?” Jason screamed from the ground below them, startling them both.
Claire screeched, and Helen’s concentration faltered. Before she could recover, the two of them started to drop quickly. Looking below, Helen could see that they had soared up higher than she’d thought. Even though she and Claire had fallen a long ways, they were still nearly thirty feet above Jason, Cassandra, Ariadne, and Matt, who were all staring up at them with panicked faces.
“Let her down now!” Jason commanded furiously.
“Jason, I’m fine,” Claire called in a soothing voice, but he wouldn’t listen.
“Now, Helen,” he growled. Even from so high up, Helen could see that Jason was bright red with anger. She decided she’d better do as he said before he popped a vein or something, and she began to gently lower Claire down to him.
She was still about ten feet off the ground when Jason jumped up and snatched Claire out of the air, forcing Helen to release her entirely. He was so angry he couldn’t even look at Claire as he put her down on her own two feet. He rounded on Helen as soon as she touched down in front of him.
“How could you be so selfish?” he asked in a strangled voice.
“Selfish?” Helen squeaked incredulously. “I’m selfish?”
“Did you ever consider how badly you could have hurt Claire if you dropped her?” He got louder and more wound up with every word. “Do you have a concept for how long a broken leg hurts a full mortal even after it’s healed? It can cause them pain for the rest of their lives!”
“Jason,” Claire tried to interrupt, but Helen was already yelling back at him.
“She’s my best friend!” Helen howled. “I would never let anything bad happen to her!”
“You can’t promise that. None of us can promise her that because of what we are!” he howled back.
“Jase . . .” Ariadne put a calming hand on her twin’s arm. He shook it off roughly and then turned on her.
“You’re no better, Ari. You won’t date Matt, but you think training him is going to help?” Condemnation seethed out of him. “How many times do we have to see it before we finally accept the truth? Full mortals don’t live for very long around Scions. Or hadn’t you noticed that we don’t have a mother?”
“Jason! Enough!” Ariadne exclaimed. Shocked tears sprang to her eyes.
But Jason was already done. In one quick motion, he whirled around, shied away from Claire’s reaching hands, and headed straight for the darkening beach. Claire backpedaled after him, giving Helen a pleading look. Helen mouthed the word “sorry” and in response, Claire sighed and shrugged, like there was nothing either of them could do. Then she left to chase Jason, who was rapidly retreating into the gathering shadows of the beach.
“This is my mom, Aileen, and Aunt Noel when they were in college together in New York City,” Ariadne said. She removed a picture that was sandwiched between the pages of a book on a shelf over her bed, and jumped down to hand it to Helen.
The photo showed two stunning young women behind a packed bar, pouring drinks. They had a sassy way about them that Helen admired right away, and they were laughing together uproariously as they served multicolored cocktails to the smeared waves of people in front of them.
“Look at Noel!” Helen burst out in surprise. “Is she wearing leather pants?”
“She sure is,” Ariadne said with a painful grimace. “I guess she and my mom were a little on the wild side when they were younger. They used to work in nightclubs and trendy restaurants all over the city to pay their tuition. That’s actually how they met my dad and Uncle Castor. In a nightclub.”
“Your mom was very beautiful,” Helen said, and she meant it. Aileen was slender, but still curvy and ultrafeminine. She had the black hair and the deep golden-brown skin of a Latin American. “But she doesn’t . . .”
“Look anything like us? No. Scions look like other Scions from history. We inherit nothing from our mortal parents,” Ariadne said sadly. “I think it would have been easier on my dad if he could look at us and see something of her living on. He loved her very much—still does to this day.”
“Yeah, I know,” Helen mumbled, and she was surprised to realize that she did know. Somehow she could sense how deeply this stranger in the photo had been loved. Looking at the way Aileen and Noel were cracking each other up, Helen couldn’t help but think of herself and Claire. “They were really close, huh?”
“Best friends since they were babies,” Ariadne said pointedly. “There’s a pattern, a cycle, to everything in our lives, Helen. Certain themes pop up over and over for Scions. Two brothers, or cousins who were raised like brothers, falling in love with two sisters, or almost sisters, is one of those cycles.”
“And only one of these women is still alive,” Helen said quietly, finally understanding Jason’s overprotectiveness. “Well, Jason has nothing to worry about. I’d die before I’d let anything happen to Claire.”
“Unfortunately, Scions don’t get to choose things like that,” Ariadne said with narrowed eyes. “My father would have died for my mother, but it doesn’t always end up in some heroic battle to save the person you love, you know. Sometimes, people just get killed. Especially around our kind.”
“What happened to your mom?” All this time, and Helen had never asked any of the Delos kids this question. Maybe Jason was right, Helen thought. Maybe she was selfish.
“Wrong place, wrong time,” Ariadne replied as she reclaimed the photo of her laughing mother and tucked it tenderly back between the pages of Anne of Green Gables. “Most Scions would do just about anything to avoid killing a full mortal. But more often than not, a full mortal will get killed completely by accident just because he or she is near a Scion. That’s why my father and my brother think we should stay away from anyone who could get hurt.”
“But you’re training Matt.”
“I never knew my mother. Everyone tells me she had a big mouth and a fiery Latina temper.” Ariadne shook her head with remorse. “But being tough isn’t enough. My father never taught my mother anything about how Scions fight, and I think that must have had something to do with why she died. I’m not delusional. I know Matt could never beat a Scion, but that’s not what this is about. If I don’t at least give him a skill set, then I’d never be able to forgive myself if he gets hurt. Does this make any sense?”
Helen nodded and took Ariadne’s shaking hands between her own. “Yeah, it does. I had no idea things were that serious between you and Matt.”
“It’s not like that,” Ariadne said quickly, but then she tossed her head back in exasperation and sighed at the ceiling. It was a gesture Helen had seen from Jason many times when he fought with Claire. “Honestly? I don’t know what’s between us. I can’t decide if I’m insulted he hasn’t tried anything or if I should be happy he hasn’t tempted me.”
It was obvious how torn Ariadne was. Helen didn’t know what to say, and eventually decided that maybe Ariadne didn’t need anyone else telling her what to do. Instead of trying to give advice, Helen just sat there, holding her hand while she thought it through for herself.
“Ari, do you know where . . .” Lucas said as he opened the bedroom door. He froze when he saw Helen. “Sorry. I should have knocked.”
“Who are you looking for?” Ariadne said, almost like she was testing him.
Lucas dropped his eyes and closed the door without answering her question. Helen told herself to breathe and forced herself to move her body in some way so she wouldn’t seem so dumbstruck, but Ariadne noticed, anyway.
“You too? Still?” she asked in a slightly disgusted way. “Helen. He’s your cousin.”
“I know that,” Helen said in a strained voice, holding out her hands in a pleading gesture. “You think I want to feel this? Do you know that I actually prefer being in the Underworld now because at least there I know I’m away from this sickness? How wrong is that!”
“All of this is really, really wrong,” Ariadne said compassionately, but almost begging Helen. “I’m so sorry for you both, but you have to stop this. Incest, even if it is unintentional incest where the two Scions don’t know they’re related, is another theme that gets repeated again and again. It always ends in the worst possible way. You know that, right?”
“Yes. I read Oedipus Rex—I know how this story ends—but what are my options? Do you have any ancient home remedies that will make me fall out of love with him?” Helen asked, being only partly sarcastic.
“Stay away from each other!” Ariadne snapped.
“You were right there when he lost his mind and told me I wasn’t even allowed to look at him,” Helen shouted back. “And that lasted for what? Nine days? We can’t stay away from each other. Circumstances always bring us back together, no matter what we do to each other.”
A big bubble of desperation was rising and swelling in Helen’s chest, and Ariadne’s pitying look was enough to make it burst. She stood up and started pacing. “I’ve literally gone to hell and back looking for a place to dump these feelings that I have for him, but I haven’t found a hole wide enough or deep enough. So, please, tell me you have an idea, because I’m out of theories, and if what Cassandra says is true, I’m out of time, too.”
Helen felt a pop behind her eyes and raised a hand to cover the gush of warm blood soaking her lips. Ariadne sat in stunned stillness on the edge of her bed while Helen ran to the window, wrenched it open, and jumped out.
Helen accelerated straight up. She wanted to see the thin blue line of air around the earth as it faded into black sky one more time. She wanted it fresh in her mind when she laid her head down that night. She was pretty certain that if she didn’t have some sort of miraculous epiphany, she would never pick her head up again.
Cleaning the freezing blood off her face as best she could with the edge of her shirt, Helen stared at the slowly spinning earth. It was nightfall on her side of the planet, but she could still make out the gossamer layer of atmosphere. It was just a fragile sliver of nearly nothing that kept life on one side and frozen oblivion on the other. Helen marveled that something that looked so delicate could be so powerful. Another gift from Lucas, she thought, smiling at the humbling sight.
Helen shut her eyes and let herself float. She was up high, higher than she had ever gone before, and the tug of the earth was so slight that for a moment she wondered if she could cut the final thread of gravity that tied her to the world and drift all the way to the moon.
A steely hand clamped onto the back of her jacket, yanking her down and nearly tearing her clothes off. Helen twisted around as she tumbled back to earth, and saw Lucas’s tortured face as he pulled her against him.
“What are you doing?” he gasped into her ear, clamping her tight to his panting chest as he rapidly sank them both back down. His throat was so pinched with emotion his voice broke repeatedly as he tried to talk. “Were you trying to drift off into space? You know that would kill you, right?”
“I know, Lucas. I . . . it feels good to just let go.” She realized that she had said his name aloud for the first time in ages. It was such a relief to finally have his name in her mouth again that she laughed. “I like to do it sometimes. Haven’t you ever?”
“Yeah. I have,” he admitted, still clutching at her and digging his face deeper and deeper into her neck as he floated them down from the cold night sky. He whispered in her ear. “But your eyes were closed. I thought you had blacked out.”
“I’m sorry. I thought I was alone,” she whispered back.
She knew she should ask, but she honestly didn’t care how Lucas got there. She held on to him tighter and tighter, as if she were trying to push him inside her chest and wrap her skin around him.
This was Lucas, and she wanted to hold on to him, hold on to the person he was in this moment, before he had a chance to turn into the angry stranger again. He sighed deeply and said her name before pulling back from her hug and searching for Helen’s widow’s walk.
“Where’s Jerry?” he asked as they hovered over her house. The Pig, Jerry’s ancient Jeep Wrangler, was conspicuously absent from the driveway and none of the interior lights were on.
“Probably still working,” Helen said, never taking her eyes off him. “Will you come in? Or is this about to get ugly again?”
“I promised you, no more fighting. It didn’t work, anyway,” Lucas said, and tugged Helen down to land with her on her widow’s walk.
“You did do it on purpose, didn’t you?” For a moment they stood there staring at each other through the heavy silence. “Did your father have anything to do with it?”
“It was my choice,” he said heavily.
She waited for him to explain himself, but he didn’t. He didn’t try to make any excuses or push the blame off onto someone else. Instead, Lucas left it up to Helen to decide what was going to happen between them next. She punched his chest in frustration, not as hard as she could, but hard enough to make him feel something. He didn’t try to stop her.
“How could you do that to me!” she cried, just short of howling.
“Helen.” He caught her tight fists and pressed them to the place on his chest that she had hit. “What else could I do? We were together all the time again. Sitting together, telling each other our deepest secrets, and it was confusing you. You have more important things to think about than me.”
“Do you have any idea how much that hurt?” she asked in a strangled voice, wanting to hit him again, but finding that her hands relaxed of their own accord and smoothed over him instead.
“Yes.” He spoke so tenderly Helen knew that he was just as hurt by their separation as she was. “And the consequences will stay with me for the rest of my life.”
Her brow wrinkled with worry. She knew that he wasn’t exaggerating—Lucas had changed. His face was so pale it reflected the moonlight, and his eyes were a dark blue that bordered on black. It was like looking at the midnight twin of her sunshine Lucas. He was still beautiful, but so sad it was painful for her to look at him.
After everything he’d put her through, Helen knew she should want to punish him, but she didn’t. Somewhere along the way she had laced her arms around his neck and he had started running his hands up and down her back, and she wasn’t the least bit angry anymore.
Staring into his eyes, she could see an odd gloom creeping around in there, trying to snuff out the glow she’d always found inside of him. But before she could figure out how to ask him what he meant by “consequences,” Lucas changed the subject and pulled away from her.
“I had a long exchange with Orion today,” he said, opening the door on the widow’s walk that went downstairs into the house and holding it open for Helen. “He had a feeling that you weren’t telling us everything about what was going on in the Underworld. He asked me to help. He cares about you very much.”
“I know that.” Helen led him into the house and down to her cold bedroom. “But he’s wrong. I’m not keeping anything from anyone. It’s just that I figured there’s no help for me, so why go into the details? I’m not dreaming, Lucas. How does Orion think you or anyone else can fix that?”
Lucas slumped down on the edge of Helen’s bed, shrugged off his jacket, and kicked off his shoes while he thought. He was so comfortable in her room, it was like he belonged there. Helen’s every instinct screamed that Lucas did belong in her bedroom, despite the fact that they both knew he shouldn’t be there.
“I descended into the Underworld the other night. At first, it was to see if I could help you in any way—without interfering, of course. And then after a few hours it was just to watch the two of you together. For a lot of reasons,” Lucas finally admitted, laying all his cards on the table. “Anyway, I got sloppy. Orion saw me there and worked out how I did it. He got in touch with me today to tell me why you were dying, and together we realized that I might have the one thing you need to get well again. So I guess I did find a way to help you after all.” He swung his legs up onto her bed and settled back against the pillows.
Helen stopped dead. She wanted to stare at him all night, lying in her bed like that, as perfect as could be, but she couldn’t get past what he’d just told her.
“You descended into the Underworld? When? How?” she asked, trying not to squeak.
“Saturday night. Ares saw me hiding in the boneyard and talked to me. I was the other ‘little godling.’ Remember? Then I distracted Cerberus when she chased you.”
“The yodeler?” Helen asked in disbelief. “Wait, she’s a she?”
“Yes,” he said through a chuckle. “I was the yodeler and Cerberus is a she-wolf. Now go wash up. I’ll be right here.”
“But . . .”
“Hurry,” he urged. “I had to wait until you were away from our family to bring you this, but I can’t stand to see you so sick for much longer.”
Helen bolted into the bathroom and nearly washed her mouth out with soap and brushed her face with toothpaste, she was shaking so badly. She stripped and scrubbed and flossed and combed pretty much everything at the same time before jumping into clean pajamas and running back into her bedroom.
He was still there, just like he’d promised, and Helen’s last nagging doubts evaporated. The unnatural separation was over, and they weren’t going to start yelling at each other or pushing each other away anymore.
“Oh, good. I’m not hallucinating,” she said, only half kidding. “Or dreaming.”
“But you need to dream,” he said softly across the room, staring at her. Helen shook her head.
“This is better,” she said certainly. “Even if it kills me, staying awake and seeing you in my bed is better than any dream.”
“You’re not supposed to say things like that,” he reminded her.
He closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them he smiled resolutely and lifted up the edge of the covers. Helen ran and dove into them, beside herself with happiness. She didn’t care about right or wrong anymore. She was dying, she reasoned; shouldn’t she at least die happy? Helen turned over onto her back and lifted her arms up to him invitingly, but he captured her face between his palms and made her settle back into the bed. He hovered over her, on top of the covers, pinning her safely beneath them.
“This is an obol,” he said, holding up a small gold coin. “We Scions put them under the tongues of our dead loved ones before we burn their bodies on the pyre. The obol is the money the dead use to pay Chiron, the Ferryman, to leave the shadow lands, cross the River Styx, and enter the Underworld. But this obol is special, and very rare. It wasn’t made for the Ferryman. It’s for another dweller of the shadow lands.”
Lucas held up the coin so Helen could see it clearly. On one side there were stars and on the other side there was a flower.
“Is that a poppy?” Helen asked, trying to remember where she had seen this little gold coin before. A newspaper headline flashed into her thoughts. “You stole these from the Getty! Lucas, you broke into a museum!”
“That’s part of the reason why I can’t let my family know I’m here, trying this. But you know my real reason . . . cousin,” Lucas said.
He suddenly leaned down and brushed his lips across her cheek, but he didn’t kiss her. It was more like he was inhaling her. Feeling his warm lips so close to her skin made her shiver.
Helen knew exactly why he had to hide this from his family. Theft was nothing compared to the immorality of what they were doing. Helen knew she should be disgusted that she was in bed with someone who was so closely related to her, but she couldn’t seem to convince her body that it shouldn’t want Lucas. Matt felt like her brother, Orion felt new and strange and so intense it was a little dangerous, but Lucas felt right. If other men were houses, Lucas was her home.
How could she be so mixed up? She pushed against him gently to make him lean back and look at her. She still needed answers, and she couldn’t think with his face so close to hers.
“Lucas, why did you steal them?”
“This obol isn’t for Chiron. It was forged for Morpheus, the god of dreams. This will bring your whole body down to the land of dreams when you fall asleep.”
“The land of dreams and the land of the dead are right next to each other,” Helen said, finally understanding why he did it. “You stole them to follow me down, didn’t you?”
He nodded and ran his fingers across her face. “There’s an old legend, that says if you give Morpheus a poppy obol he may let you visit the land of dreams still in your body. I thought if I offered him a trade he might let me cross his lands and go all the way to the Underworld. I didn’t know if it would work, but what choice did I have? When I saw you Saturday morning in the hallway . . .”
“You jumped out a window,” Helen reminded him. A smile crept across her face as she realized that she had just done pretty much the same thing to Ariadne.
“To go steal these,” he said, smiling down at her. “I knew you were sick, I knew that pushing you away hadn’t helped, and I couldn’t sit back anymore and watch. I had to go down into the Underworld and find out why. Orion got a glimpse of me following the two of you and figured out on his own who I had to be. Then he mostly figured out how I was able to get into the Underworld.”
“Mostly?” Helen asked.
“He thought that since I’m a Son of Apollo, it had something to do with music. Which wasn’t a bad guess,” Lucas admitted begrudgingly.
“You do have a beautiful voice,” Helen said. She wanted to keep Lucas talking, just to hear that voice and feel him stretched out next to her in her bed for as long as she could. “But why music?”
“Orion originally thought I was doing what Orpheus did when he followed his dead wife into the Underworld to try and sing her back to life. But eventually, he put the stolen obols together with me, changed Orpheus to Morpheus, and guessed how I did it. Then he told me why you were so sick and asked me to try this with you,” Lucas said in such a way that led Helen to suspect a lot more had gone on in those text conversations than Lucas was letting on. “He’s a smart guy.”
“What? Are you two best friends now?” Helen asked with raised eyebrows. Lucas swallowed painfully like she’d hurt him. Concerned, Helen reached out and ran her hand across his face, trying to wipe away the sadness that had appeared there so fast.
“I respect him. Even if he won’t do what I ask.” His voice came out rough and thick. “It’s time for you to sleep.”
“I’m not tired,” she said quickly, winning a little laugh from Lucas.
“You’re exhausted! No more arguing,” he admonished sternly, although his playful look robbed the words of their sting. “Ask Morpheus to give you dreams again. He was very kind to me. I have no doubt he’ll help you if he can.”
“Will you stay?” Helen asked. She stared at him, adoring him. “Please, stay with me?”
“As long as I can stand it,” he promised, shivering. “I never get cold, but damn! It’s freezing in here.”
“Tell me about it,” Helen said, rolling her eyes. “Come and keep me warm.” Lucas gave a small laugh and shook his head, like he didn’t know what to do with her.
Staying on top of the covers, he settled in, allowing Helen to scoot down into a comfortable position. He folded her arms into an X across her chest and smoothed her hair back like he was laying her in her grave. He looked down on her intensely.
“Open your mouth,” Lucas whispered.
Helen could feel him shaking and watched a myriad emotions play across his face as he tucked the heavy gold wafer under her tongue. It was still warm with his body heat, slightly salty, and the weight of it in her mouth was remarkably comforting. Lucas reached out and gently closed her eyelids. Keeping his hand cupped over her eyes, Helen felt him brush his lips across her cheek as he leaned close to her ear.
“Don’t let Morpheus seduce you. . . .”
Starry skies and inky strips of silk surrounded Helen. She was inside a tent that had no top, just undulating walls of dark, slippery sheets that seemed to breathe slowly as they caught and released a gentle and ever-changing breeze. Here and there between the swaths of material were austere Doric columns carved out of black pearl marble. Dim follow-me lights danced down the passageways, hovering in the night air. As one neared Helen, she saw that up close they looked like tiny candle flames glowing inside iridescent bubbles.
The grass beneath her feet was covered by a field of poppies, their heads nodding drunkenly with the passing winds. Despite the darkness, Helen could feel the cool dewiness of the flowers and see the golden pollen that sparkled inside the bloodred blooms.
About a dozen steps away from where she had emerged into this night-world, silk sheets and voluminous pillows of midnight blue, charcoal gray, and deepest purple spilled over the edges of the largest and most luxurious bed Helen had ever seen. The stars twinkled overhead and the piles of silk seemed to wink back at them like glittering oil slicks in the ghostly blue-moon light. A pair of ivory white arms, followed by a man’s naked chest, rose up from the dark mass of cradling material as he took a nice, long stretch.
“I’ve been calling out to you, Beauty. I’m so glad you’re finally here.” His voice was familiar. “Beauty and Sleep. Sleeping Beauty. We were made for each other, you know. All the sayings say it. Now come and lie down with me.”
His infectiously playful tone drew Helen to the edge of the bed. There was something about that voice that was so reassuring and sweet that Helen knew he had to be the gentlest soul in this or any other universe.
She looked down into the gigantic bed, and saw Morpheus, the god of dreams. He had the whitest skin Helen had ever seen, shiny masses of wavy, black hair, and long slender limbs of delicately carved muscle. Stripped to the waist, he wore silk pajama pants of such a deep wine red that, like all the other colors of his sleeping palace, bordered on black, but never quite reached it.
Morpheus looked up at Helen with startling white-blue eyes that looked almost like liquid mercury. He snuggled into the not-quite black of the silk sheets. For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night, Whiter than new snow upon a raven’s back, Helen thought as she took in the contrast of his skin on the sheets, wondering where she had heard those lines of poetry. Whoever wrote them, she thought, must have spent many nights with Morpheus.
“It’s your voice I’ve been hearing in my head. Little sneak,” Helen said, smiling down at the exquisite, half-naked man. “I thought I was going crazy.”
“You were, Beauty. That’s why you could hear me so clearly. I called and called to you, but you ignored me so I finally went away. Now come and lie down,” he complained prettily, holding out one of his milk-white hands. “It’s been far too long since I’ve held you.”
Helen didn’t even have to think about it. She had never laid eyes on this god before, but she knew him. After all, she had spent nearly every night of her life cradled in his arms. There was nothing Morpheus didn’t know about her, no wicked little secret that she had been able to hide from him, and he appeared to love her, anyway. In fact, from the way his starlit eyes gazed up at her, Helen could tell he adored her.
She smiled with relief, slipped her hand into his, and sighed as she let her head fall against his smooth, moonbeam-bright chest. Every muscle in her body let go as wave upon wave of soothing relaxation rolled through her exhausted limbs. For the first time in months, Helen experienced true rest. Just moments in the god’s arms made up for all those weeks of dreamlessness.
Morpheus made a sound in his chest, a deep rumbling hum of pleasure, and stroked her face. Gently coaxing her lips apart, he slid two fingers into her mouth and claimed his coin.
“But you didn’t need to bring payment to visit me. In the many hours you spend with your eyes closed before or after you descend into the Underworld, you are free to dream. You could have floated in with any of the other sleeping minds whenever you wanted,” he said, gesturing to the playful winds that constantly buffeted the tent, occasionally drifting in to ruffle his long, soft hair. “You have more control than you know, Helen. You can even visit me here in body without an obol if you want.”
“But I can’t visit you,” Helen protested, slightly confused. “Even when I don’t descend into the Underworld, I haven’t been able to dream.”
“Because you’re afraid of what you’ll find in your dreams, not because any outside force is stopping you. You feel so much guilt for what you want, you can’t even face it in your sleep.” Morpheus lifted Helen, and placed her on top of him so she was looking directly down on him. He dug his fingers into her hair and made it fan around them like a golden curtain that closed them in together.
“I can dream whenever I want?” Helen asked, already knowing the answer. The moment Helen had learned that Lucas was her cousin, she had stopped dreaming by choice. She’d just never admitted it to herself before.
“My troubled Beauty. I hate to see anyone suffer, you most of all. Stay here with me and be my queen and I will fulfill all your dreams.”
The face and body beneath her shifted and changed into a more familiar form. Helen gasped and pulled back. It was Lucas who sat up and gently gripped her arms.
“I can be this one as often as you like, and you needn’t feel guilty because I’m not actually him,” Lucas said. Helen felt him pull her close and didn’t resist. It was all a dream, right? She ran her hands across his chest and allowed him to kiss her lightly as he spoke. “Or, I can be others. The other one you want so much. Maybe more . . .”
Helen felt the mouth against hers grow fuller and softer, and felt the bare shoulders under her hands thicken. She opened her eyes and found Orion kissing her. Pulling away, Helen wondered anxiously what Morpheus meant by this. He knew her deepest dreams, so why had he turned Lucas into Orion?
Orion pushed her onto her back, and she couldn’t help but laugh when he jumped on top of her with a naughty grin. He was so much fun, and being with him was so uncomplicated. With Lucas, she could be completely herself, but with Orion she could be whomever she felt like being at the moment. The thought was intoxicating.
Orion slid her hands up over her head, pinning her under him. The giddy mood dissipated as quickly as it arose, and Orion’s face grew serious.
Helen suddenly understood Lucas’s last warning. She could not allow herself to be seduced or she would never leave this bed. Although she didn’t want to, Helen shook her head, preventing Orion from leaning down to kiss her. Morpheus took his own shape again and propped himself up on his elbows over her with a boyish sigh.
“You are downright addictive,” Helen said sadly.
She allowed herself to consider what it would be like to live forever in this dream palace with this god. She combed her fingers through his hair, making a midnight tent out of his long locks around their faces, the reverse of what he had done with her sunny blonde hair moments ago.
“But I can’t stay here,” she said, pushing him back and sitting up. “There are too many things I have to accomplish in the world.”
“Dangerous things,” he countered with genuine concern. “Ares has been seeking you in the shadow lands.”
“Do you know why he’s looking for me?”
“You know why.” Morpheus laughed softly. “He’s watching your progress. What you do here in the Underworld will change many lives, including quite a few immortal ones. But for better or worse, no one can say.”
“How did Ares get down here, Morpheus? Is Hades helping him break the Truce?” Helen knew somehow that Morpheus would be honest with her.
“The Underworld, the dry lands, and the shadow lands are not part of the Truce. The Twelve Olympians can’t go to Earth, and that’s the only rule they swore to follow. Many small gods wander the Earth at will, and all the gods come and go from here to Olympus and . . . other places.” Morpheus frowned at his thoughts and then tackled Helen, rolling her onto her back again and holding her in his arms. “Stay with me. I can keep you safe here in my realm, but not outside of it. I see all dreams, you know, even the dreams of the other gods, and I know that Ares is little more than an animal. His only goal is to cause as much suffering and destruction as he can, and he wants very much to hurt you.”
“He’s foul, I agree. But I still can’t stay here and hide in your bed.” Helen groaned, knowing she was probably going to kick herself for this later. “No matter how dangerous it is, I have to go back.”
“Brave Beauty.” The god of dreams looked down on her with an admiring smile. “Now I want you even more.”
“Will you help me, Morpheus?” Helen asked, stroking his shining hair. “I need to get back into the Underworld. Too many have suffered for too long.”
“I know.” Morpheus looked away as he considered Helen’s request. “It is not for me to say whether your quest is good or bad, I can only tell you that I admire your courage in agreeing to undertake it. I hate to lose you, but I love your reasons for choosing to leave.”
Knowing that she might be pushing her luck, Helen decided to take a chance and ask for one more favor.
“Do you know what river Persephone meant? The one I need to draw water from to free the Furies?” she asked. Morpheus cocked his head to the side, like he was trying to recall something.
“Something tells me I used to know,” he said with a puzzled frown. “But no longer. I’m sorry, Beauty, but I’ve forgotten. You’ll have to discover that for yourself.”
Morpheus kissed the tip of her nose and rolled out of bed. He turned back and easily lifted her from the twisted sheets before placing her down on the cool grass with a look of regret. Hand in hand, they walked at an unhurried pace through his palace.
They passed many wondrous rooms filled with fantastical dream imagery. Helen caught glimpses of waterfalls that gushed sparkling liquids of every color, armored dragons atop hoarded riches, their nostrils smoking with barely banked fires, and winged elfin people dancing with the follow-me lights. But the most spectacular room was a large, twinkling cavern, filled with pile after pile of heaped coins.
Above each pile a large cylinder hovered weightless in the night sky. The cylinders were made out of brick, stone, or concrete. Some seemed to be thousands of years old and were crumbling with moss; others looked newly constructed and very modern. One or two even had buckets hanging from ropes dangling out of the bottoms, which Helen found strangely kitschy.
“What is this place?” she asked in awe. The space seemed to go on and on—so far into the dark distance that she couldn’t see an end to it.
“Ever throw a coin down a well and make a wish?” Morpheus asked. “All wishing wells, past and present, end here in the land of dreams. It’s all a misunderstanding, really. I can’t make dreams come true in real life, no matter how much money people shower me with. The only thing I can do is give them vivid visions of their deepest wishes in their sleep. I try to make them as real as possible.”
“Very thoughtful of you.”
“Well, it doesn’t feel right to take people’s money without giving them something in return,” he said with a sly smile. “And all this could be yours, you know.”
“Honestly?” Helen said with a raised eyebrow. “Your warm bed was more tempting than all the cold coins in the world.”
As if on cue, Helen heard a pinging sound and saw a far-off glint as one of the enormous piles shifted to welcome another shiny wish.
“I’m deeply flattered.”
Morpheus led her away from the room of wishing wells and out of the palace. Standing under an awning, Helen looked across the palace grounds and saw a great tree that stood alone in the middle of a vast plain.
“Beyond that tree is the land of the dead. Stand under the branches and tell Hades that you will not try to capture his queen. If you mean it, he will not hinder your descents into the Underworld.”
“How will he know if I mean it?” Helen asked, surprised. “Is Hades a Falsefinder?”
“Yes, in a way. He can see into people’s hearts—a necessary talent for one who would rule the Underworld. The one who would rule must be able to judge the souls of the dead and decide where those souls are to be sent.” Morpheus’s answer came with a quixotic little smile.
“What?” Helen asked, bemused by the quirky look on his face. But Morpheus would only shake his head and smile to himself in answer to her question. He walked her across the grounds, right up to the edge of the arching branches of the great tree, and turned to her.
“When you are standing directly under the tree, no matter what you do, don’t look up into the branches,” he warned solemnly.
“Why not?” Helen said, dreading the answer. “What’s in them?”
“Nightmares. Pay them no mind and they can’t hurt you.” He gently released her hand. “I have to leave you now.”
“Really?” Helen asked with a fearful glance over her shoulder at the nightmare tree. Morpheus nodded his head and started to back away. “But how do I get home?” she asked before he could get too far.
“All you have to do is wake up. And Helen,” he called out, almost like he was warning her, “in the coming days, try to remember that dreams do come true, but they don’t come easily.”
Morpheus disappeared into the blending of stars and shimmering lights on the dark lawn, and without him Helen felt very alone. She faced the nightmare tree and balled her fists to steel herself, knowing that the sooner she got it over with, the better. Keeping her eyes down, she strode under the branches.
Immediately, Helen felt a mass of moving things above her. There were strange squeals and she could hear the scratching of claws across bark as the shadowy creatures ran around. The branches would rustle, then shake, then creak ominously as the nightmares jumped up and down on them in an ever-increasing frenzy to catch her attention.
It took all of Helen’s nerve to not look up. For a moment, she felt one lean down right next to her face. She could sense its presence loom close, staring at her. Helen told herself not to look and gritted her teeth to keep them from chattering with fear. Taking a deep breath, she faced the Underworld.
“Hades! I promise I won’t try to free Persephone,” Helen yelled across the barren land.
While she hated the idea of abandoning anyone, Helen knew what she had to do. Persephone was one princess who was going to have to figure out how to get out of the castle tower without a knight in shining armor to rescue her. That didn’t mean that Helen had to like it.
“But I strongly suggest you do the right thing and let her go yourself,” she added.
The nightmares fell silent. Helen heard footfalls in front of her as someone approached, but kept her eyes on the dusty ground of the Underworld side of the tree in case it was a trick.
“What do you know of right and wrong?” asked a surprisingly gentle voice.
Helen dared to raise her eyes, sensing that the nightmares had fled. She saw a very tall, robust figure standing in front of her. The clinging shadows that chased around him were like large, grasping hands. Helen had seen this darkness before. It was the same malevolent pall created by Shadowmasters. It dispersed and Helen could see Hades, the lord of the dead.
He was cloaked in a simple black toga. A cowl obscured his eyes and under that, the cheek plates of his shiny black helmet covered all of his face but the bottom of his nose and his mouth. Helen remembered from her studies that the helmet was called the Helm of Darkness and it made Hades invisible at will.
Her eyes quickly skipped down from what she couldn’t see to take in the rest of him. Hades was commandingly large and he moved and stood with easy grace. His toga was draped elegantly over his bare, muscled arm, and his lips were full, flushed red, and quite beautiful. Although his face was mostly hidden, the rest of him looked healthy and youthful—and unbelievably sensuous. Helen couldn’t take her eyes off him.
“What can one so young know of justice?” he prompted while Helen gawked.
“Not much, I guess,” she finally answered in a wavering voice, still trying to process the enigmatic god in front of her. “But even I know it’s wrong to keep a woman locked away from the world. Especially in this day and age.”
Surprisingly, the full mouth parted in something that was almost like a laugh, and Helen relaxed. The gesture made him seem approachable and human.
“I’m not the monster you think I am, niece,” he said sincerely. “I agreed to honor my oath and be the lord of the dead, but this place is entirely against my wife’s nature. She can only survive here a few months at a time.”
Helen knew this was true. His position as lord of the dead had been forced on him by chance. Hades had drawn the short straw, and while his brothers claimed the sea and the sky as their realms, he had been doomed to the Underworld. The one place the love of his life could not survive for long. It was tragic, a terrible irony, but it was still his choice to imprison Persephone—regardless of how bad a hand the Fates had dealt him.
“Then why do you force her to stay here at all, if you know it causes her pain?”
“We all need joy in our lives, a reason to keep going. Persephone is my only joy, and when we are together I am hers. You are young, but I think you know how it feels to be separated from the one you love because of your obligations.”
“I am sorry for you both,” Helen said sadly. “But I still think you should let her go. Allow her the dignity of choosing for herself if she wants to be here with you or not.”
The funny thing was, Helen could sense that Hades had followed every twist and turn of her emotions as she spoke. She knew that he could read her heart, and she didn’t know if she should be afraid or happy that he would be waiting to judge her heart again on the day of her death.
“You may descend at will, niece,” he said in a kindly way. “But I strongly suggest you ask your Oracle what she thinks of this quest.”
Helen felt herself being scooped up by his mile-wide hand and then gently placed back in her bed. Later, she awoke in her room, freezing cold and dusted with ice crystals, but alert and refreshed for the first time in a long time. The space in the bed next to her was empty.
Lucas had gone, but in a way Helen was relieved. Waking up next to him would have been too hard on them both, especially after what she had experienced with Morpheus.
As Helen thought back, guilt overpowered her, even though she tried to tell herself that feeling guilty didn’t make any sense. She couldn’t be cheating on Lucas with Orion because she wasn’t even supposed to be with Lucas in the first place. It didn’t matter who felt like a house or a home or a frigging motel to her. She and Lucas could never be together. Period.
She had to toughen up, she realized. Some people weren’t meant to live happily ever after, no matter what they felt for each other. Hades and Persephone were a perfect example of that. Hades had told Helen that he and Persephone were each other’s joy, but they were both miserable. Their “love” kept them locked inside prisons that made one of them half dead when they were together and the other half dead when they were apart. That wasn’t joy. Joy was the opposite of a prison. It opened the heart instead of locking it away. Joy was freedom—freedom from sadness, bitterness, and hatred. . . .
Helen had a brain wave.
Throwing the stiff blankets off her, she ran clumsily on dangerously chilled legs to her dresser and grabbed her phone.
I think I know what the Furies need, she texted Orion. Joy. We need to get to the River of Joy. Meet me tonight.
Daphne poured the wine and reminded herself to stand on both feet, like the big, beefy woman she currently looked like, instead of on one leg with a cocked hip, the way she normally would. She could feel the heavy body weighing on her, making her lower back ache slightly. She was over six feet tall and about two hundred pounds, and readjusting her internal awareness to account for all that extra muscle and bone was complicated.
She tried not to yawn. Conclave was never fun, but doing it while wearing the shape of Mildred Delos’s ape of a bodyguard was downright exhausting—not just because of all the extra weight, but because Mildred Delos was a straight-up bitch. She overreacted to everything, like an anxious little dog that barks and growls constantly because it knows it’s surrounded by much stronger animals that would gladly eat it as a snack.
“Scylla! Did you open the pinot gris?” Mildred snapped testily. “I said grigio, not gris. Pinot grigio. It’s an entirely different grape.”
“My mistake,” Daphne-as-Scylla answered calmly. She knew the difference between the two wines, and had done it on purpose. She couldn’t resist baiting Mildred. “Shall I open the grigio?”
“No, this will do,” Mildred said dismissively. “Go stand over there somewhere. I can’t bear how you loom over me all the time.”
Daphne went and stood up against the wall. Mildred could growl all she wanted, but she wasn’t fooling anyone. She was useless now that Creon was dead. She had no Scion child to give her any say among the Hundred, and if she didn’t have another child by Tantalus she would remain powerless—no more than a forgettable footnote in the long history of the House of Thebes. Mildred was an ambitious woman, and Daphne trusted that she would try to get pregnant again soon. That required the presence of her husband.
If there were any other way to find Tantalus again, Daphne would have gladly taken it, but infiltrating Conclave as Mildred’s bodyguard killed two birds with one stone. Daphne needed to be present in case there was anything she could do to help Castor and Pallas in their attempt to get Automedon away from her daughter.
Castor and Pallas didn’t know she was there, of course, or that Hector was staying a few nights a week in one of Daphne’s safe houses in lower Manhattan, but that didn’t matter. Free of the Furies for over a decade now, and capable of wearing any woman’s face she needed to, Daphne had always been able to sway the other Houses from the inside to accomplish her goals. Once Castor and Pallas got Automedon’s boot off her daughter’s throat, Daphne would finally be able to kill Tantalus.
Mildred’s cell phone rang. She looked at the screen and then answered it hastily.
“Tantalus. Did you get my recordings?” Mildred said in a slightly higher than usual voice.
She had been sending recordings of the daily meetings to Tantalus, and even though phone calls were forbidden, he would call with detailed instructions for her every night. Daphne could hear both ends of their nightly conversations because Tantalus had to speak loud enough for his human wife to hear, which was loud enough for any Scion to overhear, even from the other side of the room. As yet, Tantalus hadn’t revealed his location to his wife, and she hadn’t asked. Apparently, neither of them trusted anyone with that information, not even Mildred’s bodyguard.
“I did,” he replied coldly. Daphne imagined herself digitized so she could dive through Mildred’s phone and jump out of Tantalus’s—her hands re-forming solid out of ones and zeros to choke him. “They still call me Outcast. You were supposed to fix that.”
“How? The Hundred won’t listen to me anymore. Everyone listens to Castor now, and since he found out you’re an Outcast he’s been saying it openly. You’ve lost a lot of support,” she replied in a clipped, accusing voice. “And there’s nothing I can do about that, as things are.”
“Not this again,” he sighed. “Our son hasn’t been dead a month and already you want to replace him.”
A long, uncomfortable silence followed.
“Automedon has been slow to respond to my calls,” Tantalus said tersely, breaking the chilly stalemate. “And when he does, he always has a less than satisfying excuse.”
“No,” Mildred said, half rising out of her seat. “What does this mean?”
Daphne had to work to keep her face impassive. Myrmidons were the consummate soldiers. They never ignored their masters.
“I’m not sure,” Tantalus sighed. “It could be nothing, or it could be that he’s working for someone else. Maybe he was already pledged to another master before I hired him. Either way, I don’t think I control him anymore, and if that’s so I can’t stop him from killing Helen if that’s what his other master wants. This cannot happen, or I’m a dead man. Daphne has pledged herself . . .”
“Must you always find a way to bring her up?” Mildred said, a bitter sneer curling her lip. “Do you do it just to say her name?”
“Keep your eyes and ears open, wife,” Tantalus warned, his tone grim. “Or I won’t be alive long enough to give you the Scion baby you need to get your throne back.”
