Halloween morning was overcast and gloomy, just like it should be. The menacing storm clouds overhead added just the right shade of pearl gray to the air, making the autumn colors pop like smears of oil paint on a perfectly primed canvass. It was cold out. Not so cold that being outdoors was intolerable, but just cold enough to make everyone want soup for lunch and candy for dinner.
Helen sent the Greek Geeks a mass text, telling them that Hades had agreed to let her back into the Underworld and that she was out of danger. She didn’t mention Lucas’s obol and she didn’t give any of the details of her meeting with Morpheus. She wanted to let Lucas decide what they were going to tell the family.
She got a few texts back, asking her to explain how she managed to descend after being banished, but she ignored them and posed a question of her own. She wanted to know where the Shadowmaster talent came from.
It developed in the medieval times, and it’s been a part of the House of Thebes ever since, Cassandra replied.
That meant the talent was only about a thousand years old. A thousand years was a long time, but not to Scions who traced their ancestors back almost four times as long as that. Okay. But where’d it come from? Helen persisted.
No one had an answer.
Helen dressed and got ready for school, then went downstairs to cook breakfast for her father, the witch. Having spent the previous day in a dress, Jerry had quickly learned that the only shame in his costume was that it wasn’t elaborate enough. After fielding multiple suggestions from customers for how he could improve his holiday spirit, he had decided to pull out all the stops. He had added a corset to the dress, and wore blue lipstick, clip-on earrings, and pointy-toed boots to add some extra oomph.
“Dad. I think you and I need to have a little chat about your cross-dressing,” Helen said in a mock-serious tone as she poured some coffee. “Just because all the other kids are doing it . . .”
“I know, I know,” he said, grinning into his bacon. “I just can’t get beat by Mr. Tanis at the hardware store. He’s a pirate this year, and you should see his wig! He must have spent a fortune on it! And don’t even get me started on the movie theater around the corner. They’re handing out thirty bags of candied popcorn for one of the night showings. Kate’s is much better, of course, but we have to charge.”
Helen ate her pumpkin pancakes—the last batch of the year—and sipped her coffee, listening to her father complain, even though she knew he was loving every minute of it. She felt almost good. Her head wasn’t throbbing, her eyes weren’t watering, and for the first time in weeks she wasn’t sore all over. While she wasn’t exactly happy, she did feel a sense of peace.
This feeling was partly to do with the fact that Helen was convinced there was another presence in the room. It didn’t scare her or freak her out anymore. In fact, it soothed her. She had forgotten to ask Morpheus if he was the “invisible sun” she had been feeling, but the last time she’d felt this presence she had also heard his voice, so who else could it be?
“Helen?” Jerry said, looking at her expectantly.
“Yeah, Dad?” She’d spaced out again.
“Can you work at the store after school today?” he asked again. “It’s okay if you can’t, it’s just that Luis really wanted to take Juan and little Marivi trick-or-treating. It’ll be her first time . . .”
“Sure! No problem!” Helen replied guiltily. “Tell Luis to have fun with his kids. I’ll be there.”
She had been daydreaming about Morpheus. Or was she just thinking about him as Lucas . . . or Orion? Her cheeks throbbed with a blush, and she stood up abruptly and started to gather her things for school.
“Are you sure you feel better?” Jerry asked doubtfully as he watched her stuff books in a bag and check her phone. Claire had left her a text.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Helen replied distractedly, reading. Claire wasn’t coming to get her, as she’d been roped into going to school early to decorate for Halloween. “Damn it. I’ll have to take my stupid bike.” Helen moaned as she did an about-face and headed for the back door.
“Are you sure you can—”
“Yes! I’ll be there,” Helen cut him off peevishly. She reluctantly wheeled her ancient rig out of the garage, noticing that it had grown more rust over the past month than was scientifically possible.
“Have a good day,” her father called after her.
Helen rolled her eyes, thinking yeah, right, and pedaled off. She wasn’t more than a block away from school when she was nearly run off the road by a speeding driver. She had to veer off the shoulder, bump across the unpaved ground, and splash through the grandmother of all muddy puddles to avoid getting hit.
Great gouts of oily, turgid water splashed up onto her legs and soaked her from the waist down. Helen hit the brakes, and had to take a moment to let the catastrophe sink in, stunned that so much freezing-cold yuck had spewed all over her.
She looked back at the puddle. There was a dead animal floating in it. She smelled her clothes, and sure enough, they smelled vaguely of putrefying squirrel.
“Unbelievable,” Helen mumbled to herself. She wasn’t usually a clumsy person, at least not when she had a full night of dreaming behind her, and she couldn’t believe this had happened.
She read the time on her phone, and saw that she couldn’t go home and change. If she did, she’d get a detention from Hergie for being late for sure, and she had already promised that she would work for Luis right after school. Helen decided that spending a day smelling like dead squirrel was better than spending the rest of her life knowing she had robbed two impressionable children of their father on Halloween. Besides, she really liked Luis’s kids. They were so tiny, and Juan had the most adorable husky, little-boy voice.
Sighing at her rotten luck, Helen got ready to pedal to school, only to find that she couldn’t. Her front tire had gone flat. She swung her leg over to get off her bike, and heard a ripping noise.
Somehow, the hem of her jeans had gotten caught in the chain and she had nearly ripped the whole leg off. Readjusting her stance to stop herself before she could tear her jeans any more, Helen slid on some pebbles underfoot and fell headlong into the muddy, dead-rodent-infested puddle, with her ancient bicycle still attached to her pant leg. The bike collapsed on top of her before she could stand, the frame getting twisted and bent as it tangled with Helen’s strong body.
“What the hell is going on?” Helen yelled aloud. She heard a tittering laugh and looked across the road to see a tall, thin woman grinning at her.
Right away, Helen knew there was something not quite right about the woman. She had high, arching cheekbones and wave after wave of long, white-blonde hair that reached the back of her knees. At first Helen thought she was a movie star or something, because with her features and all that hair she should have been beautiful. But the sneer on her lips and the hollow, serpentine look in her eyes made her downright ugly. No matter how beautiful her body was supposed to be, her polluted spirit made her hideous to look at.
“What are you?” Helen shouted. Goose bumps puckered her skin, more in reaction to the uncanny encounter than to the cold.
The ghoulish woman shook her head at Helen, waggling it forward left to right, like a cobra blankly zeroing in on a hapless mouse. Then she broke eye contact and skipped off. Helen stared after her in shock, thinking to herself, Who the hell skips?
Very carefully, in case there also happened to be a bear trap she was about to step in or something, Helen pulled herself up from the nasty-ass puddle and sat down next to her trashed bike. She knew that what she had just seen was no costume, and that her little run-in with Murphy’s Law was not a coincidence. Something strange had just happened, but she had no idea what.
Picking up her demolished bike and putting it over her shoulder, Helen walked the rest of the way to school. She dumped her ex-bike somewhere in the vicinity of the rack and wandered into homeroom exactly as disgusting and torn up as the puddle had left her.
There were a bunch of people wearing costumes, and more than one wearing ripped clothes and fake-dirt makeup. Even so, it was obvious that Helen was soaking wet, shivering, and covered in real mud. Looks of shock followed her as she walked across the classroom. Matt and Claire sat up straighter in alarm. She mouthed the words “I’m okay,” and Matt sat back in his seat, less alarmed but still scowling, wondering what had happened.
“Miss Hamilton? Am I to assume that the malodorous emanation I detect is an integral part of your Halloween costume?” Hergie asked with his usual nonchalance. “Something of the zombie persuasion, I expect?”
“I’m thinking of calling it ‘eau de dead fart,’” she replied, just as cool as he was. Usually Helen was much more respectful, but she felt like pushing Hergie a bit.
“Please visit the powder room and remove it. Although I commend your holiday spirit, I cannot allow such a distraction. There are some students at this institution who wish to learn,” he chastised in his heroic way. Helen grinned at him. Hergie really was one of a kind. “I shall write you a hall pass. . . .”
“But, Mr. Hergesheimer, I don’t have a change of clothes. I’ll need help . . .”
“I would expect nothing else. One pass for you, and one for your cohort, Miss Aoki.” He tore off two precious slips of paper that pretty much gave Helen and Claire free rein over the hallways for the next two periods.
Claire looked over at Helen excitedly, trying not to scream out of her eyeballs, and the two best friends stood up from their desks and took their passes with humbly bent heads. Getting a hall pass from Hergie was like getting a knighthood. It didn’t make you any richer, but it gave you bragging rights for the rest of the year.
“Lennie, you stink,” Claire mumbled as they made their way to the door.
“You have no idea what just happened to me,” Helen whispered back, and went on to explain her entire run in with the ghoulish woman by the side of the road. Claire listened intently as she led them to the theater. “Wait, why are we here?” Helen asked when she saw their destination.
“You need something to wear,” Claire said with a shrug as she let them into the prop room. She went directly to a rack of diaphanous, glittery fairy costumes and began holding one after another up to Helen, comparing size. “Are you sure it wasn’t just some crazy tourist in a Halloween costume? This’ll fit you. It’s got wings, though.”
“I’m cool with wings. And there is no way that woman was human. She was, like, seven feet tall and she skipped,” Helen replied, easily shifting conversational gears. “Won’t we get in trouble?”
“I’m on the costume committee. Besides, we’ll give them back.” Claire gave Helen an impish grin as she took one for herself. “Now, locker room. You’re unholy stench is making my eyes water.”
Helen showered and washed her hair while Claire changed into a pilfered costume of her own and stood at one of the mirrors putting on sparkly makeup to go with it. Claire asked Helen to describe the ghoul very carefully, but she couldn’t add much beyond her original first impression.
“It was difficult to get a good look at her, Gig. I was busy doing the breaststroke in a puddle with a dead rodent floating next to me.” Helen toweled herself dry and wiggled into an iridescent wisp of a dress while trying not to poke her eyes out on the spiky wings.
“I’ll tell Matt and Ari about it in class today, see if they have any ideas. Now come out and let me see!”
“Which characters from Midsummer are we supposed to be?” Helen’s jaw dropped when she saw Claire’s costume. “Ooh, I love that! The spiderweb design is amazing!”
“I’m Cobweb, obviously, and you’re Moth. They’re good, right? My grandma did the sequin bits.”
“These wings are insane pretty.” Helen floated up into the air and pretended to be surprised that she was flying. “And they work, too!”
Claire grabbed Helen’s foot and tugged her back down to earth with a sulky face. “Jason made me promise never to fly with you again. And now that I know what I’m missing, it sucks even harder to watch you do it.”
“I’ll have a talk with him,” Helen offered. “Maybe if I show him how easy it is for me to carry a passenger, he’ll see it’s not so dangerous and change his mind.”
“I doubt it,” Claire said. She shook her head and scowled. “Not that it matters. I think today we’re technically broken up, but how would I know?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Helen asked, jabbing a fist onto her hip and frowning.
“It means that one second he’s telling me that he can’t see me anymore, and the next he’s outrunning my car and begging me to come back. Then ten minutes later, he’s dumping me again.”
“Last night?” Helen guessed.
“Then, just as I was storming off, he kissed me.” She sighed and clenched her fists in exasperation. “Jason keeps doing this to me. I think it’s making me a little crazy.”
Claire dismissed her confused thoughts with a wave of her hand, grabbed Helen by the shoulder, and started nudging her over to the hand dryer. She pressed the button on the hand dryer and made Helen lean her head over the nozzle, drowning out Helen’s attempt to ask more questions about Jason. Helen took the hint that Claire didn’t want to talk about it and let her angry friend “style” her hair.
The result was a crazy, teased bouffant that Claire insisted on coating with gold-sparkle hairspray. Helen usually would have said no to all that glitter, but she had to admit it kind of worked with the costume. And besides, it was Halloween.
There were tons of people at school that day wearing even more ostentatious getups. Helen had never seen so many people in costume before. The energy in the air bordered on recklessness. Kids were actually bouncing off the walls, and teachers were letting them.
“Is that Parkour?” Helen asked Claire as one sophomore ran up a wall and did a backflip off it.
“Yeah,” Claire replied uneasily. “Um . . . isn’t anyone going to stop him?”
“Guess not,” Helen said, and the two of them looked at each other and burst out laughing. What did they care? They had a Hergie hall pass. They were freaking bulletproof.
By the time they were done retouching this and adding another layer of glitter to that, going to and from the prop room, their lockers, and the soda machine as they came up with more and more excuses to wander the halls, it was almost lunchtime. Hours later, they were sauntering past Miss Bee’s social studies class in their kick-ass costumes when the bell rang. All the AP kids poured out of what would have been Claire’s class if she had bothered to show up.
“Whoops. I guess we’re late,” Claire said with a cheeky grin.
Helen was in midlaugh when she felt someone grip her upper arm tightly and pull her back. The air around her blurred and refracted, like she had been shrunk and put inside a diamond. When her pupils adjusted, she saw that she was on the other side of the hallway, and Lucas was using his body to barricade her up against a locker.
“Where have you been?” he asked in a low voice, close to her ear. “Don’t move or they’ll be able to see us. Stay very still and tell me what happened to you this morning.”
“This morning?” Helen repeated, stunned.
“Matt said you looked like you’d been attacked. Then you and Claire just disappeared for the rest of the day. School’s almost over. We’ve been worried sick.”
“I had to shower and change. We lost track of time.” Her excuse sounded lame, even to herself. She had no idea why neither she nor Claire had thought to go back to class.
She glanced over Lucas’s shoulder, trying to figure out what was going on, and saw a scared look on Jason’s face. He took Claire’s hand and led her down the hallway, pulling her close to him. No one seemed to pay any attention to Helen and Lucas at all. They were standing so close—literally on top of each other—but Matt walked right by them like he hadn’t noticed, and so did Ariadne. Something was wrong. There was no way Ariadne could look at Helen and Lucas pressed up against each other and not shoot them a disgusted look.
“What’s going on?” Helen whispered.
“I’m bending the light so no one can see us,” Lucas said softly.
“We’re invisible right now?” Helen breathed.
“Yes.”
A dozen confusing moments finally clicked in her head. Helen’s blurred vision, the uncanny sense of another presence in the room, Lucas’s disappearances, and how he could just suddenly come out of nowhere—it was because he had been there all along.
“You’re my invisible sun, aren’t you?”
She felt his stomach, pressed tightly up against hers, tense in a silent, startled laugh. She saw his lips move soundlessly around the words “invisible sun.” She forced her gaze away from his mouth to meet his eyes.
“Lucas,” Helen chastised gently. “You really scared me. First I thought there was something wrong with my vision, and then I thought I was going insane.”
“I’m sorry. I knew I was freaking you out and I tried to stop, but I couldn’t,” he admitted, embarrassed.
“Why not?”
“Look, just because I pushed you away from me, that doesn’t mean I can stay away from you,” he said, laughing at himself a little. “It started with me learning how to bend light, but it’s turned into something else now. Something I never thought I could do.” He broke away with a pained look on his face. “I learned how to become invisible so I could stay close to you and let you move on with your life at the same time.”
“Have you always been there?” Helen asked in a worried voice, thinking about a thousand private things he could have witnessed.
“Of course not. I miss you, but I’m not a pervert,” he said, looking away and blushing a little. “You’ve always known when I’ve been there, Helen. Unlike everyone else, you can still sense my presence when I’m invisible. No one knows I can do this, except for you.”
Helen didn’t know how to respond. The only thing she wanted to do was kiss him, but she knew she couldn’t. All she could do was stay still and stare at him.
The bell rang and dozens of doors shut simultaneously, but neither Helen nor Lucas made a move. A few random kids were still roaming the halls, looking for trouble. Strangely, no teachers seemed to be stopping them. It was like a day without rules. Helen certainly didn’t care if she got in trouble. Suddenly, she felt like destroying something. She couldn’t recall ever feeling like that before.
Over Lucas’s shoulder, Helen caught a glimpse of the ghoulish woman she had seen by the side of the road, walking down the hallway.
“Right behind you,” Helen gasped quietly. Lucas moved very slowly to turn and look. “I saw her this morning, and it was like everything went wrong at the same time. That’s why I looked like I’d been attacked.”
“She’s not mortal,” Lucas whispered to Helen as the ghoulish woman moved past them.
“Can she see us?” Helen asked, but Lucas just shook his head distractedly. Helen saw his nostrils flare, and barely a moment later she smelled why.
The she-ghoul reeked like rotten eggs and spoiled milk. It was the smell that Helen had mistaken for dead squirrel—the stench that had clung to her until she had scrubbed it off in the showers that morning.
The smell seemed to permeate the walls, and commotions began inside every classroom that the she-ghoul walked by. There were loud voices and yelling at first, and then crashes and squeals followed, like everyone had suddenly started throwing the furniture around. Notebooks and book bags were being tossed into the air. Soon enough, the doors started opening and students started pouring out, closely followed by the teachers. But the teachers weren’t trying to restore order. They were just as unruly as the kids.
Wrapped in their cocoon of invisibility, Helen and Lucas watched in awe as Miss Bee, their stolid, logic-loving social studies teacher, savagely kicked in a locker door with her sensible shoes. Helen looked up at Lucas and could tell he was fighting the urge to join in the destruction. She felt it, too. She had been feeling it all day, she realized. It was why she’d agreed to the costume and the glitter, and why she had been so willing to blow off five classes instead of just one or two. Helen felt like raising some hell.
“Don’t even think about it,” Lucas whispered with narrowed eyes.
“What?” Helen whispered back. She bit her lower lip, feigning innocence. “Don’t you feel like doing something bad?”
“Yeah, I do,” he said, and pulled Helen a little tighter to him. She felt his body generate a wave of heat, like she had just opened the door to a hot oven, and pressed harder against him. He held his breath and made himself look away from her. “We have to get out of here.”
Lucas grabbed Helen’s hand and pulled her into a sprint. She understood why right away. If they moved fast enough, they could remain invisible as they went from hiding behind Lucas’s light-cloak to moving faster than a mortal could see. It was such a thrill to run through the hallways of her high school at Scion speed that she nearly hooted with glee.
Once outside, Helen and Lucas took to the air and shot up high over the island, away from the influence of whatever was turning their school into the monkey cage at the zoo. Floating high above the ocean, Lucas turned to her and stared with a half smile on his face.
“Maybe adding wings to those paintings wasn’t such a bad idea.”
She knew immediately what he was talking about. The first time he’d taught her to land after flying, she’d hovered above him while he stood on the ground. She told him she’d seen a painting that looked just like them, only the one in flight in the painting was an angel. He’d told her the angel wings were nonsense. Now he didn’t look so convinced.
Helen felt like it had been forever since the day Lucas had taught her to fly, but every second of that perfect time came flooding back in complete detail. She marveled at how much it still hurt.
Helen decided that the saying about “time healing all wounds” was a bunch of bull and probably only worked for people with very poor memories. The time she’d spent apart from Lucas hadn’t healed anything. The distance had only made her miss him more. Even the few feet between them in that moment were excruciating. Unable to bear it, Helen soared closer and tried to hold him.
“Lucas, I . . .” Helen reached out, but he jerked away from her with a half-panicked look on his face before she could finish her sentence or lay a hand on him.
“Text Orion, tell him what happened,” he said in a loud, nervous voice. He took a moment to dial down the volume before continuing. “He’s been around, seen a lot of things. Maybe he knows who that woman is, or at least what we’re dealing with.”
“Okay.” Helen let her hands fall awkwardly to her sides. She told herself not to act as devastated as she felt. “I should go. I promised my dad I’d work at the store today.”
“I should find my sister, make sure we’re all okay,” Lucas said through tight lips. He wouldn’t even look at her. “I’ll tell everyone what we saw in the hallway and see if we can come up with a theory. And Helen?”
“Yeah?” she responded in a thin voice.
“Let’s keep the invisibility thing quiet for now. We’ll just say you and I hid in all the commotion.”
“What about the obols?” she asked in a remote way, trying to separate herself from him by acting much calmer than she felt. “I’ve been dodging everyone’s questions about how I got into the Underworld last night, but I can’t put Cassandra off forever. She can’t see my future right now, but sooner or later she’s going to foresee something about you and those obols.”
“I guess I’m going to have to come clean about stealing them,” he said, sighing. “But we should probably not tell our family how I gave you one in bed last night.”
Helen knew he’d added that last bit just to remind her that he’d done the right thing by pulling away. Helen knew he had just saved her from a potentially disastrous situation, but it still stung.
They parted ways and Helen went back to school to get her stuff, trying to put Lucas out of her thoughts. He’s my cousin, she chanted under her breath until the feeling of rejection was replaced with guilt. She felt like an idiot for reaching out for him like that. What was she expecting to happen?
Helen had the vague feeling that Lucas told her to text Orion just to make her think about him, like a guy asking a girl if her boyfriend knew they were alone together. The more she thought about it, the more miffed she became. Did Lucas think she and Orion were dating or something? Helen wondered exactly what the two of them had been saying about her.
Throwing her destroyed bike in the Dumpster with a bit more hostility than was necessary, Helen went in the side entrance of the school and walked quickly down the deserted halls. There were broken tables, overturned chairs, and upended trash cans everywhere. The whole place was a jumbled mess, and it stank like that she-ghoul. Helen hurried to her locker, grabbed her bag, and draped a sweater over her arms to fight off the chill as best she could without crushing her borrowed costume, and then went right to the News Store. She didn’t want to hang around and take the chance of seeing that wretched woman again.
Out on the streets, Helen felt a raucous, almost dangerous mood simmering. Amber-hued autumn light added a crackling vibrancy to the already festively decorated streets. In the town center, orange-and-black Halloween banners snapped in the chilly wind and glowing jack-o’-lanterns flickered, casting spooky shadows in the doorways of the old whaler-style houses and on the cobblestone roads. Helen clutched at her sweater and glanced around suspiciously, looking for the source of the menace she felt.
Dozens of groups were already out trick-or-treating. At this early hour it was mostly parents with small children, but one or two of the costumed hordes were certainly not out looking for candy. These groups had a heightened, aggressive energy, as if their monster masks gave the people wearing them the soul of the characters they depicted. For the life of her, Helen couldn’t recognize any of the young people in these groups, which was really strange. Usually, she would have passed half her high school by this point, but the streets seemed to be filled with strangers, which was nearly impossible. It wasn’t tourist season anymore.
Something was definitely off. Helen was not afraid for her own safety, but she was still concerned. It was so early, and there were so many little kids still out looking for treats, she wished the people more interested in tricks had waited a bit longer. She went into the News Store with a worried frown, wondering if she should call Luis and tell him to take Juan and Marivi home early this year.
“Nice wings, Princess,” a man drawled.
“Hector!” Helen exclaimed as she tossed herself right into one of his fantastic hugs, despite the fact that he was using her least favorite nickname. He caught her effortlessly and she hung from his neck for a bit. “One of these days, I’m going to get you to stop calling me that.”
“Not in this lifetime.” He tried to sound like he was joking, but she could tell right away that something was wrong. He seemed tense. She pulled back and took a good look at him.
“What’s happened to you?” she asked, and ran her finger along a thin, pink scar that was still healing across his cheekbone.
“Family,” he said with a sad smile.
“The Hundred are still chasing you?”
“Of course they are,” he said, shrugging. “You’re the only person I’m certain I’m safe with. Tantalus won’t risk harming his one and only chance to be free of the Furies.”
Helen frowned and wondered if she should be happy about that or not. A part of her didn’t want to do anything that made Tantalus and the Hundred happy, but what else could she do? Not help Hector because it also helped Tantalus? She was stuck and she knew it.
“You’re freezing!” he said, chafing his hands over her skin to warm her up. “Usually I prefer it when women wear as little as possible, but not you. Where are the rest of your clothes, little cuz?”
“Long story,” she chuckled. “So get comfortable, because I’ve got to fill you in.”
“I have something to tell you, too,” he said seriously as she dumped her stuff behind the counter. She looked up at Hector, and was struck again by how worn he looked.
“Are you okay?” she asked, really concerned for his health.
“Go on,” he said. “We’ve got a little time, but not that much.”
Helen ran off to greet Kate and her father, and then had to count her register before she could come and talk. Kate set Hector up with hot cider and as many hazelnut sticky buns as he could eat, while Helen checked her bank and organized the credit card slips in the relatively deserted front part of the store.
When everything was in order and Kate had bustled off to take care of the noisy customers in the back, Helen caught Hector up on everything that had happened recently in the Underworld. She altered the stolen obols story slightly to make it seem like Lucas had stolen them strictly for her use and not his own, and ended with the riot at school. He listened without interrupting, a brooding look on his face.
“Her name is Eris,” he said. “She’s the goddess of discord, or chaos, depending on which translation you use. Wherever she goes, disorder, arguments, even riots erupt. Everything that can go wrong will. She is sister and companion to Ares, and she is very, very dangerous.”
“Hector. What’s going on?”
“I came here to warn you. About two hours ago I saw Thanatos walking down Madison Avenue in New York, right outside the building where the House of Thebes is holding Conclave.”
“Who’s Thanatos?” Helen asked, although the name sounded familiar.
“Thanatos is the god of death,” Hector explained. Helen nodded, remembering Cassandra had told her that. “He’s the original Grim Reaper—black cloak and all bones, but minus the scythe. That bit of farm equipment got added during the Middle Ages. Luckily, most people on the street thought it was just a guy in an amazing costume, although there were a few of the more sensitive types out there who keyed into what was really happening and ran screaming.”
“What was he doing there?”
“Didn’t stop to chat. Thanatos just has to touch you to kill you, so I left that one to your mother and her bolts.” Hector gave an expressive shrug. “We don’t know why the minor gods are out and about. Daphne sent me back here immediately to have you ask the Oracle if she’s seen anything.”
“I’ll call her right now.” Helen took out her phone.
“There’s one more thing,” Hector said reluctantly. “We don’t think Automedon is working for Tantalus anymore. We don’t know who’s pulling his strings now. It could be that he watched you for a while, saw what you can do, and decided it wasn’t worth it. He hasn’t attacked you, so don’t panic yet. Just keep your eyes open.”
“Great,” Helen said with a mirthless laugh. “Anything else you want to tell me? Because I just started dreaming again and I could really use some more nightmare material.”
Hector laughed with her as she dialed Cassandra’s number and listened to the phone ring. She reached out and laid her hand over Hector’s, giving him a sympathetic smile. She noticed that he had avoided saying Cassandra’s name, and opted instead to call her by her title. He missed them all so much. Hector smiled back at Helen ruefully and dropped his eyes.
“It won’t be much longer,” Helen promised him softly, listening to the phone ring and ring. “You’ll be back with your family soon.”
“You found something, didn’t you?” he said, perking up. “Why didn’t you tell me right away?”
“Orion and I are pretty sure we know what we need. The only problem is I still don’t know how to find the Furies once we get it,” she replied as she hung up and dialed Matt’s number instead. “I didn’t want to say anything, just in case this all falls through, but we’re going to make our first try for it tonight.”
Matt’s phone went directly to voice mail. She tried Claire, Jason, Ariadne, and finally Lucas, but in every case she either got shunted directly to voice mail or the call was dropped entirely.
“No one’s answering?” Hector asked with growing alarm as call after call failed to connect.
“It’s the weirdest thing!” Helen huffed, and began typing an email. Hector reached out and prevented her, taking the phone and deleting the email.
“Helen, go home,” he said in a low, tense voice. He gave her back her phone, stood up, and began looking around in alarm. “Go home right now and descend.”
A lab table from the science department at Nantucket High came soaring through the front window of the store, shattering the glass and sending the displays tumbling across the floor. The rancid smell of Eris came wafting in after it. Helen fought off the urge to light something on fire, knowing that her emotions weren’t real and that she was being manipulated by a malevolent goddess. She heard customers scream in the back room and that snapped her out of her dangerous mood. She vaulted over the counter, but Hector held out an arm and stopped her from sprinting into the back.
“I’ll protect Kate and Jerry—from themselves if necessary. You descend,” he said in a firm but blessedly calm voice. Helen gave him a level look and nodded once to show she understood his orders.
“Don’t be a hero,” she ordered him back. “If the Hundred or your family comes, you run.”
“Hurry, Princess,” Hector said, and kissed her on the forehead. “We’re counting on you.”
Helen ran out of the News Store. Behind her, she heard Hector explaining to her father that she was going for the police. Avoiding the raucous mob, she darted down a dark alley where she couldn’t be seen and soared into the air. Flying under the blue tarp that still covered her window, Helen landed directly in bed, hoping she would eventually calm down enough to fall asleep.
Her feet slammed down hard between row after row of sterile, white flowers. It was the first time Helen could recall ever having a hard landing in the Underworld, and it was most likely because she had been so desperate to get there. Helen spun around in a circle and discovered that she was in the dreadful Fields of Asphodel. Thankfully, she was not alone. She hadn’t realized it until she saw Orion’s solid shape a few feet away, but she had been worried about him.
“Orion!” Helen said with relief. She ran the last few steps toward him through the tombstone blooms. He turned and caught her up in his arms with a worried frown.
“What’s the matter?” he said into her neck as he hugged her. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” she said, laughing a little at her overly emotional reaction but still clinging to him tightly. Finally, when she felt calm enough, she eased away and looked Orion in the eyes. “I have a lot to tell you.”
“And I want to hear it, but can you do something first? Say out loud that you don’t ever want anything to attack us again while we’re down here?” he asked expectantly.
“I don’t ever want anything to attack us again while we are down here!” Helen repeated emphatically. “Good thinking.”
“Thanks. I like your dress. But, you know what? I actually think you’d be warmer in those little shorts with the hissing cats. They covered more.”
Helen whirled on him with a shocked look on her face. She couldn’t believe he remembered seeing her in her pumpkin pajamas.
“You have no idea what happened to me this morning! I had to wear this,” she said defensively, trying not to blush.
“You look beautiful. Not that that’s anything new,” he said softly.
Helen stared at him, completely thrown, and then pulled her eyes away and stared at a boring asphodel flower like it was really interesting. She felt Orion move closer to her and told herself to relax. She hadn’t kissed Orion last night, she reminded herself. That was Morpheus as Orion. Big difference. And the real Orion didn’t even know anything about it, so there was no reason for her to feel shy around him. Except that she did. In her head, Helen heard Hector say that she could have a lot of fun with Orion if she wanted, and she lost her train of thought.
“Now, tell me what happened to you this morning,” he said, concern creasing his forehead.
Helen snapped back to reality and quickly recounted her accident, the student revolt that Eris had caused at school, Thanatos walking the streets of Manhattan, and the bedlam that erupted in the News Store right before she descended. Orion listened silently, clenching his jaw more and more tightly as Helen went on.
“Are you okay?” he asked in a controlled voice.
“Yeah, but I feel awful!” Helen blurted out. “I left Kate and my dad in the middle of a riot! How could I do that?”
“Hector won’t let anything happen to them,” Orion said with certainty. “He’ll guard them with his life.”
“I know he will, but in a way that’s even worse,” Helen said, almost pleadingly. “Orion, what if the Delos family comes to check up on me at the store and they find Hector?”
“You mean what if Lucas comes to check up on you and finds Hector. You’re not really worried about Jason or Ariadne,” he clarified, frustration edging his tone.
“The twins are different. Even before Hector became an Outcast, he and Lucas used to fight a lot, and sometimes it got really bad,” she said in a shaky voice. “It’s like they’ve always been headed toward something violent, and I keep thinking maybe it’s another one of these Scion cycles that’s doomed to happen.”
“Lucas and Hector are practically brothers, and brothers always fight,” Orion said, like it was obvious. “Not everything in our lives is part of a cycle.”
“I know. But the Furies! They won’t be able to stop themselves.”
“That’s why we’re down here. We have all the time we need now, and hopefully, we’ll take care of the Furies tonight,” he said. He made her stop and brushed her wrist with the tips of his fingers. It was a slight touch, almost nonexistent, but it commanded her attention.
“If I can even find them,” Helen admitted with a pleading look. “Orion. I have no idea where the Furies are.”
Orion leaned away from Helen and adjusted his backpack, assessing her.
“You’re just about to panic, aren’t you? Don’t.” He was deadly serious. “This is where you need to be, right here in the Underworld, not back in the real world fighting a hysterical mob. Any member of the Delos family can do that, but you’re the only one who can do this. Let’s get the water first and take it from there.”
He was right. They had to do what they could here in the Underworld or nothing back in the real world would ever get any better.
“Okay. Let’s do this.” She reached out and put her arms around Orion’s neck, and felt him lay his heavy hands on her hips. “I want us to appear by the banks of the River of Joy in the Elysian Fields,” she said in a clear, commanding voice.
Soft, sun-streaked light filtered down through a canopy of gigantic weeping willow trees. A lawn of thick, green, living grass cushioned their feet, and Helen could hear the sibilant rush of water over rocks nearby. Not too far off in the distance, Helen could see a large, open field of knee-high grass and pastel-colored wildflowers that served as little stars to the orbiting bees and butterflies.
There was no sun directly overhead. Instead, the light seemed to radiate from the air itself, creating the feel of different times of day in each area. The light in the stand of willow trees that shaded Helen and Orion appeared to be the ripe, long light of late afternoon, but in the meadow it was the light of early morning, still innocent and dewy.
Orion let go of her hips, but took up one of her hands, keeping it loosely clasped in his as he turned and looked around. A breeze played across his face and brushed his loose curls back from his forehead. Helen saw him turn his face directly into the gentle gust, close his eyes, and breathe in deeply. She copied him and found that the air was crisp and energizing, like it was full of oxygen. Helen could not recall anything so basic ever feeling so pleasurable.
When she opened her eyes, Orion was staring at her with a tender look on his face. He touched the edge of her costume, shaking his head.
“You planned the wings for this, didn’t you?” he said playfully. Helen burst out laughing.
“Sorry, but I’m not that clever.”
“Uh-huh. Come on, Tinker Bell. I think I hear our brook babbling.” Orion led her toward the sound.
“How will we know if it’s the River of Joy?” she asked. Before she was done speaking she realized she already knew.
When they reached the banks of the crystal-clear water, Helen felt a giddy bubbling in her chest. She had to fight the urge to start dancing, wondered why she was fighting it, and gave in. She put her arms out and began to twirl around; Orion put his backpack on the ground.
He knelt down and unzipped the top and then stopped suddenly. He put a hand over his own chest and pressed down hard, like he was trying to push his heart back in where it belonged. Glancing up at her, Orion laughed silently, but to Helen it looked more like he wanted to cry. She stopped dancing and joined him.
“I’ve never felt this before,” he said, almost apologizing. “I didn’t think I ever could.”
“You didn’t think you could ever feel joy?”
Helen knelt across from him, staring at his overwhelmed face. Orion shook his head and swallowed, and then suddenly reached out with both arms and hugged Helen tightly.
“I get it now,” he whispered, and then released her as quickly as he had gathered her up. She didn’t know what it was that he “got,” but he didn’t give her a chance to ask. Handing Helen an empty canteen, Orion went over to the riverbank and dipped the other two he had taken out of his backpack into the sparkling river.
As soon as his fingers touched the water, tears as big as raindrops spilled down his face and his chest shuddered with a startled sob. Joining him at the water’s edge, Helen lowered her canteen beneath the surface and touched joy. It wasn’t the first time for her like it was for Orion, but after so much sadness and loss over the past several weeks, she cried as if it were.
When they’d filled their canteens, they both sealed them up. She didn’t even consider drinking the water, and she could tell from the unwavering way he screwed the caps onto the tops of his two canteens that Orion wasn’t considering it, either. Helen knew, deep in her heart, that if she took even one sip she would never leave this place. As it was, she felt a deep longing beginning to build, knowing that this perfect moment had almost passed. She wished could stay like this forever, dipping her fingers in the River of Joy.
“You’ll be back someday.”
Startled out of her reverie, Helen looked up at Orion and saw him smiling at her, extending a hand to help her up. The filtered light shone down on him and made a halo out of his hair. His green eyes were bright and fringed with eyelashes that were spiky and dark from crying. She slipped her waterlogged hand into his and stood next to him, still sniffling a little after the storm of ecstasy had passed.
“So will you,” she told him through a teary hiccup. He dropped his gaze.
“It was enough for me to experience it, even just once. I’ll never forget this, Helen. And I’ll never forget that you were the one who brought me here.”
“You really don’t think you’ll be back, do you?” Helen asked incredulously, watching Orion stow the canteens in his backpack.
He didn’t answer her.
“I’ll see you here again in about eight or nine decades,” she said resolutely. Orion laughed and threaded his arms through the straps of his bag with a wry smile.
“Eight or nine? You realize we’re Scions, right?” he said as he tugged on her hand and led her out into the morning meadow. “We’ve got notoriously short shelf lives.”
“We’ll be different,” she said. “Not just you and me, but our whole generation.”
“We’ll have to be,” Orion said quietly, tilting his head down in contemplation.
Helen glanced over at him, expecting to find that he had fallen into one of his brooding moods, but he hadn’t. He was smiling to himself with a look that Helen could only think of as hopeful. She smiled, too, happy to just walk through the meadow and hold hands with him. The happiness she felt wasn’t like the rapture of the river, but rapture would have been too much to bear for much longer. She realized it would have broken her heart if she’d stayed.
The farther they moved from the River of Joy, the more Helen’s head cleared. She looked down at one of her hands. It had been in the water so long it had grown wrinkled. How long had they been kneeling there?
With every step, she was more and more grateful that Orion had pulled her away. He had probably been as entranced as she had been. Yet somehow, he had controlled himself, and then found the extra strength to help her break away as well.
“How did you do that?” Helen asked quietly. “How did you pull yourself away from the water?”
“There’s something I want more,” he replied simply.
“What could anyone want more than endless joy?”
“Justice.” He turned to face Helen and took both of her hands firmly in his. “There are three innocent sisters who’ve suffered for eons, not because of anything they’ve done, but because the moment they were born, the Fates decided that suffering was their lot in life. That isn’t right. None of us deserve to be born into suffering, and I intend to stand up for those who have been. That’s more important to me than joy. Help me. You know where the Furies are—I know you do. Think, Helen.”
His spoke with such conviction, such passion, that Helen could only stare at him with her mouth hanging open. Her mind went absolutely blank for a few heartbeats, and then a small voice in her head started yelling at her, enumerating all the places where she came up short as a person.
She wasn’t as doggedly persistent as Claire was, or as patient as Matt. She didn’t have impeccable instincts like Hector, or even half of Lucas’s raw intelligence. She certainly wasn’t as generous as the twins or as compassionate and selfless as Orion. Helen was just Helen. She had no idea why she was the Descender, instead of one of these other, far worthier people.
How the hell had she even gotten the job and ended up here in the Underworld to begin with? she wondered. All she knew was that one night she had fallen asleep and found herself wandering through a desert.
A desert so dry, with rocks and thorns so sharp I left a trail of bloody footprints behind me as I walked, she remembered clearly. A desert with a single, tortured tree clinging to a hillside, and under that tree were three desperate sisters who looked ancient, and like little girls at the same time. They reached out to me, sobbing.
Helen gasped and gripped Orion’s hands tightly in hers. She had always known where to find the Furies. They had been begging her to help them from the very start.
“I want us to appear by the tree on the side of the hill in the dry lands,” she announced, looking directly into Orion’s surprised eyes.
