Creon watched the reporter for five minutes before he decided to uncloak himself from the shadows. He appeared out of the darkness behind her, barely a step away. She spun around and inhaled a startled breath so quickly it almost sounded like a sob. There was something exhilarating about seeing a woman afraid, Creon thought, especially when that woman was a pushy bitch like this one. A little fear is good; it reminded non-Scion mortals of their place, and Creon wanted this mortal in particular to remember that she might be able to force this meeting by threatening to have the police investigate his family, but she wasn’t in control.
That’s why he picked the docks at night. He wanted to see how committed she truly was to writing a story on his family. The fact that she met him there proved she had a spine, if not a brain, and because of that Creon decided she deserved a moment of his time. Besides, she made such a pleasant sound when she was startled. Maybe he would hear it again.
He smiled down at her innocently, as if to let her know that he was just playing a little trick. She met his eye, but she also took a step back—which meant she was brave but scared. Creon liked to see those two emotions together; it made him feel like he had won something.
“Again, I ask for the father but instead I get the son,” she said in accented English.
“I speak perfect Spanish,” Creon replied in her native language, still smiling at her. “And you know my father doesn’t meet reporters.”
“Your father doesn’t meet anyone. That’s why I’m here,” she continued stubbornly in English. He shrugged impassively, refusing to take the bait. She crossed her arms and studied him. “Tantalus Delos hasn’t let anyone see him in almost twenty years now. Strange, no?”
“He likes his privacy,” Creon said through a grin that had grown tight.
“Privacy is the one luxury a billionaire aristocrat can’t buy. You’ve heard the stories about your father, yes?”
“They’re all lies,” Creon said as smoothly as he could, but her eyes were so doubtful he nearly faltered. How dare she?
Over the years there had been many stories floating around the tabloids about his father—that he had been maimed, that he had lost his mind to an obsessive-compulsive disorder like Howard Hughes, that he was dead. Creon knew at least that his father was alive, and he had vehemently denied all of the other accusations time and time again. But the truth was, Creon hadn’t seen or spoken to his father in nineteen years. No one had seen Tantalus except Creon’s mother, Mildred Delos.
His mother insisted that Tantalus was in hiding in order to protect himself and the House of Thebes, but she never could explain to Creon why his father wouldn’t call him on the phone, not even once. It seemed like such a little thing to ask.
“All lies? You know this for certain?” the reporter pressed as soon as she saw Creon fall into his own conflicted thoughts. Creon noticed that she kept speaking in English, almost as if she was taunting him. “For years now, you, your mother, your whole family, say all these things are lies, but how do you know for true? Tell me, Creon, when is the last time you saw your father? I know he was not at your graduation from university.”
Creon gritted his teeth. “My father is a very private man. He—”
“Pssh!” she exclaimed derisively, cutting Creon off with an imperious wave of her hand. She shouldn’t have done that. “This is not privacy, this is lunacy! Can any man’s privacy mean so much that he would abandon his only son simply to stay out of the papers?”
Creon’s hand shot out and he had her by the throat before she could even raise an arm in protest. She had such a tiny throat, so slender and fragile. Creon thought it was like holding a thin kitten in his hand. Her eyes blossomed with fear. The pupils opened up and reflex tears beaded on their dark surface like dew. She was lovely in terror—a perfect, pleading mask of alabaster white skin, wide eyes, and, best of all, her mouth, an open oval of red surprise like she was waiting to be kissed. Creon wanted to hold her like that for days, but a split second of enjoyment later he heard a snap.
Like a switched-off TV, the light in her eyes contracted to pinpricks, and then went completely dark.
Creon dumped her body in the water and ran back to the citadel so quickly no normal person could see him pass, even if they were standing inches away.
Still shaking with a half-sickening thrill, he went straight up to his room, and froze when he opened the door. His mother was waiting for him. She was sitting next to his packed suitcase with her narrow, manicured hands folded neatly in her lap, holding something. Her head fell to the side as she stared at him. His mother only needed to look at him to know that the meeting that she had arranged, the meeting that was supposed to be nothing more than a polite gesture, had ended violently.
“Did you have to kill her?” she asked seriously and without reproach. Mildred was nothing if not practical.
“She provoked me,” Creon said as he moved past his mother and grabbed the handle of his suitcase. “Besides, it’s better this way and you know it.”
Mildred dropped her eyes and nodded, accepting that her son was right. More than one reporter had “disappeared” over the years.
“Given the situation, I approve of you leaving the country for a while.” She held up the plane ticket she had taken from the front pocket of his suitcase and waved it at him before he could bolt out of the room. He stopped dead, realizing that he had been caught. “What I don’t approve of is your choice of destination. What do you think you’re going to accomplish by going there? Your father forbade the Hundred to go anywhere near Nantucket.”
He took a breath to calm himself down. It didn’t work. “It’s their fault we don’t have what is rightfully ours, it has to be, because all the other Houses are gone! I have to know how they can live with themselves when they’ve sentenced the rest of their family to inevitable death. Immortality is my birthright, and regardless of what my father allows or forbids, I will not sit back while they deny me that!”
Creon shouldered his carry-on, wheedled the ticket out of his mother’s reluctant hands, and moved past her. He hurried down the ancient stone steps at the back of the citadel, his heart still pumping with excitement.
Outside, there was a nondescript black sedan waiting. His mother’s driver was behind the wheel, ready to take him to the airport. Creon realized that Mildred had known all along that he would kill that girl. She had probably known he would do it the moment she arranged for Creon to meet her.
“Son?” she called out to him from under the arched gate. “Did you kill her just to have a reason to leave?”
He turned and faced her, forcing patience. “Did you send me there to kill her?”
His mother smiled at him, but her eyes were far away and out of focus—thinking many thoughts at once. She walked toward him slowly, making him wait for her even though she had to know that he was vibrating with adrenaline. She stepped close to him and looked up into his face. Her elegantly sculpted lips were pulled tight in a thin line of warning.
“Stay away from Hector.”
Wednesday morning, Helen ran out of the house and toward Lucas’s waiting car before Jerry could get it into his head to come out and “have a talk with that young man,” as he had been threatening. Helen wasn’t entirely sure if her dad was serious or if he was just trying to get a rise out of her, but she wasn’t about to take any chances. It wouldn’t be fair to put Lucas through the traditional parental screening when they weren’t even officially dating.
“Ready?” she asked quickly, trying to distract Lucas.
“Should we wait?” Lucas asked when he saw Jerry standing in the front door.
“No, just drive. Quick! I don’t know if he’s really going to do it or not,” Helen responded desperately as she waved good-bye to her father.
“Do what?” he asked. He put the car in gear and drove out.
“Try and talk to you, man-to-man,” Helen said, relieved.
“Well, in that case,” Lucas said. He hit the brakes and shifted into reverse.
“What are you doing?” Helen put her hand over his to stop him from shifting.
“I’m going to go inside and talk to your dad. I don’t want him to feel like he can’t trust me with his daughter.”
“Lucas, I swear to whatever god you think is holy that I will get out of this car and walk to school if you go inside and talk to my dad.”
Lucas smiled and shifted back into first, driving away from her house. “Who told you the gods were holy?” he asked with a sinister glint in his eyes. Helen punched him on the arm.
“You just did that to see me freak out, didn’t you?” she asked indignantly.
“Hey, you’re the one embarrassed by her own father. You’re pretty cute when you panic,” he said with a huge smile.
Helen tried to smile back at him, but it came out all mangled on her lips. She had no idea what to think. The use of the word cute could either encourage her hopes, or eulogize them.
Every person who recognized them honked and waved with a big smile on their face. Honking at passing friends was customary on the island, and it was something that Helen had grown up with, but it seemed to her as if everyone was leaning on their horns for an extra-long time this morning.
“So, listen,” Lucas said, changing the tone from playful to something a little more serious. “Hector told me you found him on your roof.”
“Yeah,” Helen replied, trying to scrunch down in her seat so no one could see her. “About that . . .”
“I wanted to explain why we didn’t tell you before. I asked to be the one to tell you, and I meant to,” he said. He glanced over at her as if to check how Helen felt about what he was saying. “I just didn’t figure out how to tell you in time. I didn’t want you to think I was some shady stalker hiding out on your roof.”
“I’m not going to lie—well, I can’t lie to you, can I?” Helen said with a grin. “I was a little upset, but I’m fine about it now. If your family is willing to protect mine, I guess I can put up with a little shadiness.”
Helen was forced to stop talking because someone was honking out “Shave and a Haircut” in the most intrusive way possible. She wanted to tell whomever it was to kiss off, but she couldn’t. These were her neighbors and she had to be polite. She wasn’t cramping up, but she suspected that she might start to. She stuck a fist into her stomach.
“What’s going on?” Lucas asked intently. “I’ve seen you do that before. Are you in pain?”
“No, but I think I might be soon. Don’t worry about it, there’s nothing you can do. Well, I guess you could go away and never hang out with me again,” Helen answered.
“That’s not going to happen,” he said with raised eyebrows. “But what are you talking about? Are you allergic to me or something?”
“No.” Helen laughed. “I think I’m allergic to attention. And we tend to draw a lot of it when we’re together.”
“But it’s not just me, right? You feel those pains even when I’m not around?”
“Yes. I’ve had this all my life. I don’t know exactly what causes it, I just know that sometimes when people stare at me I get a terrible pain in my stomach.”
“Allergic to attention,” Lucas said to himself, absentmindedly taking Helen’s hand while he thought. He had to let it go to shift as he parked at school, but as soon as they were out of the car he claimed her hand again and rolled her fingers around in his.
Helen watched Lucas as they stood at her locker together. He seemed distracted. His brow was furrowed and his gaze tuned in, but most disturbingly he seemed to be all blurry.
“What is that you’re doing? It’s giving me a headache,” Helen said quietly while she turned the combination on her lock.
“Sorry,” he said as he snapped back into focus. “I’m bending the light. It happens sometimes when I’m concentrating.”
Helen remembered from her reading that Apollo was the god of Light, and at that moment Lucas was doing things with light that were impossible outside of a magic show. She realized she had seen him do this before in the locker room at his house, but she had taken so many knocks to the head at the time she thought it was just her vision that was off.
“Aren’t you worried someone will notice?”
“Actually, sometimes I do this to make people stop noticing me when I want some privacy to think. People have a hard time forcing themselves to look at things that they can’t see clearly, or things that shouldn’t be possible.”
“Because their eyes slide right off,” Helen interjected, remembering how her gaze was diverted from Lucas’s face in the locker room even though she had really tried to focus on him.
“Exactly. If I look far away or too hard to see, most people just block me out,” he said, and then he gave her a knowing smile. “You slouch to get people to stop staring at you. I blur. It’s useful in a fight, too, only it’s nearly impossible to do when you’re moving fast.”
“Are you giving me all your fight secrets?” Helen said cheekily as she put her books in her bag and shut her locker. “Not so smart, Houdini.”
“Really? Well, come and get me, Sparky,” he said with a grin as he backed away.
Sparky? Helen thought, puzzled. But he was already through the double doors at the end of the hall and she had to go to class.
When the bell for first lunch rang she rushed as fast as she could, intending to get some answers, but by the time she made it to the cafeteria, Ariadne was already seated at the geek table, surrounded by admirers.
Helen shouldn’t have been surprised that Ariadne would join their table, considering she was in all the AP classes. Unfortunately for Matt, Ariadne’s presence usually attracted an entourage of boys—the little lambs to her Mary. Helen tried to fight her way into the circle, and nearly gave up before she was spotted by Ariadne.
“Zach? Can you make a little room for Helen, please?” Ariadne asked as she flashed a dazzling smile.
“Don’t worry about it, Zach. She can have my seat,” Claire said in a caustically cheerful voice, vacating the place next to Ariadne.
Claire brushed close to Helen as she passed, whispering something about the “old friends” not being cool enough to sit at the same lunch table when someone suddenly has a popular boyfriend. Before Helen could get into a well-deserved fight with Claire, Ariadne pulled Helen down next to her to stop one of the hormone-infested boys from getting any closer to her.
By the time the bell rang for classes, all of Helen’s normal friends had been driven away from the table—a table that had been theirs since freshmen year. Matt’s sad look made Helen wonder how long it had been since the two of them had been able to talk. It must have been months.
Claire wasn’t waiting for her at the trail when track practice started. It was silly for her to try to avoid Helen by leaving without her, because they both knew that she could catch up with Claire no matter how far behind she was, but the intent was clear. When Helen came jogging up, Claire didn’t even turn to look at her.
“Just keep running, Hamilton. I am so not into you right now,” Claire said as she veered away and raised her arm in a “talk to the hand” gesture.
From many years of experience Helen knew that Claire needed to punish her a little before she’d be ready to move forward. Then they’d talk on the phone, make up, and the next day everything would be back to normal. Just this one time, Helen wished they could skip to the end of the fight, especially since she hadn’t done anything, but she knew better than to rush Claire. Instead, Helen dutifully ran past her.
After a few minutes of running alone, Helen started to get bored with the mortal pace. She looked at her watch to calculate exactly how much time she would need to kill before making her way back to the trailhead, and took off across the moors at an impossible speed. She knew Lucas could simply step up into the air and start flying, but so far that approach hadn’t worked for her. Maybe she needed to be running to get airborne, kind of like an airplane. Here was a chance to test that theory.
As Helen struck out off the trail and through the marshy land surrounding Miacomet Pond, she began to sense the lightness she associated with flight. There was a fluttery feeling in her stomach, a barely contained wildness that she assumed was an expression of Scion power. She felt static energy running over her skin. It was as if she had rubbed a balloon over her entire body and then held it just far enough away so that her whole surface felt the outward tug of an electrical field.
Taking an experimental leap, Helen soared up into the air. At first she thought she had done it, that she was flying, but she soon felt herself reach the top of a very large arc and begin to descend. She had merely jumped higher than ever before—too high—and her brain was still hardwired to believe that when she hit the ground she would go splat and die.
She tried to grab at the air, and although there was a part of her that knew how to make it hold her, she was either too scared or not scared enough to do the trick in time. She hit the ground at an angle and went into a skid, her feet digging up two loamy troughs in the mud.
She was fine, of course, but still deeply shaken. Her knees were wobbly and she had to laugh to let out the crazy feeling flapping around inside her chest. After she had calmed down a bit she hauled herself up off her butt. She pulled her feet out of the mud and started to walk back toward the school, feeling like a jackass. She was covered in smelly muck up to her waist, and in her head she pictured how she must have looked as she came down from her leap, her arms pinwheeling frantically like a cartoon character falling off a cliff.
She glanced around to make sure no one had spotted her in her moment of foolishness, just out of habit, but she wasn’t expecting anyone to be near. Her heart turned over when she saw a dark smudge turn into a man’s shape. Then he suddenly stopped and changed direction just over the next rise. He had seen her get up and walk away laughing after falling from fifty feet high. Worse than that, Helen could see there was something wrong with the way he moved. He was going much too fast to be human.
Her entire body tensed instinctively. Without even thinking about it she took off after the dark shape. Whoever he was, he was headed back toward the high school—back toward Claire, who was probably huffing and puffing along, slow and small and human. The image of Kate lying unconscious on the ground flashed through her head and spurred Helen to run faster. She skipped over massive swaths of landscape, bounding recklessly over hillocks and cranberry bogs, unable to think of anything but catching him.
She noticed that she was having a hard time finding him in the strange shadowy light, but as she got closer, the darkness that seemed to swath itself around him abated a little and she was able to pinpoint his location. It looked like he was sucking light out of the air. There was something creepy about the way the dark shadows radiated out from him like a sinister halo—he was definitely controlling the light. That meant he was another descendant of Apollo—one of the Hundred Cousins from the House of Thebes, and therefore a threat.
From what she could see, the shadowy man was a few years older than she was, but still barely out of his teens. When she was only a few paces behind him she could see that he had fair hair and skin. With a fresh burst of speed she reached out, trying to grab on to him, and ripped off his shirt. Finally, he allowed the last of the darkness clinging to him to be swept away by the sun glowing on his huge, bare shoulders. Up close, he looked so similar to Hector in both coloring and build that they could have been twins, except for their faces. There was a hollow look to this man, a cragginess that made him seem sickly.
A horrendous cramp crumpled up her torso like origami, and Helen tumbled to the ground with a scream. She curled up on the ground in the fetal position, unable to move or even take a breath. Through the long blades of grass that partially obscured her vision she could see the blond, shirtless Cousin trot back toward her with an inquisitive look on his face.
“Interesting,” he said with a cocky smile. Something behind Helen caught his eye and he started to back away. “I’ll see you sooner rather than later, preciosa,” he promised as he ran off, a dark, ominous mist collecting to obscure his outline.
Helen tried to shout something tough and ballsy after him, but all that came out was a pathetic moan. He was gone in a second, and she was left to lie there alone until she was noticed or until she was well enough to walk away. Finally, she heard someone approach.
“Helen?” a familiar voice said as it neared. “Oh, no. It is you.”
“Matt,” Helen grunted. “Get Lucas.”
He came around into Helen’s field of vision and got down on his knees in front of her. “Don’t you think the nurse would be a better idea? Or maybe a paramedic?”
“Please. Lucas. Quick.”
He sighed once, rubbed Helen’s back in an awkwardly reassuring way, and then got up and ran off. Once she got her breathing under control, Helen could see enough around her to take in the fact that she was practically in the school parking lot—much closer to the school than she had realized. Still curled up in a ball on the ground, Helen banged her forehead against her knees. She couldn’t believe she had been that stupid. Her ear pressed to the ground, Helen heard approaching footsteps that were a little too heavy and a little too quick to be a normal’s and smiled to herself with relief even though she was still in terrible pain.
“Thanks, Matt,” she heard Lucas say from somewhere behind her. “Where are you hurt?” he asked her as he came around toward the front, Jason close behind him. Helen pointed to her stomach and spoke with her eyes. Lucas nodded and looked around, confused.
“Did you see what happened?” he asked Matt.
“I think she was running after someone. I don’t know,” Matt said skeptically. “I just heard from Gretchen that Helen was chasing some guy, then she screamed and fell down.”
“Is that true?” Lucas asked Helen with a tense face. She nodded, and he smiled back at her, his worried eyes softening for her sake. He plucked some of her hair off her sweaty forehead and looked back over his shoulder.
“I’m on it,” said Jason too quietly for an ordinary mortal to catch, and then Helen heard his rapidly retreating footsteps.
“I should go with him,” began Hector’s voice from someplace that Helen still couldn’t see.
“No, you shouldn’t,” ordered Lucas sharply. “I need you to get the girls. They could have whatever sickness Helen has, and they might need you. Right?”
“Right,” Hector said without bitterness, suddenly understanding Lucas’s hidden meaning. Cassandra and Ariadne were unaware, unprotected, and therefore in the most danger of being attacked by the stranger. Hector ran off so silently that Helen couldn’t even hear his feet brush against the grass, and she couldn’t help but be both impressed and a little frightened by his skill.
“Matt, can you help me get Helen up? If you could just grab her feet . . .” Lucas asked in an apologetic voice.
“Sure, no problem,” Matt said as he slipped his hands behind her knees. “Jeez, Len, you smell awful! Did you have to fall into every cranberry bog on the island?” Helen chuckled briefly, but it hurt to laugh so she stopped.
Helen initially wondered why Lucas would ask Matt for help when he didn’t need it, but as she listened to them talk and work together to carry her to Hector’s SUV she realized that Lucas had to be one of the smartest people she’d ever met. Not only did asking for help make Lucas seem normal, but it also made Matt feel needed. Lucas was treating him like a partner and, more important, like a man. Helen knew that if Lucas ever asked for Matt’s loyalty, this simple gesture of inclusion made it more likely that he would get it. A fresh bout of pain gripped her so tightly that a sweat broke out on her upper lip. Helen blew out her breath slowly, trying to navigate her way through the pain.
Lucas popped the back hatch of the SUV and laid Helen down, then asked if Matt didn’t mind waiting with them until his sister and cousins came back.
“If Helen gets any worse, I’m not going to wait for them, I’m just going to take her to the hospital. If that happens, I’d really appreciate it if you stayed here to tell them where I went. It shouldn’t take long,” Lucas explained.
“I’ll stay as long as you need me,” Matt offered with his usual generosity.
“Damn, Matt. Aren’t you tired of watching over my sick ass yet?” Helen asked him with a half smile.
“You have no idea,” he said back with a smile of his own. It faded quickly. “This makes it twice this year. You never used to get sick, Len, not even that time we all got the stomach flu after Gretchen’s birthday party in fourth grade. The rest of us were puking our brains out for two days, but you were fine.”
“Oh, yeah! That was so gross! Hey, at least I brought you all Gatorade and crackers, remember?” Helen said playfully. She was trying to lighten the mood, but she was still in pain. She pressed on her belly again and Matt frowned. He was worried, and so was she. Her cramps had never lasted this long before.
“Maybe you should quit track,” Matt suggested suddenly.
“I think Matt’s right,” Lucas said, his face both surprised and pleased that Matt had suggested it. “It’s obviously not good for you. You should quit.”
Helen was too stunned to respond. She stared at Lucas with her mouth hanging open until Hector, Cassandra, and Ariadne arrived and ended the conversation. The girls got in the SUV with Lucas and Helen, and Hector took the keys to the Mercedes, saying he would wait for Jason. Ariadne offered Matt a ride home in her sweetest voice, but he demurred. Then, after a brief and very quiet exchange between Lucas and Hector, Lucas got behind the wheel and drove the three girls to the Delos compound, speeding the whole way. As they drove, Cassandra climbed into the back and perched next to Helen with a calm poise that belied her age.
“Did you get a good look at him?” she asked in a level, strangely adult voice.
“Yes,” Helen answered.
“If I showed you some pictures, would you be able to recognize him?”
“Like, mug shots? No problem,” Helen said positively. “I’m pretty sure there aren’t that many guys in the world who look exactly like a bigger, blonder version of Hector but with a scary, pockmarked face.”
She sensed the mood in the SUV shift.
“Creon,” whispered Cassandra.
“Are you sure?” Lucas asked, his head snapping up to look into the rearview mirror at Cassandra.
“Yes,” she answered with a dreamy look on her face. “And Uncle Pallas followed him here from Europe. He’s at home.” Lucas apparently didn’t need any more information. He fished his cell phone out of his jeans and hit speed dial.
“Jase, come in. Cassie can see him now,” he said in a flat, frightened voice. He listened for just a moment and then continued, talking over Jason’s questions. “When we all get back home. Your father’s waiting for us there.”
Helen felt like she had missed an important detail. “Who’s Creon?” she asked Cassandra as soon as she was able to sit up.
“A cousin of ours,” Cassandra answered unhelpfully.
“He’s the one who attacked Hector in Cádiz,” Ariadne said, her voice quivering momentarily. She glanced over at Lucas, who was just about to interrupt her, and kept going. “Okay, they attacked each other. Creon is a radical fanatic, and he’s looking for a fight with any of the moderates, not just us. But it’s Hector he’s really after. Not even you can deny that, Luke.”
“That guy, huh?” Helen asked, folding her arms over her belly as she tried to make a joke. No one laughed. Her right hand felt stiff so she flexed it. A scrap of fabric fell from her balled-up fist.
“What’s that?” Cassandra asked.
“Um. It’s Creon’s. I caught up to him, and when I tried to grab him I sort of ripped his shirt off,” Helen replied apologetically.
“You chased him, caught up to him, and got close enough to rip his shirt off?” Ariadne said in disbelief. Apparently, Creon was fast, even by their standards.
“He saw me trying to fly, okay?” Helen began, sensing that she had done something very wrong. “I didn’t know who he was, I just knew that he’d seen me jump about five stories into the air and I had to get to him before he got away.”
“Great,” Cassandra said bitterly. “He came here to check on our family and maybe pick a fight with Hector, but now that you’ve exposed yourself everything has changed.”
“He was heading right for the school,” Helen said defensively.
“And what was he going to do?” Cassandra yelled back, suddenly furious. “Attack a pathetic normal? Use your head, Helen! For some reason the two women who attacked you haven’t told the rest of the Hundred Cousins that you exist, probably because they want the glory of killing you alone so they can have a Triumph. Creon might be thinking the same way, but if he isn’t, he will tell Tantalus. That means half of the Family is going to be here in a few days—and you can’t even hold a sword yet!”
“Back off, Cassie!” Lucas said heatedly. “We were raised for this, and Helen’s had what? A whole week to adjust?” He looked at Cassandra through the rearview mirror, and even in reflection his eyes looked intense. Cassandra threw up her hands in surrender.
“You’re right, Cassandra. I didn’t use my head,” Helen said, rubbing her stomach. “Maybe we could talk to him.”
Ariadne made a strangled sound.
“What? Why are you all so scared of him?” Helen asked.
“He’s a Shadowmaster,” Ariadne said ominously from the front seat. “He can stop light. It’s unnatural.”
Helen thought about the darkness that wrapped itself around Creon and she knew what Ariadne meant. The sun wouldn’t shine on him, and Helen had instinctively felt like there was something wrong about that.
“Shadowmasters are rare,” Lucas tried to explain a bit more calmly, but Helen could still hear the fear in his voice. “There haven’t been very many of them in our House’s history, but every one of them that we know about has turned out to be, well . . . evil.”
A few tense minutes passed with Cassandra cupping her hands over her eyes in a posture of deep concentration. Finally, she looked up at Helen, and with a determined smile she dispelled the lingering negativity.
“Well, you’re safe for now. I don’t see any immediate threats,” she said reassuringly, watching Helen cradle her still-tender midsection. “Any idea which human saw you chasing Creon?”
“Gretchen. Don’t worry, no one will care. She’s always saying stuff about me,” Helen said positively. “Wait a sec. How do you know someone saw me?”
“These cramps you’re having? They’re the curse. Your mom cursed you to feel almost unendurable pain if you use your Scion powers in front of ordinary mortals,” Cassandra said with a shrug.
“Is that what it is? It’s been driving me crazy all week!” Lucas said from the front seat as he turned down the long Delos driveway.
“Of course you wouldn’t recognize them. You’re a boy,” Ariadne said. “Curse Cramps are sadistic, really. I haven’t even read about anyone doing it in centuries.”
“My mother cursed me?” Helen repeated back to Cassandra, who nodded sadly.
“Way back, hundreds of years ago, it was thought to be the only way to keep women Scions in line with the society of the time. Mothers would do it to their daughters to keep them from drawing too much attention to themselves because women weren’t supposed to be special or smart or talented.” Cassandra wrinkled her nose, like she had said something that smelled bad as it came out of her mouth.
Helen sputtered uselessly to herself for a few seconds, unable to process what she had just learned. Cassandra took Helen’s hand and smiled kindly at her. “If it’s any consolation, the curse probably kept you hidden all these years.”
“As much as I hate to admit anything so barbaric could be useful, I have to agree,” said Ariadne as she opened her door and got out of the car. “If you hadn’t been cursed, can you imagine what your mortal dad would have gone through when you were a toddler with all that strength? He tries to punish you, you throw him out a window. Bedtime would have been a bloodbath.”
“Well, when you put it that way,” Helen admitted as she climbed out of the back, accepting Lucas’s politely offered hand. As she and Lucas walked side by side behind Ariadne and Cassandra toward the house, she started to laugh to herself.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I always knew my mother hated me, and now I find out that she literally cursed me,” she replied, hearing her voice sound matter-of-fact. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything that made so much sense in my whole life.”
“Your mother was trying to protect you,” Lucas countered judiciously.
“Oh, you are such a boy! You’ve never had cramps,” Helen muttered. They paused on the landing.
“Maybe take your shoes off,” Lucas said, looking down at Helen’s feet. She was caked in black marsh mud all the way up to her waist.
“Maybe get a hose,” Helen countered with a laugh.
“I can do better than a hose,” he said with an easy grin, pulling on her hand to follow him to the pool. “Outdoor showers are sort of a requirement for our family.”
He brought her to the outdoor shower and left her there to go to the pool house to get some towels and a change of clothes. When he was completely out of sight she self-consciously stripped down in the shower area. The beautiful teak walls of the shower curved around in a spiral that screened off the important parts of her body, but her feet and the very top of her head were still visible.
She’d taken millions of beach showers like this, but never without wearing a swimsuit. She washed as quickly as she could and was nearly finished by the time Lucas returned.
“The T-shirt’s definitely mine, but I have no idea who the sweatpants belong to. Don’t worry about it, though. No one will care,” he said, flipping the clothes and a big beach towel over the top of the screen. Then he put a plastic shopping bag down on the ground. “That’s for your uniform and sneakers.”
“Thanks,” Helen called out, painfully aware how little space stood between him and her naked body. It was silly, really. Everyone is naked under a few millimeters of clothes, but this felt different somehow. It felt dangerous. She watched his feet through the gap at the bottom of the screen as he began to turn away, hesitated, and then hurried off. She let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.
The clothes he’d left her were gigantic, but they were soft, comfortable, and they smelled like dryer sheets. She toweled off, put the borrowed outfit on, and came out of the shower area carrying her bag of dirty clothes.
By the time she and Lucas made it into the house, Jason and Hector were sitting at the kitchen table watching Cassandra and Ariadne shower a man Helen didn’t know with affection. Lucas introduced Helen before giving his uncle a big hug.
Pallas Delos was a large, blond man, still glowing with health and youth even though he was graying at the temples. He and Hector shared the same cautious smile and sharp eyes, but there was more of Jason’s and Ariadne’s prettiness about him than Hector’s blunt masculinity. He shook Helen’s hand politely, but his curious stare followed her long after the introduction was over and it began to make Helen feel uncomfortable. She wondered if he was just reacting to her taboo name or if he had heard unflattering things about her from someone in the family. His stare made Helen jumpy. She tried to hide herself behind Lucas.
“Okay, everybody out. I have to get started on dinner,” Noel ordered as she entered the kitchen, waving her hands in a shooing motion. Helen found herself being pulled out the back door by Lucas.
“It’s a good idea to stay out of my mom’s way when she gets like that or you’ll end up chopping vegetables for the next hour,” he said. He led her back outside toward the grassy lawn between the tennis courts and the pool.
“I don’t mind helping,” Helen said, starting to head back toward the house.
“I do,” Lucas said with a sly smile, tugging on her hand. “Besides, I thought you wanted to learn how to fly. Isn’t that what caused all the fuss earlier this afternoon?”
Helen could tell he was upset and trying not to show it. “About that,” she began, scrunching her face up guiltily.
“Yeah, that was bad. And it was all my fault. I should have taught you to fly as soon as we healed from our fall, but I didn’t trust . . .” he said, stopping himself and shaking his head ruefully. “Never mind. The point is, once I learned I could fly all I wanted to do was get back in the air. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat. It was stupid of me to think you would wait.”
“How old were you when you found out?” Helen asked.
“Ten? But it took me a while to understand it,” he said as if to prepare her for something. “Scions are born with all their talents, but it takes time to discover how to use some of them. Especially if there’s no one with your particular talent to act as a mentor.”
“Did you have one? A mentor, I mean.”
“No. I don’t know any other Scions who can fly besides you. But I had books, and my family for support.” He pulled up and stopped to face Helen. “You never had any of that, so this might be a little harder for you.”
“I’m good at hard, it’s easy I’ve never trusted,” she responded quickly, but he gave her a look that indicated he thought she had missed his point.
“I just don’t want you to get discouraged if this takes us a while. So before we start, I have to explain some things,” he said, suddenly all business. “Strength, speed, agility, acute hearing and eyesight, beauty, rapid healing, and intelligence, although that last one’s debatable, these are all gifts that pretty much every Scion has, and we don’t have to be trained to use them. But there’s another group of talents that are rare, and most of them take some work. Flying is one of the rare ones. And it’s one of the hardest to get the hang of.”
“I honestly don’t care how hard it is to master this. I don’t care if this takes me years. I’m just dying to do it again!” Helen bounced up and down on her toes impatiently.
“Okay, okay! First of all, you have to hold still. The jumping part comes later when you want speed,” he said with a laugh as he put his hands on Helen’s waist.
She gasped faintly at the unexpected touch, and tried to make herself stand still like he had said, but it wasn’t easy. They stood for a few moments, just staring at each other.
“Close your eyes,” he whispered. Helen’s heart was racing and she had a feeling Lucas could hear it.
“Calm down,” he said, smiling with his eyes closed. “Try and slow your pulse down if you can.”
“I’m trying. Do you have to stand so close?” Helen asked, her voice thin and shaky.
“Yes. I don’t want you to get away from me. That would be bad,” he said in a deadpan voice, maintaining his concentration. A few seconds passed. When he next spoke he sounded very calm and far away.
“Now. Focus on your body. Take a deep breath and follow it in, like your brain is floating gently inside that air you’re breathing.” He waited a few moments for Helen to get to where he was.
It took her a few breaths, but eventually she was able to do it. He knew exactly when she was ready. “Good. Now you’re inside of yourself,” he said triumphantly. “Can you feel the weight of you, all stacked up and all tied together?”
She did feel it. She could feel the weight of her skin on top of her muscles on top of her bones, all stacked up, just like he had said. There were millions and millions of little bits of her, all marching around like soldiers with different but cohesive orders. Those were her cells, she realized at once. She giggled, thinking how strange it was to be this massive army and never feel it. She heard Lucas laugh, too, and she knew that he was right there with her, experiencing what she was experiencing.
“Now I want you to do something really hard,” he said, his voice light and curious, almost childlike. “I want you to stay inside, but also look out, if you can. Don’t be scared. I’m right here with you.”
Helen did as he told her, but the sensation was way too intense to process.
She had lost her sunglasses once. She’d looked all over, in the kitchen, the living room, back up in her bedroom, but she couldn’t find them anywhere. It was annoying because she knew she had just had them in her hand, but she couldn’t remember what she’d done with them. Then her dad told her that her sunglasses were on top of her head.
In that moment she realized that she had been using the wrong sense. She had been looking when she should have been feeling. She reached up and felt her glasses with her hand, but she also felt them with her scalp, and when she thought about it she realized that she had been feeling her glasses up there the whole time. She’d just been so busy looking she hadn’t thought to feel.
This was similar. Again, she was realizing that there were many different ways to experience the world around her. Now she was still aware of all of her millions of cells, but she could also feel something new. She felt herself falling toward something truly huge, and she knew she had another sense that could stop the falling.
Scared out of her mind, she instinctively pushed with this new sense. She needed to put some distance between her little army and the big, fast monster she was falling toward—the monster she suddenly realized she had been falling toward every second of every day of her life.
A moment too late to stop herself, Helen realized that the monster was the earth, and the falling sensation was gravity—and that what she had just done was switch it off. Vertigo sucked at her, pulling her off balance. She grabbed on to Lucas, frantically burying her face against his chest. He was the only unmovable object in the entire universe, and if Helen let him go of him she knew she would spin off into space forever and ever.
“It’s okay,” he whispered into her ear. His breath was warm, and his voice soothed her. “I won’t let you go, Helen. I promise. Do you trust me?” The temperature dropped and great gusts of wind tossed her hair around in a tangle.
She kept her face pressed against the L-shaped hollow where Lucas’s shoulder turned into his neck. She told herself that this is what difficult felt like, this was the “hard” that she had been cavalier enough to tell Lucas she preferred to “easy.”
“Yes,” she whispered, feeling the cold, thin air crawl into her clothes and snatch the sounds she made away from her lips as soon as she spoke.
“Then prove it,” he whispered back. “Open your eyes.”
They stayed in the air until the sky was almost completely dark and Helen was so cold she couldn’t stop shaking. There was a lot for her to learn. Defying gravity was a big deal, but it was only half of flying. The other half was less of a mental leap, but it was also much trickier. Helen learned that to move through the air she couldn’t just flap her arms or kick her feet. She had to manipulate the air around her. Lucas started to teach her how to command the air, make it denser on one side and thinner on another so that a tiny, Helen-sized current was created around her. When Lucas did it, it seemed as if he were floating underwater. The wind didn’t whip at his hair or clothes but flowed around him, gently holding him or quickly pushing him, depending on how fast he wanted to go.
Lucas spent most of this first lesson just floating there in front of Helen as if he were in the ocean, his long limbs sinuously riding the currents, his fingers splayed to stave off random eddies. He kept his arms out and ready to catch her in case she shot off too fast, or slipped off a current of air pressure that she had created unevenly before she tumbled into a spin. Flying was complicated, and Helen didn’t have the feel of it yet. It was a bit like learning to drive a car and aim a rifle at the same time. It required a light touch and complete concentration.
Lucas also taught her tricks for not getting spotted by the “gravity impaired,” as he called the poor landlocked suckers they were looking down on. Helen was surprised to learn that early evening was actually the most dangerous time to fly. Sunset was when people looked up to admire the pretty colors, and on Nantucket it was also when half the island’s residents were making their living taking photos or churning out watercolors.
Several times, Lucas had to grab Helen and fly out over the ocean so they weren’t seen. Apparently, flying any time during the day was dangerous, but if Helen stayed high enough, anyone who spotted her would think she was a bird. Night was the safest time, of course, and that’s when they could fly closer to the ground, which Lucas promised was a thrill. But all of it was a thrill to Helen, and when Lucas finally said that they should go in, she literally whined and asked for five more minutes. Lucas just laughed.
“Believe me, I know how you feel. But I’m freezing,” he said. Helen pushed away from him with narrowed eyes and a small smile. She swooped over his shoulder and around his back, softly brushing against him as she passed.
“Tomorrow?” she asked, feeling shy and powerful at the same time. He rolled over gracefully and captured one of her arms just before she could drift away.
“Tomorrow. I promise,” he said quietly as he reeled her in. “But it’s nearly dark and my family will worry about us if we stay out any longer tonight.”
Helen couldn’t argue with that, so she let Lucas hold her shoulders and steer her down to the soft patch of grass they had taken off from. She hovered above him as he transitioned gracefully into the gravity-state.
“What do I do?” she asked, suddenly frightened again.
“It’s okay. I know landing is intimidating, but I’m right here,” Lucas said patiently as he stood on the ground, his arms stretched up to hold both her hands as she floated above him.
“I think I’ve seen a painting like this,” Helen said, giddy with fear. “But the woman in the painting had wings.”
“Demigods, and gods for that matter, have always been attracted to artists, and sometimes they’ve painted us. The wings are total bull, of course, but they are pretty,” he said in a light tone. He was just giving her time to calm down, and she knew it.
“Okay. What do I do?” she asked evenly.
“I want you to pick the world back up again,” he answered.
“What do you mean, pick up the world?” she sputtered.
“Concentrate. You can feel what I mean, I know you can, but you have to trust me.”
“I trust you,” Helen said for the hundredth time that day, but this time she looked him in the eyes as she said it, and he looked back at her with perfect faith. His face was glowing with it. Nothing could be impossible if Lucas had faith in her. So, she picked up the world . . . and fell, exactly like anyone else would have if they were trying to walk on six feet of air. Of course, Lucas knew what to expect, and caught her easily on her way to the ground. Snatching her out of the air, he eased her down until her feet lightly touched the grass.
Finally standing on her legs after so long without using them, Helen felt a bit unsteady. Her vision was reeling, and she rested against Lucas for a moment, her arms wrapped around his neck. When the dizzy feeling passed, she kept her arms there still, hoping to feel some kind of invitation from him. He pulled away and forced a laugh.
“See? Piece of cake. Next time, just swing your legs under you right before you change states, and you’ll be good to go,” he said breezily as he started walking back toward the house. “You’re learning much faster than I did, you know.”
“Yeah, right. I would have hit the ground like a brick if you hadn’t caught me,” she said, shoving Lucas away from her as she walked, laughing with him even though her heart felt a bit twisted up in her chest.
She wasn’t exactly expecting a kiss, but she certainly had been hoping for one. She suddenly felt really foolish, like she was being an idiot for even trying to kiss someone so much smarter, so much more confident, so much more worldly than she was. She crossed her arms and sped up, but Lucas wouldn’t let her pass him. Instead, he unwound her arms and took her hand. She had just enough pride to be offended that he would insist on holding her hand after refusing to kiss her.
“They can see us,” he said so quietly Helen could barely hear him. She saw him jerk his chin over toward the house.
Following his gesture she saw that Pallas and Castor were sitting on the dark deck outside their shared study. They must have come outside to talk privately and been interrupted by Helen’s prolonged landing. They also must have seen her angling for a little nookie, which was so horrifying to Helen that she had to banish that thought from her mind forever or instantly explode from humiliation.
“She’s learning fast, isn’t she, Dad?” Lucas called out.
“Much better than her first landing,” Castor replied jovially, then turned to Helen. “Glad to see you’ve stopped trying to impersonate a comet.”
“Yeah. I’ve also decided to do all my landings conscious from now on. Saves on food costs,” Helen returned amiably, glad that it was too dark for them to see her blush. She smiled at Pallas but he didn’t laugh, or even return her smile. He just watched.
“Very wise of you,” Castor said. “By the way, you’d better not be planning any side trips, Lucas,” he added in warning. “Your mom’s almost done with dinner and she’s not in the mood to wait for anyone tonight.”
“Duly noted. Thanks for the heads-up,” Lucas said as he led Helen back toward the house. By the way Lucas was rushing her along it seemed as if he was purposely avoiding his father and uncle. Either that or he was keeping Helen away from them.
“Okay, what’s going on?” she asked as soon as they got into the dark garage and closed the door behind them. “Your uncle is really weird around me. What did he find out in Europe?”
“No one’s heard of you over there—or at least no one is talking about you. My uncle Pallas came home because he was following Creon here, but as far as we know Creon came to the States without telling his family. We think he just wants to keep an eye on us—on Hector, mostly,” Lucas said with a dark look on his face.
“Did your uncle learn anything about those two women? The ones who attacked me?” Helen whispered tensely.
“No, that’s still a mystery. None of Uncle Pallas’s contacts know anything about them. We don’t think Tantalus knows about you yet, but no one has seen Tantalus in years, so it’s difficult to say for sure what he’s got planned.”
“No one’s seen Tantalus?” Helen asked, stunned. “How does he lead, then?”
“Through his wife. She’s the one who gives all the orders to the Hundred Cousins, and has been for almost nineteen years now.”
“Why?”
“It’s a long story,” Lucas said, frowning and looking down. Helen could tell that meant that it was an important story.
“My favorite kind,” she said, angling her head so she could catch his downcast eyes. When she did, she smiled coaxingly at him until he gave in. Lucas took her hand absentmindedly and started playing with her fingers as he spoke.
“My father had another brother. He was the youngest of the boys and everyone’s favorite. Even Tantalus loved him the most,” he said with a grimace, as if he had a hard time believing Tantalus loved much of anything. “His name was Ajax.”
“What happened to him? Did he die?” Helen asked carefully. Lucas nodded.
“He was murdered. By someone he couldn’t stay away from,” he said quickly. Frustrated, he brushed a hand over his face before he continued. “Anyway. When Ajax was killed, my uncle Tantalus went into hiding to protect himself. As head of the House, he feared being overthrown. After that, all of his orders either came in writing or through his wife, Mildred. But no one has seen him in person since then.”
“Mildred? That’s not a Greek name.”
“She’s normal, of course,” Lucas said with a raised eyebrow. “Scions from other Houses usually send us into a murderous rage, remember? Not exactly good for a marriage. And the only other option would be for us to marry our cousins.”
“Oh, right. Forgot about the Furies for a sec. And with just one House left the only Scions around are related to you. Gross,” Helen said, rolling her eyes at herself for missing such glaringly obvious points.
“You’re not related to me,” he whispered, gently pulling on her hand to bring her closer to him. Then, abruptly, he turned and started leading her through the garage.
They could have walked in a straight line around the edge, but instead Lucas chose to bring her through the maze of cars. Right before they got to the door that led into the kitchen he slowed and turned back around to face her with a smile. She could hear his elevated breathing and his hand felt light in hers. For just a moment he pulled toward her, as if he were looking for a way to scuff his chest across hers and fall against her mouth, but at the last moment he turned away and brought her inside the house as if nothing was going on.
And maybe nothing was. Helen was so confused. But as soon as they entered the kitchen she had other things to worry about. Like tinnitus. In an instant, she understood why Castor and Pallas had gone outside to talk. It was really noisy in there.
Noel was working her magic over the stove, and the rest of the family seemed to be collecting around her as inevitably as water running downhill. All the chairs were taken, and the standing room up against the counter was constantly changing as Noel whirled and bullied her way around her work space. Everyone was talking and laughing and arguing at the same time, and although Helen couldn’t understand a word, somehow they all seemed to be understanding each other. It was a Delos symphony, and Noel was the maestro.
As an outsider, Helen could see Noel for what she was—the center of the family, the beating heart that fed all that muscle she was tripping over while she was trying to cook. She was the personification of a warm fire and an open door, and she welcomed, even expected, strays like Helen to wander in and eat her food.
“There you are,” she said without looking up from the stove. “I called your father and invited him over for dinner. I figured you’d be too worn out to do any cooking yourself.” She turned the vegetables she was sautéing with a deft flick of her wrist, just like Helen had seen celebrity chefs do on TV. Helen had always wanted to learn that move, and for a moment her slightly shell-shocked brain was distracted by it. Then she registered that Noel had been talking to her.
“You invited my dad?” Helen asked shrilly.
“I sure did. Pallas is finally home, and since you’re going to be spending a lot of time at our house to train I’ve decided it’s time our families met each other. I asked Jerry to bring your Kate as well, but she’s working at the store tonight, so that will have to wait. Your dad’s going to be here in about fifteen minutes, so if there’s anything you need to brush or wash first,” she said, finally turning around to inspect the windswept girl standing in her kitchen wearing clothes that were about four sizes too big for her, “I’d do it quick,” she finished with a knowing smile.
Helen looked down at her grass-stained feet. She tried to run a hand through her hair, and squeaked with pain when all the short hairs on the back of her neck got yanked out. Ariadne laughed.
“You look like you’ve been dragged through a bush backward. But I can fix that.” Ariadne stood up, pried Helen’s hand away from Lucas’s, and dragged her out of the kitchen.
Helen couldn’t believe how many knots were in her hair, but eventually Ariadne managed to tease them out with some anti-frizz lotion and a straight comb. Then Helen washed her feet, tied her hair back in a ponytail, and threw on some flip-flops that Ariadne loaned her so fast she was halfway down the steps before she realized that they were too big on her and she could break her neck.
“What the hell are you wearing?” Jerry said as soon as he saw her. Helen burst out laughing, partly because her dad had said exactly what she was thinking, but mostly because of the dumb-ass look on his face.
“It’s a loaner. My track uniform was all sweaty. Hey, they’re huge, but at least they’re clean,” Helen said, gesturing down to the gigantic T-shirt and the rolled-up sweatpants.
“Oh. Well, you look . . . comfortable?” he said suspiciously.
“Next time I’ll wear a ball gown,” Helen promised. Still laughing with her dad, she turned and noticed that half the Delos family was watching them, apparently amused.
“I see what you mean,” Castor said to Lucas, and the two of them shared a look that Helen didn’t understand before he turned to Jerry and smiled warmly.
“It’s nice to see you again, Jerry,” Castor said, coming forward with his hand extended for Jerry to shake.
“And you, Castor. I intended to be the first to suggest we all sit down to a meal together, but your wife seems to be a step ahead of me,” Jerry said graciously.
“Welcome to my world,” Castor replied with a laconic smile, the two men already enjoying each other’s company.
The introductions were as brief as possible, considering they included so many people, and Jerry handled them like a pro. He’d run a local store for almost twenty years and he was accustomed to remembering people’s names and adjusting to even the most eccentric of personalities. Helen watched him respond in just the right way to make one person smile, another laugh, and yet another stop and think. She was proud of her dad, not just because he was clever and funny, but because he knew when not to be.
It also helped that Lucas’s family had similar tastes, both in conversation and in food. Jerry ate up a storm and gently leaned on Noel until she confessed that she had been a chef in her pre-mom life, years ago, when she lived in France. Noel even admitted that she had made a few stealth trips to the News Store. She generously declared Kate’s sea salt, rosemary, and créme fraîche croissants to be a work of crazy genius. Jerry beamed with pride, as if Kate was the buried treasure that he had been lucky enough to dig up. Helen elbowed him.
“I see you blushing,” she whispered to her dad.
“Yeah, and you’re not. Why is that?” he asked back.
“No reason to,” she said, a traitorous glow starting to grow on her cheeks.
“Uh-huh,” he said, not buying it. “Is this the part where I’m supposed to be the concerned parent and demand that you tell me exactly what’s going on between you and Mr. Superfantastic over there?”
“No. This is the part where you mind your own business and eat your dinner,” Helen said, sounding exactly like a mom.
“Good! Another bullet dodged,” he said with a smile, and asked for seconds of Noel’s potatoes au gratin.
The rest of the evening went along as well as Helen could have hoped, until the end. Helen chatted with Jason, joked around with Ariadne, and even spoke briefly with Pallas about his job as a museum curator. Up to that point, Pallas had seemed cold, even hostile toward her, but as soon as they started discussing painting, he seemed to open up a bit. Helen was no expert, but she knew enough about art to keep the conversation interesting. They were both surprised to find that they shared similar tastes, and they had a moment of mutual admiration while they discussed one of their favorite painters. Helen was beginning to think that she and Pallas could get along, but after their exchange ended she saw him turn away from her with a deep, distrusting frown.
Helen heard a merry jingling and turned when she felt a touch on her arm.
“You can’t take it to heart,” Pandora said consolingly. “Look, I love all my brothers, but they can be huge jackasses sometimes. Especially Pallas.”
“I just wish I knew what I did,” Helen said, frustrated.
“No, it’s not you! You didn’t do anything. All of this Scion crap has been going on for a lot longer than you know.”
“Since the dawn of time, right?” Helen asked, trying to be humorous even though she was still hurt by Pallas’s reaction.
“Yeah, right. In a literal sense that’s true, but in this family there’s something more specific that I’m referring to. Something that goes back to just before you were born—that’s when everything started going to hell.”
To Helen’s surprise, Pandora took her hand and led her to a corner where they could sit down next to each other and avoid the jumble of the rest of the room. Apparently, whatever Pandora had to tell her was something she wanted to keep between them.
The Delos family was large enough to have cliques, and if Helen had to put their family into high school terms, Pandora was the artsy, mysterious girl that everyone wanted to hang out with, but only a few did on a regular basis.
“Let me start by saying that it’s hardest for Pallas because he’s lost more than most of us,” Pandora said sadly, before she sat up straighter and smiled apologetically. “Don’t get me wrong, my brother is still an ass for treating you like he did, but it might help you understand him a little better if you can flip it, and try to see that your arrival in our lives is just as big a bombshell for us as it is for you. Do you know about the way our looks are handed down?”
Helen felt her face twitch in confusion at what seemed like a one eighty in the conversation.
“Sort of,” she said. “Castor said something about archetypes, and then Cassandra said that we all look like the people who fought in the Trojan War, or something.”
“So we’ve all got these recycled faces, right? And we don’t always look like our parents, or even Scions from our own Houses, but rather like the people from history that the Fates want us to be all over again.”
“Yeah, I get that. The Fates are really into repeats.”
“And since Scions usually tend to fall madly in love with one person they are ‘destined’ to be with, and then they go and have about a billion kids really young, the older generation sometimes has the dubious honor of seeing the faces of people they once knew—and here’s the real bitch—the faces of people they once fought against, in the younger generation. Sometimes, even in their own children or in someone who their children love.”
“Oh. That doesn’t sound good,” Helen said, a strange dread growing in her. “Pallas hated me the first time he saw me. So who do I look like?”
Pandora sighed. The spangles on her wrist shook as she took Helen’s hand.
“This totally sucks,” she said apologetically. “But you look exactly like Daphne Atreus—the woman who killed our brother Ajax twenty-one years ago.”
Helen noticed that Pandora stumbled over his name. For a moment, Helen thought the usually happy Pandora would cry.
“But I didn’t do it! I didn’t kill your brother,” Helen said, shaken to a whisper by the depth of emotion she was seeing. Hearing Helen’s urgency, Pandora snapped out of her sad thoughts and squeezed Helen’s hand.
“I know that!” she exclaimed kindly. “It’s insane to blame you, and most of us don’t. I certainly don’t. We have no way of knowing if you’re even from her House.”
“But Pallas does blame me,” Helen said, finally getting Pallas’s instant dislike of her. Pandora nodded reluctantly.
“When we lost Ajax it’s like we lost the best of us,” Pandora said, her eyes downcast and her lower lip momentarily catching between her teeth. “Ajax was . . . the best. You should have seen him. Actually, you can see him.”
Pandora shook her right wrist out from under the piles of bangles. At the very bottom, clipped tightly to her skin, was a cuff. Pandora opened the oval face to reveal that the cuff was actually a wrist-locket, something Helen had never seen before. Inside was a picture of what Helen first thought was Hector, tickling the daylights out of a little girl with short dark hair.
“My brother Ajax,” Pandora said wistfully. “He always had time for me, which is a big deal when you’re in a family as large as ours. It’s easy to get lost in the shuffle, especially when you’re the littlest. I used to follow him around everywhere he went, begging him to give me jobs to do. He started calling me ‘Squire’ and I loved it.”
Helen looked at the joyful little girl squirming under the giant hand of her big brother, and then up at Pandora’s glistening eyes. “Even just looking at this picture I can tell he loved you very much.”
“He did, and I loved him. I used to pretend he was a glorious knight and I was his only trusted sidekick, and he played along. He was so patient. He used to send me on dangerous quests to find his car keys or summon the elevator. I was seven when he died. I wasn’t supposed to be following him that night, but I was. I was there when he was murdered.”
Helen was about to speak, to say something comforting if she could, but Pandora changed abruptly, and continued. “He was like Apollo himself,” she said with a bright, although slightly forced, smile. “Like Hector in a lot of ways . . . only sweet, and not a cranky wiseass. Don’t get me wrong, I love my nephew, but damn! He can be a such a grouch.” They both broke into a much-needed laugh at Hector’s expense.
“I wish I’d met him. Your brother, I mean,” Helen said, and was surprised to realize that she meant it. Ajax must have been truly special to inspire such enduring love in his younger sister.
“In a lot of ways none of us have gotten over losing him,” Pandora said, shrugging as though she had run out of explanations for Helen. “But my brother Pallas is the only one who can’t look at you and accept that you’re a different person, even though he knows it’s got nothing to do with you.”
“I get it,” Helen conceded. “It’s not fair, and I still think he’s mean, but I get why Pallas hates me.”
“Don’t worry, eventually he’ll get over it. Deep down he knows you didn’t choose your face. The Fates did,” she said. She gave Helen a cheeky smile. “And damn, girl! But you got a nice one!”
“So did you!” Helen insisted, and she meant the compliment she gave.
“Whatever,” Pandora said, rolling her eyes and shaking her tinkling wrists. “I’m probably one in a hundred who gets some stupid handmaiden’s face, or a vestal virgin’s from Troy, considering my luck with men!”
Even while she laughed, Helen couldn’t quite shake a strange doubt. Finally, she gave into it and asked, “So who from Troy do I look like?”
“Hell, no!” Pandora said, standing up. “I promised—we all did. You need to talk to Lucas about that one, Helen. Sorry, but I’ve already given you enough to think about for one night.”
And with a considerable amount of jangling and sparkling, Pandora announced that she needed a glass of wine and disappeared in the mix of her family. Helen grimaced after her. She knew that Pandora had really opened up and entrusted her with an emotionally dense bit of information, but Helen still felt dissatisfied. She wanted to know what role the Fates intended for her to play. She was going to ask Lucas the second she got him alone.
She looked over at him. All night she had felt him watching her, and the weight of his eyes had been like an encouraging hand on the small of her back. She didn’t have to slouch or pretend to be weak or less of a geek than she was. She simply fit in. She realized that this new ease with herself was partly due to the fact that for the first time in her life she was around people who were just as odd as she was . . . but it was mostly because of Lucas. He never stood next to her, but she could feel they were still tied to each other by the trust they had built during their flight. His gaze had such a positive impact on her that she felt unbalanced as soon as his eyes abandoned her. She looked around to see what had caught his attention and spotted him talking privately with Pallas.
Helen did not approve of using Scion hearing to violate another person’s privacy—she and Hector had already had an argument about just that when she accused him of eavesdropping on her and Jerry from the widow’s walk, but now she couldn’t seem to stop herself. When she heard Pallas say her name, she had to know what they were saying about her.
“I’m not going to lie to you. Helen caught my eye,” Lucas was saying in a low voice. “But nothing’s going on.”
“So everyone keeps telling me,” Pallas replied. Helen saw him rub his lower lip in thought before continuing. “I’m not so worried about that right now, but what I am worried about is a month or two down the road when the two of you are flying off every direction together. Alone. It can’t happen, Luke.”
“It won’t,” Lucas replied coldly. “I’m teaching her to fly and I’m making sure she doesn’t get killed, but there’s no way I’d ever touch her. Give me some credit.”
They continued talking, but Helen had stopped listening. She felt sick. Stumbling in her borrowed shoes, she went over to her dad. She stood right next to him as he talked to Pandora, and stared at his profile until he took the hint and looked at her.
“What’s the matter with you?” he asked sarcastically at first, until he took a good look at her and became concerned. “You okay, Len?”
“Can we go? I have so much stuff to do. Homework and chores. And I’m so tired,” she said, making up random excuses until he responded. She was causing a bit of a scene, which she hated, but she simply couldn’t stand there and suck it up for one second longer.
Jerry glanced down at his watch. “Sure, yeah. I guess it’s getting kind of late. Was that supposed to be my line?” he asked with a guilty grimace.
“No, you’re good. It’s still early. I’m just . . . I’ve got stuff,” Helen said before she launched immediately into the thank you, good-bye, and see-you-tomorrow crap that she wished she could just skip.
Ariadne shot Helen a worried look, but Helen didn’t care about anything anymore, not anyone’s feelings or whether or not they all thought she was rude or crazy or both. None of it mattered. She just needed to get out of that house before she saw Lucas again or she was going to lose her mind. It was rude and awkward, but Helen managed to drag her dad out the front door before Lucas and Pallas had even looked up from their conversation in the corner.
