Swathed in black shadows, Creon crouched outside Helen’s house, his eyes glued to her bedroom window. He could hear Hector four doors down, slipping through the neighbor’s yard, searching for him. But Creon knew Hector didn’t have a prayer. No one could find Creon at night if he didn’t want to be found.
His little cousin Lucas was up there, in Helen’s bed, holding her while she slept. Creon shook from head to toe, resisting the nearly all-consuming urge to leap through the glass and fight his cousin for her life. Or maybe just for her. Creon wasn’t sure what he would do anymore, and he didn’t like this newfound uncertainty. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to get control. If he challenged his cousin, it would be a fight to the death. Creon had no doubt he would win, but in winning he would lose everything. He would become an Outcast, and Atlantis would remain lost.
The choice was clear: immortality or Helen. So why was he sweating with the effort to resist? He heard Helen sighing in her sleep and Lucas shifting his body under hers, pulling her even closer. Creon’s legs straightened as if of their own accord. He took two steps toward the window, his head swimming in the red-lit haze of bloodlust.
His phone vibrated in his pocket.
Alerted to the danger, Hector broke into a sprint and headed straight for that slight sound. Creon had no choice but to run. He couldn’t take both his cousins and Helen. He would have to come back some other time.
It took him ten minutes to lose Hector in the center of the island. His cousin was persistent, but eventually the suffocating darkness of Creon’s shadows disoriented Hector enough so that Creon could slip away.
Trotting up the eastern side of the beach, Creon finally checked the ID on the call that had saved him from a terrible mistake. It didn’t surprise him that it was from his mother. She might not be a Scion, but she had uncanny timing. He called her back and told her what he had discovered when he tried to stab Helen.
At first she didn’t believe him, though in her careful choice of words, Creon sensed that her incredulity came not from a belief that what he had described was impossible, but rather that she doubted Helen herself was responsible for the phenomenon he had witnessed. Somehow, his mother had seen or heard of a Scion being able to break blades with his or her skin before, and Creon pressed her to tell him who it was. Instead of answering, she asked yet again for Creon to describe Helen. He did.
“Well, it must have been that your blade was defective. From how you describe Helen, it can’t be her or her daughter,” Mildred said quickly.
Creon continued to press his mother and she grew increasingly frustrated, raising her voice and even swearing a bit. Creon was shocked by her crass behavior. A lady never cheapened herself by using foul language, and he hadn’t even considered his mother capable of it until that moment. He asked her politely how she could be so sure his blade was defective.
“Because if this girl truly was impervious to weapons, then you would have also said she has the most beautiful face you’ve ever seen. You wouldn’t be able to ignore that fact—it’s in your blood,” she replied petulantly.
“And if she does have the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen? What then?” Creon asked calmly, although a wonderful rush of adrenaline was sending a chill across his skin. The line went silent for a full five seconds.
“You need to come home now. We need to tell your father. This is much bigger than you know,” Mildred finally choked out before she abruptly ended the call.
The next morning Helen jerked herself awake, her entire body snapping from sleep to high alert in a blink. Her hand flew to that spot on her chest where Creon’s blade had broken, and she had to press her fingers into her breastbone to convince herself that there was no gaping hole there.
She heard faint whispers coming from across the room. Sitting up, she saw Lucas standing in the window, talking to someone outside in such a low voice that no human could hear. The clock by her bed read 5:25, and the sky was barely gray with the dawn.
“She’s safe, that’s all that matters,” Lucas said out the window.
“Not all that matters,” came the whispered reply.
Helen got out of bed and joined Lucas at the window. She looked down and saw Hector standing on the edge of her lawn. He looked up at them, glancing back and forth from Helen to Lucas, an indignant look on his face.
“You okay?” Hector asked Helen gruffly.
“Yeah. But you don’t look so hot,” she said. Even from one flight up she could see that Hector’s eyes were bloodshot with fatigue and worry. He grimaced sarcastically at her compassionate look, and turned to Lucas with a warning.
“Stay high until we’re sure. She’s safer in the air.”
Hector ran off so fast that Helen could only make out his blur. Lucas shut the window and leaned against it. His eyes were wide and unblinking.
“What was that about?” Helen asked in a nearly inaudible voice. She could hear her dad’s deep breathing from his bedroom. Thankfully, he was still asleep.
“My family went looking for Creon last night,” Lucas answered with downturned eyes. “We think he caught a charter flight off the island, but we aren’t sure yet.”
“He’s gone?” Helen asked, a little too hopefully.
“Maybe. But if he did leave, it won’t be forever.” Lucas stared at Helen so intensely she had to reach out and touch him somehow just to break the tension. She stepped forward and placed her hand on his chest. He was shaking.
Straightening suddenly, Lucas crossed to the door. “Put on something warm.”
“Why? Where are we going?” she whispered.
“Up.”
As soon as they were airborne, Lucas seemed to relax a little, but not much. She asked for a flying lesson, partly because she wanted to learn, but mostly just to distract him. They worked on Helen’s air-pressure control for over an hour before they got a call from his family. Castor had called from the airport, finally confirming that Creon had left the island by private charter like they had suspected, and it was safe for Lucas to bring Helen in.
Hector took the phone and insisted they come in right away—he wanted her to resume her combat training that morning. The cousins got into a heated exchange. Finally, Lucas agreed to land, but he seemed put out by the request.
“What’s wrong?” Helen asked, confused that he wasn’t happier to learn that Creon was gone.
“Hector has the wrong idea about us being up here alone. I’m not keeping you aloft so we can . . . damn it, you need to learn this!” he snapped, raking a hand through his hair. “I want you to be able to fly away from trouble, rather than try to stand and fight.”
“Me too,” she replied enthusiastically, grabbing on to Lucas’s shoulders so she didn’t waft away. “Call your cousins back and tell them we’re not done. I’d rather spend the day flying with you than getting sweated on by Hector any time.”
Lucas gave Helen a sinking look, like he was thinking a painful thought. “We’d better go in,” he finally decided, his face darkening. “You need to learn both.”
Helen knew Lucas was worried, but after spending the morning soaring weightless, she couldn’t feel anything but elated. She took both his hands and swung him around her so they spun in a spiral and tumbled in the air like they were on a roller coaster. The swooping sensation in her stomach made Helen shriek, but it worked. Lucas grinned and took the bait.
He seized on her arms and brought her into a dive that had her screaming bloody murder. At the last moment he pulled up, holding Helen cradled in his arms before allowing her to float to his side. They hovered over the Delos lawn like that for a moment, holding hands and laughing hysterically. They failed to notice the worried stares they were getting from the rest of the Delos family inside the house.
“Now, before you land I’m going to teach you another skill,” Lucas said as he looped over her shoulder and put an arm around her from behind. “I’m going to teach you how to transition into the massive-state—turn up the gravity pulling on you. The best way to get the hang of it is to do it while you’re landing.”
“Is that what you did when you landed on Hector the other day in the tennis courts?” Helen guessed. “And last night?” She was thinking of how heavy he’d made his body when they were wrestling in her bed. She pinched her lips together to keep herself from smiling.
“Exactly,” he said against her ear, letting his lower lip brush against her skin. “It’s the third state of gravity for fliers, and it could save your life in a fight.”
With his arm around her waist and the two of them floating ten feet above the ground, he taught her how to warp the way the world pulled on her. Lucas guided her to reverse the impulse that made her weightless and imagine her body becoming heavier. She was able to pick up the basics right away and when Lucas told her to touch down she thudded into the lawn with a jarring blow, kicking up two great divots of grass with her heels. She was impressed with herself and looked up at Lucas for approval, but apparently, there was still a lot left for her to learn.
“You’ll get better at it,” he said encouragingly as he pounded into the lawn next to her, skidding two deep trenches with his feet.
“You are such a show-off!” she said, grinning at him.
“Hey, I’ve got to impress you as much as I can, while I can. Soon you’ll be flying circles around me,” he said. He took her hand and pulled her tight up against his side as he led her toward the house.
“I doubt that,” Helen said, shaking her head. Lucas was so graceful in the air. There was no way she’d ever fly the way he did.
“You’re stronger than me,” he said without any envy or judgment, just as a fact. “When you realize that, you’re going to be able to do things that I never dreamed of.”
“If I’m so strong, then why do I always need you to come and save my sorry ass?” she asked sarcastically.
“Because fighting is about much more than strength,” he said seriously. “Which is good, or Hector would still be able to beat the crap out of me in a fight.”
“I can still beat the crap out of you in a fight,” Hector shouted from inside the house. Lucas smirked at Helen and shook his head as they walked into the kitchen. They didn’t get far.
“Not on my clean floors!” Noel shouted, pointing to Lucas’s and Helen’s muddy shoes. Then she realized why they were so muddy. “What did you savages do to my new lawn?” she groaned.
“I had to, Mom. Helen needs to learn.” Lucas dutifully backed out of the house and took off his shoes, and Helen did the same.
“Helen, dear. You look hungry. Make sure you eat something before you leave,” Noel said kindly, before shifting right back into scolding mode. “About that lawn, you know the rules, Luke.”
“‘Fix what you break,’ yeah, yeah. And you know I always do,” he said with a mischievous smile as he came into the house and started chasing his poor, hassled mother out of the kitchen with the threat of a tickle. She tried to beat him off with a dish towel, but she didn’t stand a chance.
As Lucas ran upstairs to change his clothes, Helen could see he was happy. And so was she. She knew she was still in danger and should be terrified, but watching Lucas bound up the stairs three at a time, all she could feel was giddy, bubbly happiness. She still had no idea what the heck was going on between them, but she was happy.
Apparently, Helen wasn’t the only one. Pandora came into the kitchen with a yoga glow, humming to herself. She didn’t have on her bracelets. Instead, it was her anklets and a spangled belly chain that were jingling away cheerily with every step and sway of her hips.
“Oh my gods, I love that!” she exclaimed, reaching out and touching the charm Helen always wore around her neck. “I always say, if it isn’t plastered with diamonds it isn’t really jewelry.”
“What?” Helen asked, puzzled, looking down. Pandora was chugging from a bottle she took from the fridge and didn’t hear.
“The workout room is all yours,” she tossed back over her shoulder at Hector. Helen fingered her heart necklace and wondered why Pandora had mentioned diamonds. There were no diamonds on her charm.
“You ready for a beating, Princess?” Hector asked once his aunt had danced out of the room.
“Do you have to call me that?” Helen huffed, wondering if being a dick was part of his strategy or if it was just his personality baseline.
“Well, now I do,” he smirked, pleased with himself for hitting a nerve.
“Let’s go before I wreck Noel’s kitchen with your big, stupid face.”
“That’s the spirit,” he said encouragingly. Helen had to laugh. He really could be quite charming when he wasn’t trying to kill her.
Hector and Lucas started Helen out on the heavy bag, thinking that it was the most basic place to begin. She didn’t get it. She tried to follow through with her hips like they told her, but she kept positioning herself strangely at the last moment and taking all of the momentum out of her swing. She just didn’t like to punch things. It didn’t come naturally to her. Hector couldn’t even watch.
“You’ve got the killer instincts of a houseplant,” he groaned, covering his face.
“Maybe we should move on to grappling. It’d probably be more useful for her, anyway, considering all of her attacks have been close-quarter struggles,” Lucas suggested.
Helen readily agreed. She was a terrible fighter, but not even Hector could deny that she was trying. The boys gave her a brief rundown of dojo etiquette, and then she entered the ring with a bow, as she had been taught. She was expecting Lucas to be her teacher, but he stood back and let Hector go into the dojo with her instead.
“I thought this was your specialty,” Helen said uncertainly to Lucas.
“It is. He’s way better on the ground than I am,” Hector replied for him with a grin. “Now get down on your hands and knees. You know, like you’re a dog.”
Despite the fact that Hector was deliberately trying to get Helen’s back up, she stayed calm and focused on the instructions she was given. Jujitsu was part physical, which was fun, but the main part of it, the real challenge, was mental. She felt like she was trying to solve a puzzle, trying to unwind out of the human pretzel that Hector had made out of her. A few times she pissed him off by giggling and shying away from the sexually suggestive shapes he was trying to bend her into, but he gutted it out and kept working with her rather than let Lucas take over the lesson.
“Nah-uh!” Hector said when Lucas tried to enter the ring. “You. Out.”
“You’re not breaking it down step-by-step for her, Hector!” Lucas called from outside the cage. He wouldn’t come in the ring and break the rules of the dojo, but he could still yell from the sidelines. “She doesn’t know the first thing about pulling guard!”
“Well, tough,” Hector replied as he raised himself up from between her knees. “There’s no way I’m letting you in here, brother, so just forget it.” He gestured meaningfully at her prone body and open legs, and raised his eyebrows. Helen started laughing hysterically.
“You have nothing to worry about, Hector!” she managed to choke out. “Trust me!”
That got Lucas blushing. Helen heard a familiar laugh from outside the ring. “Giggles? Is that you?” She propped herself up and shoved Hector off of her.
“Yeah, it’s me. I gotta say, Len, I would have thought it would be harder to get between your legs, but Hector doesn’t seem to be having any trouble at all,” Claire teased.
“What are you doing here?” Helen said, surprised.
“I tried to stop her, but she just barged in and . . .” Jason began, his voice fraying with frustration.
“I really wanted to see you do demigod stuff!” Claire said, cutting him off. “I’ve never gotten to see you do all your tricks on purpose before.”
“Tricks? We’re not show ponies, Claire!” Jason yelled at her.
Helen looked at Hector and shrugged while Claire and Jason continued to bicker. “You know what? I think they enjoy fighting,” she commented.
“She’s your friend,” Hector said to her.
“He’s your brother,” Helen said back.
Then she heard the door slam. Lucas had left the room. Helen stood up and called after him, but she couldn’t leave the ring until Hector, her dojo master for the day, dismissed her. She turned to him and pleaded with her eyes.
“You may be safe for today, but you’re still in a lot of danger, you know. I know you don’t like this, but you need to train. And anyway, it would be better if you just let him start hating you now, Helen,” he said heavily.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, surprised that Hector could be so unfeeling.
“Then chase after him if you have to,” he said, looking away. Helen bowed to him and ran out of the practice ring. “But it will only get harder,” he warned as she turned to close the door. She slammed it behind her to make her point . . . though she didn’t exactly know what that point was.
She ran outside and heard a deep thunking noise coming from the tennis courts. She started to run and then realized that, duh, she could fly. Leaping into the air, she looked down to see Lucas in the tennis-courts-turned-arena, chucking spears at a target. He saw her and took flight, meeting her in the air.
“Come on,” he said, taking her hand and looking down at a couple of people on the nearly empty beach below them. “Someone could still see us.”
They flew high, going north to Great Point, where they could be alone. They touched down on the soft sand around the lighthouse and transitioned into two normal people walking on the chilly beach, holding hands. Lucas was still silent after a few moments so Helen decided to go first.
“You know we were all joking around, right? I wasn’t trying to hurt your feelings. I’m sorry if I did,” Helen told him.
“You didn’t hurt my feelings,” he said, shaking his head and clenching his fists. “It’s much simpler than that. Much more basic. I hate seeing Hector on top of you. I’m jealous, Helen.”
“Then you train me,” she said hopefully, and he stopped walking and turned away from her with a groan. “Wait, why not?” she persisted.
“I’m a demigod, not a saint,” he said with a self-deprecating laugh. “There’s only so much I can take.”
“Exactly. So, what can’t you take? Decide which of the two options is harder, and do the other. That way, no matter how hard your choice turns out to be, at least you can find comfort in knowing you’re avoiding something even worse,” Helen said logically. Lucas looked at her sidelong and smiled.
“You give good advice, you know that?”
“Maybe, maybe not. I’ve got my own agenda,” she said through a playful smirk.
“You’re betting I’m going to choose to train you, aren’t you?” he asked, a laugh bubbling up in his chest.
“Flat-out banking on it.”
They walked along for a bit, smiling at their own thoughts. She could feel him struggling to make his decision, and she let him be. Then, finally, she felt him give in to something and take a deep breath.
“The twins will still be teaching you archery and spears, and Hector will still be in charge of boxing and sword fighting, but I’m taking over for all the grappling disciplines. Just a warning, this could still be vetoed by my father and uncle, no matter what I say.”
“Don’t I have any say?” Helen asked, slightly annoyed. “Castor and Pallas can’t tell me what to do. If I want you to train me, then why shouldn’t I get what I want?”
“Um . . . maybe leave my family to me,” Lucas said good-naturedly, and Helen decided to let the subject drop. “Come on, we need to go back. I don’t like having you out in the open like this.”
“Everything is so close,” Helen said as they hovered over the Delos lawn, still in awe over how fast and simple it was for her to get from one end of the island to the other. “Don’t you ever get sick of being stuck over Nantucket?”
“I would if I was stuck,” he said wryly as they touched down in the backyard, “but I just went to New York the other day.”
“You did! For what?”
“Bagels. There’s this place out in Brooklyn that I love. It only takes me ten minutes at subsonic to get there.”
Helen stopped dead when she realized what that meant.
“You mean, any day at school, you and I can just fly to Boston and eat our lunches in Harvard Square and then be back in time for fifth period?”
“Sure,” he said with a shrug. “I want you to get a few more weeks of experience before we go off island, but soon you’ll be strong enough to go everywhere with me.”
“I want to see the statues on Easter Island! And Machu Picchu! And the Great Wall of China!” Helen exclaimed, practically hysterical with excitement.
She started bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet as they walked toward the house. Lucas grabbed her hands.
“We’ll need to wait a bit before we go overseas. You can barely stay in the air as it is and it’s harder to navigate with no point of reference, plus oceanic air currents can be a nightmare.”
“But I’ll be with you, and you know all that stuff already!” She stopped dead and gripped his hand tightly to her chest. “I’m strong enough now, I swear! Please? I’ve always dreamed of traveling! Lucas, you have no idea! My whole life I’ve wanted off this island.”
“I know, and we will—soon! We’ll tape a map to a dartboard and wherever we hit, we’ll go. Fiji, Finland, Florence, whatever!” he said indulgently, pulling her against him to stop her from jumping into the air and leaving without him. “We can go eat sushi in Tokyo every night until it gets boring. We can do whatever you want, Helen. When you’re a better flier.”
“We really can, can’t we?” she asked breathlessly, noticing the fact that they had both used the word “we.” Then a less-pleasing thought occurred to her. “You’ve been doing this for a while now, haven’t you? Running off to other continents when you have a few hours to kill.”
“Yes, I have.”
“But always alone?”
“We can carry people short distances when we fly if we have to, but it’s unbelievably exhausting to tamper with other people’s gravity. You’d be better off just walking there.”
He was attempting to sound lighthearted about it, but his face was turned down. Helen looked at him sideways, trying to figure out what it must be like to know that you could go to the Louvre and see the Mona Lisa instead of just looking at a picture of it in a book, but you’d have to go there by yourself. It must have been so lonely for him. He’d been the only Scion who could fly for his entire life, and that meant that he’d been isolated in a lot of ways—until he met her.
“There’s plenty of time for us to see the world, but for now, I think you’d better stay local. And since I can’t ask you to do something that I wouldn’t be willing to do myself, I promise I won’t go off island without you,” he said.
“Yeah, right,” Helen said, laughing and trying to pull her hand out of his, but he held on to her.
“I’m serious,” he said, tugging on her hand and pulling her toward him until she was practically stepping on his feet. “There’s another reason I want you stay over the island, especially when I’m not with you. My family can’t protect you if they can’t find you. Don’t forget, those women are still out there. And Creon will be back for you. . . .”
At the mention of Creon’s name, it came flooding back to her. He had tried to kill her, and he very nearly succeeded. The dizzying darkness had been bad enough, but he had forced her to use her lightning and relive another terrible memory as well.
“Helen?” Lucas said, touching the side of her face and turning her eyes to his. “I’m sorry to bring him up, but you know I had to.”
“I know, Lucas, it’s not that,” she began and stopped, needed a second to regroup. “Do you think my lightning is dangerous?”
“Very,” he said seriously. “But only if you don’t learn to use it.”
“I don’t want to use it! I want to go back to forgetting about it!”
“Helen, you don’t need to run away from yourself anymore,” he said, scowling down at the ground. “Look, this is partly my fault. I should have told you about your lightning sooner, but I could tell you were avoiding it, maybe even repressing it, for some reason. What I really wanted was for you to discover it yourself and want to learn about it, like you did with flying.”
“Lucas, I . . .” Helen broke off, shaking her head. “I think I killed someone with it, and even if he was trying to hurt me, it still terrifies me.”
“You can’t be afraid of your power anymore, Helen,” Lucas said gently. “You are the strongest of us all, but all that strength is for nothing until you own it.”
“But I’ve spent my entire life scared to death of using any of my powers,” Helen said in a strangled voice, thinking about her cramps.
“I know I’m asking you to forget about years and years of conditioning, and it probably won’t happen overnight, but it still has to happen, and you have to be the one to decide to make it happen. You are the most amazingly talented Scion I’ve ever seen.” Lucas raked a hand through his hair and shook his head, at a loss. “Really, Helen, you can’t see yourself the way I do, but if you could, you’d be speechless. It’s time for you to stop fearing what you can do, and it’s definitely time for you to start using all your talents when you train, especially your lightning.”
“How am I supposed to do that without frying everyone? I don’t suppose you have a garage full of lightning rods?” she tried to joke, flustered that Lucas thought she was powerful, but more important, that he seemed to love that about her.
“I haven’t worked out the details yet,” he said with a grin. “But I’ll think of something.”
When they went into the house it was dinnertime. Helen was happy to see that Claire was still there, sitting at the table, waiting to be fed like the rest of the family, chatting away with the twins about a paper due the next morning for one of their brainiac classes, and stopped only to wave excitedly at Helen when she and Lucas came through the back door.
As usual, the kitchen was packed. Pallas and Castor were hovering hungrily over the stove, burning themselves every time they dipped a finger into a pot to taste what Noel was cooking, but not caring enough to stop. Pandora and Hector were joking around with each other by the sink, laughing identical laughs as they tried to see who was better at spitting a grape into the air and then catching it again in their mouths. Poor Noel couldn’t turn one way or the other without tripping over one of her offspring, a guest, a husband, an in-law, a nephew, or a niece—and, yet again, no one seemed to be lending her a hand.
“You know I can cook, right? Should I offer to help your mom?” Helen asked Lucas sheepishly.
“Are you kidding? My mom loves this. Sometimes I think she’s just waiting for all of us to get married and move out so she can open her own restaurant.” He saw Helen’s dubious look. “I’m serious! She was telling my dad the other day she wants to have a dinner party and invite half the island. She’s insane.”
“There you are, Helen, dear,” Noel said when she looked up, as if she had been truly anxious about Helen’s whereabouts. Then she turned back to her stove top and started talking to herself. “She’ll need extras. So damned thin all of a sudden . . . Father still doesn’t know the first thing about her so he isn’t feeding her properly and Kate is so worried! Now where is Cassie?”
Noel was mumbling to herself, but loud enough so Helen could hear. She couldn’t tell if Noel was out of her mind with stress, used to being talked over in such a loud room, or if she was intentionally letting Helen in on her thoughts. Noel took a lungful of air and hollered Cassandra’s name.
There was a startled thump from upstairs, and Cassandra’s distant voice yelling back, “Start without me, I’m busy!”
Helen and Claire shared a wide-eyed stare, which melted into identical warm smiles. They had both been only children, both growing up not being allowed to raise their voices indoors. Together, they’d dreamed of having big families and full houses with a thousand things happening at once, and now they saw in the other the remembrance of that girlish wish. The yelling jangled the nerves a bit, but there was no denying that it made the Delos house feel like a home.
“Hec-Jace-Castor-Lucas!” Noel sputtered while she stared at her son’s face and repeatedly forgot what she had named him. “Go drag your little sister down here. We have guests tonight.”
Lucas did as his mother asked, returning with a very grouchy Cassandra thrown over his shoulder.
“But I see them every day!” Cassandra whined as Lucas bent forward and put her down on her own feet next to Helen.
“Mom said,” Lucas replied with an apologetic shrug. Apparently, there was no arguing with that because Cassandra rolled her eyes and sat down at the table without another word.
“Hi,” Cassandra said in a slightly miffed way to Helen. “Do you eat a lot of garlic?”
“No. Why? Does my breath stink?” Helen replied uncertainly, already working up a blush at the thought of having gassed Lucas all day with dragon breath.
“Not at all. Just trying to figure out why you’re impervious to weapons,” she said. She held up a book she had clutched in her hand and waved it at Noel’s uncaring back. “I’m trying to solve a problem here,” she said loudly, obviously intending for her mother to hear, but Noel kept right on cooking.
“I’ve been looking stuff up, too,” Hector added, hands behind his head, exactly like someone who hadn’t.
“You just worry about teaching her to defend herself, and I’ll take care of the research,” Cassandra said in a frazzled way as she opened her book and started leafing through it. Hector smiled, obviously glad he was off the hook.
Castor, Pallas, and Cassandra asked Helen about different habits—foods she ate, daily routines, even prayers her mother might have taught her to say before bed. Nothing yielded an answer, and they gave up when dinner was served.
It was good. Really, really good. Helen ate like she hadn’t been fed in weeks. She drank glass after glass of water. She was so dehydrated she could feel the cool water fanning out in her system and thickening her tissues like a dry rag fattening up as it absorbs a puddle. She felt guilty at one point for hogging all the food and forced herself to put her knife and fork down, but Noel looked at her sharply and asked her if she didn’t like the meal. Helen murmured an apology and gladly resumed chowing down.
After dinner, Lucas drove her back to her house, which by now was a waste of both time and fuel, but something they had to do to keep Jerry from getting suspicious about how Helen was traveling around the island.
“I don’t like leaving you alone,” Lucas said, glancing nervously at every shadow in the yard.
“I’ll be okay,” Helen lied. Actually, now that it was dark out she didn’t want Lucas to get farther than a few inches away from her, but with her dad home there was no option but for them to separate.
“I’ll be back in an hour or so,” Lucas told her as she got out of the car. Helen shut the door but kept hold of it, looking at him uncertainly through the open window. “What is it?” he asked.
“I feel horrible, Lucas! It’s autumn, and you and your cousins are sleeping outside at night. That just isn’t acceptable.”
“We don’t have much of a choice. We can’t leave you by yourself until you can fight.”
“I won’t allow it anymore,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear and crossing her arms stubbornly. “You’re just going to have to stay in my room.”
“Because that’s relaxing,” he replied with gentle sarcasm. “I barely shut my eyes last night. Trust me, I’ll get more sleep on your roof.”
“No,” she said, sticking to her guns, even though she was getting warm and jittery at the thought of him in her room again. “You either come inside or you don’t spend the night here at all.”
Lucas looked up at her. “We’ll figure something out when I get back. Okay?”
Helen reluctantly agreed and went into the house to see her dad. Through a wide yawn, he tried to ask her how her weekend had gone but after working double shifts for two days straight he could barely keep his eyes open. Helen sent him to bed, promising to fix breakfast in the morning. Jerry was snoring away before she’d even brushed her teeth. She finished up in the bathroom and put on a pair of boxer shorts and a baggy V-neck tee, thinking that Lucas would appreciate her attempt to cover up, and then went to the linen closet to find an air mattress she was pretty sure her dad had gotten for his birthday a few years ago.
At the bottom of the closet she found the unused kit herding dust bunnies around its corners and brought it back into her bedroom. She sat down on the floor, opened the box, and took out the different components. As she tried to find any part of the instructions that was written in English, she heard a tap. She smiled involuntarily, and waved for Lucas to come through her unlatched window, marveling at how lovely he looked as he soared in her window, quite certain that she looked nothing like that when she flew.
“Is that spine cracker for me?” he whispered with a smile as he pointed at the air mattress.
“Hey, if you don’t like it, I’m all for you sleeping in my bed,” Helen whispered back, making a show of closing up the kit.
“No, it’s perfect,” he said, stopping her by grabbing her hands and pulling her into his arms. He held on to her like he hadn’t seen her in forty days, instead of forty minutes, and then he grinned and rubbed his face against her cheek.
“You need a shave!” she said, squirming away from his scratchy chin. He chuckled sadistically and turned his attention to the air mattress.
“I was going to sleep on the couch downstairs,” he said uncertainly, still deciding if that would be better.
“My dad . . .”
“Wouldn’t be able to get down the stairs fast enough to catch me.”
“And what if you didn’t hear him and didn’t get out in time? I’d never be able to explain it,” Helen countered.
“Better that than the alternative,” he said, gathering up the mattress. “Look, I’m fine on the roof, Helen. I’m really not comfortable sleeping in here with you. I think it would be a mistake.”
No matter how guilty it made her feel to make Lucas sleep on the roof, she could tell that she wasn’t going to win this one. They dragged the air mattress up to the widow’s walk and eventually figured out how it was supposed to inflate, but Lucas had to read the instructions in Spanish because the English ones were nearly incomprehensible. Hilariously so.
“Insert mouth to the purpose inflation,” Helen whispered, quoting one of the stranger lines of the English instructions as she fixed up the newly filled mattress with sheets.
“Expel lung into inflator tube,” Lucas whispered back. He stuffed a pillow into a fresh case. “That sounds like it would hurt.”
Trying to silence their giggle fit only made it harder to stop. They both crumpled up on top of the mattress, stifling their laughs. Every now and again they would get control over themselves—only to snort and stuff their hands back over their faces as soon as they made eye contact. It went on way past the time when their throats started stinging with the tension of holding in the sound. Finally, they got it all out and just lay there on their backs, breathing heavily with the exhaustion of a damn good laugh. Helen felt Lucas take her hand and shake his head at the night sky.
“What am I doing?” he whispered to himself, digging his other hand into his hair.
“What? We’re not allowed to laugh together now?” she whispered, the ghost of a smile still haunting her lips.
“It’s not that,” he said, turning his face to her tenderly. “But it’s not exactly healthy for me to enjoy your company so much that something as stupid as blowing up a mattress is this much fun. As soon as I think I’m in control, you make me laugh or you say something so smart, and I feel like I lose a little bit of myself. I thought I was prepared, but this is much harder than I imagined.”
“And what exactly is ‘this,’ Lucas? Why are you sleeping on my roof and not in my bed?” Helen asked. She rolled over onto her side to face him and reached out to run her fingers over the U-shaped hollow under his Adam’s apple.
“Go downstairs,” he ordered desperately, brushing her hand away before she made contact. “Please, Helen. Go to your own bed.”
There was a part of Helen that knew exactly how to seduce Lucas whether he wanted to be seduced or not, and that freaked her out enough to make her get up and walk on shaky legs to her own bed. It rattled her that she could be so aggressive, so unconcerned with what he wanted that she would consider forcing herself on him.
As she settled down under the covers she heard Lucas tossing and turning above her. She heard him stand up with a sharp exhale and go to the door on the widow’s walk.
Her heart started joyfully hammering away when she heard him put his hand on the knob and turn it. Helen sat up, listening to him listening to her.
Both of them could hear the other’s breath, the other’s blood rushing around under the skin, and, for just a second, Helen could have sworn that she was so aware of him that she could feel his body heat from so far away. Finally, he seemed to win some kind of fight, and forced himself to go lie back down on his air mattress.
Helen lay back as well. After getting control over her thumping heart, she fell into the dreamless sleep that she was usually blessed with when Lucas was watching over her.
