It was nighttime in the dry lands. Helen was surprised that there was such a thing as time here. It confused her so much that she glanced around, uncertain as to where she was. After a few moments she decided that, yes, she was in the dry lands, but this time the hilly terrain was flatter and more open. The dark, empty sky seemed lower and heavier somehow. Then she looked over her shoulder. It took her a few moments to understand what she was seeing.
Miles away, there was a line across the land and sky, where the flat nightscape turned back into the more familiar, hillier dayscape. The different time zones sat next to each other like two paintings in an artist’s studio—unmoving, unchanging, and both equally as real. Here, time was a place and it never moved. Somehow that made sense.
Helen walked. It was cold in the night version of the dry lands, and her teeth chattered uselessly. In the dayscape, there was no relief from the heat, so Helen knew that in the nightscape there would be no warmth no matter how much she rubbed her arms and shivered. She saw someone up ahead. He was panicking.
She hurried forward until she could see that it was Lucas. He was on his hands and knees, feeling around as if he were blind—grabbing at the sharp stones, cutting his hands on their edges. He was very afraid. She called out to him, but he couldn’t hear her. She knelt down next to him and took his face in her hands. He flinched away from her at first and then reached out blindly with relief. He mouthed her name, but no sound came out. In her arms, he felt very light. She made him stand up even though he was so frightened he hunched over on shaking legs. He cried silently, and Helen knew he was begging her to leave him behind. He was too frightened to move, but Helen knew she couldn’t heed him or he would never leave this dark, dry land.
Even though he screamed, she forced him to get up and walk.
Helen was in terrible pain. She wanted to groan but she didn’t have the strength to make any noise. She could hear the ocean close by, but she couldn’t move or open her eyes to see where it was. She felt her head bob gently up and down, as if she were lying, stomach down, on a lumpy raft, and her lips twitched in the faintest of grateful smiles. Something had broken her fall and was gently supporting her. She concentrated on that bit of good fortune as she divided her pain up into manageable little bits, one heartbeat at a time. After ten heartbeats she counted to twenty. At twenty she asked herself to get to forty, and so on. She heard another steady rhythm under her, and after a short time her heart was in sync with the sound coming from her life raft. They beat together, each encouraging the other. She kept very, very still.
After what seemed like hours Helen was still immobile, but she could finally open her eyes and focus them. All she could see in the sweeping, blinding flashes sent out from some distant lighthouse were walls of sand. Under her right cheek was a warm T-shirt. After a few moments she realized there was a person in it. She was lying on top of a man. The lumpiness under her head was his chest and the bobbing sensation was him breathing. She gasped. The Delos boys had caught her.
“Helen?” Lucas asked, his voice faint and breathy. “Make sound. If alive,” he barely managed to say. He didn’t sound like he was going to kill her so she answered.
“Alive. Can’t move,” she whispered back. Every syllable sent threads of pain radiating out from her diaphragm.
“Wait. Listen to waves. Calm,” he said, struggling with every word as her body weight tried to press the air out of him.
Helen knew she couldn’t so much as raise her arm, so she relaxed like he told her to and just watched as the world swayed up and then back down with every breath he took. They waited in the intermittent light and dark of the lighthouse signal, listening to the surf fizzing in the sand.
As the agony began to lessen into something semiendurable, Helen was able to notice more things about her body. From what she could see, her outward shape seemed mostly normal, but her insides felt gooey and soft, as if she were a freshly microwaved chocolate chip cookie. Her bones were barely supporting the muscles and tissue they were supposed to, and there was an itchy heat in her marrow. She recognized that sensation as being similar to the one she’d experienced once when she was learning to ride a scooter and accidentally flipped the thing. Some part of her knew at the time that she had broken her arm, but by the time she got it X-rayed it was as good as new. The itch meant she was healing.
Somehow, she had fallen out of the sky and survived. She really was a monster. A freak. Maybe even a witch. She started to cry.
“Don’t be scared,” Lucas managed to say in one try. “Pain will pass.”
“Should be dead,” she whined quietly through her liquefied jaw. “What’s wrong with me?”
“No. Not wrong. You’re one of us,” he said with a slightly stronger voice. He was healing just as fast as Helen was.
“And what’s that?”
“We call ourselves Scions,” he said.
“Offspring?” Helen mumbled, remembering the definition from one of Hergie’s despised Word of the Day assignments. “Offspring of what?”
Lucas answered her. Helen heard him, but she didn’t. The word demigod was so far from what she was expecting to hear she had to think about it for a second. She had prepared herself for it to be something horrific, possibly even evil, which made her the way she was.
“Huh?” she blurted out stupidly, so confused she had stopped crying. Her view jiggled, and Helen realized that Lucas was laughing.
“Ouch. Don’t make me. Laugh,” he said even though his chest kept bouncing up and down.
It felt funny to have her head bobbing around like that so she started laughing, regretted it, but couldn’t seem to stop. It was almost as if the pain was so awful she had to laugh it off.
“This really hurts,” he said as he started to get hold of himself.
“If you stop, I’ll stop,” she said, her fit winding down as well.
In between recurring snickers, they went back to quietly managing their pain and waiting for their bodies to knit themselves back together. Despite the pain, the time ticked by soothingly. Out of one ear, Helen could hear the steady thump of Lucas’s heart, and out of the other she could hear seagulls. Dawn was on its way, and she felt completely safe for the first time in weeks.
“Why don’t I hate you anymore?” she asked when she felt like her head bones were solid enough to enunciate properly.
“I was just wondering the same thing. I think the Furies are gone.” Lucas sighed deeply, like a huge weight had just been lifted off his chest, even though Helen knew her head was probably as heavy as a bowling ball. “I was scared for a moment when we were in the air. It was very hard not to engage you.”
“We? Oh, you can fly!” Helen said, realizing.
She remembered how Lucas had a habit of appearing and disappearing so suddenly, and how she had heard the thuds and scuffs of his takeoffs and landings. She had never seen him fly because she had never thought to look up.
“How did you get under me?” she asked, shifting her position ever so slightly.
“I caught you. I saw you faint and slowed your fall as best as I could, but we were already close to impact when I got an arm around you.” He shifted as well, and then flinched in pain. “I can’t believe we’re alive.”
“Neither can I. I thought you were coming to kill me tonight, but instead you caught me,” she marveled, still stunned. “You saved my life.”
It was as if the fall had knocked all the rage right out of her. She didn’t hate Lucas at all. She felt the pressure of his arms lying across her back increase slightly, quickly, and then relax again.
“The sun’s coming up,” Lucas said after a while. “Hopefully, my family will be able to see us now.”
“All I can see is your chest out of my right eye and mounds of sand out of my left. Where are we?”
“At the bottom of our impact crater on the last bit of beach before Great Point Light at the absolute tip of the narrowest strip of sand on the northernmost end of Nantucket Island.”
“So . . . easy to find,” Helen quipped.
“Practically in my backyard,” Lucas joked, and then flinched painfully when he laughed. He went quiet for a moment before speaking again. “Who are you?” he finally asked.
“I’m Helen Hamilton,” she replied hesitantly, not sure what he was getting at. She wished she could see his face.
“Your father’s name is Hamilton, but that’s not your House,” he said. Helen could feel the capital H in the word House just from the inflection he used. “You would normally have taken your mother’s Scion name rather than your father’s mortal one. Who was she?” he asked as though he had been meaning to ask her that question all night.
“Beth Smith.”
“Beth Smith. Right,” he said sarcastically.
“What?”
“Well, ‘Smith’ is obviously an alias.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know anything about her. How can you say that isn’t my mother’s name?” Helen asked, getting defensive.
She had never even known her mother, and here was this stranger assuming he knew more than she did. It cut Helen a little to have to admit to herself that perhaps he did. For the first time in hours, she was also hyperaware of the fact that she was lying on top of him, and she didn’t want to be anymore. She tried to put pressure on her forearm but a searing pain informed her that there would be none of that. After a few feeble attempts to roll off of him she gave up. She could feel him smiling, and his arms tensing to hold on to her just in case she managed to get away.
“I know your mother wasn’t named Smith because you can fly, Helen, now hold still. You’re hurting me,” he said frankly.
“Sorry,” she said, suddenly realizing that he’d taken the brunt of her weight when they hit the ground. His injuries were probably far worse than hers—and hers were awful.
As she watched the sand turn gray, then pink, then coral with the rising sun, Helen thought that this was the second dawn she had seen in as many days. Of the two, she much preferred this one. She was in far more pain, but she was also alive and completely free from anger. Helen hadn’t realized how heavy the burden of hate had been until she was allowed to put it down.
She heard a voice calling for Lucas, and although she knew they were in danger lying helpless in that pit, she didn’t want to be found. What if the Furies came back with the rest of the family?
“Here!” Lucas called weakly.
“Wait,” Helen pleaded. “What if they still see the Furies when they look at me? I can’t defend myself in this state.”
“No one will hurt you,” he promised, his arms tightening slightly around her.
“Hector . . .” she began.
“. . . would have to get through me first,” he said resolutely.
“Uh, Lucas?” she said leadingly, not wanting to insult him by pointing out the obvious.
“Yeah,” he replied with a chuckle, catching her drift. “I know I’m not exactly Secret Service material right now, but trust me. I won’t let any of them harm you—not even big, bad Hector. He isn’t as terrible as you think, you know.” He managed to tilt his head to the side enough to meet Helen’s eyes.
“You’re his cousin. You have to think the best of him.”
“I’ll leave it up to you, then. I can’t hide us, but I won’t call out to them if you don’t want me to,” he said, and let his head roll back out of her sight.
They lay there listening to his family call his name over and over, but Lucas kept his word. He didn’t make a sound, although he did flinch when he heard Cassandra’s exhausted voice. She sounded desperate and frightened. They all did. And Helen was to blame. After a few more moments she couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Here!” Helen yelled as hard as she could. “We’re over here!”
“Are you sure?” Lucas asked carefully.
“No.” She chuckled nervously before calling out again, this time with Lucas’s help.
There was a lot of yelling from down the beach, and the sound of feet pounding across the sand. Then Helen felt Lucas try to reposition his head to look at someone standing above them.
“Hi, Dad,” he said apologetically.
Castor muttered some kind of oath that Helen didn’t recognize, but the meaning was clear enough. Then he starting giving orders, and Helen felt someone thud down next to her.
“My gods,” Ariadne whispered to herself. “Helen? I’m going to try to roll you off, okay? But first I’m going to have to try to speed up the healing of your bones a bit. It will feel a little hot, but don’t be afraid, healing is one of my and Jason’s talents. Jase, come and do her legs,” she called up.
Helen felt another thud, and then she felt the twins slide their hands gently down along her arms and legs. There was a burning sensation inside Helen’s bones that was nearly unbearable, and it made her wonder if she would be better off without any “healing.” Right before she begged them to stop, the burning mercifully ended. The twins counted to three and gingerly flipped her onto her back like she was a runny pancake. Helen tried to be brave, but she couldn’t stop a scream from slipping out. Every muscle, every inch of skin, every bone in her body was lit up with pain as though someone had filled her bloodstream with flaming-hot shards of glass.
She gritted her teeth and took deep, calming breaths before she felt like she had enough control to open her eyes. When she did, she saw Ariadne’s luminous hazel eyes, fringed with the same incredibly long lashes as Jason’s, looking down at her with compassion. She studied Helen’s face carefully, and then gave her a tired smile. Helen thought Ariadne looked drained, as if what she had done for Helen had cost her. Her bow-shaped lips were ashy instead of their usual cherry red and her long, chestnut hair stuck to her perspiring cheeks.
“Don’t worry. Your face is already going back to its right shape. You’ll be your usual, exquisite self by nightfall,” she said, smoothing Helen’s hair comfortingly. “Keep still. I’ll be right back.”
Helen glanced around. For the first time she could see where she and Lucas had spent the night. It took a moment to register that they were in a hole in the ground that was at least five feet deep and three times that wide, and it took even longer to register that the hole had been made by their bodies when they fell. She felt water seep into her clothes as it leached up from the damp sand, and realized that Lucas must have been lying in a cold puddle all night. She rolled her head to the side so she could look at him.
There was a faint Helen-shaped dent running down the length of his body, and his chest was nearly caved in from the weight of her head and shoulders. His face was pinched up in a grimace. He hummed to himself a little as if to try to give his vocal cords something to do other than howl. His father hovered over him, looking Lucas directly in the eye and talking softly. She saw Lucas give a tiny nod, bite his lower lip, then take a deep breath and strain. His chest expanded into a more normal shape, and then Lucas suddenly let his breath out and panted as if he had just lifted a great weight. A tear trickled out of the corner of his eye and ran into his hair.
His father said something reassuring and then pulled himself smoothly out of the hole and started talking strategy with Hector. After a few moments of getting his breathing right, Lucas rolled his head to the side so he could look back at Helen.
“I think the worst is over,” he said, squeezing her hand. She hadn’t realized that they had joined hands, but it felt right to her. She squeezed back gently and smiled. He looked horrible. Much worse than Helen could have guessed.
“Piece of cake,” she said blithely, trying to distract him. “So what are you doing next Friday night?”
“What have you got in mind?”
“We could try hitting each other with cars,” she suggested cheerfully.
“Did that last weekend with Jase,” he said with mock regret.
“Go to the zoo and throw ourselves to the lions?” she fired back quickly, desperate to keep him focused on her rather than his caved-in chest.
“The Romans sort of wore that one out. Got anything original?”
“I’ll think of something,” she warned him.
“Can’t wait,” he breathed, and then turned his face away as he rode another shivering wave of pain.
“Hey! Little help?” Helen yelled, her voice sliding up to a shriek as she watched Lucas shake. “Lucas isn’t doing so hot!”
“No, he isn’t doing so hot,” Cassandra said in a hoarse, bitter voice from somewhere around Helen’s feet. Helen hadn’t realized that anyone was in the hole with them while she and Lucas held hands and cracked jokes, but she had the feeling that Cassandra didn’t like what she had seen.
“Lower the boards down, it’s time to move them,” Cassandra called up to her father, as if she was the one in charge.
Helen’s eyes widened in shock that any fourteen-year-old would speak like that to her elders, let alone be obeyed, but the boards were quickly lowered down without a word of comment. Jason and Ariadne eased Helen and Lucas onto the long planks and told them to hold still. The twins ran their glowing hands an inch above Lucas’s body, and Helen saw him grit his teeth as they sped up his healing. Just when she thought Lucas was about to start screaming, the twins stopped, looked at each other in silent communication, and then nodded exhaustedly. They had both lost so much color their cheeks looked gray to Helen, but they also seemed strangely happy, like nothing gave either of them more pleasure than helping someone else. Helen tried to thank them, but Ariadne told her to save her strength.
Helen and Lucas were kept level as they were raised out of the crater and loaded side by side in the back of the same giant SUV that Helen had had so many uncharitable thoughts about. Now that it was her ambulance, she made a silent promise to never rag on big trucks again.
Castor was behind the wheel and anxious to get moving. The longer they stayed on the beach, the higher the sun got, and the more opportunity there was for them to be discovered. Cassandra came with them, but Jason, Ariadne, and Hector stayed behind to fill in the crater and leave the beach looking as normal as possible.
“Can’t we just put a lump of rock in the middle and pretend it was an asteroid?” Helen heard Hector ask, exhausted.
“Do you think that would work?” Jason put in, perking up at the prospect of seeing his bed an hour or so sooner.
“No,” Cassandra said decisively. “This part of the island is a nature preserve. There are scientists all over the place. They would know the rock didn’t come from space.”
Jason and Hector gave identical groans and immediately went back to work. Again, Cassandra’s opinion went unquestioned. Helen had always tacitly assumed that Lucas was the leader of the kids and that his father, Castor, was the leader of the whole family, but now she thought maybe there was another, less traditional dynamic at work in the Delos family. When Cassandra spoke, everyone listened—including Castor. And apparently, Cassandra didn’t need the influence of the Furies to dislike Helen. Which reminded her . . .
“I don’t see the Furies!” Helen suddenly exclaimed out loud.
“None of us do,” replied Castor in a pensive voice. Helen heard a leathery squeak as he twisted around in his seat to look back at them. “We’ll figure it out later. You two need your rest for now.”
She couldn’t argue with that; in fact, she could barely keep her eyes open. As soon as she heard the soporific purr of the engine she nodded off exactly like a fussy baby on a car trip.
She woke up in a big, white bed as the sun was going down. The room’s window framed the sky, which was doing things with color that all the island painters had to be going bananas over.
She wiggled her toes. When that worked out okay she propped herself up on her arms and got into a sitting position. Swinging her legs out of bed, she realized that she was in someone else’s nightgown and she wasn’t wearing anything underneath it. She knew she was recovering from a near-death experience, but she was still bashful enough to blush. The nightgown was actually more what Helen would call a nightie, as gowns were generally much longer and more opaque. Testing her feet on the floor was enough to wipe her modesty away, however, and her startled cry was quickly answered with a welcome helping hand.
“Easy. Here, hold on to me,” said Ariadne. “Wow, I can’t believe how fast you’re healing. But still, you should lie down for a bit longer.”
She tried to get her to lie back, but Helen stayed perched on the edge of the bed and took a few breaths.
“I kinda can’t,” she replied, looking up at Ariadne sheepishly.
“Bathroom, huh? Okay,” she tittered nervously. “I’ll carry you. Just don’t pee on me.”
Helen laughed gratefully. Ariadne was making an embarrassing situation as humorous as possible so Helen would feel more comfortable. It was something Claire would have done. Helen was still embarrassed, but with a few jokes and a little bit of tact, they both made it through.
“Is it all right if I check and see how you’re healing?” Ariadne asked politely when Helen was settled back in the bed. “It would mean that I would have to lay my hands on you, and I want to make sure you’re okay with that.”
“You just watched me pee,” Helen responded with an embarrassed laugh. “So, yeah, I’m okay with a checkup. But wait—is it going to hurt?”
“Not at all. I’m just going to take a peek, not grow cells. That’s what really hurts you. If it’s any consolation, it’s no picnic for me, either. So exhausting,” Ariadne said with a smile as she pushed Helen, making her lie down.
“Okay,” Helen said uncertainly. She rested against the pillows and waited for the pain that she suspected was soon to follow, despite Ariadne’s optimistic denial.
Ariadne put her hands on Helen’s ribs and concentrated. Helen felt a faint vibrating sensation, like she was standing in front of an enormous subwoofer, but, as promised, it didn’t hurt at all. After a few moments, Ariadne lifted her hands and looked at Helen.
“I couldn’t ask for a better patient,” she said with a beaming smile. “After seeing how much damage you and Luke sustained, I had my doubts. But you’re going to be just fine.”
“Thank you,” Helen said earnestly. “For the healing and helping me . . .”
“And thank you for not peeing on me.” Ariadne laughed as a beautiful pixie of a woman in her late twenties popped her head around the half-open door.
“You two are having way too much fun to be in a sickroom,” she said with a mischievous look in her yellowish cat eyes. Helen had a feeling that those eyes were usually filled with some kind of worldly mischief, and she instantly liked her for it. It reminded her of Kate. She entered the room, tinkling like a shaken bag of loose change. She had short, spiky hair. Helen noticed that her wrists were buried under layer upon layer of glittering bangle bracelets, and although Helen couldn’t see them, she could hear that the woman’s ankles probably had a few bits of jewelry wrapped around them as well.
“Helen, this is my aunt Pandora. Dora, this is . . .” Ariadne rapped her fingertips on the bedspread like a drumroll. “The famous Helen Hamilton!”
“Ta-da,” Helen replied weakly. Pandora sat down on the end of the bed.
“Gorge-ous! I can see why she’s got Luke’s panties in a twist,” she said with a cheeky grin.
“No! That’s all done with! We haven’t heard the Furies since we woke up on the beach,” Helen said urgently. When Pandora gave her a quizzical look, Helen felt like she had to keep going. “I don’t want to kill any of you anymore. Just to be clear.”
“Well, good, ’cuz I hear you’ve got quite the arsenal,” Pandora said as if she was giving a big compliment. Helen had no idea what she was talking about so she changed the subject.
“How is Lucas?” she asked cautiously, still surprised that she could say his name without being launched into a fit of anger. Pandora and Ariadne glanced at each other.
“He’ll be okay,” Pandora said firmly. She shook her wrists and sent her bangles into a cascade of sparkles and jingles, almost as if she believed the cheerful sound would banish all dark thoughts.
“It was close, but he’s healing,” Ariadne added with an optimistic face. Helen couldn’t look at either of them. The tense moment was broken by a glugging sound in Helen’s stomach, which lasted for an inordinately long time.
“Well, you’re hungry,” Pandora said drily. “And I think you might be able to come downstairs with some help.”
Helen was outfitted with a long terry-cloth bathrobe, which bore the logo of a popular Spanish soccer team, from Ariadne’s closet. Then, with a few more jokes about how Helen could use a little fattening up, she was carried downstairs by her two new patronesses.
When they reached the kitchen, they were greeted with a heavenly scent blossoming off of the stove, and Helen’s stomach growled again. Hector heard the noise and cocked an eyebrow as she was deposited gently in a chair at the kitchen table. He said something to the woman who was orchestrating dinner, and she spun around to look at Helen.
“I didn’t think you’d be joining us,” the woman said with a startled face. “I’m so glad.”
“Thank you. And thank you again for the stuff you sent my father and me,” Helen said. She knew immediately that this was Noel Delos, and she could also tell that Noel was a normal woman without an ounce of demigod strength. A big, bubbling pot of guilt boiled over in Helen’s chest. She had threatened this fragile human in a family of super-heroes—threatened her to her son and her nephews, no less. Noel smiled knowingly at Helen’s penitent face.
“You’re very welcome. Now, first things first. How do I contact your father to let him know you’re okay?”
“I’d rather keep my dad out of this,” Helen replied nervously.
“You’ve been gone all night and all day. Don’t you think he’ll be worried?”
“He’s in Boston for the weekend. He won’t be back until tomorrow night.”
“All right, it’s up to you, but I want you to know I think it would be better if you and your father had a long talk about all this,” Noel said with piercing eyes. Then she whirled around and got busy with dinner. Helen had the feeling that she may have been granted a stay of execution, but she wasn’t pardoned yet. “Are you ready to eat now?” Noel asked, buzzing around.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been this hungry,” Helen replied truthfully.
“It’s the heal,” Noel said, smiling at some internal thought as she laid down bread, salt, and oil in front of Helen. She poured a tall glass of milk before gesturing impatiently. “Eat. This isn’t the time to be shy, Helen. You need it.”
Helen ripped into the bread like a medieval glutton with low blood sugar. Noel smiled again and asked Hector to go get some hard cheese out of the fridge. He grudgingly did as he was told. As he put the cheese down he made a joke about being scared to get his fingers too close to Helen’s mouth.
“You’re one to talk,” Pandora grumbled. “Just two weeks ago I had to count the silverware after every meal to make sure you hadn’t swallowed any of it.”
“You were healing two weeks ago?” Helen asked, and then remembered that Hector and Pandora had arrived later than the rest of the family.
So much had happened in just a few weeks that Helen felt like every day had telescoped out into a week in itself. As she marveled at how much her life had changed, she noticed that a silence had fallen over the kitchen. Apparently, Helen had stumbled on to a touchy subject because everyone was exchanging nervous glances over her head.
“Sorry. I don’t mean to intrude,” Helen amended quickly.
“No, it’s fine. It’s just that Hector’s recent heal is part of something much bigger,” Noel said. “Right now, you eat.”
At first she felt the lingering reticence of a new guest, but as soon as the lentil stew was put down in front of her, Helen’s whole being was lost in a flavor blur. She was vaguely aware of other people pulling up chairs or standing around by the stove while they tasted this or that, got themselves a plate, or just hung out to talk, but she was far too focused on the ever-changing dishes in front of her to pick individuals out of the crowd. Noel kept the food coming. A few times, Helen was aware of Cassandra shuttling trays up and down the stairs, but it didn’t sink in that those were for Lucas until Helen was falling asleep over something sweet and nutty made out of dough.
“Ready for ice cream?” Noel asked her, absentmindedly pushing a thick swath of Helen’s long hair behind her shoulder so it didn’t fall into her food.
“I think I’ve gone blind,” Helen replied, unable to chew or swallow or see straight anymore.
“Finally,” Noel sighed as she sank into a chair across the table from Helen. She looked as tired as Helen felt. “Jason? Do you think you could take her up?”
“Sure,” Jason replied, and scooped Helen out of her chair. She was suddenly very awake.
“I can walk! Really, you don’t have to carry me,” she said, squirming in his arms.
“Sure you can. Now hold still or I’ll drop you,” he replied with a good-natured smile. She had no choice but to relax and let him carry her.
When they got upstairs, Cassandra came through one of the many doors, holding a tray stacked to overflowing with dirty dishes, and Helen got a brief glimpse of Lucas lying in bed. She tensed and tried to crane her head around Jason’s shoulders to get a better look, but Cassandra shut the door.
“Is he really going to be all right?” Helen asked Jason as he brought her into the guest room.
“Yeah,” Jason said, but he didn’t meet her eyes when he said it. He forced an uncomfortable laugh. “Luke’s just milking it to get Cass to pamper him. He’ll be fine,” he said. He laid her down and turned to go.
“I’m really sorry,” Helen called out as Jason reached the door. He stopped uncertainly and turned to listen as Helen unburdened herself with increasing emotion. “I was so scared and I was running away into the fog and then I felt really light and really cold. When I looked down and realized that I was flying, I fainted. I always knew I was strange, that there was something wrong with me, but I didn’t know . . .” Helen trailed off. Jason came back to her bedside and touched her shoulder.
“Nobody blames you,” he said, but Helen waved a dismissive hand.
“Yeah, you do. You all do. Because I started this when I attacked Lucas in the hallway at school.”
“You didn’t start this,” Jason replied forcefully. “This war started thousands of years ago.” Helen gave him a confused look, but he shook his head before she could ask any questions. “Get some sleep, and don’t worry about Lucas. Even compared to other Sons of Apollo, he’s really tough.” Jason switched off the light on his way out, but left the door open a tiny crack in case she needed to call out for help in the middle of the night.
Helen snuggled into the down comforter and tried to relax, but she was jittery with exhaustion and overwhelmed with the strangeness of the room and the house. And the flying. She could fly—there was no denying it now. She wasn’t just a gifted athlete with paranoid notions about possibly being some kind of genetic experiment. She could frigging fly, which is aerodynamically impossible for Homo sapiens, so she had to be something else. Something other than human.
The only explanation was what Lucas had said, but that didn’t make much sense, either. The Greek gods were myths, anthropomorphic manifestations of powerful natural forces, not historical figures with actual descendants—or so she’d been taught in eighth grade. But now she wasn’t so sure. She thought of how it felt to fly, how the air had become solid—a malleable object—and she knew that the argument was over in her heart. Somehow, she was a demigod, and she was just going to have to accept it.
In the early morning hours, Helen woke up with a start and looked around at the dark, unfamiliar room. She had been dreaming about flying, which was great, until she realized she had no idea how to land. Her first waking thought was that she would have to get Lucas to teach her. Then it occurred to her he might never be able to fly again.
Despite what his family said about him being fine, Helen knew she wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep without checking for herself. She needed to see his face tanned and normal, not white and scared as it was when they were in the dry lands together.
She touched her feet to the floor and tested them, applying more pressure until she was sure she could stand, and then made her wobbly way down the hall to Lucas’s room. She had never had shin splints, had never had any kind of sports injury at all, but as she crept along she imagined that what she was feeling had to be similar, if not much, much worse. Her muscles wouldn’t stretch as far as usual; her joints felt swollen and hot. By the time she silently pushed Lucas’s door open she was covered in a thin, sickly sweat. Lying on his back and staring at the moon in the window, Lucas spun his head to look at Helen as she appeared in the doorway. A moment passed.
“Hi,” he whispered.
“Hi,” she whispered back. “May I come in?”
“Yeah. But quietly.” He gestured to Cassandra asleep on a couch on the other side of the room. “She was awake for two days straight.”
Helen made her way into the room, crouching like an old woman and wincing at the pressure on her feet. She felt like some ridiculous fairytale hag and she started laughing silently at the thought of chasing kids off her gingerbread lawn.
“You shouldn’t have come on your own. You’ve worn yourself out,” Lucas admonished her gently.
“I was fine a second ago, but it was farther than I thought. Your house is huge,” Helen whispered, aiming her creaky body at the chair next to his bed.
“You won’t be able to sit up long. Here,” he said as he pulled back his covers. “You’d better lie down.”
Helen looked uncertainly at his bed. She had spent all of last night melded to him, but now it was different somehow. If she lay down with him, it would be a choice. She saw him smirking up at her, and realized he thought she was being silly. Which she was, because her knees were shaking with the effort to hold her up. She tried to sit down as carefully as she could so as not to disturb him, but at the last moment her legs gave out and she pretty much flopped into bed with him.
“Sorry,” she whispered as she gathered the covers over them.
“It’s okay. Careful of your toes—my legs are splinted,” he warned her. Helen peeked under the covers and saw that his lower body was wrapped in soft casts. “See? You’re completely safe with me.” He grinned at her in the dark and she grinned back, until the reason for her draining trek came back to her. Her smile faded.
“How bad is it? Can you even tell right now?” she asked him seriously. She propped herself up on an elbow so she could look directly into his face and scan him for any well-intentioned lies. Even in the low moonlight dribbling through the casement she could see the intense jewel blue of his eyes.
“I’ll mend,” he said so softly his lips hardly moved.
“Completely? Will you still . . . you know . . . walk and run and . . . fly and all that?”
“Yeah,” he whispered before she had even finished talking. “Good as new in another day.”
It occurred to Helen that all she had to do was lean down and she would be kissing him. It seemed like such a natural thing to do—as if she should be kissing him—that she was halfway to his mouth before she stopped herself and pulled back, stunned by her lack of self-control. She saw him swallow hard.
“Lie back, Helen,” he told her, which she immediately did to hide her confusion.
For a few minutes they were both breathing a lot faster than they should have been, but after a while, Lucas relaxed enough to take her hand and hold it under the covers. She watched his chest go up and down in a way that was familiar to her now, and smiled herself to sleep.
