Starcrossed (38 page)

into the air and leaving without him. “We can go eat sushi in Tokyo

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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 had 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. . . .”

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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 your powers.”

“But I’ve spent my entire life scared to death of using any of

them,” 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.”

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“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

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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 a 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.

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“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.

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“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 a 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

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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