walking steadily toward her with long, forceful strides.
What are you doing here? he half barked, half whispered.
Helen took a couple of steps back and then made herself stop and
hold her ground. In the gray light she could see the white bodies of
the three sisters dragging themselves through the sandy grass,
crawling up the soft rises, shivering with sobs.
How did you get behind me? Were you following me? she asked
in an accusing voice.
Yeah, I was, he spat out, still coming toward her. What the hell
are you doing on my familys land?
Too late Helen realized that by coming to his house she had
crossed some line. Where there had been hatred, Helen could now
see violence. It distorted his features and added menace to his
stance. He was still graceful, but almost too cruel to look at. Good,
she thought. Lets do this.
She lowered her shoulder and closed the distance between them,
barreling into his chest and tumbling onto the ground with him
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under her. She reared up to drive her fist into his face, but he
grabbed her arms. She was on top and should have had the upper
hand, but she had never hit anything and she could tell from the
way he never wasted a movement that he had been fighting his entire
life. Helen felt him do something with his hips and then he was
on top. Her arms were pinned above her head and her heels were
left to scrape uselessly at the ground. She tried to bite his face, but
he jerked his head away.
Lie still or I will kill you, Lucas warned through gritted teeth.
He was panting, not because he was winded, but because he was
trying to control himself.
Why did you come here? he asked, almost begging.
Helen stopped struggling and looked into his infuriating face. He
had his eyes closed. He was trying the trick she had used in the alley,
she realized. She shut her eyes as well, and felt a tiny bit better.
I lied to the police. I didnt tell them you were there tonight,
Helen grunted, the unbelievable weight of him pressing the air out
of her. Youre crushing me!
Good, he said, but he shifted his weight, seeming to get lighter
somehow so she could fill her lungs. Do you have your eyes
closed, too? he asked, sounding more curious than angry.
Yeah. It helps a little, she replied quietly. You see them, too,
dont you? The three women?
Of course I do, he replied in a baffled voice.
What are they?
The Erinyes. The Furies. You really dont understand. . . . He
stopped abruptly when a womans voice called his name from what
Helen assumed was his house. Damn it. They cant find you here
or youre dead. Go! he ordered. He rolled off of her and jumped
up into a run.
As soon as she was free, Helen bolted and didnt look back. She
could almost feel the three sisters reaching out with their clammy
white arms and bloody fingertips to touch the back of her neck. She
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ran in a panic for Kates car, dove behind the wheel, and drove
away as fast as she dared.
After half a mile she had to pull over and take a few deep breaths,
and as she did, she noticed that she could smell Lucas on her
clothes. Disgusted, she took her shirt off and drove home in her
bra. No one would see her, and if they did they would just think
she was out for a dawn swim. At first she left her shirt on the passenger
seat, but the scent of him kept wafting up, smelling of cut
grass, baking bread, and snow. In a fit of frustration she screamed
at the steering wheel and tossed her shirt out the window.
She was exhausted to the point of collapse when she got home,
but she couldnt lie down in her bed without taking a shower. She
had to scrub Lucas off or his scent would chase her around in her
dreams. She was filthy. Her elbows and back had grass stains on
them and her feet were a black mess.
As she watched the dirt melt off her shins and ankles under the
water she thought of the three sisters and their perpetual suffering.
Lucas had called them the Furies, and no name could have suited
them better. She vaguely recalled hearing Hergie saying the word
at some point, but for the life of her, she couldnt remember what
story they were in. For some reason Helen was picturing armor
and togas, but she couldnt be sure.
She picked up a pumice stone and rubbed off every last speck of
dirt before shutting off the taps. Afterward, she stayed in the steam
to put on sweet-smelling lotion, letting it soak in, obliterating every
last trace of Lucas. When she finally tumbled into bed, still
wrapped in a damp towel, the sun was long up.
Helen was walking through the dry lands, hearing the dead grass
crackle with each step she took. Little clouds of dust puffed up
around her bare feet and clung to the moisture running down her
legs, as if the dirt she walked on was so desperate for water it was
trying to jump up off the ground to drink her sweat. Even the air
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was gritty. There were no insects buzzing around in the scrub, no
animals of any kind. The sky was blazingly bright with a tinny
blue light, but there was no sun. There were no wind and no
cloudsjust a rocky, blasted landscape as far as Helen could see.
Her heart told her that somewhere close there was a river, so she
walked and walked and walked.
Helen woke a few hours later with heavy limbs, a headache, and
dirty feet. She flopped out of bed, rinsed off the increasingly familiar
nocturnal grime, and threw on a sundress. Then she sat down at
her computer to look up the Furies.
The first website she clicked on gave her chills. As soon as she
opened it she saw a simple line drawing on the side of a pot. It was
a perfect depiction of the three horrors that had been haunting her
for days. As she read the text under the illustration it gave a nearly
exact physical description of her sobbing sisters, but the rest confused
her. In classical Greek mythology there were three Erinyes,
or Furies, and they wept blood just as they did in Helens visions.
But according to her research, the Furies job was to pursue and
punish evildoers. They were the physical manifestation of the anger
of the dead. Helen knew she wasnt perfect, but she had never
done anything really wrong, certainly not anything that would have
earned her a visit from three mythological figures of vengeance.
As she read on, she learned that the Furies first appeared in the
Oresteia, a cycle of plays by Aeschylus. After two solid hours of untangling
what had to have been the firstand bloodiestsoap opera
in history, Helen finally got her head around the plot.
The gist of it was that this poor kid named Orestes was forced to
kill his mother because his mother had killed his father, Agamemnon.
But the mother killed the father because the father killed their
daughter, Orestes beloved sister Iphigenia. To make it even more
complicated, the father had killed the daughter because thats what
the gods asked for as a sacrifice to make the winds blow so the
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Greeks could get to Troy to fight the Trojan War. Poor Orestes was
bound by the laws of justice to kill his mother, which he did, and
for that sin he got chased halfway across the earth by the Furies
until he was nearly insane. The irony was that he never had a
choice. Right from the start he was damned if he did and damned if
he didnt.
After Helen got the tragedy straight, she still had no idea how it
could relate to her own circumstances. The Furies wanted her to
kill Lucas, that was clear, but if she did would they then chase her
for having committed murder? It seemed to her that the Furies had
no idea what justice was if they both demanded you commit
murder and then punished you for doing it. It was a vicious cycle
that didnt seem to have any end, and Helen didnt know how or
why it had all started. The Furies had simply appeared in her life
one day as if theyd moved to Nantucket with the Delos family.
She felt a shot of adrenaline rush into her bloodstream. Was it
possible that the Deloses were murderers? Something in her didnt
quite buy it. Lucas had had several opportunities to kill her, but he
hadnt. Hed even fought someone else to save her. Helen had no
doubt he wanted to kill her, but the fact remained that hed never
even raised his hand to her. If hed hurt her at all it was because he
had been defending himself from her abuse.
Helen switched off her computer and went downstairs to look for
her dad. When she couldnt find him she went out to the car and
grabbed her cell phone off the passenger seat. Jerry had left her a
text saying that he was still at Kates. Helen looked at the timeit
was 3:00 p.m. What could he possibly still be doing? A fantastic,
although slightly nauseating, idea occurred to Helen.
It would make sense for the two of them to hook up, she
reasoned. They made each other laugh, they worked well together,
and they obviously cared about each other. Kate was definitely a
few years younger and could probably get any guy she wanted, but
Helen didnt think shed ever find a better man than her father.
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And Jerry definitely deserved a fresh start. Hed been treated horribly
by Helens mother and hed never gotten over her, which
ticked Helen off to no end.
She rubbed the charm on her necklace. For the hundredth time
she considered taking the wretched thing off, but she knew she
wouldnt. Every time shed tried to go without wearing it she obsessed
over it, unable to stop picturing it in her head. Eventually,
shed give in and put it back on in order to regain some mental
peace and quiet. She realized that this probably meant she had
some serious mommy issues, but compared to all the other things
that were wrong with her, that was the least of her problems. An
image of Lucass face hovering over hers in the dark, his eyes
scrunched tight, popped into her head. She had to think up a task
to distract herself before she started throwing things, so she decided
to go grocery shopping.
Helens official term as kitchen slavea system of alternating
weeks that had started as soon as she was old enough to
cookbegan on Sunday morning, but there was nothing in the
house for them to eat that night. She made a list, took the housekeeping
cash out of the cookie-less cookie jar, and drove Kates car
to the market. In the parking lot she saw a gigantic luxury SUV and
shook her head disapprovingly at it. There were a lot of disgustingly
rich people on the island who drove vehicles that were too big
for the old cobblestone streets, but this SUV was especially annoying
for some reason. It was a hybrid, so she couldnt really get too
wound up about the environment, but she felt herself getting irritated,
anyway.
Helen pulled a shopping cart out of the stand and wheeled it into
the store. As she waved at a few kids from school who worked at
the registers, she started to hear the Furies whispering. She debated
running out . . . but everyone at school already thought she
was crazy. If she ran out of the grocery store now like she had seen
a ghost, there would be even more gossip.
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She made herself push the cart on, keeping her head down to
avoid seeing the Furiesbut there was nothing she could do to
block out their voices. She would just have to move fast and get it
over with as quickly as possible. She allowed herself a moment of
self-pity for the injustice of her situation. She didnt deserve to be
haunted like this. It wasnt fair. Helen walked briskly through the
store, picking only the few things she would need to get through a
day or two of cooking. Her frantic thoughts were interrupted by
voices, real voices, coming from the next aisle over.
She shouldnt be here, said a young, but strangely serious voice.
Helen guessed it was Cassandras.
I know, said a male voice, possibly Jasons? We have to find a
way to get to her soon. I dont think Luke can take it much longer.
Helen froze. What did they mean, get to her? She stood there
thinking in slow motion until she realized they were coming
around the end of the aisle. Trying to back up, she plowed into
someone standing right behind her. The wailing of the Furies grew
so loud it was painful.
She spun around and had to tilt her head almost all the way back
to find the face above the enormous male chest that confronted
her. Under golden curls, bright blue eyes drilled down into Helens.
It crossed her mind that he looked like a blond version of
Michelangelos Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, newly released
from plaster and walking around in three gigantic dimensions.
Helen had never been so afraid of anyone in her entire life.
She took an automatic step back and ran into her shopping cart.
Her breath hitched painfully in the back of her throat as she
stumbled to the side, her hands and feet clumsy with fear. There