Starcrossed (28 page)

declared Kate’s sea salt, rosemary, and créme fraîche croissants to

be a work of crazy genius. Jerry beamed with pride, as if Kate was

the buried treasure that he had been lucky enough to dig up. Helen

elbowed him.

“I see you blushing,” she whispered to her dad.

“Yeah, and you’re not. Why is that?” he asked back.

“No reason to,” she said, a traitorous glow starting to grow on her

cheeks.

“Uh-huh,” he said, not buying it. “Is this the part where I’m supposed

to be the concerned parent and demand that you tell me exactly

what’s going on between you and Mr. Superfantastic over

there?”

“No. This is the part where you mind your own business and eat

your dinner,” Helen said, sounding exactly like a mom.

“Good! Another bullet dodged,” he said with a smile, and asked

for seconds of Noel’s potatoes au gratin.

The rest of the evening went along as well as Helen could have

hoped, until the end. Helen chatted with Jason, joked around with

Ariadne, and even spoke briefly with Pallas about his job as a museum

curator. Up to that point, Pallas had seemed cold, even hostile

toward her, but as soon as they started discussing painting, he

seemed to open up a bit. Helen was no expert, but she knew

enough about art to keep the conversation interesting. They were

both surprised to find that they shared similar tastes, and they had

a moment of mutual admiration while they discussed one of their

favorite painters. Helen was beginning to think that she and Pallas

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could get along, but after their exchange ended she saw him turn

away from her with a deep, distrusting frown.

Helen heard a merry jingling and turned when she felt a touch on

her arm.

“You can’t take it to heart,” Pandora said consolingly. “Look, I

love all my brothers, but they can be huge jackasses sometimes.

Especially Pallas.”

“I just wish I knew what I did,” Helen said, frustrated.

“No, it’s not you! You didn’t do anything. All of this Scion crap

has been going on for a lot longer than you know.”

“Since the dawn of time, right?” Helen asked, trying to be humorous

even though she was still hurt by Pallas’s reaction.

“Yeah, right. In a literal sense that’s true, but in this family

there’s something more specific that I’m referring to. Something

that goes back to just before you were born—that’s when

everything started going to hell.”

To Helen’s surprise, Pandora took her hand and led her to a

corner where they could sit down next to each other and avoid the

jumble of the rest of the room. Apparently, whatever Pandora had

to tell her was something she wanted to keep between them.

The Delos family was large enough to have cliques, and if Helen

had to put their family into high school terms, Pandora was the

artsy, mysterious girl that everyone wanted to hang out with, but

only a few did on a regular basis.

“Let me start by saying that it’s hardest for Pallas because he’s

lost more than most of us,” Pandora said sadly, before she sat up

straighter and smiled apologetically. “Don’t get me wrong, my

brother is still an ass for treating you like he did, but it might help

you understand him a little better if you can flip it, and try to see

that your arrival in our lives is just as big a bombshell for us as it is

for you. Do you know about the way our looks are handed down?”

Helen felt her face twitch in confusion at what seemed like a one

eighty in the conversation.

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“Sort of,” she said. “Castor said something about archetypes, and

then Cassandra said that we all look like the people who fought in

the Trojan War, or something.”

“So we’ve all got these recycled faces, right? And we don’t always

look like our parents, or even Scions from our own Houses, but

rather like the people from history that we are supposed to

reincarnate.”

“Yeah, I get that.”

“And since Scions usually tend to fall madly in love with one person

they are ‘destined’ to be with, and then they go and have about

a billion kids really young, the older generation sometimes has the

dubious honor of seeing the faces of people they once knew—and

here’s the real bitch—the faces of people they once fought against,

in the younger generation. Sometimes, even in their own children

or in someone who their children love.”

“Oh. That doesn’t sound good,” Helen said, a strange dread growing

in her. “Pallas hated me the first time he saw me. So who do I

look like?”

Pandora sighed. The spangles on her wrist shook as she took

Helen’s hand.

“This totally sucks,” she said apologetically. “But you look exactly

like Daphne Atreus—the woman who killed our brother Ajax

twenty-one years ago.”

Helen noticed that Pandora stumbled over his name. For a moment,

Helen thought the usually happy Pandora would cry.

“But I didn’t do it! I didn’t kill your brother,” Helen said, shaken

to a whisper by the depth of emotion she was seeing. Hearing

Helen’s urgency, Pandora snapped out of her sad thoughts and

squeezed Helen’s hand.

“I know that!” she exclaimed kindly. “It’s insane to blame you,

and most of us don’t. I certainly don’t. We have no way of knowing

if you’re even from her House.”

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“But Pallas does,” Helen said, finally getting Pallas’s instant dislike

of her. Pandora nodded reluctantly.

“When we lost Ajax it’s like we lost the best of us,” Pandora said,

her eyes downcast and her lower lip momentarily catching between

her teeth. “Ajax was . . . the best. You should have seen him. Actually,

you can see him.”

Pandora shook her right wrist out from under the piles of

bangles. At the very bottom, clipped tightly to her skin, was a cuff.

Pandora opened the oval face to reveal that the cuff was actually a

wrist-locket, something Helen had never seen before. Inside was a

picture of what Helen first thought was Hector, tickling the daylights

out of a little girl with short dark hair.

“My brother Ajax,” Pandora said wistfully. “He always had time

for me, which is a big deal when you’re in a family as large as ours.

It’s easy to get lost in the shuffle, especially when you’re the littlest.

I used to follow him around everywhere he went, begging him to

give me jobs to do. He started calling me ‘Squire’ and I loved it.”

Helen looked at the joyful little girl squirming under the giant

hand of her big brother, and then up at Pandora’s glistening eyes.

“Even just looking at this picture I can tell he loved you very

much.”

“He did, and I loved him. I used to pretend he was a glorious

knight and I was his only trusted sidekick, and he played along. He

was so patient. He used to send me on dangerous quests to find his

car keys or summon the elevator. I was seven when he died. I

wasn’t supposed to be following him that night, but I was. I was

there when he was murdered.”

Helen was about to speak, to say something comforting if she

could, but Pandora changed abruptly, and continued. “He was like

Apollo himself,” she said with a bright, although slightly forced,

smile. “Like Hector in a lot of ways . . . only sweet, and not a cranky

wiseass. Don’t get me wrong, I love my nephew, but damn! He can

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be a such a grouch.” They both broke into a much-needed laugh at

Hector’s expense.

“I wish I’d met him. Your brother, I mean,” Helen said, and was

surprised to realize that she meant it. Ajax must have been truly

special to inspire such enduring love in his younger sister.

“In a lot of ways none of us have gotten over losing him,” Pandora

said, shrugging as though she had run out of explanations for

Helen. “But my brother Pallas is the only one who can’t look at you

and accept that you’re a different person, even though he knows

it’s got nothing to do with you.”

“I get it,” Helen conceded. “It’s not fair, and I still think he’s

mean, but I get why Pallas hates me.”

“Don’t worry, eventually he’ll get over it. Deep down he knows

you didn’t choose your face. The Fates did,” she said. She gave

Helen a cheeky smile. “And damn, girl! But you got a nice one!”

“So did you!” Helen insisted, and she meant the compliment she

gave.

“Whatever,” Pandora said, rolling her eyes and shaking her tinkling

wrists. “I’m probably one in a hundred who gets some stupid

handmaiden’s face, or a vestal virgin’s from Troy, considering my

luck with men!”

Even while she laughed, Helen couldn’t quite shake a strange

doubt. Finally, she gave into it and asked, “So who from Troy do I

look like?”

“Hell, no!” Pandora said, standing up. “I promised—we all did.

You need to talk to Lucas about that one, Helen. Sorry, but I’ve

already given you enough to think about for one night.”

And with a considerable amount of jangling and sparkling, Pandora

announced that she needed a glass of wine and disappeared

in the mix of her family. Helen grimaced after her. She knew that

Pandora had really opened up and entrusted her with an emotionally

dense bit of information, but Helen still felt dissatisfied. She

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wanted to know what role the Fates intended for her to play. She

was going to ask Lucas the second she got him alone.

She looked over at him. All night she had felt him watching her,

and the weight of his eyes had been like an encouraging hand on

the small of her back. She didn’t have to slouch or pretend to be

weak or less of a geek than she was. She simply fit in. She realized

that this new ease with herself was partly due to the fact that for

the first time in her life she was around people who were just as

odd as she was . . . but it was mostly because of Lucas. He never

stood next to her, but she could feel they were still tied to each other

by the trust they had built during their flight. His gaze had such

a positive impact on her that she felt unbalanced as soon as his

eyes abandoned her. She looked around to see what had caught his

attention and spotted him talking privately with Pallas.

Helen did not approve of using Scion hearing to violate another

person’s privacy—she and Hector had already had an argument

about just that when she accused him of eavesdropping on her and

Jerry from the widow’s walk, but now she couldn’t seem to stop

herself. When she heard Pallas say her name, she had to know

what they were saying about her.

“I’m not going to lie to you. Helen caught my eye,” Lucas was saying

in a low voice. “But nothing’s going on.”

“So everyone keeps telling me,” Pallas replied. Helen saw him rub

his lower lip in thought before continuing. “I’m not so worried

about that right now, but what I am worried about is a month or

two down the road when the two of you are flying off every direction

together. Alone. It can’t happen, Luke.”

“It won’t,” Lucas replied coldly. “I’m teaching her to fly and I’m

making sure she doesn’t get killed, but there’s no way I’d ever

touch her. Give me some credit.”

They continued talking, but Helen had stopped listening. She felt

sick. Stumbling in her borrowed shoes, she went over to her dad.

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She stood right next to him as he talked to Pandora, and stared at

his profile until he took the hint and looked at her.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asked sarcastically at first, until

he took a good look at her and became concerned. “You okay,

Len?”

“Can we go? I have so much stuff to do. Homework and chores.

And I’m so tired,” she said, making up random excuses until he responded.

She was causing a bit of a scene, which she hated, but she

simply couldn’t stand there and suck it up for one second longer.

Jerry glanced down at his watch. “Sure, yeah. I guess it’s getting

kind of late. Was that supposed to be my line?” he asked with a

guilty grimace.

“No, you’re good. It’s still early. I’m just . . . I’ve got stuff,” Helen

said before she launched immediately into the thank you, goodbye,

and see-you-tomorrow crap that she wished she could just

skip.

Ariadne shot Helen a worried look, but Helen didn’t care about

anything anymore, not anyone’s feelings or whether or not they all

thought she was rude or crazy or both. None of it mattered. She

just needed to get out of that house before she saw Lucas again or

she was going to lose her mind. It was rude and awkward, but

Helen managed to drag her dad out the front door before Lucas

and Pallas had even looked up from their conversation in the

corner.

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Chapter Eleven

Helen rode her bike to school the next morning, giving

her dad instructions to tell Lucas that she had a few

things to do before homeroom. Jerry was a little put

out that Helen refused to call Lucas to explain it herself,

but she honestly couldn’t make herself listen to his