Starcrossed (41 page)

other before separating. They changed into workout clothes and

met back on the practice mat.

Helen was expecting there to be a little lingering tension between

her and Lucas after his “slip” at Great Point, but if anything, that

momentary loss of self-control only served to make him more focused

on training. Usually, there was a moment or two when one

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or the other of them would become conscious of the intimate positions

they pressed each other into as Helen tried to grasp the basics

of jujitsu, but not that afternoon. Lucas was all business.

“I just realized, we’ve been fighting all day,” Helen said as she

tried and failed to break out of his armbar for the tenth time. “And

I don’t think I’ve won once.”

“How long has it been?” he asked, suddenly curious about

something she didn’t understand right away. He craned his head

and looked at the clock on the wall, then back at Helen. “Do you

have your bolts back yet?”

Helen connected to that strange sense at the bottom of her belly

and felt a spark there. She nodded at Lucas, a bit surprised, and he

grabbed her hand, pulling her to her feet.

“Then let’s go try it out,” he said with a grin as he led her out of

the gym.

“Wait,” Helen said uncertainly, stopping him with an outstretched

hand. “My lightning almost killed you today.”

“Because you don’t know how to control it yet.” Lucas turned and

cupped her shoulders in his hands. “You have to accept this. I

know it freaks you out, but as harsh as it sounds, you’ve just got to

get over it. This is who you are, Helen, and I’m not afraid of you, or

your lightning. So you shouldn’t be, either.”

Helen looked up at Lucas. His eyes were so sure, so accepting.

“You know what?” she said, standing up straighter. “I want to

learn how to control my lightning.”

“Yeah, you do!” he nearly shouted. When they got outside, they

saw Hector’s truck pull up and the rest of the Delos siblings pile

out.

“We’re going to test her bolts!” Lucas yelled toward them. Jason

and Hector glanced at each other briefly with wide eyes. They both

broke into a run.

“How long has is been?” Hector shouted, sprinting toward them,

giddy as a schoolgirl.

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“About an hour and forty-five minutes,” Lucas said. “She drank

two gallons of water.”

“And I still feel a little thirsty,” Helen admitted.

“Well, get her some more water, Lucas!” Cassandra ordered as

she and Ariadne caught up. “How is she supposed to make lightning

bolts without hydrogen?”

“Right,” Lucas said distractedly. Jumping into the air, he flew to

the house and back in about twenty seconds. “Why didn’t you tell

me you were thirsty?” he asked Helen, handing her a large bottle

still cold from the fridge.

“I didn’t know. I guess I should start paying better attention to

that,” Helen mumbled to herself sheepishly.

“You have to pay attention to everything that makes you more

powerful. And your bolts make you very powerful,” Hector said, a

feline grin spreading across his face. Helen tipped the bottle back

and drank deeply.

“That door was insane!” Jason exclaimed. Recalling it, he rubbed

a hand across his face in that Delos gesture that Helen always noticed.

“It was like you had taken an industrial-strength welder to

it.”

“How many volts do you think you have stored right now?” Cassandra

asked. They all entered the arena.

“No idea.” Helen shrugged. She felt for the charge and tried to

gauge it, but she couldn’t describe it. “It’s a feeling, not a digital

readout, Cass.”

“Oh, then wait!” Cassandra said, holding up her hands. “Maybe I

can devise a way to measure it.”

“Cassie, geek out later! We’re all dying to see this right now,”

Hector whined.

“All right, fine! Sorry, Helen. Whenever you’re ready,” she reluctantly

allowed.

The Delos family moved behind Helen, giving her plenty of room

to aim her bolt out across the nonconductive sand of the arena. She

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held up her right hand. That was the hand she wrote with, but it

didn’t feel like the best fit, so she switched to her left. Then she

summoned her bolt—deliberately for the first time.

Lightning shot out of her hand. Not static, not some pathetic

splinter of a spark, but actual lightning. It arced forward in a

bright, branching blur, and it made a huge cracking sound, like an

orchestra of leather bullwhips snapping simultaneously. One

second the air was full of blinding icy blue light, and the next

second half of the arena was coated in a thick sheet of smoking

amber-colored glass.

No one said anything for a second.

“Unbefrickinglievable,” Hector cussed quietly into the silence.

Helen smacked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and

stumbled toward the water bottle that Lucas automatically held out

for her. She finished an entire liter in five gulps.

“Maybe that was a bit much,” she said as she leaned against

Lucas.

“You could have fried about fifty people,” Ariadne murmured distractedly,

looking from Helen to the irregular sheet of glass.

“I don’t want to fry fifty people. Fifty French fries, sure. Who

wouldn’t want fifty French fries? Delicious,” Helen said. She felt

herself give a goofy grin.

“The electricity makes her a little confused,” Lucas explained to

his siblings in an embarrassed tone. “I hope it isn’t bad for her.”

“It’s not the voltage, Lucas. It’s severe dehydration!” Cassandra

chastised. “Her body is built to handle electricity. It’s the drain of

the fluids out of her tissues that makes her seem like an airhead.

And that isn’t permanent or damaging, so stop worrying.”

In the kitchen, Helen put her lips under the faucet. Everyone

waited patiently for Helen to drink her fill while they stared at one

another behind her back. She could feel their fear. It was exactly

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why she had suppressed her power to begin with. That power was

so intense, so destructive, it was impossible for anyone to trust it.

Helen shut off the tap and turned to face them. “Did I just freak

everyone out?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Lucas said, his face a mask. Helen’s throat closed and her

whole body went still. She kept her eyes on Lucas, but she was

waiting for any one of them to condemn her for going too far. Lucas

looked up at Helen and smiled at her. He smiled like he was

proud of her.

“But that’s our problem, not yours,” he said firmly. “There’s nothing

wrong with what you can do. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“Plus, I bet you’re real good at making s’mores,” Ariadne added.

“But the real question is, can she do it without liquefying the

chocolate?” Jason asked, like he was some kind of s’mores guru.

Helen looked from face to face, her heart aching a bit with gratitude

to find nothing but acceptance and compassion wherever her

eyes landed.

After all the talk of French fries and s’mores, everyone had junk

food on the brain, so they headed to a local mom-and-pop burger

shack by the beach. When Helen and Lucas got up to the counter,

the cashier reached out to touch Helen’s necklace.

“It’s a sea horse! I love sea horses,” the woman enthused, raising

her hand to touch it, and dropping it again in embarrassment.

Helen thanked her—because she would have felt rude if she

didn’t—put in her order with Lucas and then they sat down in one

of the booths, where they looked at each other, confused.

“Your necklace isn’t a sea horse, it’s a heart,” Lucas disagreed

vehemently.

“What are you talking about, Luke?” Hector said, sounding disparaging.

“Helen’s necklace is a cockleshell. Always has been, although

I just noticed it today. Weird,” he said, twisting up his face

in confusion.

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“Nuh-uh,” Jason said with a disagreeing grimace. “It’s a strawberry.

I was just looking at it this morning.”

“Heart,” Lucas insisted.

“Has everyone lost their minds? She’s wearing a golden key with

pavé rubies on the top,” Ariadne said, reaching out to touch it.

“Which, by the way, I think is so lovely.”

Helen, still a little punch-drunk with dehydration, got up and

went over to a pair of complete strangers at another booth. She

smiled at the two shocked tourists, pointed to her necklace, and

asked the man closest to her what he thought it looked like.

“A rose. Of course,” he said with a hopeful smile. His friend

leaned in and took a look, as if he were drawn to it.

“That’s a locket,” he said with a faraway look in his eye. “Just like

my mom used to wear.”

“Thanks,” Helen said to them, then turned and went back to her

table with a shrug. “You’re all wrong, except for Lucas. My mom

gave me this charm when I was a baby. It’s a heart, and I’ve never

worn anything but this heart since, like, forever.”

“That’s what I see!” Cassandra said like she had just solved a

mystery. “I’ve been wondering what everyone was talking about!”

Helen sat back down next to Lucas. “Personally, I think you all

see what you want to see.”

Cassandra’s mouth dropped open. “Oh my gods! She’s projecting!

That’s why everyone is so cheerful and suddenly started jumping

on top of each other like it’s mating season at the zoo.” she

said. Her eyes were wide. She looked at Hector. “I need to go home

right now.”

“But . . . our burgers,” he said, slightly forlorn but also aware of

the fact that he was going to end up doing whatever Cassandra told

him to do.

“We’ll need all this to go,” Cassandra said to the food runner. She

turned to Helen. “I think I’ve figured this out, but I still need to test

it.”

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They raced back to the Delos compound, the rowdy group storming

into the library and upsetting Castor and Pallas. Cassandra

dragged one of the ladders over to a high shelf of her choosing and

then had Lucas hold the bottom for her while she climbed. As she

did so she told her father and uncle to look at Helen’s necklace and

describe what they saw.

“It looks like . . . That’s impossible,” Pallas said, his eyes hardening

with anger as he took an involuntary step back.

“What do you see?” Castor cautiously asked his brother.

“I gave that to Aileen,” Pallas said, pointing to Helen’s necklace

like he was accusing Helen of stealing it.

“Cass?” Lucas called up to his sister, worried.

“Her necklace looks like whatever would attract the person who

looks at it. That ability is only related to one goddess and one relic,”

Cassandra called down, still searching for something. “Aphrodite’s

cestus.”

“That can’t be,” Pallas said, shaking his head. “We might as well

say she has the aegis of Zeus. Or the Loch Ness monster, for that

matter. It’s folklore, it doesn’t exist.”

“What’s a cestus?” Helen asked quietly, in case it was such a stupid

question everyone needed to be able to pretend like they didn’t

hear her.

“The cestus is Aphrodite’s girdle,” Lucas responded automatically,

his eyes darting from Cassandra to Castor before they landed

back on Helen. “It’s a mythical object that makes the wearer impervious

to any weapon.”

“And impossible to resist,” Castor added. He cast a worried look

at his son.

“And I’m supposed to have this thing on me? Well, I hate to

break it to you, but I’m fresh out of mythical girdles,” Helen said

with a sarcastic laugh, but no one laughed with her.

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“Let me see that necklace your mother gave you,” Cassandra

replied, coming down the ladder with a book tucked under an arm.

Reaching the bottom, she stretched out her hand.

“How long are you going to want it for?” Helen asked as she

fingered her necklace uneasily. She really hated to take it off for

any reason, even if that reason was as important as Cassandra was

making it seem.

“I’ll give it right back. I promise,” Cassandra said, keeping her

eyes locked on Helen.

“Yes, of course,” Helen replied, feeling silly for balking. She obediently

muscled through the naked, panicky feeling that came along

with the thought of removing her necklace. Taking it off, she

handed it over. As soon as she placed it in Cassandra’s outstretched

hand she felt a burning sensation across her forearm.

“Cass, are you crazy?” Lucas yelled. He snatched a small blade

out of his sister’s grip.

Helen felt someone step against her back and put a hand on her

shoulder, and, from his size, Helen knew it was Hector, supporting

and protecting her.

“I’m sorry, Helen. But it was the only way to prove it,” Cassandra

said, biting her lower lip and looking up with defensive eyes.

“It’s okay,” Helen mumbled, not understanding what had

happened yet. Everyone was staring at her arm. She looked down

and saw a thin red cut dripping blood onto the carpet.

“But it’s just a necklace,” Helen repeated as she ran the charm

along the chain and looked at her arm. The cut had already healed.

“It becomes whatever you need it to be, that’s part of its magic,”