Starcrossed (45 page)

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“What are you talking about?” Helen asked, suddenly alarmed.

“Why would you go to prison?”

“For killing the guy that took your virginity,” he replied. “You I

would forgive. But the guy? Dead man.”

Helen smirked at Lucas like she didn’t believe him, but she wisely

decided not to question his sincerity.

“Then what’s the plan?” She sighed, resting back against him.

“We can’t be together and we definitely can’t be apart.”

“We stick together and play by the rules until we can rewrite

them. We’re going to find a way to make this work. I promise.”

“Isn’t that hubris?” she asked, raising her eyes to his. “Thinking

we can beat the Fates?”

“I don’t care what it is anymore. I need to hope,” he responded

before he allowed himself kiss her.

Helen fell against him, and this time she was able to enjoy his

mouth without the shock that came along with the unexpectedness

of their first kiss. This time she could pay attention to him, feel him

responding to her. Far sooner than Helen wanted, Lucas pulled

back, pinched his eyes together like it hurt, and gently pushed her

hands off of him.

“You have to stop,” he said, forcing himself to laugh, even if it

was a shaky, watered-down laugh.

“Sorry. I don’t know what I’m doing yet,” Helen said through her

tingling lips.

“Could have fooled me,” he mumbled as he took both of her

hands and stood up, pulling her to her feet with him. “I think a

little cold air will do us good.”

“Where to? Venice?” Helen asked with a cheeky grin.

“Sure. Because that’s exactly what you and I need—a more romantic

setting,” he replied sarcastically. “Sorry, Sparky, but I’m

taking you home to your father before I start a war.”

He leapt into the air and spun back to face her, holding out a

hand like they were in an old movie and he was asking her to

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dance. She groaned at how gorgeous he was, then joined him with

a smile, taking his hand and rolling her body over the playful eddies

he carved into the wind for her.

Moments later, they were landing in Helen’s yard and strolling

toward the door, hand in hand. Just as Helen was about to go inside

the house, Lucas stopped her.

“You actually thought I didn’t know, didn’t you?” he asked her incredulously.

“Happy birthday.”

“I totally forgot!” Helen exclaimed with a bemused smile.

“I didn’t,” he said, kissing her. He looked up at the brightly lit

house, and they both listened briefly to an emergency weather report

blaring away on the TV. “Your dad’s waiting for you. You’d

better go in.”

“Yeah. Kate made me a cake,” Helen said. She grimaced, guilty

over how she’d treated her family this past week.

“Tomorrow, first thing, I’ll be back to get you,” Lucas promised

as he brushed his mouth lightly against hers. “Then we’ll go to my

house and tell my family. Together.”

“Right. We still have to plead our case,” Helen said. Wrapped

around each other, they kissed for a few more moments, stalling

for time that the storm wouldn’t give them. Finally, Lucas pulled

away. Glancing around at every shadow suspiciously, he told her to

hurry into the house. It was dark out and he was unwilling to leave

her unguarded for even a moment. Helen ran inside and closed the

front door behind her, peering out the window in time to see Lucas

fly away. She called out for her father as she walked into the family

room.

“Jerry isn’t here, Helen,” said a woman’s voice behind her. Helen

spun around, already calling up a bolt, but the woman grabbed her

tightly by the wrists and shook her head.

“That won’t work on me,” she said. Electricity danced across her

flawless face, making her long, blonde hair crackle and fluff, and

circling the pupils of her warm brown eyes.

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“Oh my god,” Helen said, looking at the heart-shaped charm that

fell neatly into the groove at the base of her attacker’s throat.

The woman ripped off Helen’s identical necklace with one hand

and jabbed a needle into her neck with the other. Helen felt her

muscles go limp and refuse to follow her commands. The world

faded into a pale gray haze, and even though she kept trying to see,

her eyes could only chase the bright squiggles that tracked across

the backs of her eyelids. She was losing consciousness so fast,

Helen knew that she had to have been given a powerful drug,

maybe even a lethal one. The last thing Helen felt was her attacker

tenderly supporting her body as it swooned to the floor. Helen

couldn’t see, couldn’t move, but for just one moment longer she

could still hear.

“My sweet little girl,” the woman whispered, and then Helen experienced

nothing, not even nightmares.

Lucas was only halfway home when the wind tried to throw him

down to the ground and the sky started to flash with the first bolts

of lightning. He landed immediately, and had to go the rest of the

way on foot rather than get electrocuted or crushed. He wondered

if Helen could fly through the lightning and if she would be able to

control it so that he could fly with her in a storm if the situation

ever arose. That would be beautiful, he thought as he walked

through the garage and into the kitchen, flying through lightningbright

clouds.

As soon as he opened the door, he stopped, sensing something

wrong.

“Didn’t you bring Helen with you?” Cassandra asked nervously as

he stood in the doorway. “I could have sworn I saw you together

today.”

Lucas looked around the room and saw Jerry and Kate, the

promised cake bristling with unlit candles, and Claire sitting wideeyed

next to Jason.

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“I just left her at home to be with you two,” he said gesturing to

Jerry and Kate. Panic washed up his legs, nearly making his knees

buckle.

Lucas ran out the kitchen door, past the cars in the garage, and

ripped the outside door off its hinges as he leapt up into the apoplectic

sky. Jumping up twenty feet, Jason tackled him out of the

air and dragged him back down, pinning Lucas’s weightless body

to the ground.

“Sorry, brother, but the storm is too big. We drive tonight,” Jason

said.

“There was someone waiting for her inside her house!” Lucas

yelled, taking on mass and throwing Jason off of him.

“We know, you idiot! This afternoon, while you had your phone

shut off, Cassie saw that Creon came back to the island,” Jason

said, latching on to Lucas to make sure he didn’t change states

again and fly off. “But Creon isn’t the one at her house!”

“Then who is it?” Lucas asked, visibly calming down. He and

Jason stood up and waited for Hector to pull his truck out.

“Cassandra was getting little images all day long, but she didn’t

understand them. One of the things she saw was a woman tailing

Creon as he came back to the island. She had this habit of tucking

her hair behind her ear with her pinkie finger,” Jason began. The

truck pulled out and Lucas and Jason jumped onto it. They eased

themselves inside as the truck sped off into the punishing wind and

rain.

“Then Cass said she kept seeing flashes of several different women,

over and over,” Jason continued. “She didn’t know why she

was having visions about women that she didn’t recognize and that

didn’t seem to have anything to do with each other. It took a while,

but Cass finally noticed that they all had exactly the same way of

putting their hair behind their ear, like a nervous tic. Because of

that, Cass realized that they were all the same person, and the

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most persistent vision she kept having was of one of these woman

waiting for Helen at her house like she lived there.”

“The woman let herself into Helen’s house with her own key and

turned on the TV like she’d done it a million times, so at first Cass

didn’t think there was any danger. Probably a relative Helen never

mentioned, right?” Hector interjected. “It wasn’t until just a few

seconds before you walked in the door that she put it all together

and knew that she had been seeing Helen’s attacker all day long.

We tried to call you. . . .”

“But I had my phone shut off,” Lucas finished for him, adding a

foul curse on the end. “What did the woman waiting at Helen’s

house look like?” Lucas asked urgently, trying to get a mental image

of the threat. “Is she that brunette? Or the old woman who attacked

Kate?”

“Neither. Cassandra said she was unbelievably beautiful. Like

Helen,” Jason replied.

“Not just beautiful like Helen—you’re telling it wrong, dumbass,”

Hector interrupted. He wove through traffic like a madman,

blowing through red lights and passing cars illegally. “Cassie said

this woman looked almost exactly like her. But whoever she is,

Cass is certain this woman is not on Creon’s side. He doesn’t even

know he’s being followed, which may or may not be good for us.”

“Why the hell wasn’t someone guarding the house?” Lucas

shouted in frustration, too upset to think about what Cassandra’s

vision meant yet.

“It’s my fault,” Hector said, and then continued before his little

brother could argue. “Shut up, Jase, I’m the one who allowed her

to go off on her own after practice. It was my call, and I made it,

even though I knew in my gut it was wrong.”

Lucas wanted to rip Hector’s face off for taking the blame when

he knew whose fault it really was. He should have checked his

phone, he should have checked the house, he should have paid

more attention to Helen’s safety and less attention to her soft

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hands and warm skin. He scrubbed his hands over his face and

made himself take a series of deep breaths. He needed to trust

Hector to get them there, and then he needed to focus and be ready

for whatever they encountered. If he was going to be at all useful,

he was going to have to shut up and calm down.

When they got to Helen’s house, the TV and the lights were off

and the front door was locked. Lucas flew up to Helen’s bedroom

window, which he knew she always forgot to latch. He let himself

in and then went downstairs to open the front door for the others.

Nothing was taken and nothing was disturbed in the entire house.

It was as if Helen hadn’t even put up a fight.

“She must have known the woman and gone with her willingly,”

Hector said, tossing up his hands. “It’s the only reason this place

isn’t melting.”

“Unless whoever kidnapped her is just that good,” Jason added.

“What are you talking about?” Hector said derisively. “Helen’s a

full-on monster now with her lightning. I don’t care who this evil

twin is, no one is that good.”

“Twin,” Lucas repeated, thinking. “It could be that simple. She’d

have the same lightning, the same strength, and a lot more

experience.”

The brothers looked at him as he got down on his hands and

knees and examined the floor. He reached under an end table and

came up with a drained hypodermic needle.

“That rules out Helen going willingly. Whoever she was, she

came prepared. And she must have known about the cestus and

how it works, or she never would have been able to penetrate

Helen’s skin,” Lucas said, his breath catching only slightly when he

said her name.

He handed the needle to Jason and dropped back down to examine

the floor one last time, in case he missed something. When he

was satisfied, he stood up and looked through his cousins instead

of at them, still thinking. Then he went to the windows by the door

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and looked out at the raging storm. Lucas watched mini mudslides

slosh down Helen’s driveway and out into the street and knew that

any path Helen might have left would be long gone.

“Was there anything else in Cassandra’s vision?” Lucas asked

hopefully.

“The last thing she said was that she thought Helen would still be

safe tomorrow morning,” Jason replied, shaking his head doubtfully.

“Cass had a brief flash of Helen standing in a window that

looked like some kind of hotel on Nantucket, but she couldn’t be

sure.”

“Maybe Cass has seen something else,” Hector said as optimistically

as he could. He opened his phone and tried to dial, but a NO

SIGNAL sign was flashing on his screen. “Check your phones,” he said

to his brother and cousin. Neither of them could connect a call,

either.

Lucas went into Helen’s kitchen and checked her landline for a

dial tone, but it was dead. As he joined his cousins back in the

entryway, the power in the house went out. Jason went over to the

window and looked at the other houses in the area.

“The whole block is out,” he said. “And massive lightning bolts

are headed this way. I guess we’re stuck here for a while.”

“You two stay here in case Helen gets free and makes her way

back,” Lucas said as he turned for the door.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Hector demanded,

grabbing Lucas by the shoulder and trying to turn him around.