Starcrossed (46 page)

“Don’t,” Lucas warned quietly. They stared at each other until

Hector finally backed down and removed his hand from Lucas’s

shoulder.

“Just stay out of the sky,” he cautioned. “You’re no good to her

dead.”

Lucas strode off into the dark storm without responding. He was

frustrated with not being able to fly and trying to think of where to

start. If he could get airborne he could see around, get his bearings

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and look for anything suspicious, but the storm had him completely

grounded. It suddenly occurred to him that if he had just

drugged a girl who was known on sight by most of the locals of a

tiny island, he would want to get off that island as soon as possible,

and if Lucas was grounded, all air travel was almost certainly canceled

as well. The only way to get Helen off island would be by

boat, and even that was a long shot. Going out on the water would

be suicide.

He ran to the dock, where he learned that the last ferry had left

over an hour earlier and that the coast guard had officially suspended

all travel in and out of the marina and airport while the storm

lasted. New England was going to get pummeled with a good oldfashioned

nor’easter that night, and the impassable weather would

probably last into the next day. Lucas relaxed a little when he

heard that. He’d left Helen less than an hour earlier, after the last

ferry had already departed, so the chances were high that she was

still on island. Hopefully, she was in a hotel, and relatively safe.

He wasted a few more hours wandering in and out of every motel

and bed-and-breakfast near the ferry, asking if two women had

checked in that evening. Unfortunately, although there were a lot

of people stranded on the island and filling up the hotels due to the

storm, there were none that fit Helen’s description. Lucas knew it

was futile. No Scion would be stupid enough to walk into a hotel

with an unconscious girl slung over her shoulder and ask for a

room. Whoever had taken Helen may have broken in someplace, or

even bribed someone at the desk, but either way, Lucas knew they

weren’t going to announce themselves. He was chasing his own

tail, but still, he couldn’t give up. He checked back at home, found

out what Cassandra had seen in her next vision while he’d been

gone, and then ran back into the storm before his father could even

start to argue.

The wind was so strong it was tearing down trees and taking

apart the stoic Nantucket architecture. Even Lucas, as strong as he

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was, had to switch over into his supermassive state to stay

anchored to the ground as bits and pieces of people’s houses

tumbled down the streets around him. His bare face was getting

lashed by the swirling debris in the air, and the sideways rain was

clawing at his eyes. All night he wandered around outside every

hotel, inn, and bed-and-breakfast he could think of, looking in the

windows with eyes that could see in even the dimmest of light,

hoping for a glimpse of Helen.

He knew he wouldn’t get it. Cassandra had told him that Helen

would be standing in a hotel window the next morning, but he still

couldn’t make himself stop. He wouldn’t stop, because if by some

miracle he did find her, take her out of that hotel, and bring her

back to her family, he could prove Cassandra wrong. All he needed

was to beat Fate once and he would know that he was the master of

himself—not just a prewritten story that gets reread every now and

again to amuse the cosmos—but a truly blank slate that he would

be allowed to fill with whatever future he decided to write for himself.

If he could just find Helen that night and bring her home, then

he knew that someday they would beat Fate, and that they could be

together.

He walked all night.

Helen’s head was pounding and there was a sour, chalky taste in

the back of her mouth, like she had chewed an aspirin and didn’t

rinse afterward. Her eyes felt swollen and puffy, and the skin on

her face felt clammy and hot, but she didn’t feel as dehydrated as

she usually did when she visited the dry lands. This was different.

She’d been drugged, she suddenly remembered, by a woman. A

woman that looked just like her, but older.

“Take a sip,” said a voice as Helen felt a straw being pressed to

her lips. Her eyes flipped open and she saw the woman again, leaning

over her and holding a glass of water.

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“Who are you?” Helen asked, her voice crackling. She jerked her

mouth away from the suspicious glass of liquid and felt her arms

strain against bonds. She was tied to a bed. Still unbearably weak

from whatever drug she had been given, Helen knew it would be a

while before she was strong enough to break free. She looked

around frantically. She was in a hotel room that was lit by candles.

It was still night, and she could hear wind and rain battering the

window behind the closed curtain.

“Look at me, Helen! Who do you think I am?” the woman asked

so forcefully it momentarily stopped Helen from panicking. “Here,

I know you’ll need proof. I would.”

The woman took out an envelope full of pictures. They were pictures

of herself, when she was in her late teens. In one picture she

was holding a tiny baby. In another she was sitting and talking to a

young Mrs. Aoki while two baby girls, one blonde, one blackhaired,

played together on the floor. In yet another she was kissing

Jerry over her swollen, pregnant belly.

“Beth,” Helen whispered, her eyes darting over the pictures that

she had spent a hefty portion of her childhood searching for.

“My real name is Daphne. Daphne Atreus. I guess it would be too

much to ask for you to call me ‘Mom’, huh?” Daphne said with a

wry smile.

Helen gestured to her bound wrists. “You guessed right,” she

replied, starting to get angry. “You want to tell me why you

knocked me out and tied me up?”

“Because we are out of time, and if I were you I would hate me so

much I wouldn’t even give me a second to explain,” Daphne replied

with a loving look on her face. “Unless I had been knocked out and

tied down first.”

Helen glared at her, furious and still groggy from the drug. “What

do you want from me?”

Daphne’s face and body began to shift, not just changed in mood,

but in shape. One moment Helen was looking at an older version of

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herself, and the next moment she was looking at a woman in her

sixties with salt-and-pepper hair. Before Helen could even gasp,

the dowdy woman disappeared and was replaced by a brunette in

her late thirties. Then that woman disappeared and Helen was

looking at her mother again. She held up Helen’s heart-shaped

necklace in one hand and touched her own identical necklace with

the other.

“There are a lot of things I need to tell you about who you are and

where you come from. Things that are going to hurt you,” Daphne

said in a direct, almost brutal way. “But I don’t have any choice.

Creon is on this island right now, and he is coming for you.”

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Chapter Sixteen

At around eight o’clock in the morning, Lucas finally accepted

the fact that he had run out of time. The sun was

up. It was the next day, and Helen was probably already

standing in a hotel window somewhere, in fulfillment of

Cassandra’s prophecy. He knew his best bet would be to

give up, go home, and wait for his little sister to see something else,

even if it half killed him to admit that. He hadn’t beaten Fate.

Again.

Lucas saw the Pig still parked out in front of his house, and had

to sneak in. It looked like Jerry, Kate, and Claire had all been

forced to spend the night to wait out the storm, and that meant

Jerry and Kate still didn’t know that Helen was missing. As far as

they knew, Helen was safe at home and stranded there with all

three Delos boys on the other side of the island. Lucas knew that lie

wouldn’t hold up much longer, but he decided someone else was

going to have to think up a new cover story to tell Jerry. He

couldn’t control his emotions about Helen long enough to convince

anyone she was still safe, let alone her father.

Lucas flew in through his window and paced around his room for

another hour. He was vaguely aware of the fact that he should eat

or rest or dry off, but the only thought he could keep in his head

was the thought of Helen. Cass would know it if she was injured,

wouldn’t she?

The houseguests woke and went downstairs. Lucas heard Claire’s

phone buzzing with text alerts, and knew that the phones were

back on. He listened from his room while Jerry and Kate tried to

call Helen. When she didn’t answer either her cell or the phone at

the Hamilton household, they got worried and decided to go back

home to see if she was there. The roads were a mess, but even

though that would slow them down, Lucas knew he only had a few

more hours tops to find Helen before her dad realized she was

missing and called the police. As soon as Jerry and Kate departed,

Lucas met Hector and Jason on the stairs as all three of them came

out from hiding in their rooms at the same time.

“Bro, put a clean shirt on, at least!” Hector admonished as soon

as he saw Lucas.

“Leave it,” Lucas mumbled, shaking his head and trying to pass

his cousins, but Jason stepped in front of him.

“Don’t you think your mom is worried enough as it is? Go clean

up before you come downstairs,” Jason said quietly.

It was a guilt trip, pure and simple, but Jason was still right. Lucas

nodded and pulled his shirt off over his head on his way to the

bathroom. He washed, dressed, and met the rest of his family

down in the kitchen. Even so, everyone stared at him when he

walked in the room, and his mother looked like she had seen a

ghost. Lucas checked his edges and realized that he was blurring

himself. His mom always got upset when he did that because she

knew that meant that he was upset. He made a conscious effort to

let the light do what it wanted, and sat down in a corner, his eyes

on Cassandra. Then the sound of bickering made him realize that

Claire was there.

“What are you still doing here?” Jason was saying in a dismayed

voice. “Why didn’t you go back with them?”

“I’m not going anywhere until we find Lennie,” Claire huffed

back at him.

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“We?” Jason sputtered, but Claire held up an imperious hand

and fished her vibrating phone out of her back pocket.

“Guys?” Claire said, looking at the incoming number. “It’s

Helen.”

“Let me talk to her,” Lucas demanded as he jumped up out of his

chair and held out his hand to take the phone.

“She called me, not you,” Claire said gently.

She answered her phone, immediately asking Helen several questions

at once. Then Claire was quiet for a moment. She put the call

on speakerphone.

“Okay, Len, we can all hear you. What is it?” Claire asked, looking

around at the rest of his family but avoiding eye contact with

Lucas.

“I’m with my mother, Daphne, and my mother only. We are not

being coerced by any other individual, family, or House,” Helen

announced to the room as smoothly as if she were playing a recording.

“My mother and I are preparing to leave the island together,

and we ask that you allow us to leave it in peace. I am not in any

physical danger. You know all of this is true, because your

Falsefinders can hear it in my voice. Good-bye. I will miss you all.”

The line went silent. Lucas stared at the phone as Claire switched

out of speaker mode, put her phone to her ear, and repeated

Helen’s name a few times.

“That wasn’t her,” Lucas insisted, shaking his head repeatedly.

He felt something was off, like there was a lie lurking somewhere.

Helen wasn’t supposed to leave him. Ever. “She’d never call me a

‘Falsefinder’ like that.”

“Lucas, it was her,” Claire insisted, finally meeting Lucas’s eyes

and giving him a sad look as she did so. “I know she sounded really

weird, but it was Helen. You know that.”

“Was she lying?” Castor asked Lucas.

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“No,” Lucas answered hoarsely, as though his voice couldn’t entirely

commit to something that the rest of him knew was so

wrong. “She told no lies.”

“So Daphne is alive,” Pallas breathed, his eyes wide and blank

with shock.

“We still don’t know if ‘Daphne’ is Daphne Atreus,” Castor said,

blocking his brother from leaving the room.

“Enough, Castor. Just stop it,” Pallas said, a note of weariness

weighing his voice down. “I thought Helen was that Atreus whore

when I first saw her!”

“And Hector is a dead ringer for Creon, and Lucas looks like one

of Poseidon’s children from the House of Athens!” Castor shouted,

losing his patience. “More often than not the way we look has nothing