Chapter Seven #4
“He can come, too. My mom wants to meet him,” Lucas said with growing uncertainty. He glanced over at Helen. “Don’t you want to come?”
“It’s not that,” she said, feeling cornered and frustrated and not knowing why. “My dad won’t allow it, okay?” Helen looked out her window at the golf course and felt Lucas take her hand and shake it a little to get her to look at him.
“No one will tell your father about you if you don’t want them to,” he said, glancing from her to the road and back again.
“It’s not that. He doesn’t let me go out on school nights,” she said, looking back at him, but he was frowning deeply and staring at the road. As the minutes ticked by silently, Helen could feel Lucas’s mood getting worse and worse.
“Nope. This isn’t going to work,” he said suddenly, pulling the car over to the side of the road, yanking on the parking brake, and turning in his seat to face Helen.
When he saw Helen’s startled face he took a shaky breath to control himself before he started.
“I don’t know if my dad explained this to you, but the different Houses are the descendants of different gods,” he began.
“Yes, he said something like that,” Helen responded quietly. She felt like a kid in the principal’s office and she had no idea why. He tried to smile at her but gave up.
“My family’s House, the House of Thebes, are the descendants of Apollo.
He’s primarily known as the god of Light, but he was also the god of Music, Healing, and of Truth.
Falsefinders—Scions who can feel lies—are very rare, but I’m one of them.
I always know a lie when I hear it, and if it comes from someone close to me I can’t stand it.
So you can’t lie to me, Helen. Ever. If you don’t want to tell me the truth, please, for my sake, don’t say anything all,” he pleaded.
“Does it hurt?” Helen asked, her curiosity piqued.
“I’ve tried to explain to Jase how it feels, but I’ve never been able to get it right.
It’s almost like that feeling you get when you’ve lost something really important and you can’t find it, but it’s much worse.
The longer the lie hangs there, the more frantic I get to find the truth. I’ll dig and dig for it . . .”
“I just need a little bit of time to adjust,” Helen admitted in a rush.
“I’m not ready to tell my dad about me, or about my mom, because I don’t know what it would do to him.
To be honest, I don’t know if I’ll ever tell him.
But I know I need a minute to get used to all of this. A few days at least.”
Lucas’s face relaxed immediately and he let out a held breath.
“Why didn’t you just say that to begin with?”
“Because it’s, it’s too . . .” she trailed off, not knowing why it was so hard.
“Too raw. Like being naked,” Lucas said for her. Helen nodded her head. “Well, sorry. But with me you have to be either honest or silent.” He released the brake, put the car in gear, and merged back into traffic.
As soon as he could stop shifting, he grabbed her hand and held it on his leg, and when the fading sunlight forced him to turn on the headlights, he let go of the steering wheel rather than let go of her hand.
Lucas pulled into Helen’s driveway behind the Pig, then killed the lights and engine. “Stay here for a sec,” he said before hopping out of the car and disappearing around the back of the house.
Helen craned her head to look for him as she waited, but she didn’t hear anything—not even the sound of his footsteps.
Annoyed that he would just run off like that, she got out of the car and walked up to the Pig to get a better view.
She noticed her purse lying on the ground behind the front tire.
Oops. She picked it up and fished out her phone. There were over a dozen missed calls.
She remembered that her purse was lying on the ground because she had been attacked, and she suddenly realized that her attacker was not Hector or Lucas, as she had assumed the other night.
Now that she could look back on it without the Furies there to warp her judgment, she figured out that there had been someone else here waiting for her when she came home.
Someone with wiry arms—a woman, she thought, recalling the smell of cosmetics—had grabbed her from behind, then been scared off by the arrival of the Delos family.
Lucas had sent Ariadne and Jason to chase after her, but the woman must have gotten away because there was no mention of her this weekend.
In the shock of the past few days, Helen had completely forgotten about the attack.
“Lucas?” she called, heading toward the shadows off to the side of her house. He had been gone too long. She heard a muffled thud behind her.
“I asked you to stay in the car. It’s for your safety, Helen,” Lucas said with frustration. She spun around to face him, gesturing wildly with her cell phone still in her hand.
“That woman! You’re looking for that woman who jumped Kate and me,” Helen said, finally understanding it all. “She’s a Scion, too. She has to be!”
“Yes, of course she is. . . .” he interrupted her. “But listen to me. There are two of them—two different women are after you, and we haven’t caught either of them yet.”
A pair of lights flashed across the house and driveway. A car was pulling up. Lucas stood in front of Helen and looked easily through the lights that were blinding her from seeing the people in the car. “It’s your father,” he told her.
“Helen? There you are! Where the hell have you been?” Jerry shouted as he climbed out of the cab before the driver had even come to a full stop. He was angrier than she’d seen him in years. “I called over and over. You’re never late! I thought something had happened to you!”
“Why are you here?” Helen screeched.
“We got an earlier flight. Didn’t you get any of my messages?”
“I . . .” Helen trailed off, holding up her cell phone stupidly. She knew she had to make something up, but she also knew she was a terrible liar. She started to panic. Lucas grabbed her phone from her and, as he did, Helen heard an almost imperceptible crunch.
“Her phone’s broken,” Lucas said, passing Helen’s phone to her father so he could see it.
It came apart in Jerry’s hand. “I came over to see why she wasn’t picking up and she was out here in the driveway on her way to go get you.
” Helen stared at Lucas with her mouth open, wondering how someone who demanded honesty from everyone else could be so quick to lie.
“How did you do this, Len?” Jerry asked in a dismayed voice as he studied the pulverized sandwich of plastic and microchips. “This was brand-new.”
“I know!” Helen said a little too emphatically. “Piece of junk, right? I’m so sorry, Dad. I had no idea you were coming early. Really.”
“Oh, it’s all right,” Jerry said a bit sheepishly now that he wasn’t so worried. He and Helen smiled at each other, all forgiven. Then Jerry turned to Lucas. “You look familiar,” he said suspiciously, acknowledging Lucas’s presence for the first time and distrusting it immediately.
For a moment Helen could see Lucas as her father did—a heartbreakingly beautiful young man who was too well built, too well dressed, and driving too nice of a car to ever be liked by anyone’s father.
“Lucas Delos,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Don’t you hate this kid?” Jerry asked Helen candidly as he shook the offered hand. Lucas laughed, and it was such an open, unself-conscious sound that Jerry joined in.
“We worked it out,” Helen said.
“Good,” Jerry said. Then he passed Lucas’s flashy convertible as he went back to the cab to pay and get his bags. “Or maybe not,” he amended. Helen took that moment to roll her eyes at Lucas and point to her phone.
“What about that woman? How are you going to tell me the rest of the story now?” she whispered frantically. “If I use the phone in the kitchen, my dad will hear.”
“Sorry,” Lucas whispered back, his eyes laughing. “I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”
“Tomorrow,” Helen warned. “I want the whole story.”
“I’ll pick you up half an hour early for school. We’ll get coffee,” Lucas promised.
“What’s going on?” Jerry asked suspiciously, joining them again.
“Lucas has to get home for dinner,” Helen said. She saw Lucas wince at the lie, but he took the hint.
“It was nice to meet you, Mr. Hamilton,” Lucas said as he waved good-bye and backpedaled toward his car.
“Damn, I really wish you had acne. Or a gland problem,” Jerry replied.
“Dad!” Helen huffed, embarrassed. “Good night, Lucas,” she said apologetically.
“Good night, Helen,” he replied softly, his eyes bright.
“Okay, that’s enough. Get in the house, Helen,” Jerry said with a nervous smile. He physically turned Helen around and gave her a little push toward the door. “I think I would prefer it if you went back to hating him.”
Helen heard Lucas laughing to himself as he started his car. The warm sound made her smile.
Lucas took his time driving home from Helen’s side of the island.
He needed time to think and get control over himself before he faced his family.
Not that it would do much good. Cassandra and Jason could always figure out how he was feeling, and they were being hypervigilant about him right now.
They’d been worried about him since that day in the hallway when he’d first seen her, and now it would get worse.
It was already worse. Jason would probably try to get him to sit down for a nice, long talk, and Lucas didn’t have the patience for that.
He didn’t want anyone’s pity; he just wanted to be left alone for once.
Lucas pulled into the garage and sat with the engine off for a few minutes, trying to put his feelings back where they belonged.
The past few days he’d felt as if his emotions were spring-loaded, as though if he let the lid off them they’d all come flying out like confetti from a Christmas cracker.
He knew for damn sure he couldn’t handle seeing Cassandra, not right then, and he also knew she was probably waiting for him.
He got out of the car, walked outside, and flew up to his bedroom window to avoid her.
But of course she knew he would do that, and she was already sitting on the couch in his room. Lucas smiled ruefully to himself before he even got his window open. He should have known better than to try and outmaneuver his little sister.
“I don’t want to talk about it, Cassie,” he said in what he hoped was a patient but firm voice.
“You don’t get to make that choice,” Cassandra responded sadly.
“No. We’re Scions. We don’t get to make many of our own choices, do we?” he said bitterly as he floated through the window and came in for a landing.
His body took on the burden of gravity and his feet touched down as he went from flying to walking in an instant.
“You’ve been gone a while,” Cassandra said in an insinuating tone.
“I stayed in her area for a bit, looking around her neighborhood for any sign of those women,” he said evenly, and he wasn’t lying.
“I told you, you don’t have to worry. She’s safe for a few more days at least,” Cassandra said, shaking her head. “I’m not so sure about you.”
“I didn’t touch her.”
“But you can’t stay away from her, either.”
He couldn’t. Even when he was still possessed by the Furies in her presence, he couldn’t stay away from Helen. He didn’t know how to describe it; it was as though it felt wrong to be separated from her. “You don’t have to worry. I won’t touch her.”
“That’s not the only thing I care about,” she began in a warning tone.
He interrupted her, tired of the doublespeak. “Yeah, sure, but it’s the thing you and everybody else cares about most, Cassie,” he said. He unlatched his watch and laid it carefully on his bedside table. He wouldn’t look at her, and he knew that was cruel, but he couldn’t stop himself.
“That’s not true. You know that, right?” she asked, suddenly no more than his sweet little sister.
He looked over at her and felt his heart soften.
She carried a heavier burden then he did, he knew that.
Sometimes his bitterness got the better of him, but he trusted that Cassandra knew he loved her, and that she also knew he wouldn’t stop loving her even if she told him he had to give up the one thing he wanted most in the world.
That didn’t make it any easier for either of them, though it wasn’t like anyone had ever asked them what they wanted.
“What does it matter how any of us feel?” he muttered. “If I take Helen, the war starts all over again. No amount of wishing will make it different.”
“I don’t know that,” Cassandra replied with more than a little self-doubt. “I’m not strong enough yet.”
“But you’re pretty sure it is,” he said, sitting down on the end of his bed, suddenly feeling as if he had taken on two planets’ worth of gravity. “And don’t pretend you’re not, because not even you can lie to me.”