Chapter Ten #4
“He saw me trying to fly, okay?” Helen began, sensing that she had done something very wrong. “I didn’t know who he was, I just knew that he’d seen me jump about five stories into the air and I had to get to him before he got away.”
“Great,” Cassandra said bitterly. “He came here to check on our family and maybe pick a fight with Hector, but now that you’ve exposed yourself everything has changed.”
“He was heading right for the school,” Helen said defensively.
“And what was he going to do?” Cassandra yelled back, suddenly furious.
“Attack a pathetic normal? Use your head, Helen! For some reason the two women who attacked you haven’t told the rest of the Hundred Cousins that you exist, probably because they want the glory of killing you alone so they can have a Triumph.
Creon might be thinking the same way, but if he isn’t, he will tell Tantalus.
That means half of the Family is going to be here in a few days—and you can’t even hold a sword yet! ”
“Back off, Cassie!” Lucas said heatedly. “We were raised for this, and Helen’s had what? A whole week to adjust?” He looked at Cassandra through the rearview mirror, and even in reflection his eyes looked intense. Cassandra threw up her hands in surrender.
“You’re right, Cassandra. I didn’t use my head,” Helen said, rubbing her stomach. “Maybe we could talk to him.”
Ariadne made a strangled sound.
“What? Why are you all so scared of him?” Helen asked.
“He’s a Shadowmaster,” Ariadne said ominously from the front seat. “He can stop light. It’s unnatural.”
Helen thought about the darkness that wrapped itself around Creon and she knew what Ariadne meant. The sun wouldn’t shine on him, and Helen had instinctively felt like there was something wrong about that.
“Shadowmasters are rare,” Lucas tried to explain a bit more calmly, but Helen could still hear the fear in his voice. “There haven’t been very many of them in our House’s history, but every one of them that we know about has turned out to be, well . . . evil.”
A few tense minutes passed with Cassandra cupping her hands over her eyes in a posture of deep concentration. Finally, she looked up at Helen, and with a determined smile she dispelled the lingering negativity.
“Well, you’re safe for now. I don’t see any immediate threats,” she said reassuringly, watching Helen cradle her still-tender midsection. “Any idea which human saw you chasing Creon?”
“Gretchen. Don’t worry, no one will care. She’s always saying stuff about me,” Helen said positively. “Wait a sec. How do you know someone saw me?”
“These cramps you’re having? They’re the curse. Your mom cursed you to feel almost unendurable pain if you use your Scion powers in front of ordinary mortals,” Cassandra said with a shrug.
“Is that what it is? It’s been driving me crazy all week!” Lucas said from the front seat as he turned down the long Delos driveway.
“Of course you wouldn’t recognize them. You’re a boy,” Ariadne said. “Curse Cramps are sadistic, really. I haven’t even read about anyone doing it in centuries.”
“My mother cursed me?” Helen repeated back to Cassandra, who nodded sadly.
“Way back, hundreds of years ago, it was thought to be the only way to keep women Scions in line with the society of the time. Mothers would do it to their daughters to keep them from drawing too much attention to themselves because women weren’t supposed to be special or smart or talented.
” Cassandra wrinkled her nose, like she had said something that smelled bad as it came out of her mouth.
Helen sputtered uselessly to herself for a few seconds, unable to process what she had just learned. Cassandra took Helen’s hand and smiled kindly at her. “If it’s any consolation, the curse probably kept you hidden all these years.”
“As much as I hate to admit anything so barbaric could be useful, I have to agree,” said Ariadne as she opened her door and got out of the car.
“If you hadn’t been cursed, can you imagine what your mortal dad would have gone through when you were a toddler with all that strength?
He tries to punish you, you throw him out a window. Bedtime would have been a bloodbath.”
“Well, when you put it that way,” Helen admitted as she climbed out of the back, accepting Lucas’s politely offered hand. As she and Lucas walked side by side behind Ariadne and Cassandra toward the house, she started to laugh to herself.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I always knew my mother hated me, and now I find out that she literally cursed me,” she replied, hearing her voice sound matter-of-fact. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything that made so much sense in my whole life.”
“Your mother was trying to protect you,” Lucas countered judiciously.
“Oh, you are such a boy! You’ve never had cramps,” Helen muttered. They paused on the landing.
“Maybe take your shoes off,” Lucas said, looking down at Helen’s feet. She was caked in black marsh mud all the way up to her waist.
“Maybe get a hose,” Helen countered with a laugh.
“I can do better than a hose,” he said with an easy grin, pulling on her hand to follow him to the pool. “Outdoor showers are sort of a requirement for our family.”
He brought her to the outdoor shower and left her there to go to the pool house to get some towels and a change of clothes.
When he was completely out of sight she self-consciously stripped down in the shower area.
The beautiful teak walls of the shower curved around in a spiral that screened off the important parts of her body, but her feet and the very top of her head were still visible.
She’d taken millions of beach showers like this, but never without wearing a swimsuit. She washed as quickly as she could and was nearly finished by the time Lucas returned.
“The T-shirt’s definitely mine, but I have no idea who the sweatpants belong to.
Don’t worry about it, though. No one will care,” he said, flipping the clothes and a big beach towel over the top of the screen.
Then he put a plastic shopping bag down on the ground. “That’s for your uniform and sneakers.”
“Thanks,” Helen called out, painfully aware how little space stood between him and her naked body.
It was silly, really. Everyone is naked under a few millimeters of clothes, but this felt different somehow.
It felt dangerous. She watched his feet through the gap at the bottom of the screen as he began to turn away, hesitated, and then hurried off.
She let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.
The clothes he’d left her were gigantic, but they were soft, comfortable, and they smelled like dryer sheets. She toweled off, put the borrowed outfit on, and came out of the shower area carrying her bag of dirty clothes.
By the time she and Lucas made it into the house, Jason and Hector were sitting at the kitchen table watching Cassandra and Ariadne shower a man Helen didn’t know with affection. Lucas introduced Helen before giving his uncle a big hug.
Pallas Delos was a large, blond man, still glowing with health and youth even though he was graying at the temples.
He and Hector shared the same cautious smile and sharp eyes, but there was more of Jason’s and Ariadne’s prettiness about him than Hector’s blunt masculinity.
He shook Helen’s hand politely, but his curious stare followed her long after the introduction was over and it began to make Helen feel uncomfortable.
She wondered if he was just reacting to her taboo name or if he had heard unflattering things about her from someone in the family.
His stare made Helen jumpy. She tried to hide herself behind Lucas.
“Okay, everybody out. I have to get started on dinner,” Noel ordered as she entered the kitchen, waving her hands in a shooing motion. Helen found herself being pulled out the back door by Lucas.
“It’s a good idea to stay out of my mom’s way when she gets like that or you’ll end up chopping vegetables for the next hour,” he said. He led her back outside toward the grassy lawn between the tennis courts and the pool.
“I don’t mind helping,” Helen said, starting to head back toward the house.
“I do,” Lucas said with a sly smile, tugging on her hand. “Besides, I thought you wanted to learn how to fly. Isn’t that what caused all the fuss earlier this afternoon?”
Helen could tell he was upset and trying not to show it. “About that,” she began, scrunching her face up guiltily.
“Yeah, that was bad. And it was all my fault. I should have taught you to fly as soon as we healed from our fall, but I didn’t trust .
. .” he said, stopping himself and shaking his head ruefully.
“Never mind. The point is, once I learned I could fly all I wanted to do was get back in the air. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat.
It was stupid of me to think you would wait. ”
“How old were you when you found out?” Helen asked.
“Ten? But it took me a while to understand it,” he said as if to prepare her for something. “Scions are born with all their talents, but it takes time to discover how to use some of them. Especially if there’s no one with your particular talent to act as a mentor.”
“Did you have one? A mentor, I mean.”
“No. I don’t know any other Scions who can fly besides you. But I had books, and my family for support.” He pulled up and stopped to face Helen. “You never had any of that, so this might be a little harder for you.”
“I’m good at hard, it’s easy I’ve never trusted,” she responded quickly, but he gave her a look that indicated he thought she had missed his point.