Chapter Fourteen #4
“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.
“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.”
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.
“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,” Cassandra said, grasping for words with frustration.
“It’s like the way it looks different to everyone.
That’s because there’s no such thing as the most beautiful ornament, or the most beautiful anything for that matter. How can I explain this?”
“What I think is beautiful is very different from what even my twin would think is beautiful because we’re all turned on by different things,” Ariadne explained bluntly for her.
“That’s right,” Cassandra said.
“But why a girdle?” Helen persisted.
“You have to remember, a few thousand years ago girdles were considered very attractive, but they were also a form of protection for the wearer. Some even had bone or bronze plates in them, like lightweight armor,” Castor explained.
He looked remote, though, not his good-natured self.
“But there were two parts to the cestus. The girdle itself, and its adornments. It was the adornments that made the goddess irresistible to whomever she wanted to seduce, and they had the power to change to suit the tastes of whoever was looking at them. Time passed and girdles fell out of fashion, but the transformative magic of the cestus is still the same. It can become whatever you need it to be to make yourself more attractive, Helen. And all these years you’ve only needed it to be a simple necklace. ”
“I’ve always loved it,” Lucas admitted softly. “The way it falls into that place.” He touched the dent at the bottom of her throat for the briefest of moments. “I think it’s perfect.”
Helen could see a hot flush wash across his cheekbones, but he kept his eyes down, conscious of the fact that everyone was staring at them with worried frowns. Castor especially looked so stricken he could have been at a funeral.
“What I don’t understand is why are we all noticing it now? It’s like it just got charged with love mojo in the past few days or something,” Jason mused to no one in particular. Then a thought occurred to him and he looked from Helen to Lucas, then away.
“Like it just switched on,” Ariadne said. She looked over at Helen and Lucas, sharing the same idea as her twin.
“What if I wanted it to be something else?” Helen asked, ignoring the strange stares she was suddenly getting from everyone. Cassandra shrugged.
“I don’t know. Maybe try changing it?” she asked with an excited look. “But I’d take it off first! You never know,” she added quickly.
Helen unlatched her necklace and tried to think about sexy things, but she couldn’t come up with anything.
After a moment she realized that it didn’t matter what she thought was sexy, but what other people thought that would be important.
She needed a guinea pig. She looked at Hector, focusing on him alone, and she felt her necklace change shape in her hand.
“Helen!” Hector exclaimed.
Helen looked down and saw that she was holding a tiny scrap of lace that more closely resembled diamond-encrusted dental floss than underpants.
Everyone burst out laughing, pointing at Hector and making fun of his trashy taste.
She looked at Lucas, concentrated, and it turned back into her necklace. He grinned.
“I told you. I love that necklace,” he said openly.
His gaze was so warm Helen felt she had to do something to divert all the stares they were getting. She looked around the room, pointedly seeking out a new victim. Everyone wisely decided to scatter.
“Don’t even think about it!” Ariadne shrieked, running out of the room so Helen couldn’t focus on her.
“Come on! That’s not fair!” Jason said. He backed away from her, alternately covering his eyes so he couldn’t see her and covering his face so she couldn’t see him.
“All right, nobody panic!” Helen put her necklace back on and laughed, but no one was left in the library to witness her mercy but Lucas and Cassandra. “I like it best like this, myself.”
“Good,” Lucas said, averting his eyes and trying to pretend he wasn’t embarrassed.
“Why aren’t you running?” Helen asked Cassandra playfully, but when she saw the dark look on her face she knew she had said something terribly wrong.
“That will never work on me,” Cassandra said in a flat, distant voice. She brushed past Helen.
“I’m sorry,” Helen said to Lucas, as Cassandra stalked out of the room. She put her hand on Lucas’s arm and made him look at her. “I don’t understand, Lucas. What did I say?”
“Aphrodite’s power only works on adults—on sexually mature individuals,” he answered with a raspy voice, like his throat had gone dry.