A burst of relieved laughter jumped out of Helen. She was safe at home, and this time she hadn’t broken anything, stabbed herself, or drowned in a festering bog. Someone had saved her.
Or was it all in her head?
She thought about the deep voice and the warm hand that had pulled her from the pit. Healers like Jason and Ariadne could go down around the edge of the Underworld in spirit, but no one except Helen could physically get into the Underworld with his or her body still attached to the soul. It was supposed to be impossible. And Helen had been in Tartarus—the lowest of the low. Even farther down in the Underworld than Hades itself. Not even the strongest Healers had ever come close to it. Was she so desperate for help that she had hallucinated?
Confused about whether or not she had imagined the whole thing, Helen sat in her sodden bed for a few moments and listened to her father mangle Prince’s “Kiss” while he made breakfast.
Jerry was getting half the lyrics wrong—which meant he was in a great mood. Things between him and Kate were going very well: so well that Helen hadn’t seen much of her father the past three weeks. Even their timeworn system of trading weeks cooking for each other was all thrown out of whack, but that was okay with Helen. She wanted her father to be happy.
Jerry repeated the line “you don’t have to be beautiful” four times in row, probably because he couldn’t remember any of the other words. Helen smiled and shook her head, thanking her lucky stars she had a father like Jerry to wake up to, even if he was a terrible singer. She had no idea why he could never get the words to songs right, but she suspected it had something to do with being a parent. Nobody’s parents were supposed to sing Prince well. It would be disturbing if they did.
Throwing back her covers, Helen launched into cleaning mode. Two weeks ago, Claire had taken Helen to the mainland to get the special plastic sheets that moms use if they have a kid who wets the bed, making a thousand cracks about the Princess and the “Pee” along the way. Helen didn’t mind. The sheets were uncomfortable and super-embarrassing to buy, but a necessity since every night she came back from the Underworld either bleeding or covered in yuck.
She stood up and started stripping her bed as fast as she could. In the laundry room, she took off her muddy boxer shorts and threw out her ripped T-shirt, putting everything that could be salvaged into the wash. She took a quick shower, and then retraced her path with a rag to clean up the dirty footprints she had tracked across the floor.
A few days ago she had considered using her superfast Scion speed to get through this new and annoying morning cleaning ritual, but she decided that it would probably scare her dad to death if he ever caught her doing it. Instead, Helen had to either get up at the crack of dawn or run around frantically at normal human speed to cover her tracks, like she was doing that morning. Out of time, Helen wiggled into some jeans before she had completely dried off while trying to pull a sweater over her damp hair. It was so cold in her room that the tips of her ears were beginning to go numb.
“Lennie! Your breakfast is getting cold!” Jerry shouted up the stairs.
“Oh, for crying out . . . Crap!” Helen cussed as she stumbled over her book bag. Her sweater wasn’t all the way on yet, and it was still covering her face and pinning her arms over her head.
After a moment of flailing around like a muppet, Helen regained her footing and paused to laugh at herself, wondering how a demigod could be such a damn klutz. She assumed it had to have something to do with the fact that she was so tired. Helen righted her clothing, grabbed her school things, and ran down the stairs before her dad could start singing “Kiss” again.
Jerry had gone hog wild on breakfast. There were eggs, bacon, sausage, oatmeal with nuts and dried cherries, and of course, pumpkin pancakes. Pumpkin pancakes were a favorite of Jerry's and Helen’s, but around Halloween, which was only about a week and a half away, anything with pumpkin in it was on the menu. It was sort of a competition between the two of them. It started with roasted pumpkin seeds and went all the way to soups and gnocchi. Whoever found a way to sneak pumpkin into a dish without getting caught was the winner.
The whole pumpkin thing had started when Helen was a little girl. One October she’d complained to her dad that pumpkins only got used as decoration, and although she loved jack-o’-lanterns, it was still a big waste of food. Jerry had agreed, and the two of them resolved to start eating pumpkins instead of just carving them up and then throwing them out.
Unfortunately, they found that pumpkins on their own are so bland they’re practically inedible. If they hadn’t gotten creative with the cooking, they would have given up on their Save the Pumpkins crusade after the first year.
There were a lot of nauseating creations, of which the pumpkin popsicles were by far the worst, but the pancakes stood out as the biggest success. They instantly became as large a part of the Hamilton family tradition in late October as turkey was on Thanksgiving. Helen noticed that Jerry had even made fresh whipped cream to put on top, and that made her feel so guilty she could barely look at him. He was worried about her.
“Finally! What were you doing up there? Quilting?” Jerry joked, trying to make light of his worry, as he looked her up and down.
For a moment, his eyes widened with fear and his lips pressed together in a harsh line, then he turned back to the stove and started serving. Jerry wasn’t a nag, but Helen had gotten skinny over the past three weeks—really scary skinny—and this humongous breakfast was his way of trying to remedy that without having to go into a big, boring lecture. Helen loved the way her dad handled stuff. He didn’t pester her the way other parents would if they saw their daughter turn into a scarecrow, but he still cared enough to try to do something about it.
Helen tried to smile bravely at her dad, took a plate, and started stuffing the food down her throat. Everything tasted like sawdust, but she pushed the calories in, anyway. The last thing Helen wanted was to make her dad anxious about her health, although to be honest, even she was starting to feel a bit worried.
She healed quickly from any overt injury she sustained in the Underworld, but every day she felt weaker. Still, she had no choice—she had to keep going until she found the Furies, no matter how ill the Underworld was making her. She’d made a promise. Even if Lucas hated her now, she would fulfill it.
“You have to chew bacon, Lennie,” her dad said sarcastically. “It doesn’t just dissolve in your mouth.”
“Is that how it works?” Realizing she had been sitting there stock-still, she forced herself to act normal and crack a joke. “Now he tells me.”
While her dad chuckled, she wrenched her thoughts away from Lucas and considered all the homework she hadn’t done. She hadn’t even finished reading the Odyssey yet, not because she didn’t want to read it, but because she hadn’t had time.
It seemed like everything on Helen’s to-do list needed to be done yesterday. On top of that, her favorite teacher, Hergie, kept trying to pressure her into joining the AP classes. Like she needed to expand her reading list.
Claire cruised up the driveway in the new hybrid car her parents had bought her and yelled, “Honk-honk!” out the window rather than actually honking the horn. As Jerry tried, and failed, not to hover, Helen stuffed the remaining pancake down her throat, nearly choked, and ran out the door with her shoelaces still untied.
She hurried down the steps, taking a glance back at the widow’s walk on her roof, but she knew it would be empty.
Lucas had made it painfully clear to Helen that he would not sit on her widow’s walk again. She didn’t know why she bothered to look up there, except that she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
“Button your coat, it’s cold out,” Claire admonished as soon as Helen got in the car. “Lennie? You’re a frigging mess,” she continued as she put the car in gear.
“Ah . . . good morning?” Helen said with wide eyes. Claire had been Helen’s best friend since birth, and was therefore entitled to yell at Helen whenever she felt li
ke it. But did she have to start so early? Helen opened her mouth to explain, but Claire would not be deterred.
“Your clothes are falling off your body, your nails are bitten down to nothing, and your lips are chapped,” Claire ranted, plowing right through Helen’s weak protests as she tore out of the driveway. “And the bags under your eyes are so god-awful it looks like someone punched you in the face! Are you even attempting to take care of yourself?”
“Yes, I’m trying,” Helen sputtered, still trying to button up the front of her coat, which had suddenly become harder to figure out than Chinese algebra. She gave up on the buttons and faced Claire, throwing up her hands in frustration. “I’m eating up here, but there’s no food in the Underworld and I can’t seem to stuff enough down when I’m in the real world to compensate. Trust me, I’m trying. My dad just fed me enough breakfast to choke a linebacker.”
“Well, you could at least put on some blush or something. You’re white as a sheet.”
“I know I look awful. But I’ve got other things on my mind. This whole descending thing isn’t exactly easy, you know.”
“Then don’t descend every night!” Claire exclaimed like it was obvious. “Take a break when you need it! Obviously, you’re not going to solve this in a few weeks!”
“You think I should treat the Furies like a part-time job?” Helen yelled back, finally finding her voice.
“Yes!” Claire shouted back, and since she was naturally better at shouting than just about anybody, Helen shrank back into her seat, cowed by her itty-bitty friend. “Three weeks I’ve put up with this and I’ve had enough! You’re never going to find the Furies if you’re so tired you can’t even see your own big, stupid feet!”
After a slight pause, Helen burst out laughing. Claire tried to keep a straight face, but eventually she gave up and laughed her amazing laugh as they pulled into the parking lot at school.
“No one would think any less of you if you decided to limit your trips down there to once or twice a week, you know,” Claire said gently as they got out of the car and started toward the front door of the school. “I can’t believe you can force yourself to go down there at all. I don’t think I could do it.” Claire shuddered, remembering her own recent brush with death when Matt hit Lucas with his car. Claire had almost died in the accident, and her soul had traveled down to the dry lands—the outskirts of the Underworld. The memories of that place still frightened her, weeks later.
“You would if you had to, Gig. But it doesn’t work like that, anyway. It’s not something I decide to do.” Helen threw an arm over Claire’s shoulders to pull her out of her disturbing recollections of the thirst and loneliness of the dry lands. “I just go to sleep and end up there. I don’t know how to control it yet.”
“Why doesn’t Cassandra know? She’s so smart and she’s been doing a lot of research,” Claire said archly. Helen shook her head, wondering if she really wanted to get in the middle of the feud between Claire and Cassandra.
“Don’t blame Cassandra,” she said carefully. “There isn’t exactly a manual for descending. At least Cassandra and I haven’t found one in that pile of ancient Greek and Latin the Delos family calls archives. She’s doing her best.”
“Then that settles it,” Claire said, crossing her arms and narrowing her eyes with conviction.
“Settles what?” Helen asked in a worried tone as she turned the dial on her locker.
“You and Cassandra can’t do this alone. You need help. Whether Cassandra wants me to or not, I’m helping.” Claire shrugged as if the matter was settled, which it most certainly was not.
Cassandra insisted the archives were for Oracles and the priestesses and priests of Apollo only, despite the fact that there hadn’t been any real priests or priestesses of Apollo in about three and a half thousand years. Matt, Claire, Jason, and Ariadne had offered to help Cassandra a bunch of times, but she wouldn’t accept because that would go against tradition, and for a Scion, going against tradition was nothing to sneeze at.
The Fates had a thing against Scions in general, but Scions who broke tradition usually found themselves on the Fates' extra-special hate list. Plus, most of those archives were hexed against the uninitiated. The only reason Cassandra let Helen in the library at all was because no one could think of a hex that could harm her. Helen was protected by the cestus. In the real world she was impervious to practically everything. But Claire most certainly was not.
Helen followed her stubborn friend down the hallway, feeling her shoulders slump more with every step. She hated the thought of going against Cassandra, but when Claire set her mind to something there was no point in arguing with her. Helen just hoped that whatever Claire was planning didn’t get her permanently cursed with boils or lice or something equally horrid. Claire could get seriously hurt.
The bell rang just as Helen and Claire scooted into homeroom. Mr. Hergesheimer, or “Hergie” as he was called behind his back, gave them one of his most disapproving glares. It was almost like he could smell the trouble brewing inside Claire’s head. Hergie assigned both of them two words of the day for the next morning as preemptive punishment for whatever it was they were so obviously up to. From that moment on, Helen’s day got progressively worse.
Helen had never been the most attentive student, and now that she was spending her nights slogging through the Underworld, she had even less interest in school. She was scolded in every class, but at least one of her peers was doing even worse than she was.
As their physics teacher tore into Zach for not writing up his lab, Helen wondered what had happened. Zach had always been one of those guys who looked awake and alert no matter what time it was. Usually, he was a bit too alert, sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. Helen had never seen Zach looking so washed out and disconnected. She tried to catch his eye and smile at him in solidarity, but he turned away.
Helen sat staring at his blank face until it finally sank into her sleep-deprived brain that about a week ago she had heard someone say that Zach had quit the football team. Zach’s dad, Mr. Brant, was the football coach, and Helen knew that he pushed Zach to be perfect in everything he did. There was no way Mr. Brant would allow his son to quit without a fight. Helen wondered what had happened between them. Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been good. Zach looked horrible.
When the bell rang at the end of class Helen tried to touch Zach’s arm and ask him if he was okay, but he acted like she wasn’t even there and walked out of the room. There was a time in their lives when Helen and Zach had been friends—he used to share his animal crackers with her on the playground—but now he wouldn’t even look at her.
Helen had just resolved to ask Claire about Zach and his mysterious condition at track when she caught a glimpse of Lucas from afar. Everything else dissolved like a chalk drawing in the rain.
He was holding a door open over someone’s head, politely making a bridge so that a smaller underclassman could walk beneath his arm. He glanced back down the hallway at nothing in particular and spotted her. His eyes narrowed in anger.
Helen froze. It felt like someone was kneeling on her chest again. That’s not Lucas, she thought, unable to breathe or move.
As Lucas disappeared in the throngs of rushing students, Helen made her way down to the locker room to change for track, her mind wiped clean, like the sky after a thunderstorm.
When Claire showed up, Helen immediately started asking her questions. She’d stumbled across this trick a few weeks back when she realized that if she peppered her best friend with questions, Claire wouldn’t have time to ask how she herself was doing. This time, Claire really did need to talk. Jason was having a bad day and Claire was worried about him.
Jason and Claire weren’t officially dating, but ever since Jason had healed her they were obviously more than just friends. They had become very close very quickly, and now she was Jason’s closest confidante.
“Are you going over to his house after track?” Helen asked quietly.
“Yeah, I don’t want to leave him alone right now. Especially since Lucas is still MIA.”
“What do you mean?” Helen asked, alarmed. “He hasn’t been home at all since . . .” Since he told me to go to hell, hit his father, endangered his mother, and got thrown out of his house? Helen finished in her mind.
Claire seemed to know exactly what Helen was thinking, and she squeezed Helen’s hand in support as she explained.
“No, he’s been home a few times since then. He apologized to his parents and they forgave him, of course. But he’s never around anymore. No one knows where he’s been going or what he’s been doing, and honestly? Everyone’s too afraid of him to ask. He’s changed, Lennie. He doesn’t talk to anyone, except maybe Cassandra. He vanishes right after school, and sometimes he doesn’t come home until one or two o’clock in the morning, if he comes home at all. His parents are letting him go because, well, without Hector around, no one can really stop him. Jason is worried,” Claire said before glancing sideways at Helen. “You haven’t seen him lately, have you?”
“Today. But only for a second, way down the hall,” Helen said, ending the line of questions before Claire could ask her how she felt. “Look, I gotta pick up the pace. Are you okay, or do you want to talk some more?”
“You go ahead,” Claire said with a troubled frown.
Helen gave Claire a little smile to let her know she was okay, even though she kind of wasn’t, and then sped up to finish her run in a time that Coach Tar would think showed initiative.
Lucas saw Helen at the end of the hallway, and forced his face into an angry shape, willing her to hate him or fear him—whatever it took to get her the hell away from him. For her own good.
But Lucas didn’t see hate or fear in her eyes. She didn’t turn away from him like she was supposed to. She just looked lost.
It felt like chewing glass, but Lucas forced himself to turn his back on her and continue down the hallway.
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