Starcrossed

by Josephine Angelini

  that, Cass realized that they were all the same person, and the

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  most persistent vision she kept having was of one of these woman

  waiting for Helen at her house like she lived there.”

  “The woman let herself into Helen’s house with her own key and

  turned on the TV like she’d done it a million times, so at first Cass

  didn’t think there was any danger. Probably a relative Helen never

  mentioned, right?” Hector interjected. “It wasn’t until just a few

  seconds before you walked in the door that she put it all together

  and knew that she had been seeing Helen’s attacker all day long.

  We tried to call you. . . .”

  “But I had my phone shut off,” Lucas finished for him, adding a

  foul curse on the end. “What did the woman waiting at Helen’s

  house look like?” Lucas asked urgently, trying to get a mental image

  of the threat. “Is she that brunette? Or the old woman who attacked

  Kate?”

  “Neither. Cassandra said she was unbelievably beautiful. Like

  Helen,” Jason replied.

  “Not just beautiful like Helen—you’re telling it wrong, dumbass,”

  Hector interrupted. He wove through traffic like a madman,

  blowing through red lights and passing cars illegally. “Cassie said

  this woman looked almost exactly like her. But whoever she is,

  Cass is certain this woman is not on Creon’s side. He doesn’t even

  know he’s being followed, which may or may not be good for us.”

  “Why the hell wasn’t someone guarding the house?” Lucas

  shouted in frustration, too upset to think about what Cassandra’s

  vision meant yet.

  “It’s my fault,” Hector said, and then continued before his little

  brother could argue. “Shut up, Jase, I’m the one who allowed her

  to go off on her own after practice. It was my call, and I made it,

  even though I knew in my gut it was wrong.”

  Lucas wanted to rip Hector’s face off for taking the blame when

  he knew whose fault it really was. He should have checked his

  phone, he should have checked the house, he should have paid

  more attention to Helen’s safety and less attention to her soft

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  hands and warm skin. He scrubbed his hands over his face and

  made himself take a series of deep breaths. He needed to trust

  Hector to get them there, and then he needed to focus and be ready

  for whatever they encountered. If he was going to be at all useful,

  he was going to have to shut up and calm down.

  When they got to Helen’s house, the TV and the lights were off

  and the front door was locked. Lucas flew up to Helen’s bedroom

  window, which he knew she always forgot to latch. He let himself

  in and then went downstairs to open the front door for the others.

  Nothing was taken and nothing was disturbed in the entire house.

  It was as if Helen hadn’t even put up a fight.

  “She must have known the woman and gone with her willingly,”

  Hector said, tossing up his hands. “It’s the only reason this place

  isn’t melting.”

  “Unless whoever kidnapped her is just that good,” Jason added.

  “What are you talking about?” Hector said derisively. “Helen’s a

  full-on monster now with her lightning. I don’t care who this evil

  twin is, no one is that good.”

  “Twin,” Lucas repeated, thinking. “It could be that simple. She’d

  have the same lightning, the same strength, and a lot more

  experience.”

  The brothers looked at him as he got down on his hands and

  knees and examined the floor. He reached under an end table and

  came up with a drained hypodermic needle.

  “That rules out Helen going willingly. Whoever she was, she

  came prepared. And she must have known about the cestus and

  how it works, or she never would have been able to penetrate

  Helen’s skin,” Lucas said, his breath catching only slightly when he

  said her name.

  He handed the needle to Jason and dropped back down to examine

  the floor one last time, in case he missed something. When he

  was satisfied, he stood up and looked through his cousins instead

  of at them, still thinking. Then he went to the windows by the door

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  and looked out at the raging storm. Lucas watched mini mudslides

  slosh down Helen’s driveway and out into the street and knew that

  any path Helen might have left would be long gone.

  “Was there anything else in Cassandra’s vision?” Lucas asked

  hopefully.

  “The last thing she said was that she thought Helen would still be

  safe tomorrow morning,” Jason replied, shaking his head doubtfully.

  “Cass had a brief flash of Helen standing in a window that

  looked like some kind of hotel on Nantucket, but she couldn’t be

  sure.”

  “Maybe Cass has seen something else,” Hector said as optimistically

  as he could. He opened his phone and tried to dial, but a NO

  SIGNAL sign was flashing on his screen. “Check your phones,” he said

  to his brother and cousin. Neither of them could connect a call,

  either.

  Lucas went into Helen’s kitchen and checked her landline for a

  dial tone, but it was dead. As he joined his cousins back in the

  entryway, the power in the house went out. Jason went over to the

  window and looked at the other houses in the area.

  “The whole block is out,” he said. “And massive lightning bolts

  are headed this way. I guess we’re stuck here for a while.”

  “You two stay here in case Helen gets free and makes her way

  back,” Lucas said as he turned for the door.

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Hector demanded,

  grabbing Lucas by the shoulder and trying to turn him around.

  “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

&
nbsp; 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