The Helicon Muses Omnibus: Books 1-4

by V. J. Chambers

“I don’t think I want to talk to you,” said Agler.

  If Agler were Owen right now, then of course he would want to talk to her. That must mean that Agler was himself right now. Right? “Look, I know I must’ve freaked you out. But your eyes turned blue. They looked just like Owen’s. That’s what scared me. Not you. I meant what I said. I want us to be together. But Owen keeps screwing everything up.”

  Agler stared at her in disbelief. “Do you have any idea what you put me through tonight?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “They thought I was trying to rape you.”

  Nora supposed she could see how they could have gotten that impression. After all, they had been making out in the fields alone. And Nora had screamed and told Agler to get away from her. “I guess they would have thought that. But you didn’t. I don’t think that.”

  Agler’s nostrils flared. “I would hope you didn’t think that, because that’s not what happened.”

  “Well, of course it’s not. This stuff gets confusing all the time. In my health class in ninth grade, they taught us that you have to say no. If you don’t say no, it’s ambiguous. I said back off, and you did. So no big deal. The important thing here is Owen.”

  “No big deal?” He was incredulous. “I don’t know what your ‘health class’ was like. Or what the mundane world is like, but in Helicon rape is serious business.”

  It was like he was deliberately not listening to her. “Owen. He took control of your body.”

  “No, he did not. That was me, Nora. It was all me. And there is no way I would ever have done anything to you that you didn’t want me to do.”

  “I’m not saying that you would.”

  “You made it seem like I had.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not sure if you get it,” said Agler. “If Phoebe hadn’t let me go, that would have been the end for me. If you rape someone, or even attempt to do it, they exile you from Helicon. You could have gotten me kicked out of my only home forever.”

  “I-I didn’t know that.”

  Agler dragged his hands over his face. “There’s a lot of things you don’t know, Nora. And for the life of me... You know, when I first found out that you were only fifteen, a year ago, I told myself this whole thing was a bad idea. But I just kept pursuing you. No matter what you did. No matter how many times you pushed me away. I’m an idiot. But I’ve learned my lesson now. Everything about you is a bad idea, Nora. You’re bad for me. I don’t want to see you anymore.”

  Nora’s mouth fell open. She wasn’t sure what to say. Maybe Owen was controlling Agler. The only other time that Agler had ever rejected her, Owen had been pulling the strings. But she didn’t think so. She swallowed. She couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  Agler didn’t wait for her to talk, anyway. He turned and started walking again.

  Nora stood stunned for several minutes. Then she started walking too.

  * * *

  The May Day festivities were still going on, but Nora wasn’t in the mood for more celebrating. Besides, she was pretty drunk. Her drunkenness was reaching the stage where it no longer energized her but simply made her feel tired and depressed. She didn’t feel like seeing anyone, so she went back to her tent. She had some scraps from the feast earlier that she’d feed to Catling. Then she’d go to sleep. Maybe she’d wake up tomorrow to find that all of this had simply been a bad dream. Maybe the real May Day was going to happen when she woke up.

  When she reached her tent, a light was burning inside. Had she left it on? But that didn’t make any sense. She wouldn’t have slept with the light on, and she wouldn’t have needed it when she woke this morning. She pushed aside the flap, only to find Sawyer inside. He was sitting on the floor, holding a bottle of wine in one hand. With the other hand, he was clumsily petting Catling.

  “’lo, Nora,” he said.

  “Sawyer! What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you,” he slurred. He was even drunker than she was. “Did you have a good time tonight?”

  “Actually no,” she said. She sat down on the floor of her tent next to him and reached for the bottle. “I figured you were off smooching with Jack.”

  Sawyer laughed bitterly. “No. Jack broke up with me. What about you? Why wasn’t your night great?”

  “Jack broke up with you?” She burdened her friends with her problems far too often. There was no reason to go into all of it now. Sawyer was sad. He needed her. She’d focus on Sawyer’s problems, for once, instead of her own. “Why would he do that?”

  Sawyer made an exaggerated shrug. “Dunno. Not really. He said a bunch of stuff. Personally, I still think he’s in love with Agler.”

  “Did he say that?”

  Sawyer wagged his head back and forth slowly. “No. He said he thought I needed to figure some stuff about myself out. He said I had to decide things.”

  Nora sighed. “You mean like about gender stuff? Because he’s just being close minded. There is no reason you have to follow assigned gender roles. You can be whatever you want, Sawyer.”

  “That. And other stuff too. Preference stuff.”

  “Preference?”

  “Sexual preference. Orientation.” Sawyer tried to take another drink from the bottle, but he spilled most of the drink all over his May Queen costume.

  Nora wrinkled up her nose. “I don’t get it. What? He doesn’t think you’re gay? What kind of idiot is he?”

  “He said all this stupid stuff about you.” Sawyer rolled his eyes. “Which is completely ridiculous. You’re my friend. That’s all. If I happened to talk about you a lot, it’s because you’re my best friend.”

  “Hold up. He thinks you’re interested in me?” Of course, there had been that one time when Sawyer had kissed her. But they’d both been under a lot of stress at the time. “He is an idiot.”

  “A total idiot.”

  “You’re better off without him.”

  “Yeah.” Sawyer yawned. “I knew you would make me feel better, Nora.”

  Nora smiled. “That’s what I’m here for.”

  Sawyer started to get to his feet. “I think I’m going to pass out.” His feet got tangled in his May Queen dress, and he fell down.

  “Pass out here,” said Nora. “It’s too far to try to make it to your tent.”

  * * *

  Nora’s head was pounding. She yanked the covers up over her head and tried to roll over in her hammock but ran into Sawyer, who was lying next to her. Sawyer groaned.

  Nora nudged him. “Wake up. It’s morning.” She squinted. “Or maybe afternoon. I don’t know. I thought Maddie would come and get us for breakfast. She’s always annoyingly chipper when we’re hung over.”

  Sawyer pushed himself into a semi-sitting position. “Did I sleep here?”

  “Seeing as you woke up here, what do you think?”

  Sawyer ran a hand through his messy hair ruefully. “I feel like ass.”

  “Me too.”

  Suddenly, the flap to Nora’s tent was thrust open. Maddie burst inside. “Nora, no one’s in Sawyer’s tent. He’s probably upset after what happened to Jack, and I don’t know where—” She broke off as she saw them, her face growing red. “Oh gods.”

  “Maddie, it’s okay,” Nora said.

  Maddie started to back out of the tent. “Oh sure, it’s okay. I mean, you guys can do whatever you want. I mean, it’s really none of my business. I’ll just—”

  “No,” said Nora. “We didn’t do anything. Sawyer was drunk and depressed last night, and I told him to sleep here. That’s it.”

  “Oh,” said Maddie. “Okay. Actually, that’s a relief. You guys are my two best friends, and if you were like together together I don’t know what I would do. I’d be all alone.”

  Sawyer sat up in the hammock. “We are so not together.”

  “I guess it makes sense,” said Maddie. “You must be upset. Both of your guys are gone in one fell swoop.”

  Nora tumbled out of the hammock, grabbing
the center pole of her tent for balance. “What are you talking about? Who’s gone?”

  “Agler and Jack,” said Maddie. “You didn’t know?”

  Sawyer’s exit out of the hammock was even less graceful than Nora’s. “What do you mean they’re gone? How does that even happen? Where would they go?”

  “Daryl told me,” said Maddie. “They went to the fairy dimension. Apparently, every year the fairies ask if the muses would like to do an exchange. Usually, no one volunteers. But this year, both Agler and Jack did. So they’re going to the fairy dimension until Halloween, and two fairies are living here in Helicon with us until then as well.”

  Nora and Sawyer exchanged a look.

  Sawyer scratched the back of his head. “Okay, I get why Jack would do that. He dumped me, and he wanted to get away from me. But I don’t understand why Agler would leave too. You didn’t tell me why you had a bad night last night, Nora.”

  Nora made a face. “That’s a long story. And it’s going to wait until after I have some breakfast.”

  “Did you guys break up?” Maddie said.

  “In a manner of speaking,” said Nora. “I don’t get it. What’s up with this exchange?”

  Maddie shrugged. “I don’t really know. Daryl and the rest of the security guys are pretty excited about it. Something about how the fairies can move through dimensions. They’re going to work with the engineering enclave and the security enclave to try to make something that would allow muses to do that too.”

  “We can do that already, can’t we?” Sawyer said. “I mean, we travel to the mundane world and all.”

  “Sure,” said Maddie. “One dimension. But there are tons of them. I mean, where do you think the Greek gods came from? Mount Olympus is a whole other dimension. And the Norse gods live in Asgard. Daryl says that if we could find a way to travel like that, we could visit all of those different places. Imagine all the dances I could learn.” She grinned.

  Nora supposed that did sound cool. But Agler was gone. Really gone. “I can’t believe he left.”

  “Both of them,” said Sawyer. He looked down at his feet. “I guess I was kind of hoping that Jack was just drunk. I thought maybe we’d talk today, and he’d take it all back.”

  “Wait,” Maddie said. “What happened between you and Jack, anyway?”

  “I’m going to have to echo Nora on this one. Food. I need food before we start talking about all of this.”

  “Well,” said Maddie, “I was going to invite both of you to come to brunch with Daryl and me.”

  * * *

  “Nora, you should’ve said something yesterday.” Sawyer shoveled some hash browns into his mouth.

  “Seriously.” Maddie buttered some toast. “I had no idea that you were feeling so strange.”

  Nora pushed around fruit salad on her plate. “So I guess you didn’t see Himeros’ eyes change, Sawyer?”

  “I didn’t see anything,” said Sawyer.

  Nora sighed. “You guys probably think I’m nuts. Like the thing with the flowers.”

  Daryl smeared some jam on a bagel. “Hey, when it comes to Owen anything’s possible. You guys shouldn’t dismiss what Nora’s saying.”

  Sawyer took another big bite of potatoes. “Who’s dismissing?” His voice was muffled because he was chewing.

  “It’s just that last time I saw something that no one else saw, you guys thought maybe I was letting the stress of everything get to me.” Nora speared a pineapple with her fork. “I don’t expect you to believe me this time. Heck, even Phoebe didn’t.”

  “That is weird,” said Maddie. “Why would she be thinking you were a danger to Helicon?”

  “It’s got something to do with that Nimue thing,” said Nora. “Apparently, Nimue wanted a muse child. And, as Phoebe pointed out, she did steal me. So, I guess that’s what made her suspicious.”

  “Still, it’s ridiculous,” said Daryl. “Everybody knows that Owen was the danger. He killed someone. I mean, come on.”

  Nora managed a small smile at Daryl. “Thanks for sticking up for me. It means a lot that you believe me. Especially since we haven’t known each other all that long.”

  “I hung out with Owen all last year,” he said. “The guy is criminally insane. I don’t care what anyone else says, if you saw it, I think Owen did it.”

  Sawyer chewed his potatoes thoughtfully, then swallowed. “Actually, if Owen can control people’s minds in Helicon, then maybe it isn’t nearly as complicated as what you thought before.”

  Nora took a bite of her fruit salad. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you told Phoebe that you thought Owen was using magic to make things manifest in Helicon. Like the message or the flowers. But maybe it’s simpler than that. Maybe he’s taking over people’s brains and making them do stuff.”

  Maddie set down her toast. “Wait. You mean you think he controlled someone’s body and made them write a message in the snow?”

  “Exactly,” said Sawyer.

  “He could have made someone leave those flowers in your tent as well,” said Daryl.

  Nora nodded slowly. “And then when I left, he could have had them take them away, so that I’d look like an idiot when I tried to show them to anyone.”

  Daryl nodded. “That’s just the kind of thing he’d do too. He loves messing with people’s minds.”

  Maddie picked her toast back up again. “It does make sense.”

  “So, it could’ve been anyone,” said Sawyer. “He could have used anyone’s body.”

  “Not you,” said Nora. “Because you were with Jack all night. At the babies and toddlers enclave. Besides, Owen couldn’t control your mind before. Maybe he still can’t.”

  Maddie’s eyes got big, but she was still chewing. She swallowed hurriedly. “Oh gods. It could have been me. Owen took over my mind before. And I was right next to your tent the whole night. I probably could’ve done the message in the snow too.”

  Daryl patted her hand. “It could have been anyone, sweetie. Heck, it could have been me.”

  “No,” said Maddie. “You were with your mom.”

  “Well, it doesn’t really matter whose body he was using,” said Nora. “If he can do that, he can do all kinds of messed up things here. And Phoebe doesn’t believe me, so she’s no help. We’re on our own.”

  No one said anything for a minute. They all gazed down at their food, the dangerousness of the situation sinking in.

  “Well,” said Sawyer. “There’s got to be something that we can do to protect ourselves. To protect you, Nora.”

  Daryl leaned forward. “I might be able to help with that,” he said in a low voice. “We’ve got some gadgets in the security enclave. Coeus has been working on them.”

  “Phoebe had him do that because of me,” said Nora. “When I asked her about it, she said it wasn’t ready yet.”

  “Better than nothing, though, right?” said Daryl.

  She nodded.

  “The thing is,” said Daryl, “I can’t just walk in and take them in broad daylight.”

  * * *

  It was dark, and strains of music from the music enclave carried through the night air. Sawyer and Nora stood in the security enclave, their arms crossed over their chests, facing away from each other. They were keeping watch.

  Daryl and Maddie were inside a building searching for the gadgets that Daryl had spoken of. Daryl figured that it would be easier to explain his and Maddie’s presence than to explain the presence of all four of them. He and Maddie could just start making out if they were discovered. Daryl would say he brought Maddie into this place to impress her.

  Sawyer and Nora would stay outside and signal if they saw anyone. Then they would have to hide.

  So far no one had come by. It was kind of boring. Nora chewed on her lip. She wondered what was taking Daryl and Maddie so long. Maybe they really were making out in there. She didn’t dare make conversation with Sawyer, because they were supposed to be in stealth mode. Talking would draw at
tention. So instead, she simply waited and watched. It so happened that she was essentially watching nothing.

  Then Nora heard voices. She and Sawyer both snapped their heads in the direction they were coming from. They could see Phoebe and Coeus walking into the security enclave. That was odd. What were the two of them doing there? Nora glanced askance at Sawyer, throwing him a questioning look. Should they give the signal?

  But Sawyer was way ahead of her. He was already making the agreed-upon hooting noise and taking Nora by the arm to tug her to a hiding place.

  Nora didn’t offer any resistance, and within a few seconds, they were safely hidden behind a tent. From this vantage point, they couldn’t see Phoebe and Coeus, but they could hear them. Nora only hoped that Daryl and Maddie had heard the hooting and were taking the necessary precautions.

  Coeus was talking. “Maybe you were too hard on her, Phoebe.”

  Phoebe allowed this. “Maybe.”

  “You should talk to her.”

  “What if I’m right? What if she really is a danger to Helicon?”

  “She’s a girl,” said Coeus. “She’s not a danger.”

  In her hiding place, Nora touched Sawyer’s arm. Were they talking about her?

  Phoebe snorted. “Yes, I had forgotten. All young members of the female persuasion are obviously filled with sweetness and light.”

  “You know what I mean. She’s a confused kid who’s been through a lot. She’s never had anyone to trust. If she doesn’t feel that she can trust us, we could end up damaging her further. And after what Owen did—”

  “Oh, maybe she set Owen up. Maybe she engineered this entire thing.”

  They were talking about her.

  “Do you honestly believe that?” said Coeus. “He killed Dirk. There were witnesses.”

  A sigh from Phoebe.

  “You know what I think?” said Coeus. “I think it’s because she has red hair.”

  Phoebe’s voice raised in pitch an octave. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s not as if you haven’t done that before.”

  “I cannot believe you.” Phoebe’s voice was louder now, and Nora realized that the two of them had stopped and were standing directly in front of the tent she and Sawyer were hiding behind. “How dare you accuse me, after what you did?”