That part of the meal – the brief window of time where both Grandfather and Uncle Frank were gone – was Helena’s favorite part of the whole dinner. When it was just her, her two uncles, and her aunt at family dinners, things were less tense. They were also somehow less miserable, even though there was never any frivolity to be had at a Tarleton table; not even when they were supposedly celebrating.
Uncle Sully was never once in danger of sobering up, and no one had ever accused him of being a cheerful drunk; quite the opposite, in fact.
By contrast, Uncle Sullivan’s twin brother, Helena’s Uncle Terrance, never touched a drop. He was always as sober as a judge – and often more sober than any of the ones that Helena had met at her grandfather’s dinner parties – but his constant low-level terror of doing, being, or thinking the wrong thing could make him exhausting to spend much time with.
And Aunt Barbara, she whose twin had died after being Severed, was about as warm and friendly as a snake. She was relentlessly self-involved in all topics of conversation.
And yet, she had also put all that money in Helena’s purse. She thought that Helena could be strong, could run away, just like Helena’s mother had done. Or perhaps she was merely kind enough somewhere in her heart of hearts not to wish Severing on anyone.
Watching her Aunt Barbara across the table, Helena wondered if her aunt was really as cold and narcissistic as she often seemed to be or if she was, but she wished that she wasn’t.
She had probably been different, once upon a time. They had all probably been different. Severing changed a person, profoundly and irreparably. Everyone knew that.
But no matter how challenging they could be, Helena knew that her aunt and uncles cared for her, each in their own ways, though she wasn’t bold enough to call it love. They had done their best by her, although by the time that she had met them, none of them had had much of themselves left to give. And they had all tried to be kind to her in their own ways, which was perhaps more than could be said about other members of the family.
It wasn’t their fault that they were the way that they were. Perhaps no one had told them when it was time to run. Or maybe they had tried, but they hadn’t gotten far enough away from Grandfather to succeed.
Helena didn’t know, but looking across the table at the unhappy remnants of her mother’s siblings, she knew that she had to try.
Aunt Barbara’s husband reappeared then, wearing that awful, self-satisfied smirk of his. He was swaggering, and past him, Helena could see the waitress – the pretty one that he had been making eyes at – exiting the men’s room. She was putting something into her pocket, money or a business card, perhaps; maybe both, knowing her Uncle Frank.
Had Uncle Frank been her escort, Helena would have been humiliated. She might have cried. She definitely would have killed him, at the first available opportunity. But though her aunt’s eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared, Helena’s Aunt Barbara said nothing. She did nothing either. And she hadn’t killed Uncle Frank yet.
A lady doesn’t bite, and she especially doesn’t bite back, floated up the thought from the recesses of Helena’s brain. It came in the voice of her grandmother, as all such thoughts usually did.
A few minutes later, Grandfather returned to the table too, and all the rest of Helena’s celebration was swallowed up in talk of business, acquisitions, and mergers. As far as Helena had seen, Uncle Frank didn’t have many good points, but Grandfather had often said that Uncle Frank was a genius when it came to business. That was why Grandfather had chosen him for Aunt Barbara: to run the business when he was gone.
Run it for whom, Helena had never quite dared to ask. If Grandfather thought that Uncle Frank would act for the family’s benefit after he was no longer around to bully and scare Uncle Frank, then he was quite mistaken. No one had ever accused Helena of being any sort of genius, but even she could see that much.
The dinner had been over for awhile, the desserts eaten and the coffee all drunk, when the family gathering mercifully began to break up. Grandfather rose, signaling its end, and everyone else followed his lead, including Helena.
Grandfather and Uncle Frank left together, their heads bent together and Aunt Barbara trailing disinterestedly in their wake. After them slouched Uncle Sully, giving Helena only a brief (but hard) hug and his well wishes in passing. Only Uncle Terrence stayed with her, and from his jittery expression, Helena knew that he wouldn’t be staying for very long.
“Here,” he said, thrusting a wrapped parcel at her. “I thought – that is – Y-You might enjoy it?”
“Thank you,” said Helena, surprised for a third time that night.
Carefully, she ripped the wrapping paper off of an old book, hard-backed and fox-eared at the corners. It was entitled The Great Escape.
As far as hints went, it was only subtle in comparison to his siblings’ cues.
Helena smiled up at her uncle, her eyes prickling with unshed tears. The note, the money, and now the book; Helena had always hoped that her aunt and uncles might love her. Now, she knew it.
“Thank you, Uncle Terry,” said Helena, meaning it.
“An old book for a new graduate,” said her uncle. “Heh. It seemed appropriate?”
“It is! It’s very appropriate.” Cradling the book against her chest, Helena added “It’s just exactly the right gift for me,” just to see her uncle’s bespectacled face light up.
“Thank you, Helena.”
Her perpetually nervous uncle momentarily relaxed, his gratitude at hearing that overwhelming enough to briefly overcome even his nerves. Then her uncle straightened, all of that nervous energy flooding into his frame once more.
“You might look at the dedication,” he said. “I think you’d find it very interesting. It’s definitely the right thing to do.”
To humor her uncle, Helena flipped through the book’s pages. Handwriting caught her eye.
Flipping back to it, she saw that it was her Uncle Terrance’s neat script. It was an address; no name, just a place.
A place somewhere in Florida, decided Helena. The state’s abbreviation was literally the only part of the address that she recognized.
“Well, I’d better be going,” announced her uncle, speaking over any attempt that Helena might have made to thank him or ask questions.
He resettled his glasses and squeezed her shoulder once in farewell. Then her Uncle Terrance was off, rushing after the others. No doubt he meant to try to rein in the worst of Grandfather and Uncle Frank’s ruthlessness. It was a thankless, impossible task for which he would only be mocked, but Uncle Terrance would try nonetheless. He was a good – if very nervous – egg.
Outside, the head valet confirmed that the rest of her party had already left. Handing him her plastic chip sent one of the younger valets scurrying to fetch her car, for which Helena tipped him generously.
Helena slid into her seat, careful of her short skirt, and the valet slammed the door shut behind her.
She drove precisely six blocks and then pulled over, parking her pretty little sports car in an otherwise empty lot so that she could have a moment to herself. Helena found that she badly needed to sit quietly and think, not that there was much to think about.
She couldn’t stay.
She had to go.
Helena wasn’t much of a lightning dragon. She couldn’t even transform into one. But that didn’t mean that she wasn’t any part her mother’s daughter.
She wasn’t entirely helpless.
I can do this, thought Helena, quiet resolve filling her.
She didn’t dare think that she could do it well, but then, she didn’t need to do it well. She just needed to be brave enough to do it at all.
Helena thought that she could manage that.
It took longer than she would have liked to admit to come up with a workable plan. It wasn’t an especially good plan, but gave her a direction in which to strive. That was probably the most important thing in moments like this. At least, Helena hoped
that it was.
Left alone and probably forgotten for the time being by her relatives, Helena took herself home to her little apartment, not that it would be that for much longer. Along the way, she made a list of errands for Pia, her maid. None of the things on her list were particularly important or even necessary, but Helena needed Pia out of the way while she counted her money, packed her trunk, and placed her luggage.
Tomorrow, Helena would leave home; hopefully, for forever.
But if Pia was home tonight, all would be lost. Grandfather’s incentives were too good for any servant to keep secrets from him. And if Grandfather found out what Helena was about, all would be lost.
There would be the graduation ceremony tomorrow and then… Florida.
At least I’ll get to work on my tan?
It seemed as good a reason to go there as any and better than most. It was definitely more palatable than the real reason that she would be visiting.
Humming a half forgotten melody, Helena got to work.
Chapter 02 – Helena
The most chaotic time during any graduation was the brief span of time between the end of the ceremony and when the newly minted graduates found their families. During that time, while everyone was searching the auditorium for everyone else, Helena quietly slipped away. In a crowd like that, who would even notice?
No one, that was who. Casual friends and loose acquaintances waved to her in passing, all too busy with their own families and their own lives to wonder about hers.
When Marlie called to her, “Keep going! You’re headed the right way! I think I saw your grandfather that way,” Helena thanked her… and promptly switched directions, heading for the exit furthest from her relatives.
Helena’s university was the sort of old college around which the town had grown up, and so the auditorium in which graduates were formally acknowledged as having completed their degree was located near several major bus lines. Outside, the day was bright and clear and cold. Helena could see every one of her quick breaths, a plume of pale mist that somehow reminded her of bubbles blown underwater.
It’s good that I don’t really feel the cold, thought Helena as she unzipped her robes. Otherwise, this might be unpleasant.
She had gotten that much at least from her dragon mother, as well as a certain affinity for electricity. It was those two things, perhaps, that had allowed her mother’s relatives to live in eternal hope that she would one day shift into her dragon’s form.
Perhaps it was those two small things that had led Grandfather to think that she should be Severed from her soul’s mate, assuming that she even had one, and married off to his hoard’s advantage, as her uncles and Aunt Barbara had been. Of course, her uncles’ marriages had fallen apart sooner rather than later, unlike her Aunt Barbara’s, and that had only lasted as long as it had because Uncle Frank was a selfish, greedy, grasping pig. He wasn’t as bad as a wendigo, but it was probably close.
Perhaps Grandfather meant to marry me to Uncle Frank’s replacement, thought Helena and shivered, feeling more disquieted by that thought than ambient temperature. It was bad enough that she knew her aunt’s husband. She certainly didn’t want to be married to someone like him.
It was around then that Helena passed a recycling bin, a wad of plastic bags from the supermarket sticking out of it. Ignoring her natural distaste for the activity, Helena paused long enough to fish one of the bags out of the mouth of the recycling bin. Then she shrugged off her cords and tassels and purple robes, stuffing the lot of them into her plastic bag as she headed for the nearest bus stop.
There were already six people waiting at the bus stop, all of them bundled up against the cold. Ignoring their pitying (and sometimes inquiring looks) Helena joined them.
While she waited for the bus, Helena fiddled with her cell phone. She turned it off, felt silly, and turned it on again. A few minutes later, feeling defiant, Helena turned off her cell phone again and took out its battery for good measure.
Maybe it was silly, but doing it made her feel better. She didn’t know how it worked, but Helena had seen enough crime shows on television to know that people – computer-type people – could find someone using only their cell phone.
And if she got caught, she would forever regret not doing it. Helena knew that she would always wonder if she could have made it – just like her mother and just like her mother’s twin – if she had just sucked it up and taken the battery out of her cell phone. It would have haunted her.
Helena didn’t want any regrets, not about something as important as this.
Helena had never actually ridden a city bus before, only seen them in movies. She had had her own car and driver since before she could drive, and it had taken years to persuade anyone that she could be responsible enough to drive herself anywhere.
Getting her driver’s license at the tender age of twenty had been a personal victory. The car – little, sporty, and fashionable – had appeared in front of her apartment shortly after that.
As much as she loved it, her pretty little sports car would make a terrible getaway vehicle. It was flashy, noticeable, and registered to her name. If she left home in that car, Grandfather would probably find her in thirty minutes flat. So, the public bus it was.
Thankfully, the bus driver didn’t expect exact change from her, nor was she required to figure out the etiquette surrounding cord pulling. She just had to get on, pay her fare, and wait until the bus took her back to the bus terminal.
It took quite a bit longer than Helena had expected. While the bus lurched down the city’s old, narrow streets, its route bringing it ever closer to the main bus terminal, Helena worried.
When did they realize that I’d left? How long until someone comes looking for me? Helena fretted. How will they look for me? Did I forget anything?
There were a lot of things that she didn’t know, but Helena didn’t doubt for a moment that her grandfather would come looking for her. He would probably hire the best private investigators that money could buy. The old man no doubt had advantageous marriage plans for her – he had certainly had them for her uncles and aunts when they were Severed, although all but her Aunt Barbara’s had eventually fallen apart – and he wasn’t used to being told no.
Almost no one had ever said it to him.
Not that Helena had precisely said it to him either, not to his face, at least. She had just left, but Helena had a feeling that her Grandfather would understand what she meant. He had a gift for grasping subtleties like that.
By the time that the bus finally pulled in at the main terminal, Helena was nearly as nervous and jittery as her Uncle Terrance. It had taken so long to get there! Disembarking, Helena headed first to the post office counter, where she mailed her graduate robes back to the college, then to locker 223B in the main terminal.
Yesterday, Helena had packed her trunk and overnight case then driven them to the main bus terminal where she had stowed them as well as her purse in one of the facility’s twenty-four hour lockers.
Now, Helena flipped up the hem of her skirt to get at the key that she had pinned there. With it, she opened the locker, relief washing through her when she saw that all of her things were still there and still exactly as she had left them. Collecting them, Helena went to purchase a bus ticket.
Helena was hurrying down the sidewalk, her ticket in hand and her overnight case bumping against her leg on her every step as she searched for bus bay twenty-three, when she came upon the man.
He was tall with dark hair, darker eyes, and a hard face. Built along the same delicate lines as a brick outhouse, he seemed about likely to move out of her way as that proverbial brick outhouse too.
Despite all of her bags and the lack of maneuverability inherent to the frame of the trunk that she was wheeling behind her, Helena tried to go around him. She went left, he stepped to his right, and, believing it a mere coincidence, Helena dodged right, trying again to go around the man.
Except, the man stepped into her pa
th again, deliberately Helena realized this time. Another man, one that she could see from the periphery of her vision was no daintier than the one standing before her, slid into place behind Helena.
Trapped, Helena realized, her stomach clenching hard enough to hurt. Adrenaline surged through her, making her dizzy.
“What do you want?” demanded Helena, her voice wavering.
“Your Grandfather sent us to escort you home.”
“No he didn’t,” snapped Helena. Fear crackled under her skin, as sharp and clean as an electrical current. It gave her strength. “He couldn’t have! He had no way of knowing that I’d come here!”
“Not true,” disagreed the man. “Two members of our firm followed you here yesterday. They saw what you got up to. That’s why we were sent to wait for you here today.”
“Why would you do something like that? There was no reason!”
“Because your grandfather paid us to,” said the stranger. Try as she might to remember seeing him anywhere before, his face remained horribly unfamiliar. “You see, he hired my firm about a month ago. Our operatives have been following you around ever since, just in case.”
“In case of what?” demanded Helena, as if she didn’t know very well.
“He didn’t say.” The man reached out to grab Helena’s arm. “C’mon. We’ll take you home.”
Two hands landed on her, one closing on her shoulder and the other around her upper arm, and Helena lashed out, sending the current of her fear leaping through them.
The men made terrible, pained noises, and Helena watched, horrified, as the square face of the man in front of her contorted with pain. Their hands clenched hard on her, then unclenched and re-clenched, the muscles in their hands spasming. Their entire bodies were jerking and spasming, as if they had jammed their hands into an electrical socket rather than simply grabbing a girl on the street.
Pitying them, Helena shrugged their hands away. She watched as the man in front of her fell away from her, crashing to the ground like Jack’s giant falling from the beanstalk. Judging by the heavy thud that reverberated through her trunk, the man behind her was in no better shape.
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