Starcrossed (16 page)

towel off without calling for Ariadne. It took her ten minutes to

struggle into her own freshly laundered clothes alone, but it was

worth it. All she wanted do was say thank you and slip out without

drawing too much attention to herself.

When she got downstairs the whole family was in the kitchen, including

Lucas. His face lit up like Vegas when he saw her. She

automatically went straight to him and sat down, her hopes of a

quiet escape ruined by what felt like a knee-jerk reaction. She

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hadn’t intended to stay for breakfast, but it was almost as if she

needed to be near him.

“We were just about to send someone up to make sure you hadn’t

washed down the drain,” joked Noel.

“Helen’s modest. She wanted to dress herself,” Ariadne said,

drizzling honey over a bowl of oatmeal and putting it down in front

of Helen.

“Modest? Sure she is,” Hector said sarcastically as he passed Lucas

the bacon.

“That was your sister’s nightgown, wasn’t it?” Lucas asked

without skipping a beat as he served Helen and himself. Hector

wisely shut his mouth.

“Yeah,” Ariadne replied for him, not getting it. “So comfortable!

What? What are you all laughing at?”

“Nothing, Ari. Just drop it,” Jason said in a pained voice, a hand

over his eyes. Everyone was cracking up, including Castor and

Noel.

Helen was torn. She didn’t want to laugh at the joke because it

was partly on her, but she couldn’t entirely stop herself. She stifled

a giggle and looked down at her full plate. It was the kind of breakfast

that was almost always followed by a nap, and Helen was dying

to go somewhere and hide. She thought about skipping it so she

could get away sooner.

“I know you’re hungry,” Lucas said so quietly that Helen alone

could hear him. “What’s the matter?”

“I feel like I should go home. I’ve imposed long enough. . . .” She

trailed off as Lucas started shaking his head.

“That’s not the reason,” he said positively. “What is it?”

“I feel like a jackass! Waking up practically naked in your bed

with half your family standing over us? Not okay,” she said through

clenched teeth as a hot blush burned her cheeks. He smiled slowly

as he watched her cheeks stain red.

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“If that hadn’t happened, would you want to stay?” he asked, suddenly

serious, his eyes focused on hers. She looked down and nodded,

still blushing. “Why?” he persisted.

“For one thing, I have questions,” she said, hazarding a glance up

at him. He was staring at her with an unreadable look on his face.

“Is that the only thing?” he whispered.

“Enough chat, you two. You both need to eat,” Noel called across

the table, making Helen jump, which in turn made Lucas chuckle.

She and Lucas dug in with all the ferocity of two people who were

literally rebuilding their bodies cell by cell. When Helen finally

looked up after a solid hour of determined chewing, everyone else

was done eating but still sitting around drinking coffee and passing

around sections of the paper. It was as if they always spent half of

Sunday sharing an enormous brunch, then the other half hanging

out around the kitchen waiting for dinner to start. Lost in the

shuffle, Helen was surprised to find herself having a good time.

Lucas was still bent over his plate, so Helen took the sports section

when Hector put it down, and read up on her beloved Red

Sox, who were battling their way through September. She must

have been muttering to herself out loud because when she finally

put down the stats sheet she had the attention of all the men at the

table.

“‘Pitching wins pennants,’ huh?” Castor asked with a delighted

smile.

“‘We’ve got too many injuries and no closer,’ do we?” Jason repeated

back to Helen, then looked at Lucas. “Okay, you win,” he

said cryptically.

“Thank you,” Lucas said through a shaky grin. He leaned back

and closed his eyes, and Helen saw a sweat break out on his forehead.

She touched his head to see if he had a fever, but Jason was

already standing up.

“I got him, Helen,” he said as he came around the table. Jason

went to pick Lucas up, but Lucas wouldn’t let him. Instead, he

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threw his arm over his cousin’s shoulder and allowed Jason to prop

him up.

“Just to the stairs, okay?” Lucas asked, and Jason nodded back,

the bond between them so strong they didn’t seem to need words

to communicate. Helen saw Noel throw up her hands in frustrated

helplessness.

“Let him find his own pace,” Castor said gently to his wife. She

nodded, like it was something they had been over a million times.

Then she turned her attention back to the brunch leftovers.

“Hector! It’s your turn to clear the table!”

Helen noticed Noel had a tendency to parse out her anger as judiciously

as she possibly could. She needed a good yell, but she

couldn’t scream at Lucas because he was hurt, and she couldn’t yell

at Jason because he was helping Lucas, so she picked the next boy

she could find. It was the same thing Noel had done when Helen

was just waking up, speaking softly to Helen and then yelling for

Hector. Poor Hector seemed to get the brunt of her frustration, and

from the way he slunk into the kitchen shaking his head, Helen

had the feeling he’d been Noel’s favorite whipping boy since Lucas

got hurt. For a moment she almost felt bad for him, but when she

saw the way Noel stared worriedly after Lucas as he winced his way

out of the kitchen, she couldn’t blame her.

Lucas paused before he left the room.

“Dad?” he called back without fully turning around. “Helen has

questions.”

Still seated at the head of the table, Castor nodded, deep in

thought for a moment, and then stood up. “I thought she might,”

he said, smiling kindly at Helen. “Would you like to join me in my

study?”

Castor took her to a quiet end of the sprawling house and into a

half-unpacked study with a spectacular view of the ocean. Leather

chairs and boxes of books in a dozen different languages fought for

floor space with rolled-up carpets and un-hung paintings. Two

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large desks stood on opposite sides of the room. The tops of each

were already covered in various papers, envelopes, and parcels.

Along the back wall was a row of French doors that opened up to

a patio bordering the beach. In front of the doors were two sofas

and a big armchair, all three set up facing each other.

Cassandra sat in the oversized armchair reading a book, which

she put aside when Helen and Castor entered. Helen expected her

to leave, or at least be asked to leave, but after a few moments it

was clear that Cassandra had been waiting here for Helen and

Castor to come to her and have this conversation. How Cassandra

knew there would be a conversation at all was beyond Helen, but

Castor didn’t seem surprised.

Castor offered Helen a seat on one sofa and then sat down on the

other. He glanced at Cassandra, dwarfed by her giant chair, and

then began.

“How much do you know about Greek mythology?” he asked.

“You mean, like the Trojan War? Homer and all that?” she asked

in return. When Castor nodded, she shrugged. “I know bits of it. I

was supposed to read the Iliad but there was this chemistry exam

. . .” Her excuses were interrupted by Cassandra passing Helen

the book she was reading. It was an anthology containing both the

Iliad and the Odyssey.

“Keep it. We’ve got plenty of extras,” she said with a wry smile.

It was the first attempt at a joke Helen had ever seen Cassandra

make, so she forced a smile in response.

“I’m pretty sure my son has already told you that we are descendants

of what are known as the Greek gods,” Castor began. When

Helen grimaced uncomfortably, he nodded with good humor. “I

imagine it’s hard to grasp, but you have to understand that Homer

was a historian, and the Iliad and the Odyssey were accounts of a

real war that took place thousands of years ago. Most of the ancient

myths and great dramas are based on real people. Hercules

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and Perseus, Oedipus and Medea. They all existed, and we are

their descendents. Their Scions.”

“Okay,” Helen said, hearing how frustrated her laugh sounded.

“Say I believe you, and all this did happen. Gods had babies with

humans? Fine. But wouldn’t all that magic, or the god-ness or

whatever, been bred out of us by now? That was a really long time

ago.”

“The gifts don’t dilute,” Cassandra responded. “Some Scions are

stronger than others, and some have a broader range of powers,

but the strength of those powers isn’t dependent on how strong

their parents were.”

Castor nodded and took over to clarify.

“For example, my wife is entirely mortal, but both of our children

are stronger than I am. And I am very strong,” he said without

boasting. “We think it has something to do with the fact that the

gods are immortal. They never fade, so neither do the talents

they’ve given us, no matter how many generations pass. In fact—”

he started, but broke off, looking at Cassandra.

“We are getting stronger, and each successive generation of

Scions are being gifted with more and more talents than their parents

were. But there is still some argument as to why this is so,”

Cassandra finished.

“Okay,” Helen said mostly to herself. “I knew I had to be

something not entirely human, but can I ask another question?

What are the Furies? And why aren’t they bothering us anymore?”

This question earned a long pause. Cassandra and Castor made

eye contact as if they were trying to read each other’s minds before

Cassandra began to speak.

“We aren’t completely sure why they went away. In the past,

there have been rumors about pairs of Scions, usually a man and a

woman, who have found a way to be together and not see the Furies,

but it’s never been proven. As far as we know for sure, you and

Lucas are the first to manage it. I think it might have something to

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do with saving a life. I think somehow you managed to save each

other, and this freed you from the cycle of vengeance, but I can’t be

certain about that,” she said.

Helen had a fleeting thought about Lucas in the dry lands—blind

and lost and unable to get off his knees. She pushed the horrible

image aside.

“Vengeance?” Helen questioned. Castor saw her confusion.

“The Trojan War was very long with many casualties. It was the

worst the world had ever seen at that point. A blood feud started. It

began as a punishment for one single family who returned from

the war, but as the years passed it spread to all of the Four Great

Houses and set them against one another.”

“‘Houses’ are what we call the four different bloodlines of

Scions,” Cassandra interjected when she saw Helen frown at the

term. “They were royalty in ancient Greece.”

“The Furies are our curse, our punishment,” Castor said quietly.

“They compel members of opposing Houses to kill each other to

pay a blood debt we owe our ancestors. It’s a vicious cycle. Blood

for blood for more blood,” Cassandra whispered, and Helen

shivered at the empty gleam in her eyes.

“I know that part. Orestes had to kill his mother because she

killed his father because he killed their daughter,” Helen said. “But

I read those plays and they had happy endings. Apollo talked the

Furies into forgiving Orestes.”

“That part was pure fiction,” Castor said, shaking his head. “The

Furies never forgive, and they never forget.”

“So basically, our families have been murdering each other since

the Trojan War?” Helen asked. “There can’t be many of us left.”

“There aren’t. The House that our family belongs to is called the

House of Thebes. It was thought to be the only House left—until

the Furies led us to you, of course,” Castor responded.

“What House am I from?”

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“We won’t know that until we know who your mother was,” Cassandra

said.

“Her name was Beth Smith,” Helen said, hoping Lucas was

wrong and that his father would remember her somehow. But

Castor shook his head kindly.

“Whoever she was, she obviously told you and your father a fake

name to protect you. You certainly look like someone I used to

know, but Scions don’t always hand down physical traits the same

way mortals do,” Castor spoke haltingly as he shifted in his chair.

“For instance, Lucas looks nothing like me—he doesn’t even look

like a typical Son of Apollo, like my brother or me. We Scions are

half human, half archetype, and every now and again the way one

of us looks has more to do with the historical figure the Fates

destined that Scion to model his or her life after than who the parents

were.”

“So who do I look like? ” Helen asked.

“We don’t want to jump to conclusions. Maybe you have some

pictures, or some video of your mother? Then we might be able to

confirm who she was,” Castor said eagerly, like they were close to