Starcrossed (10 page)

was a bright, momentary glimmer, and he twitched away from her,

his body convulsing spasmodically.

Helen smelled the nauseating combination of singed hair and

ozone that always made her think that she had done something

wrong. A brief thought of the Nantucket ferry flashed through her

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mind as she studied the blond monster in front of her, trying to figure

out what had happened. After a stunned second, he collected

himself and leaned closer to Helen with an evil grin on his angelic

face. He was near enough that Helen could feel the heat coming off

his body.

“Hector!” commanded a familiar voice. Helen had only a moment

to register that it was Lucas before she felt him grab her arm and

pull her away from the Goliath that was his cousin. Instantly furious

instead of frightened, Helen rounded on Lucas and threw off

his arm.

“Don’t touch me,” she hissed. She felt light-headed. “Why can’t

you just stay away from me?”

“Why can’t you just stay at home?” he shot back at her. “Didn’t

you have enough fun last night in the alley?”

“I have errands to run! It’s not like I can hide in my bedroom for

the rest of my life just because some woman . . .” Helen realized

she was starting to yell. She stopped herself and lowered her voice.

A thought occurred to her. “Are you still following me?”

“You’re lucky that’s all I’m doing. Now go home,” he growled, and

grabbed her arm again.

“Careful, Luke,” Hector warned, but Lucas just smiled.

“She can’t control it yet,” he replied.

“Can’t control what?” Helen choked out furiously, her patience

pushed past the limit.

“Not here. Not now,” said Jason in a low, clipped voice. Lucas

nodded in agreement and started pulling Helen toward the door.

Helen ripped her arm out of Lucas’s grasp again. Undeterred, he

just grabbed her by the hand and held it hard. Helen had two

choices. She could put up a fight in front of the entire store, or she

could go quietly holding the hand of the most despicable boy in the

free world. She was so frustrated she could feel a repressed scream

squeezing her lungs shut, but she had no choice.

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Lucas frog-marched her past a chestnut-haired beauty that Helen

guessed was the other cousin, Ariadne. She tried to smile at Helen

compassionately even though she was clearly just as inflamed by

the Furies as everyone else was. For a second, Helen considered

smiling back, but she didn’t possess Ariadne’s self-control. She was

too angry to manage it. Fleetingly, she thought that Ariadne had to

be the nicest person in the world if she could attempt to be kind in

that moment.

“Don’t even look at my sister,” Lucas growled through gritted

teeth, jerking brutally on Helen’s hand as they walked past tiny

Cassandra. Cassandra opened her mouth to say something to her

brother and quickly shut it, turning away.

“I have no food in the house. What am I supposed to do for dinner?”

Helen growled through her closed-off throat.

“Do I look like I care?” he replied, dragging her out of the store.

“You can’t treat me like this,” she said. He was leading her across

the lot. “We hate each other. Fine. Why don’t we just stay away

from each other then?”

“And how has that worked out so far?” Lucas asked, sounding

frustrated rather than sarcastic. “Do you always come to this same

store at this same time every Saturday, or did you come today on a

whim?”

“No, never. It’s the busiest day of the week. But I needed groceries,”

Helen sputtered. He laughed incredulously and squeezed her

arm even harder.

Helen suddenly realized how many random events and raw impulses

had driven her decisions these last few days. When she

thought about it, it was as if she had stopped choosing for herself

days ago.

“The Furies won’t allow us to avoid each other,” he said in a dead

voice.

“Then we can make a schedule or something . . .” Helen began,

but she knew it was a lame suggestion and trailed off before he had

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a chance to shoot it down. An ancient, supernatural force was compelling

her to kill Lucas. It probably wasn’t going to be deterred by

something as prosaic as a time-share.

“My family hasn’t decided what we want to do about this, about

you—yet. But we’ll be in touch,” Lucas said. They got to her car. He

shoved her against the driver’s door, as if he couldn’t stop himself

from trying to hurt her one last time. “Now go home and stay

there,” he ordered again, and stood over her while she fumbled

with the keys.

For a moment as she backed out of her parking space she considered

gunning the engine and hitting him with the car, but she

didn’t want to mess up Kate’s paint job. Angry tears started pouring

down her face as soon as she was out of the parking lot, and

they didn’t stop until she was at home, splashing cold water on her

face in the kitchen sink.

She felt humiliated in a dozen different ways. Some of that humiliation

she had brought on herself by attacking Lucas at school, but

he seemed determined to belittle her. She wasn’t even allowed to

go grocery shopping now. How was she going to explain that to her

father?

The thought of Jerry derailed any nascent plan of escape. She

was hopelessly outnumbered, and unless she was willing to leave

her father behind to fend for himself she had to wait until the

Delos boys were done deciding how to handle her. She leaned

against the kitchen sink and stared at the block of knives on the

counter. If she had Lucas cornered the way he did her, she would

have already picked out which knife to use. What she didn’t know

was why. Why did they hate each other so much? What purpose

could all that anger possibly serve?

She suddenly thought about Hector, about the way he had smiled

at her, and a carpet of goose bumps unrolled down her arms. If she

was ever alone with him she knew he would kill her. Not just bully

her like Lucas did, but actually, joyfully, kill her.

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She was still leaning up against the sink half an hour later when

her dad finally made it home. He froze midstep and looked around

the kitchen, giving the entire room a fast once-over.

“Did I do something wrong again?” he asked, his eyes wide.

“Why do you keep asking me that?” Helen huffed.

“Because the past few days every time I come home you look at

me like I’ve forgotten your birthday or something equally

unforgivable.”

“Well, have you?”

“No! I haven’t done anything! Nothing wrong,” he said with a

straight face, but the red flush rising up his neck gave him away.

“Should I ask about you and Kate or would I be too grossed out?”

“Hey. There’s nothing going on there. We’re just going to be

friends,” he said, his expression grim. Helen could tell there was a

lot of backstory behind that decision, but she didn’t really want to

hear it at the moment.

“Your loss,” Helen responded with a disinterested shrug. Jerry’s

head jerked up quickly, stunned by the bitterness in her voice.

“You didn’t used to be so mean, Helen.”

She crossed her arms and looked off to her left at absolutely

nothing, too ashamed of herself to meet her father’s sad gaze. She

could handle the fear of being pursued by vengeful spirits from

Hades, but not if turned her into a bitch. Whatever the Delos family

decided, she hoped they would do it quickly. She started to

mumble an apology, but was saved from having to explain herself

by a knock at the door. Jerry went to answer it and after a few moments

he called out to Helen to come and join him.

“What is it?” she asked, coming out of the kitchen. There was a

delivery boy at the door with bags and bags of groceries.

“He says these are for you,” Jerry said, holding out a note with

Helen’s name on it.

“I didn’t order these,” Helen said to the delivery boy.

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“The order was made by a Mrs. Noel Delos to be delivered to a

Miss Helen Hamilton. It’s all paid for,” he replied, anxious to be on

his way.

Jerry tipped the kid and took the groceries into the kitchen while

Helen read the note.

Miss Hamilton,

I am so sorry for my son’s appalling behavior toward

you at the market today, and I ask that you accept these

few things I’ve sent, even if you are unable to accept an

apology. I understand what it is to try to put dinner on the

table with no groceries, although apparently my Lucas

does not.

Noel Delos

Helen stared at the page for far longer than it took to read it. She

was touched by the gesture. It was a ridiculously decent thing to

do. Helen got the impression that there was something different

about Noel Delos, but she had no idea what it was.

“What does she mean, ‘appalling behavior,’ Lennie?” Jerry asked,

reading over her shoulder. Helen could see outrage beginning to

build in him. “What did that Lucas kid do to you now?”

“No, Dad, it’s okay. She’s exaggerating,” Helen said, trying to

make as little of it as possible.

“Then we can’t accept these. This is over a hundred dollars worth

of groceries,” he argued.

“Oh, for crying out loud!” Helen moaned at the ceiling. She took a

deep breath and launched into an explanation. “Okay, you win. Lucas

and I had another fight today at the market, but it was a small

one. In comparison, at least. Anyway, the point is that he started it

and I couldn’t go shopping like I needed to and one of the other

Delos kids must have told his mom that I didn’t do my shopping

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and she took it the wrong way and sent all these groceries because

she’s obviously a really nice woman but I don’t want you to say

anything to her and can we please, please, drop it?”

“What the hell is it with you and this Lucas kid?” Jerry said after

a moment, completely flabbergasted. Then a thought occurred to

him. “Are you two dating?” he asked in a terrified voice. Helen

burst out laughing.

“No, we’re not dating. What we’re doing is trying to not kill each

other. And that isn’t working out too well,” she responded, trusting

that the absolute truth would be so inconceivable he would think it

was a joke. She was right.

He got a pained look. “You’ve never had a boyfriend. Is it time for

us to have that talk about what men and woman do when they love

each other?”

“Absolutely not,” Helen replied firmly.

“Good,” he said, relieved. They stood in awkward silence for a

moment. “So . . . we can eat the groceries, right?”

“Heck, yeah,” she said as she turned on her heel and made for the

kitchen while Jerry practically ran to the living room and the dependable

comfort of SportsCenter.

As she put together some bruschetta with the amazing bufala

mozzarella, fresh tomato, basil, and crazy-good Spanish olive oil

Mrs. Delos had sent, she thought about her father and how oblivious

he was to the forces pulling her life apart in hunks. With all

that was happening to her, she knew she might not have many

more nights of dinner and baseball to look forward to, but the

thought didn’t bother her as much as it would have a week ago. If

the Delos family wanted her, they could try and take her. She was

sick of being angry all the time. Fight and kill or fight and die, she

really didn’t care. As long as she could keep her father out of all of

this Greek tragedy nonsense, she would deal with whatever came

her way.

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HarperCollins Publishers

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Chapter Five

The next week at school was nothing short of torture. On

Monday, Helen tried to stay away from the Delos family,

but every effort she made to avoid contact seemed to lead

her right to them. She went to school early to try to beat

them there, only to see them pull up behind her in the

black Hum-Scalade she had seen at the market. She rushed to lock

up her bike and get her bags together, but her rush only put her in

stride with Jason and Hector. Slowing down to let them get ahead

of her, put her next to Lucas who was helping his little sister get

her cello out of the back. Helen took a flustered step forward, then

went back toward her bike to stand and wait there as long as it took

for them to go inside and get out of her way.

Later that day, she got permission to eat lunch outside, only to

find Cassandra was already out on the patio practicing the fingering

without using her bow on her cello. When she saw Cassandra,

Helen pulled up short. As she turned to go back inside, she

smacked into Ariadne. The contact made Helen’s skin prickle so

tight that her pores hurt, and although she tried to be gracious and

smile apologetically, Ariadne’s hands balled into fists around her

violin case. Helen stumbled to get away from her, both of them

mumbling apologies.

“Cass and I got an outdoor pass to practice. We’ll be out here