much as she could. It seemed like every page was filled with the
gods meddling in the world of men. Helen could see why her ancestors
had eventually decided that praying for divine intervention
wasn?t such a good idea.
She was up to the part where Achilles, who struck Helen as the
world?s most celebrated psychopath, started sulking in his tent
over a girl when she heard a definite footstep overhead. And then
another. Relying on the extrasensory hearing she?d always known
she had, but only recently begun to let herself use, she zeroed in on
her father, listening to his rib cage moving against his chair as he
breathed in and out. He was watching the late news on the TV
downstairs and he sounded perfectly normal to Helen. The widow?s
walk above her, however, was now suspiciously silent.
Helen slipped out of bed and grabbed the old baseball bat she
kept in her closet. Holding her slugger at the ready she walked
sideways, foot over foot, out her bedroom door and to the steps
that led to the widow?s walk. She paused for a moment on the landing
between the stairs that led down to the first floor and the stairs
that led up to the roof, listening again for her father. After a few
moments of tense indecision, she heard him cluck his tongue at the
antics of some camera-greedy congresswoman on TV and she relaxed.
He was still okay, so she knew that whatever she had heard
had not made it downstairs yet. With the intention of keeping it
that way, she ascended the stairs to the widow?s walk.
As soon as she stepped outside, Helen felt the cool fall air soak
through the thin cotton of her nightshirt, rendering it useless
against the elements. A flickering shadow in the starlight caught
160/395
the corner of her eye and she swung at it, but the top of her bat was
stopped before it came around in a full arc. She heard the chunky