She took a step back and reached out, but touched nothing but thin air. Glancing around nervously, Helen spun on her heel, grabbed her bags, and jogged into the town center. Cassandra had foreseen that Helen was safe from attack for the next few days at least, but she’d never promised that Helen would be left in peace. Helen knew someone from the Hundred Cousins was most likely watching her, she just hadn’t expected to feel so paranoid about it. Suddenly, Helen imagined that she could feel someone’s breath on her neck. The thought made her bolt into the News Store like she was being chased.
“What is it?” Kate asked. She looked behind Helen for whatever had spooked her. “Is someone following you?”
“It’s nothing,” Helen replied with a phony smile. “The cold gave me the shivers.”
Kate gave Helen a skeptical look, but Helen ducked around her and deposited her things behind the register before Kate could get into it.
“Did you eat after track?” Kate asked. “Go to the back and make yourself a sandwich,” she ordered when Helen didn’t respond right away.
“I’m not really hungry,” Helen began, but Kate cut her off angrily.
“Is that your final answer? Think carefully,” Kate warned as she planted a flour-dusted fist on her curvy hip.
Helen shut her mouth and went into the back. She felt like Kate and Jerry were both blaming her for getting so thin. But she couldn’t explain what was really going on to either of them.
Helen smeared some peanut butter on a hunk of bread and drizzled honey over it before she took a giant, angry bite. She chewed mechanically, hardly noticing the sticky ball of bread and nutty-sweet paste sealing up her mouth. She felt like she was choking on something most of the time, anyway—like there was a wad of words lodged permanently in the back of her throat. What was a little peanut butter compared to that?
She gulped down a glass of milk and shuffled back out front, still feeling like she was being blamed for something that wasn’t her fault. She avoided Kate for the rest of the night to punish her.
After an uncomfortable few hours walking on eggshells at the News Store, Helen lied and said that Claire was picking her up. Outside in the dark, sure that no one could see her, Helen jumped up into the night sky and flew toward home. She soared high, pushing herself to go up to where the rarified air tugged at her eardrums and dug at her lungs.
She had promised Lucas once that she wouldn’t leave the island without more training in transoceanic travel, and technically, she’d kept that promise. She was still over Nantucket, just very high over it. Helen reached up and up until she could see the bright web of night-lights that connected the whole continent underneath her. She flew until her eyes watered and the tears froze on her cheek.
She stretched out and let her body float until her mind emptied. This must be what it was like to swim unafraid in the ocean, but Helen preferred to swim in an ocean of stars. She floated until the cold and the loneliness became intolerable, and then she drifted back down to earth.
Helen landed in her yard and ran in the front door, hoping her dad wouldn’t notice that there hadn’t been a car in the driveway to drop her off, but Jerry wasn’t in the kitchen. She poked her head into her dad’s room just to make sure, but he wasn’t there, either. Helen reminded herself that it was Friday night. He and Kate probably had plans. Since she and Kate hadn’t spoken for most of the evening, Helen hadn’t thought to ask if Jerry would be spending the night at Kate’s place or not. Now she regretted holding a grudge. The house was too empty, and the silence seemed to press painfully on her ears.
Helen washed her face, brushed her teeth, and went to bed. She kept her eyes open for as long as she could, willing herself to stay awake despite the fact that she was so tired she was near tears.
If she fell asleep, she knew she would descend into the Underworld and plunge herself into a loneliness that was even more complete than the loneliness she felt in the real world. But the longer she lay in bed, the closer her thoughts drifted toward Lucas. Helen rubbed her hands over her face and tried to push the stinging tears back into her eyes. The unbearable weight began to settle on her chest again.
She couldn’t allow herself to wallow, or in a few moments she’d be wallowing in the filth of the pit. Then a thought crossed her mind.
Maybe this time she wouldn’t be alone in the Underworld.
She knew that her savior was probably a mirage, but Helen was desperate. Even talking to a mirage was preferable to wandering through hell alone.
As she focused her thoughts on the deep voice she’d heard, Helen allowed herself to fall asleep. She pictured the flash of gold, the beautiful mouth, and the sound of him saying her name as he held out his hand for her to take. . . .
Helen was on a prairie-like plain with lots of dead grass and undulating hills. She’d been to this part of the Underworld before, but something had changed. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but everything felt a little bit different. For one thing, there was noise. Helen couldn’t remember ever hearing any sound in the Underworld that she hadn’t made herself—not even the sound of wind on the grass.
Somehow, the Underworld felt real, and not just part of a terrible nightmare. Helen had experienced this before, if only briefly, when she was miraculously pulled from the pit. As jarring as this new perspective on the Underworld was, it was also a relief at the same time. Hades seemed less hellish for some reason. Looking around now, Helen was reminded of that moment in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy sees in color for the first time.
She squinted into the distance and saw dancing flashes of gold, coupled with the sound of shrieks, grunts, and clangs. There was a fight going on, and it sounded like a brutal one. At least Helen could be certain of one thing. The guy with the warm hands wasn’t a mirage.
She ran as fast as she could toward the commotion.
When she crested a small rise she saw a big guy with an overgrown mop of loose chestnut curls using a long dagger to hack away at the tattered vulture-bat thing that was flapping around his head. As Helen ran closer, she heard the harpy snarl and cuss, trying to rip at the young man with her talons. Even though he was fighting for
his life, Helen couldn’t stop herself from noticing that he really needed a haircut.
“Haircut” got the upper hand for a moment, and Helen saw him grin in a half-surprised, half–self-congratulatory way. Then, as he realized that he was still losing, Helen watched the grin quickly turn into a self-deprecating grimace. Even though he was battling away, he seemed to maintain a good sense of humor.
“Hey!” Helen shouted as she neared the struggling pair.
Haircut and the harpy paused awkwardly in the middle of the fight, each of them still clutching the other’s throat. Half of Haircut’s mouth lifted up in a surprised smile.
“Helen,” he managed to croak out, as if he always had a pair of talons wrapped around his neck. Helen was so taken aback by his nonchalance she almost laughed. Then everything changed again.