Goddess (Starcrossed 3)

“Drop me over the side and let me drown,” she pleaded. “Please. End this before it begins.”

Paris didn’t answer her. Holding her up high in his arms to keep her close, he carried her belowdecks to his bunk. The other Helen finally lost consciousness, and Helen’s visit to this terrible dream or vision or whatever it was ended abruptly as she fell back into a natural sleep.

TWO

Andy glared at the metronome on top of the organ she was playing and willed it to explode. It didn’t. She took a deep breath, waited a measure, and dove back into Bach. Ten swings of the metronome’s pendulum later and she was growling through her gritted teeth and shaking her fists in the air rather than pounding them on the keys. Abusing instruments was an unforgivable offense in Andy’s mind. But metronomes, on the other hand . . .

“You’re lucky you’re an antique,” she told it, just to let it know how close it had come to a splintery end. She emptied her mind and started again.

This time she let Bach do the work, and for several measures she found the art inside the complicated math of the fugue.

Bliss. Right up until she was interrupted by the ding of an egg timer. Andy’s fingers slid off the keys with the deafeningly loud blarting noise that only a giant, hundred-year-old organ could muster.

“Really?” Andy said to the heavenly glow of the Tiffany window that reached high above her head. Even the beauty of the patchwork colors, warming her face like a bright quilt made out of light, was not enough to calm her. Just when she was getting it, she had to stop.

She repressed the urge to swear in church and looked at her watch. It was 8:00 a.m. already. Drat. Her rehearsal time was over, and she had to hoof it in order to make it to her first class.

It was freezing cold. Outside, the sun was just starting to peek up over the far edge of campus. Andy hunkered down into the boxy layers of flannel and wool she used to conceal her stunning figure and made her way through the frost-stiffened scrub of her “shortcut.” Truth be told, it was a long cut. What mattered was that it was off the path and farthest away from everyone else. Andy wasn’t looking for friends at school. She liked her solitude. Actually, that wasn’t quite true. She hated her solitude, but she trusted it more than she trusted people.

“I saw you playing,” said a young man with a musical voice.

Andy screamed and whirled around. She saw a tall, beautiful youth crowned with golden curls. The edges of him twinkled in the thin sunlight of the chilly November morning.

“What are you doing here?” Andy said calmly. She blinked her sun-dazzled eyes and glanced around for another person. Wellesley College was an all-girls’ school in the most blue-blooded, upper-crusty, and thoroughly traditional area of Massachusetts. Unless this boy was a professor or a security guard, he was not allowed this deep into the campus without a visitor’s badge.

“You’re very talented,” he said, moving toward her.

“You said you saw me, huh?” Andy took a step back, not liking this situation. “How could you see me in the chapel? I was alone.”

He laughed, his voice dancing around the notes like a wind chime. “I wasn’t in the chapel, of course. I saw you through that big window.”

“You saw me through a stained-glass window? How’d you pull that off?”

“I could find someone as beautiful as you no matter where you hide. You’re so radiant, I bet you even glow in the dark.”

The way he said it didn’t sound phony. He wasn’t leering or rude in any way, but he was still moving toward her, even though she obviously didn’t want him to. When he got closer, Andy saw something wrong in his eyes—so

mething distinctly animal and not human at all. She remembered the sunlight hitting her face through the stained-glass window and figured out how he’d seen her. She knew who, or rather, what, she was dealing with now. Andy backed away quickly, her breath starting to rasp with real fear.

“Are you going to run from me?” the youth asked poignantly, like this had happened to him many times before.

“Would you chase me?” she asked, adding to her voice the seductive, hypnotic edge that could drive mortal men to their death. She needed to stall for time, maybe get him to follow her back to the path. There was sure to be someone up there to help her.

“Of course I would,” he said, his eyes smoldering and his voice low. He was aroused, but not hypnotized—unfortunately for Andy. “Only the ones who run are worth catching.”

Doesn’t it figure? she thought with that desperate hilarity that only happens in the most hopeless circumstances. I spend my whole life deathly afraid of tempting a boy, and I end up getting jumped by one at an all-girls’ school.

The light sparked off him again, catching his edges and making him look more real than real, like he existed in 4-D. Andy knew this was no trick of the rising autumn sun. She also knew this was no boy. Her mother had warned her of the possibility of something like this, but Andy had never thought it would come to pass.

“Hey, Andy!” called an intensely chipper girl Andy had met over a month ago at freshman orientation and avoided ever since. She eyed Andy and the boy uncertainly. The noisy cluster of girls behind her went silent when they saw that Andy was with a boy. “Are you coming to class?”

“Hi . . . Susan!” Andy yelled back frantically, remembering the girl’s name at the last moment. “I want to go with you!”

The beautiful youth smiled sadly at Andy as the chattering knot of young women moved closer to collect her. Then he turned and ran off toward Lake Waban.

“Where did your friend go?” Susan asked, perplexed.

“He’s not my friend,” Andy said, grasping at Susan’s mitten-covered hand with relief. “We need to go to campus security right now.”