Dreamless (Starcrossed 2)

Helen didn’t know how to respond. The only thing she wanted to do was kiss him, but she knew she couldn’t. All she could do was stay still and stare at him.

The bell rang and dozens of doors shut simultaneously, but neither Helen nor Lucas made a move. A few random kids were still roaming the halls, looking for trouble. Strangely, no teachers seemed to be stopping them. It was like a day without rules. Helen certainly didn’t care if she got in trouble. Suddenly, she felt like destroying something. She couldn’t recall ever feeling like that before.

Over Lucas’s shoulder, Helen caught a glimpse of the ghoulish woman she had seen by the side of the road, walking down the hallway.

“Right behind you,” Helen gasped quietly. Lucas moved very slowly to turn and look. “I saw her this morning, and it was like everything went wrong at the same time. That’s why I looked like I’d been attacked.”

“She’s not mortal,” Lucas whispered to Helen as the ghoulish woman moved past them.

“Can she see us?” Helen asked, but Lucas just shook his head distractedly. Helen saw his nostrils flare, and barely a moment later she smelled why.

The she-ghoul reeked like rotten eggs and spoiled milk. It was the smell that Helen had mistaken for dead squirrel—the stench that had clung to her until she had scrubbed it off in the showers that morning.

The smell seemed to permeate the walls, and commotions began inside every classroom that the she-ghoul walked by. There were loud voices and yelling at first, and then crashes and squeals followed, like everyone had suddenly started throwing the furniture around. Notebooks and book bags were being tossed into the air. Soon enough, the doors started opening and students started pouring out, closely followed by the teachers. But the teachers weren’t trying to restore order. They were just as unruly as the kids.

Wrapped in their cocoon of invisibility, Helen and Lucas watched in awe as Miss Bee, their stolid, logic-loving social studies teacher, savagely kicked in a locker door with her sensible shoes. Helen looked up at Lucas and could tell he was fighting the urge to join in the destruction. She felt it, too. She had been feeling it all day, she realized. It was why she’d agreed to the costume and the glitter, and why she had been so willing to blow off five classes instead of just one or two. Helen felt like raising some hell.

“Don’t even think about it,” Lucas whispered with narrowed eyes.

“What?” Helen whispered back. She bit her lower lip, feigning innocence. “Don’t you feel like doing something bad?”

“Yeah, I do,” he said, and pulled Helen a little tighter to him. She felt his body generate a wave of heat, like she had just opened the door to a hot oven, and pressed harder against him. He held his breath and made himself look away from her. “We have to get out of here.”

Lucas grabbed Helen’s hand and pulled her into a sprint. She understood why right away. If they moved fast enough, they could remain invisible as they went from hiding behind Lucas’s light-cloak to moving faster than a mortal could see. It was such a thrill to run through the hallways of her high school at Scion speed that she nearly hooted with glee.

Once outside, Helen and Lucas took to the air and shot up high over the island, away from the influence of whatever was turning their school into the monkey cage at the zoo. Floating high above the ocean, Lucas turned to her and stared with a half smile on his face.

“Maybe adding wings to those paintings wasn’t such a bad idea.”

She knew immediately what he was talking about. The first time he’d taught her to land after flying, she’d hovered above him while he stood on the ground. She told him she’d seen a

painting that looked just like them, only the one in flight in the painting was an angel. He’d told her the angel wings were nonsense. Now he didn’t look so convinced.

Helen felt like it had been forever since the day Lucas had taught her to fly, but every second of that perfect time came flooding back in complete detail. She marveled at how much it still hurt.

Helen decided that the saying about “time healing all wounds” was a bunch of bull and probably only worked for people with very poor memories. The time she’d spent apart from Lucas hadn’t healed anything. The distance had only made her miss him more. Even the few feet between them in that moment were excruciating. Unable to bear it, Helen soared closer and tried to hold him.

“Lucas, I . . .” Helen reached out, but he jerked away from her with a half-panicked look on his face before she could finish her sentence or lay a hand on him.

“Text Orion, tell him what happened,” he said in a loud, nervous voice. He took a moment to dial down the volume before continuing. “He’s been around, seen a lot of things. Maybe he knows who that woman is, or at least what we’re dealing with.”

“Okay.” Helen let her hands fall awkwardly to her sides. She told herself not to act as devastated as she felt. “I should go. I promised my dad I’d work at the store today.”

“I should find my sister, make sure we’re all okay,” Lucas said through tight lips. He wouldn’t even look at her. “I’ll tell everyone what we saw in the hallway and see if we can come up with a theory. And Helen?”

“Yeah?” she responded in a thin voice.

“Let’s keep the invisibility thing quiet for now. We’ll just say you and I hid in all the commotion.”

“What about the obols?” she asked in a remote way, trying to separate herself from him by acting much calmer than she felt. “I’ve been dodging everyone’s questions about how I got into the Underworld last night, but I can’t put Cassandra off forever. She can’t see my future right now, but sooner or later she’s going to foresee something about you and those obols.”

“I guess I’m going to have to come clean about stealing them,” he said, sighing. “But we should probably not tell our family how I gave you one in bed last night.”

Helen knew he’d added that last bit just to remind her that he’d done the right thing by pulling away. Helen knew he had just saved her from a potentially disastrous situation, but it still stung.

They parted ways and Helen went back to school to get her stuff, trying to put Lucas out of her thoughts. He’s my cousin, she chanted under her breath until the feeling of rejection was replaced with guilt. She felt like an idiot for reaching out for him like that. What was she expecting to happen?

Helen had the vague feeling that Lucas told her to text Orion just to make her think about him, like a guy asking a girl if her boyfriend knew they were alone together. The more she thought about it, the more miffed she became. Did Lucas think she and Orion were dating or something? Helen wondered exactly what the two of them had been saying about her.