He couldn’t solve this for her. She was on her own down there, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“Son. Why don’t you sit next to me?” Castor suggested, startling Lucas out of his thoughts. His father motioned to the chair on his right as they all sat down at the table for Sunday supper.
“That’s Cassandra’s seat,” Lucas replied with a sharp shake of his head, but really what Lucas was thinking was that it was Hector’s. Lucas couldn’t bear to take a seat that never should have been vacated. Instead, he took his place on his father’s left at the end of the community bench.
“Yeah, Dad,” Cassandra joked as she took the seat that she had automatically inherited when Hector became an Outcast for killing Tantalus’s only son, Creon. “Are you trying to demote me or something?”
“Wouldn’t you know it if I was? What kind of an oracle are you, anyway?” Castor teased, poking Cassandra in the belly until she shrieked.
Lucas could see that his father was seizing this rare opportunity to play with Cassandra, because those opportunities were nearly over. As the Oracle, Lucas’s little sister was pulling away from her family, from all of humanity. Soon, she would drift away from all people and become the cold instrument of the Fates, no matter how much she was loved by those closest to her.
Castor usually took any chance he could to joke around with his daughter, but Lucas could tell that this time he was only partly focused on taunting Cassandra. His mind was elsewhere. For some reason Lucas couldn’t immediately see, Castor really didn’t want Lucas to sit in his usual seat.
He understood a moment later when Helen sat down next to him, in the place that had, through time and use, become her spot at the table. As she stepped over the bench and slid down next to him, Lucas watched his father’s brow furrow.
Lucas shook off his father’s disapproval and let himself enjoy the feel of Helen next to him. Even though she was obviously hurt by whatever was happening to her in the Underworld, her presence filled Lucas with strength. The shape of her, the softness of her arm as it brushed against his while they passed plates around the table, the clear, bright tone of her voice as she joined in the conversation—everything about Helen reached inside of him and soothed the wild animal in his rib cage.
He wished he could do the same for her. Throughout dinner, Lucas wondered what was happening to Helen in the Underworld, but he knew he would have to wait until they were alone to ask. She would lie to the family, but she couldn’t lie to him.
“Hey,” he called out later, stopping Helen in the dim corridor between the powder room and his father’s study. She tensed momentarily and then turned toward him, her features softening.
“Hey,” she breathed, moving closer to him.
“Bad night?”
She nodded, angling herself even closer until he could smell the almond-scented soap she had just used to wash her hands. Lucas knew she probably wasn’t aware of how they always moved toward each other, but he was.
“Tell me about it.”
“It’s just hard,” she said shrugging, trying to dodge his questions.
“Describe it.”
“There was this boulder.” She stopped speaking, rubbed her wrists, and shook her head with a pinched expression. “I can’t. I don’t want to think about it any more than I have to. I’m sorry, Lucas. I don’t mean to make you angry,” she said, responding to his huff of frustration.
He stared at her for a moment, wondering how she could be so wrong about how she made him feel. He tried to stay calm while he asked her the next question, but still, it came out rougher than he would have liked.
“Is someone hurting you down there?”
“There’s no one down there but me,” she replied. By the way she said it, Lucas knew that her solitude was even worse somehow than torture.
“You’ve been injured.” He reached out across the few feet separating them and briefly ran a finger across her wrist, tracing the shape of the fading bruises he had seen there.
Her face was closed. “I don’t have my powers in the Underworld. But I heal when I wake up.”
“Talk to me,” he coaxed. “You know you can tell me anything.”
“I know I can, but if I do, I’ll pay for it later,” she groaned, but with a touch of humor. Lucas pressed on, sensing her lightening mood, and wanting so much to see her smile once more.
“What? Just tell me!” he said with a grin. “How painful could it be to talk to me about it?”
Her laugher died and she looked up at him, her mouth parting slightly, just enough so Lucas could see the glassy inner rim of her lower lip. He remembered the feel of it when he kissed her and he tensed—stopping himself before he dipped his head down to feel it again.
“Excruciating,” she whispered.
“Helen! How long does it take to use the powder—” Cassandra cut off abruptly when she saw Lucas’s back moving away down the hall, and Helen blushing furiously as she darted toward the library.
Helen hurried through the room with the peeling petunia wallpaper, avoiding the rotted floorboards by the soggy, mold-infested couch. It seemed to glare at her as she ran past. She’d already come this way a dozen times, maybe more. Instead of taking the door on the right or the door on the left, both of which she knew led nowhere, she decided she had nothing to lose and went into the closet.
A mossy wool overcoat loomed in the corner. There was dandruff on the collar and it smelled like a sick old man. It crowded her, like it was trying to shoo her out of its lair. Helen ignored the cantankerous coat and searched until she found another door, hidden in one of the side panels of the closet. The opening was only tall enough to permit a small child to pass through. She knelt down, suddenly creeped out by the wool coat that seemed to watch her bend over, like it was trying to peek down her shirt, and hurried through the child-sized door.
The next room was a dusty boudoir, caked with centuries of heavy perfume, yellow stains, and disappointment. But at least there was a window. Helen hurried to it, hoping to jump out and free herself from this terrible trap. She pushed the lurid peach taffeta curtains aside with something approaching hope.
The window was bricked up. She hit the bricks with her fists, just jabs at first, but with increasing anger until her knuckles were raw. Everything was rotted and crumbling in this labyrinth of rooms—everything except the exits. Those were as solid as Fort Knox.
Helen had been trapped for what felt to her like days. She’d become so desperate she’d even closed her eyes and tried to fall asleep, hoping to wake up in her bed. It didn’t work. Helen still hadn’t figured out how to control her entrances and exits from the Underworld without half killing herself. She was frightened that she was actually going to die this time, and didn’t want to think about what she would have to do to herself to get out.
White spots crowded her vision, and several times now she had almost passed out from thirst and fatigue. She hadn’t had any water in so long that even the sluggish goo that spattered reluctantly out of the taps in this hell-house was starting to look appealing.
The strange thing was that Helen was more frightened in this part of the Underworld than she had ever been, even though she wasn’t in any imminent danger. She wasn’t hanging from a ledge, or trapped in the trunk of a tree, or chained by the wrists to a boulder that was dragging her down a hill and toward a cliff.