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You don’t have to jump for joy at the thought of NOT seeing me tonight, you know, she typed testily on her way to lunch.
NOT happy I won’t see you. Happy b/c I need to study. Can’t pay my board w/o full scholarship, and my broke ass has no place else to go. Bad grades=homeless Orion. ?
Helen stared at his text, her brow pinched together. She could tell he had put the frowny face at the end to make light of what he wrote, but it didn’t work. She thought about what it meant to have no place to live but boarding school.
Where do you go over summer break? Christmas vacation? Do you just stay in the dorms by yourself?
Oh boy. Can of worms . . . he texted after a long pause. Summers I work. Christmas I volunteer.
What about when you were a little kid? When you were only 10? Helen remembered that he’d told her he’d been on his own since then. You couldn’t have had a job that young.
Not in this country. Look, just drop it, okay? Class is starting.
“Helen?” Matt asked, repressing a smile. “Are you going to text with Orion all through lunch?”
“Sorry,” Helen said with a grim expression. She put her phone away, wondering what country Orion meant. She pictured him as a little boy, having to work in some horrendous sweatshop that condoned the use of child labor, and started to get angry.
“Did something happen between you two?” Ariadne asked. “You seem upset.”
“Nope. Everything’s fine,” Helen said as cheerfully as she could. Everyone was staring at her like they didn’t believe her, but she couldn’t tell them what the text was about. It was private.
Orion sent her a “good luck in the Underworld” text that night, but he sent it so late that Helen didn’t get it until the next morning. It was obvious he was dodging her—probably because he didn’t want to talk about his childhood. Helen decided to let it go until he trusted her better. This was not something she could rush, but she was surprised to find that she didn’t mind waiting. So what if she had to work a bit harder to gain his confidence? He was worth the extra effort.
“Is that Orion?” Claire asked, her eyes narrowing when Helen jumped to pull out her vibrating phone.
“He said he found something,” Helen said, ignoring Claire’s disquiet.
Her best friend shot her a concerned look, and Helen hoped Claire would let it go. She didn’t have the energy to deal with a “Do you like this boy, or like this boy?” cross-examination by her best friend, especially not when so much was at stake.
“What is it?” Cassandra asked.
“A scroll from the private diary of Marc Antony that talks a lot about the afterlife. He wants to know if you want him to scan and email it to you.”
Cassandra rubbed her eyes. They had been locked in the Delos library every day after school for three nights in a row, looking for some kind of clue that could lead them to a plan. So far nothing had come up.
“Wait, Marc Antony? As in Antony and Cleopatra?” Ariadne asked wi
th stars in her eyes. “She was such a badass.”
Helen grinned in agreement and typed the question to Orion. She paused to read his response. “Yup, same Roman. I guess he’s a relative on his mother’s cousin’s side. It looks really convoluted, but Orion’s mother was related to both Marc Antony and Julius Caesar if you go back far enough.”
“Yeah, but go back far enough and even you and me could be related, Len,” Claire said wryly. She fluffed her inky black hair to point out how genetically different she and blonde Helen were.
“Huh. I’ve never thought of it like that, but you’re probably right, Gig,” Helen mused. A disturbing idea started to bud in her mind, but Cassandra interrupted Helen’s half-formed thought.
“Helen, tell Orion not to bother. Marc Antony was trying to become Pharaoh, so he would only have been interested in the Egyptian afterlife.” Cassandra’s mounting frustration was obvious.
Helen began to type in Cassandra’s reply, adding the “thank-you” that Cassandra so glaringly omitted.
“Wait a sec, Len,” Matt said before she could send it. “Just because Orion’s information is from a different culture doesn’t make it incorrect.”
“I agree with Matt,” Jason said, perking up from his study stupor. “The Egyptians were obsessed with the afterlife. It’s possible they knew more about the Underworld than the Greeks did. They could have exactly the information Helen needs to navigate down there. We could overlook it if we’re biased to favor the Greeks.”
“Sure, it’s possible that the Egyptians had a three-dimensional map of the Underworld complete with magic passwords!” Cassandra responded sarcastically as her frustration boiled over. “But Marc Antony was a Roman invader. An Egyptian priest initiated to the level of knowledge that Helen needs would have died before telling a conqueror even one of the sacred secrets of the Underworld!”
Everyone knew that Cassandra was reminding them that the same level of devotion was expected from the newly ordained priests and priestesses of Apollo. Jason and Ariadne had been raised to deal with these kinds of expectations. Matt and Claire paused to think about it. Helen watched her two oldest friends give each other worried looks. When they both seemed to steel themselves, she couldn’t help but feel proud.
Helen glanced around the room, thinking to herself how freaking awesome her friends were, when her eyes landed on Jason. He was looking at Claire like she had just canceled Christmas. When he saw that Helen was watching him, he looked away quickly, but he still looked pale to Helen.
