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“Hector called. Daphne learned that Tantalus sent a Myrmidon to watch me. The thing just caught me snooping around its nest, like, two seconds ago.”
Without warning, Lucas reached out and grabbed Helen by the waist, and threw her straight up into the air. She released herself from gravity as a reflex, and on the momentum of Lucas’s toss, she soared twenty, then thirty, then forty feet up. Lucas rocketed past, catching her by the hand. He pulled her behind him at an unbelievable speed. Helen’s ears popped with the pressure of the mini–sonic boom that she and Lucas created.
“Where’s the nest? Near my house?” he yelled frantically over the rushing wind.
“At my neighbor’s. Lucas, stop!” Helen was frightened, not of him, but that they were moving so fast. He slowed and faced her, but he didn’t stop entirely or let go of her hand. Flying in close, he looked her directly in the eye, searching for a lie.
“Did it sting you?”
“No.”
“Did Hector tell you to go look for its nest on your own?” His words came so quickly she barely had
time to process what he was saying.
Helen’s head hurt and her vision swam. They were up so high the air was dangerously thin. Not even demigods could survive space, and Lucas had brought Helen right to the edge.
“Hector said not to go near it . . . but I wanted to see for myself before I made everyone panic. Lucas, we have to get lower!” she pleaded.
Lucas looked down at Helen’s chest and saw it bellowing in and out as she struggled for oxygen. He drifted nearer, and she felt him share the slip of air he had wrapped around himself with her. A gust of oxygen brushed gently past her face. She inhaled, and instantly felt better.
“We can call more breathable air to ourselves, but you need to relax first,” Lucas said. He sounded like himself again.
“How high are we?” She stared at him, shocked that he was being kind to her. She didn’t know what else to say.
“Look down, Helen.”
Overwhelmed, she followed his gaze to the view beneath them.
For a moment, she and Lucas floated weightless above the slowly spinning Earth, just looking at it. Black sky edged the white-and-blue haze of atmosphere swaddling the planet. The silence and the bleakness of space only served to emphasize how precious, how miraculous their little island of life truly was.
It was the most beautiful thing Helen had ever seen, but she couldn’t fully enjoy it. If ever she came this high again, she knew would always recall that Lucas had brought her here first. Now this, too, was something they shared. She was so confused she wanted to cry. Entirely by chance, Lucas had claimed yet another piece of real estate in her mind, and he was the one who had ordered her to stay away from him.
“Why bother to show me this? Or teach me anything at all?” Helen said, choking on the words. “You hate me.”
“I never said that.” His voice held no emotion.
“We should go down,” she said, forcing her eyes away from his face. This wasn’t fair. She couldn’t let him toy with her like this.
Lucas nodded and gripped Helen’s hand tightly. She tried to pull it away but Lucas resisted.
“Don’t, Helen,” he said. “I know you don’t want to touch me, but you could still pass out up here.”
Helen wanted to scream that he couldn’t be more wrong. Pretty much the only thing she wanted was to touch him, and it was eating her up inside. At that moment, she imagined herself drifting closer and brushing against him until she could feel his body heat leaking out through the gaps in his clothes. She pictured how the scent of him would hit her in a wave, riding the tide of that heat. She knew thoughts like that shouldn’t even cross her mind, but they did. Right or wrong, whether she was allowed to act on it or not, it was what she truly wanted.
What she didn’t want was to be pushed and pulled in so many different directions that she didn’t know how to behave. She didn’t even know who she was supposed to be around him anymore. She resented him for it, but worse, she was disappointed in herself for wanting him even after he had treated her so badly.
Ashamed of her own thoughts, Helen didn’t allow herself to look at Lucas as they flew to a lower altitude. When she could breathe easily outside his slip of air, Helen noticed that they were over some dark part of the continent. She searched for the familiar glowing nets that she recognized as Boston, Manhattan, and DC at night, and couldn’t believe it when she found them. By Helen’s estimation they were hundreds of miles away.
“How fast are we?” she asked Lucas in awe.
“Well, I haven’t been able to beat light . . . yet,” he said with a mischievous glint in his eyes. Helen turned her head and stared at him, amazed that he was acting like himself again. This felt right. This was the Lucas she knew. He smiled for a moment, then seemed to stop himself. Still staring at her, his lips slowly slackened and dropped.
Helen felt like she was falling toward him. She realized that Lucas was an emotional black hole for her. If she was anywhere near him, her heart simply couldn’t get away. Helen dropped Lucas’s hand and drifted ahead of him. She needed a moment to get a hold of herself.
She turned her attention back to the situation, forcing herself to focus and take control. She had to keep her mind busy or she was lost.
“I gather from both your reactions that this Myrmidon is a really big problem,” she said.
