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Lucas’s face blanched with anger.
“Enough!” Noel yelled from the doorway. “Lucas, go upstairs and go to bed.” Lucas whirled around to face his mother, but Noel didn’t give him the chance to start with her. “I’m sick to death of watching the two of you fight! You’re both so tired you’re not even making sense anymore. Helen, go upstairs with Ariadne. You’re sleeping over.”
“I can’t leave my father alone with that thing practically next door,” Helen said, slumping down on the edge of Castor’s desk. Noel was right. All the endless running around, coupled with the emotional minefield she had to navigate whenever Lucas was near, suddenly hit her like a brick. She was exhausted.
“Trust me, if you’re here, then that creature won’t be far away. I know it’s going to be hard for you to accept this, but both your father and Kate will be safer if you keep your distance from now on.” Noel said it as kindly as she could, but her words were still harsh. “Lucas, I want you to go with your father and uncle to Conclave. I think it would be best for you to spend a little time in New York.”
“Noel! He’s not eighteen yet,” Castor began to argue.
“But he is Heir to the House of Thebes, Caz,” Pallas countered gently. “Creon is dead. After Tantalus, you’re next in line. That makes your eldest the Heir. Lucas has every right to attend Conclave before he comes of age.”
“Tantalus could have another child,” Castor said impatiently.
“The Outcast, marked for death, will bear no more children,” Cassandra chanted in multiple voices from the corner of the room.
The sound made Helen’s spine recoil and bunch up, like someone had poured cold water down her back. As one, the room turned to see the eerie aura of the Oracle flicker across Cassandra’s face and purple, blue, and green lights trace like spirits along the edges of her body. Her usually pretty face was puckered like an old woman’s.
“Lucas, son of the sun, has always been the intended Heir to the House of Thebes. So it has come to pass.” The Oracle cackled, and her body convulsed violently.
The light suddenly went out and Cassandra shrank. She glanced around with terrified eyes and clasped her arms around her body, cowering inside her clothes. Helen wanted to comfort Cassandra, but there was a chill around her that Helen couldn’t ignore. She just couldn’t force herself to take a step closer to the frightened girl.
“Now, all of you, go to bed,” Noel said in a shaky voice, breaking the silence.
She pushed everyone toward the door and corralled the small herd toward the stairs, leaving Cassandra in the library by herself. Helen dragged herself upstairs and collapsed onto the guest bed without undressing or even pulling the covers down first.
When she woke the next morning she was covered in dried slime. Helen had fallen asleep in such a foul mood that when she got to the Underworld, she’d found herself chest deep in a prehistoric swamp. It wasn’t the quicksand pit, which was an enormous relief, but it still stank. It took every ounce of effort to keep the muddy water out her mouth as she waded through it, always just one wrong footfall away from drowning. After a night of half panic, Helen awoke to find herself even more tired than she had been the day before.
She hauled herself out of bed and noticed that her shirt was nearly torn off, there were odd sticks and dead leaves tangled in her hair, and she’d lost a shoe. Of course, she ran into Lucas on her way to the bathroom. He stared at her for a moment, his eyes ticking up and down her bedraggled frame while the rest of his body remained rigid.
“What? You going to yell at me again?” Helen challenged, too tired to be careful.
“No.” His voice broke. “I’m done fighting with you. It obviously isn’t helping.”
“Then what?”
“I can’t do this,” he said, more to himself than Helen. “My father was wrong.”
Her bleary brain was still processing his words when he opened the nearest window and jumped out of it.
Helen watched him fly away, too tired to be surprised. She continued on to the bathroom, sprinkling nastiness all over the floor with every step. She looked down at the mess she was making and thought about how much worse it would get when she undressed. The only solution her partially paralyzed thought process came up with was to step into the shower, still fully clothed. As she rubbed a lemony-smelling bar of soap over her torn shirt she started to laugh. It was an unstable laugh, the kind that threatens to tip into a sob.
Ariadne knocked on the door. Helen stuffed a hand over her mouth, but it was too late. Ariadne took Helen’s silence as a signal that something bad was happening, and barged into the bathroom.
“Helen! Are you . . . Oh, wow.” Ariadne’s tone changed from concerned to dumbstruck in a second. She saw Helen was still completely dressed through the glass door of the shower. “Um, you know you forgot a step, right?”
Helen burst out laughing again. The situation was so ridiculous that there was nothing to do but laugh.
“Are you still wearing a shoe?” Ariadne choked out.
“I woke . . . up . . . with only one on!” Helen lifted up her bare foot and pointed at it. Both of the girls laughed hysterically at Helen’s wiggling toes.
Ariadne helped Helen clean up, and together they dragged the dirty bedding and soggy clothes to the washroom. By the time they made it down for breakfast, everyone else was nearly finished.
“Where’s Lucas?” Noel asked, craning her head anxiously to look behind Helen.
“Jumped out a window,” Helen answered. She got a mug and poured herself some coffee. Lifting her head, she noticed that everyone was staring at her. “I’m not kidding. We bumped into each other in the hallway and when he saw me, he literally jumped out a window. Anyone want coffee?”
“Did he say where he was going?” Jason asked with obvious concern.
