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Helen cleaned herself off as best as she could and looked first at Cassandra, then at Jason. Neither of them would meet her eyes.
“Jason,” Helen said, a note of pleading creeping in on her otherwise frustrated tone. “Just spit it out. How much worse?”
“We think you’re dying,” he replied quietly. “We don’t know exactly why, and because of that, we have no idea how to help you.”
CHAPTER TEN
Matt wrapped a towel around his waist and sat down on the wooden bench outside the boys’ showers in the downstairs torture chamber, or as the Delos family liked to call it, the “exercise” room. Hanging out with demigods was not easy, but he couldn’t just stick his head in the sand and pretend that the world was a safe and predictable place anymore. Matt’s whole life, his whole future, had changed the second he hit Lucas with his
car less than a month ago.
He looked at his right hand and grimaced. He was pretty sure his knuckles weren’t supposed to be this big, or this purple. He tried to ignore them. The last time he had told Ariadne that he’d broken something she’d fixed it, and then she turned a terrifying shade of gray. Matt didn’t ever want to see Ariadne like that again, especially not for his sake.
Matt just needed a minute to relax in the residual steam of his shower, and then he’d go over to the little freezer in the corner and put some ice on his hand. It’d be fine, and if it wasn’t—well, he was left-handed, anyway. His phone rang and he winced as he reached for it, clutching his side.
“Yeah?” he answered distractedly as he walked to the mirror. There was a large red welt rising up on his ribs. Great, he thought. Now I’ll have something black and blue on the upper half of my body to match that lovely bone bruise on my shin.
“Hey, man.”
“Zach?” Matt hissed. Immediately forgetting his aches and pains, he spun around and made sure that Jason or Lucas hadn’t walked in. “What the hell!”
“I know, I know. I just need—”
“Don’t ask me for a favor,” Matt warned. “I’ve done enough of those for you over the years already.”
“I’m not asking for a favor, I only want to . . . Can’t you at least meet up with me?” Zach sounded desperate. “You know, to talk? I just want to talk to you!”
“I don’t know, man.” Matt sighed with true regret. “We’re sort of past that point. I mean, we’ve chosen our sides, right? After you ratted out Hector, every single member of the Delos family is looking for a reason to kick your ass. Just stay away, all right?”
“All right,” Zach said so softly Matt could barely hear him. His voice shook, like he was scared witless. “I just needed a friend.”
“Zach . . .” Matt began to say, but the line went dead. He didn’t call Zach back.
R u in bed?
Helen almost dropped her phone when she saw that the text was from Orion, which would have been really bad, considering she was hundreds of feet in the air and he had no other way to contact her. Recovering from the nearly disastrous fumble, she hovered in midair and told herself to calm down as she typed a reply.
Almost. Are you going to meet me? she wrote, wondering if her phone had an emoticon for “hopeful.”
y. Need to c u. Driving 2 caves now.
See you soon.
Helen was unbelievably happy that Orion had finally gotten back in touch with her, but she still felt uneasy. It didn’t feel like he’d forgiven her. She would have given a lot to be able to see his face or hear his voice instead of settling for what had to be a text written hastily while he was driving.
She came in for a quick landing in her backyard and ran into the house.
“Do you have any idea what time it is?” Jerry hollered as she bounded past him, heading for the stairs.
“Four minutes to eleven,” Helen hollered back as she ran up the stairs and straight into the bathroom. “Punish me tomorrow, okay? I really need to get into bed!”
She could hear her dad mumbling angrily to himself downstairs about how nice things had been when Helen was nine. In a rather loud voice, he remembered how thoughtful she’d been at that age, how she did everything she was supposed to do, and then he asked the ceiling why daughters couldn’t just stay nine forever. Helen ignored him as she washed her face and brushed her teeth.
Helen couldn’t stop to think about anything but meeting Orion. She had no idea what she was going to say to him, but that didn’t matter. She just had to see him.
Before entering her room she put on warm socks and boots that she kept in the hallway, just in case it was as cold in there as it was outside. The door stuck. She pushed it open forcibly, making the wood of the lintel groan as she burst through the entryway. Her first steps crunched, like she had stepped on a carpet of corn flakes. Looking around, Helen saw why.
The entire room was covered in hoarfrost. The dresser, the bed, the floor, even the walls glinted sliver-white with layers of feathery ice. Her breath puffed out in front of her like a billowing cloud of smoke. Tilting her head back in disbelief, Helen saw the small fingers of icicles hanging down like crystalline buds above her bed. It had to be at least ten or fifteen degrees colder in her room than it was outside. How could that even be possible? She suspected it had something to do with the Underworld. Helen remembered that the cave that led to Orion’s portal had been freezing cold.
