Helen froze. What did they mean, “get to her”? She stood there thinking in slow motion until she realized they were coming around the end of the aisle. Trying to back up, she plowed into someone standing right behind her. The wailing of the Furies grew so loud it was painful.
She spun around and had to tilt her head almost all the way back to find the face above the enormous male chest that confronted her. Under golden curls, bright blue eyes drilled down into Helen’s. It crossed her mind that he looked like a blond version of Michelangelo’s Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, newly released from plaster and walking around in three gigantic dimensions. Helen had never been so afraid of anyone in her entire life.
She took an automatic step back and ran into her shopping cart. Her breath hitched painfully in the back of her throat as she stumbled to the side, her hands and feet clumsy with fear. There was a bright, momentary glimmer, and he twitched away from her, his body convulsing spasmodically.
Helen smelled the nauseating combination of singed hair and ozone that always made her think that she had done something wrong. A brief thought of the Nantucket ferry flashed through her mind as she studied the blond monster in front of her, trying to figure out what had happened. After a stunned second, he collected himself and leaned closer to Helen with an evil grin on his angelic face. He was near enough that Helen could feel the heat coming off his body.
“Hector!” commanded a familiar voice. Helen had only a moment to register that it was Lucas before she felt him grab her arm and pull her away from the Goliath that was his cousin. Instantly furious instead of frightened, Helen rounded on Lucas and threw off his arm.
“Don’t touch me,” she hissed. She felt light-headed. “Why can’t you just stay away from me?”
“Why can’t you just stay at home?” he shot back at her. “Didn’t you have enough fun last night in the alley?”
“I have errands to run! It’s not like I can hide in my bedroom for the rest of my life just because some woman...” Helen realized she was starting to yell. She stopped herself and lowered her voice. A thought occurred to her. “Are you still following me?”
“You’re lucky that’s all I’m doing. Nowgo home,” he growled, and grabbed her arm again.
“Careful, Luke,” Hector warned, but Lucas just smiled.
“She can’t control it yet,” he replied.
“Can’t control what?” Helen choked out furiously, her patience pushed past the limit.
“Not here. Not now,” said Jason in a low, clipped voice. Lucas nodded in agreement and started pulling Helen toward the door.
Helen ripped her arm out of Lucas’s grasp again. Undeterred, he just grabbed her by the hand and held it hard. Helen had two choices. She could put up a fight in front of the entire store, or she could go quietly holding the hand of the most despicable boy in the free world. She was so frustrated she could feel a repressed scream squeezing her lungs shut, but she had no choice.
Lucas frog-marched her past a chestnut-haired beauty that Helen guessed was the other cousin, Ariadne. She tried to smile at Helen compassionately even though she was clearly just as inflamed by the Furies as everyone else was. For a second, Helen considered smiling back, but she didn’t possess Ariadne’s self-control. She was too angry to manage it. Fleetingly, she thought that Ariadne had to be the nicest person in the world if she could attempt to be kind in that moment.
“Don’t evenlookat my sister,” Lucas growled through gritted teeth, jerking brutally on Helen’s hand as they walked past tiny Cassandra. Cassandra opened her mouth to say something to her brother and quickly shut it, turning away.
“I have no food in the house. What am I supposed to do for dinner?” Helen growled through her closed-off throat.
“Do I look like I care?” he replied, dragging her out of the store.
“You can’t treat me like this,” she said. He was leading her across the lot. “We hate each other. Fine. Why don’t we just stay away from each other then?”
“And how has that worked out so far?” Lucas asked, sounding frustrated rather than sarcastic. “Do you always come to this same store at this same time every Saturday, or did you come today on a whim?”
“No, never. It’s the busiest day of the week. But I needed groceries,” Helen sputtered. He laughed incredulously and squeezed her arm even harder.
Helen suddenly realized how many random events and raw impulses had driven her decisions these last few days. When she thought about it, it was as if she had stopped choosing for herself days ago.
“The Furies won’t allow us to avoid each other,” he said in a dead voice.
“Then we can make a schedule or something...” Helen began, but she knew it was a lame suggestion and trailed off before he had a chance to shoot it down. An ancient, supernatural force was compelling her to kill Lucas. It probably wasn’t going to be deterred by something as prosaic as a time-share.
“My family hasn’t decided what we want to do about this, about you—yet. But we’ll be in touch,” Lucas said. They got to her car. He shoved her against the driver’s door, as if he couldn’t stop himself from trying to hurt her one last time. “Now go home and stay there,” he ordered again, and stood over her while she fumbled with the keys.
For a moment as she backed out of her parking space she considered gunning the engine and hitting him with the car, but she didn’t want to mess up Kate’s paint job. Angry tears started pouring down her face as soon as she was out of the parking lot, and they didn’t stop until she was at home, splashing cold water on her face in the kitchen sink.
She felt humiliated in a dozen different ways. Some of that humiliation she had brought on herself by attacking Lucas at school, but he seemed determined to belittle her. She wasn’t even allowed to go grocery shopping now. How was she going to explain that to her father?
The thought of Jerry derailed any nascent plan of escape. She was hopelessly outnumbered, and unless she was willing to leave her father behind to fend for himself she had to wait until the Delos boys were donedecidinghow to handle her. She leaned against the kitchen sink and stared at the block of knives on the counter. If she had Lucas cornered the way he did her, she would have already picked out which knife to use. What she didn’t know waswhy. Why did they hate each other so much? What purpose could all that anger possibly serve?
She suddenly thought about Hector, about the way he had smiled at her, and a carpet of goose bumps unrolled down her arms. If she was ever alone with him, she knew he would kill her. Not just bully her like Lucas did, but actually, joyfully, kill her.
She was still leaning up against the sink half an hour later when her dad finally made it home. He froze midstep and looked around the kitchen, giving the entire room a fast once-over.
