Helen couldn’t believe how many knots were in her hair, but eventually Ariadne managed to tease them out with some anti-frizz lotion and a straight comb. Then Helen washed her feet, tied her hair back in a ponytail, and threw on some flip-flops that Ariadne loaned her so fast she was halfway down the steps before she realized that they were too big on her and she could break her neck.
“What the hell are you wearing?” Jerry said as soon as he saw her. Helen burst out laughing, partly because her dad had said exactly what she was thinking, but mostly because of the dumb-ass look on his face.
“It’s a loaner. My track uniform was all sweaty. Hey, they’re huge, but at least they’re clean,” Helen said, gesturing down to the gigantic T-shirt and the rolled-up sweatpants.
“Oh. Well, you look... comfortable?” he said suspiciously.
“Next time I’ll wear a ball gown,” Helen promised. Still laughing with her dad, she turned and noticed that half the Delos family was watching them, apparently amused.
“I see what you mean,” Castor said to Lucas, and the two of them shared a look that Helen didn’t understand before he turned to Jerry and smiled warmly.
“It’s nice to see you again, Jerry,” Castor said, coming forward with his hand extended for Jerry to shake.
“And you, Castor. I intended to be the first to suggest we all sit down to a meal together, but your wife seems to be a step ahead of me,” Jerry said graciously.
“Welcome to my world,” Castor replied with a laconic smile, the two men already enjoying each other’s company.
The introductions were as brief as possible, considering they included so many people, and Jerry handled them like a pro. He’d run a local store for almost twenty years and he was accustomed to remembering people’s names and adjusting to even the most eccentric of personalities. Helen watched him respond in just the right way to make one person smile, another laugh, and yet another stop and think. She was proud of her dad, not just because he was clever and funny, but because he knew when not to be.
It also helped that Lucas’s family had similar tastes, both in conversation and in food. Jerry ate up a storm and gently leaned on Noel until she confessed that she had been a chef in her pre-mom life, years ago, when she lived in France. Noel even admitted that she had made a few stealth trips to the News Store. She generously declared Kate’s sea salt, rosemary, and créme fraîche croissants to be a work of crazy genius. Jerry beamed with pride, as if Kate was the buried treasure that he had been lucky enough to dig up. Helen elbowed him.
“I see you blushing,” she whispered to her dad.
“Yeah, and you’re not. Why is that?” he asked back.
“No reason to,” she said, a traitorous glow starting to grow on her cheeks.
“Uh-huh,” he said, not buying it. “Is this the part where I’m supposed to be the concerned parent and demand that you tell me exactly what’s going on between you and Mr. Superfantastic over there?”
“No. This is the part where you mind your own business and eat your dinner,” Helen said, sounding exactly like a mom.
“Good! Another bullet dodged,” he said with a smile, and asked for seconds of Noel’s potatoes au gratin.
The rest of the evening went along as well as Helen could have hoped, until the end. Helen chatted with Jason, joked around with Ariadne, and even spoke briefly with Pallas about his job as a museum curator. Up to that point, Pallas had seemed cold, even hostile toward her, but as soon as they started discussing painting, he seemed to open up a bit. Helen was no expert, but she knew enough about art to keep the conversation interesting. They were both surprised to find that they shared similar tastes, and they had a moment of mutual admiration while they discussed one of their favorite painters. Helen was beginning to think that she and Pallas could get along, but after their exchange ended she saw him turn away from her with a deep, distrusting frown.
Helen heard a merry jingling and turned when she felt a touch on her arm.
“You can’t take it to heart,” Pandora said consolingly. “Look, I love all my brothers, but they can be huge jackasses sometimes. Especially Pallas.”
“I just wish I knew what Idid,” Helen said, frustrated.
“No, it’s not you! You didn’t do anything. All of this Scion crap has been going on for a lot longer than you know.”
“Since the dawn of time, right?” Helen asked, trying to be humorous even though she was still hurt by Pallas’s reaction.
“Yeah, right. In a literal sense that’s true, but in this family there’s something more specific that I’m referring to. Something that goes back to just before you were born—that’s when everything started going to hell.”
To Helen’s surprise, Pandora took her hand and led her to a corner where they could sit down next to each other and avoid the jumble of the rest of the room. Apparently, whatever Pandora had to tell her was something she wanted to keep between them.
The Delos family was large enough to have cliques, and if Helen had to put their family into high school terms, Pandora was the artsy, mysterious girl that everyone wanted to hang out with, but only a few did on a regular basis.
“Let me start by saying that it’s hardest for Pallas because he’s lost more than most of us,” Pandora said sadly, before she sat up straighter and smiled apologetically. “Don’t get me wrong, my brother is still an ass for treating you like he did, but it might help you understand him a little better if you can flip it, and try to see that your arrival in our lives is just as big a bombshell forusas it is foryou. Do you know about the way our looks are handed down?”
Helen felt her face twitch in confusion at what seemed like a one eighty in the conversation.
“Sort of,” she said. “Castor said something about archetypes, and then Cassandra said that we all look like the people who fought in the Trojan War, or something.”
“So we’ve all got these recycled faces, right? And we don’t always look like our parents, or even Scions from our own Houses, but rather like the people from history that the Fates want us to be all over again.”
