“All right! I agree, it’s a valid concern,” Helen conceded, but something was wrong. “I just flew in your window. Why aren’t you more surprised?”
“I’ve known you could fly since we were kids. I even pushed you off your roof once to make sure. Sorry about that, by the way,” she said sheepishly.
“Youdidpush me!” Helen breathed, suddenly remembering the whole incident in a flash.
They had been maybe seven years old and goofing off on Helen’s widow’s walk. Helen fell, but she never hit the ground. She’d sort of settled to earth like a leaf falling from a tree. Claire swore up and down that Helen had slipped, but Helen never remembered losing her balance, and because of the way Claire looked at her for weeks afterward, Helen had suspected something fishy before putting it out of her mind. Now it all made sense. Helen stared at Claire, speechless.
“What? I didn’t think you’d die or anything! Long story short—I saw younotfall down my stairs the day before when you actuallydidslip, so I needed to test my theory,” Claire said as if it all made perfect sense.
“By pushing me off the roof?”
“You have no idea how angry I’ve been with you since then for keeping it from me! You canfly, Lennie, and you never told me!” Claire yelled, completely shifting the argument away from herself, but Helen decided that she should allow it, considering Claire’s obvious hurt.
“I didn’t know until a few weeks ago!” Helen insisted.
“You are such a liar!” Claire said, jabbing a fist against her hip.
“It’s true! My mom put a curse on me when I was a baby so I wouldn’t be able to use my... Aw, crap! It would be so much easier if Iwasa vampire. Then you’d just understand!” Helen huffed, frustrated and feeling misunderstood. She paced around for a bit, raking her fingers through her tangled hair, before she was able to put her thoughts in order.
“Hergie made you read theIliad, right? You remember how all the heroes had superhuman strength and they could do all kinds of things that normal people can’t?” she asked.
“Yeah. That’s because they were demigods. But that wasn’t real,” Claire said like it was obvious. Then she got it. “Oh, my...”
“I’m one of those heroes’ descendents. We’re called Scions, and I have a whole bunch of powers—stuff you wouldn’t believe. But I had no idea what I was or what I could do until just days ago. I wish I could tell you everything, but I don’t know what I can or can’t say. Please, Gig. I know it sounds insane, but I’ve never lied to you. You just have to believe me.”
“Okay,” Claire said, nodding her head once and looking Helen directly in the eye, as if she finally felt like she was getting the respect she deserved. “I’ve had this mostly figured out for a while now, you know. You found out that you were a demigod—how cool is that by the way?—when the Delos family moved here. Because they’re like you. I knew that as soon as I saw them. I just didn’t knowwhatyou all were.”
“See?” Helen said with a flustered smile. “That’s why I had to tell you, I need to be able to talk to you about all this so you can help me figure it out. But you can’t tell the Delos family I told you until I find out if that’s okay or not.”
“It doesn’t matter. I can bluff, or pretend I guessed on my own. I sort of did, anyway,” Claire said with a satisfied smile. Then something occurred to her and made her switch to a more serious attitude. “Where have you been, by the way? And why are you such a damn mess?”
Helen was about to explain what happened between her and Hector when Claire’s phone buzzed. Claire checked the text and then started typing in a response.
“It’s Jason. I have to tell him you’re here, he’s been looking for you all day,” Claire told Helen. The phone buzzed again.
“It’s him.” She read the screen. “He wants me to keep you here. He’s on his way over.”
“No! I’m not ready to talk to any of them yet!” Helen exclaimed, backing away.
“Len, he’s really worried about you, they all are.”
“I gotta get out of here,” Helen stammered. She ran a hand over her face and turned for the window.
“Where are you going?” Claire asked, trying to block Helen’s path with an outstretched arm. “I’ll tell him to go away if you want, but you have to let me know that you’ll be okay.”
“I’m just going home. Promise you won’t let him follow me, okay?”
Claire promised and gave Helen a hug. Then Helen jumped out the window, transitioning states in midair. She heard Claire gasp as she flew away. A minute later Helen was landing in her front yard and heading right for the stairs to take a shower and warm up.
He was waiting for her behind the front door. He swept her feet out from under her before he even bothered to slam the front door shut. Everything went completely dark, darker than any night, any blindfold, or any closed room that Helen had ever experienced. She was enveloped in a disorienting blackness that made her feel so dizzy and cut off from the rest of the world that she couldn’t even remember the layout of her own house anymore. Where were the stairs? The furniture? She didn’t know. It was as if she had fallen into a black hole.
Helen was so shocked she didn’t have time to roll over before she felt a very large man cover her from behind. He took her head between his hands and wrenched it to the side, trying to break her neck. She grabbed on to his wrists and pulled them outward, trying to get him to release his grip, but he had leverage on his side. Her neck muscles strained dangerously, and she felt herself start to panic for the second time in an hour. But it was that recent brush with death that informed her as she kicked and struggled. The thought of using her lightning made her stomach turn, but she knew she had no choice.
Helen felt the current start in her belly. It was naturally trying to arc out of her toward the ground, and all she had to do was release it. Untrained as she was, she let the bolt go, and it shot down her legs uselessly, causing her to convulse. In her desperation, she got the last few volts to run up to her hands and jump across her skin into the man’s wrists.
For a brief moment the blue spark lit up the room with a flash, and she saw his eyes widen in surprise. Then she felt him shake with the current, and heard him scream as he was electrocuted.
Helen smelled burnt hair and ozone like a calling card from her darkest childhood nightmare. She felt what must have been half her body’s energy empty out of her, leaving her as weak as a kitten. The burden of the large man on top of her grew intolerably heavy, and she knew she had to get out from under him before he recovered or she would be no better off than she was when he’d had her by the head. While her attacker was still shaking, she managed to kick some of his weight off of her, and as the barest amount of light was allowed to creep back into the room, she finally got a look at him.
