“Don’t you think your mom is worried enough as it is? Go clean up before you come downstairs,” Jason said quietly.
It was a guilt trip, pure and simple, but Jason was still right. Lucas nodded and pulled his shirt off over his head on his way to the bathroom. He washed, dressed, and met the rest of his family down in the kitchen. Even so, everyone stared at him when he walked in the room, and his mother looked like she had seen a ghost. Lucas checked his edges and realized that he was blurring himself. His mom always got upset when he did that because she knew that meant thathewas upset. He made a conscious effort to let the light do what it wanted, and sat down in a corner, his eyes on Cassandra. Then the sound of bickering made him realize that Claire was there.
“What are you still doing here?” Jason was saying in a dismayed voice. “Why didn’t you go back with them?”
“I’m not going anywhere until we find Lennie,” Claire huffed back at him.
“We?” Jason sputtered, but Claire held up an imperious hand and fished her vibrating phone out of her back pocket.
“Guys?” Claire said, looking at the incoming number. “It’s Helen.”
“Let me talk to her,” Lucas demanded as he jumped up out of his chair and held out his hand to take the phone.
“She called me, not you,” Claire said gently.
She answered her phone, immediately asking Helen several questions at once. Then Claire was quiet for a moment. She put the call on speakerphone.
“Okay, Len, we can all hear you. What is it?” Claire asked, looking around at the rest of his family but avoiding eye contact with Lucas.
“I’m with my mother, Daphne, and my mother only. We are not being coerced by any other individual, family, or House,” Helen announced to the room as smoothly as if she were playing a recording. “My mother and I are preparing to leave the island together, and we ask that you allow us to leave it in peace. I am not in any physical danger. You know all of this is true, because your Falsefinders can hear it in my voice. Good-bye. I will miss you all.”
The line went silent. Lucas stared at the phone as Claire switched out of speaker mode, put her phone to her ear, and repeated Helen’s name a few times.
“That wasn’t her,” Lucas insisted, shaking his head repeatedly. He felt something was off, like there was a lie lurking somewhere. Helen wasn’t supposed to leave him. Ever. “She’d never call me a ‘Falsefinder’ like that.”
“Lucas, it was her,” Claire insisted, finally meeting Lucas’s eyes and giving him a sad look as she did so. “I know she sounded really weird, but it was Helen. You know that.”
“Was she lying?” Castor asked Lucas.
“No,” Lucas answered hoarsely, as though his voice couldn’t entirely commit to something that the rest of him knew was sowrong. “She told no lies.”
“So Daphne is alive,” Pallas breathed, his eyes wide and blank with shock.
“We still don’t know if ‘Daphne’ is Daphne Atreus,” Castor said, blocking his brother from leaving the room.
“Enough, Castor. Just stop it,” Pallas said, a note of weariness weighing his voice down. “I thought Helenwasthat Atreus whore when I first saw her!”
“And Hector is a dead ringer for Ajax, and Lucas looks like one ofPoseidon’schildren from the House of Athens!” Castor shouted, losing his patience. “More often than not the way we look is about fate, not our Houses. You know that as well as anyone! Helen’s mother could be any one of the five different Daphnes we heard were killed in the slaughter eighteen-plus years ago.”
“You’d do anything to keep the peace, wouldn’t you? Even let that woman get away,” Pallas said, pushing past Castor and throwing Hector’s restraining hand off his shoulder.
Lucas took an automatic step forward to get his cousin’s back. Hector could easily overpower his father if he had to, but Lucas didn’t want them to fight at all. A fight would delay him from finding Helen, and hehadto see her. They weren’t supposed to be separated, and Lucas couldn’t shake the overwhelming sensation that something very wrong was happening.
“Where are you going, Dad?” Hector asked wearily, backing off from a physical fight.
“To find the woman who murdered my brother,” Pallas said through gritted teeth as he strode toward the door.
“You will not go,” Cassandra said.
Everyone in the room froze at the sound of her voice. There was a chiming tone to it, as if more than one person was speaking at the same time. The voices coming out of her were old and young and everything in between, all speaking in harmony. Lucas saw Claire take an instinctive step back toward Jason in terror. Cassandra’s mouth was glowing, and her hair was writhing around her head like snakes.
“Lucas, son of the sun, is the only one who can see the face he seeks,” she continued to prophesy. “He will find the daughters of Zeus, they who are beloved by Aphrodite, and give them shelter in the Royal House of Thebes. Oh! Caution! Betrayal...” She broke off uncertainly. The light left her, and she began to shake. She looked frightened, but not even Lucas wanted to go near her.
“Are you okay?” Lucas asked her quietly from across the room, breaking the unnatural silence. She nodded and rubbed her hands over her shoulders and upper arms, suddenly looking much smaller than she was.
“You’re going to need to take Hector and the twins with you,” she warned. “I think there’s going to be a fight.”
“I’ll go, too,” Castor said, but Cassandra shook her head.
