had been truly anxious about Helen’s whereabouts. Then she turned back to her stove top and started talking to herself. “She’ll need extras. So damned thin all of a sudden . . . Father still doesn’t know the first thing about her so he isn’t feeding her properly and Kate is so worried! Now where is Cassie?”
Noel was mumbling to herself, but loud enough so Helen could hear. She couldn’t tell if Noel was out of her mind with stress, used to being talked over in such a loud room, or if she was intentionally letting Helen in on her thoughts. Noel took a lungful of air and hollered Cassandra’s name.
There was a startled thump from upstairs, and Cassandra’s distant voice yelling back, “Start without me, I’m busy!”
Helen and Claire shared a wide-eyed stare, which melted into identical warm smiles. They had both been only children, both growing up not being allowed to raise their voices indoors. Together, they’d dreamed of having big families and full houses with a thousand things happening at once, and now they saw in the other the remembrance of that girlish wish. The yelling jangled the nerves a bit, but there was no denying that it made the Delos house feel like a home.
“Hec-Jace-Castor-Lucas!” Noel sputtered while she stared at her son’s face and repeatedly forgot what she had named him. “Go drag your little sister down here. We have guests tonight.”
Lucas did as his mother asked, returning with a very grouchy Cassandra thrown over his shoulder.
“But I see them every day!” Cassandra whined as Lucas bent forward and put her down on her own feet next to Helen.
“Mom said,” Lucas replied with an apologetic shrug. Apparently, there was no arguing with that because Cassandra rolled her eyes and sat down at the table without another word.
“Hi,” Cassandra said in a slightly miffed way to Helen. “Do you eat a lot of garlic?”
“No. Why? Does my breath stink?” Helen replied uncertainly, already working up a blush at the thought of having gassed Lucas all day with dragon breath.
“Not at all. Just trying to figure out why you’re impervious to weapons,” she said. She held up a book she had clutched in her hand and waved it at Noel’s uncaring back. “I’m trying to solve a problem here,” she said loudly, obviously intending for her mother to hear, but Noel kept right on cooking.
“I’ve been looking stuff up, too,” Hector added, hands behind his head, exactly like someone who hadn’t.
“You just worry about teaching her to defend herself, and I’ll take care of the research,” Cassandra said in a frazzled way as she opened her book and started leafing through it. Hector smiled, obviously glad he was off the hook.
Castor, Pallas, and Cassandra asked Helen about different habits—foods she ate, daily routines, even prayers her mother might have taught her to say before bed. Nothing yielded an answer, and they gave up when dinner was served.
It was good. Really, really good. Helen ate like she hadn’t been fed in weeks. She drank glass after glass of water. She was so dehydrated she could feel the cool water fanning out in her system and thickening her tissues like a dry rag fattening up as it absorbs a puddle. She felt guilty at one point for hogging all the food and forced herself to put her knife and fork down, but Noel looked at her sharply and asked her if she didn’t like the meal. Helen murmured an apology and gladly resumed chowing down.
After dinner, Lucas drove her back to her house, which by now was a waste of both time and fuel, but something they had to do to keep Jerry from getting suspicious about how Helen was traveling around the island.
“I don’t like leaving you alone,” Lucas said, glancing nervously at every shadow in the yard.
“I’ll be okay,” Helen lied. Actually, now that it was dark out she didn’t want Lucas to get farther than a few inches away from her, but with her dad home there was no option but for them to separate.
“I’ll be back in an hour or so,” Lucas told her as she got out of the car. Helen shut the door but kept hold of it, looking at him uncertainly through the open window. “What is it?” he asked.
“I feel horrible, Lucas! It’s autumn, and you and your cousins are sleeping outside at night. That just isn’t acceptable.”
“We don’t have much of a choice. We can’t leave you by yourself until