of one of the chairs and fished her keys out, looking around like she had misplaced something. She looked out in the garage, counted the cars, and then glanced back into the house, whispering, “She’s back?” to herself. Before Helen could ask what was wrong, Ariadne said good-bye and hurried Matt out to her car.
Helen waited a few moments for Ariadne’s little car to disappear down the drive before she crept out onto the lawn. It wasn’t dark out yet, but Helen still felt like even the shadows under the bushes were reaching out to grab at her. As soon as she was clear of the house she jumped up into the air, frantic to get into the sky, the one place she knew Creon couldn’t catch her. Calmer once she was safely airborne, Helen flew home, circling high for a few moments to watch for random neighbors before coming in steep and fast to avoid being seen. Touching down in her backyard, Helen listened for the usual sounds of her father and heard that he wasn’t alone. Kate was with him.
They were talking softly, and here and there they would laugh or lapse into silence as one or the other gathered their thoughts to make sure the words came out right. Helen looked in the window and saw them sitting on the couch together, TV off, having what looked like an important conversation. If she concentrated she could probably make out what they were saying, but Helen didn’t want to intrude on such a private moment between two people who were obviously falling in love.
She touched her heart-shaped necklace and wished them perfect happiness together. She wasn’t sure if the cestus worked like that, but all that mattered was that Jerry would have someone to care for him when she was gone. Helen realized that if she left now, without confronting him, he would never have to know about Daphne returning to the island, and if that wound was left unopened, then this fragile understanding between him and Kate might stand a chance.
She stood at the window for a moment, deciding which course to take, until finally the sharp drop in temperature and the tangerine color staining the clouds told her she had run out of time. She flew up to her window, sat down at her desk, and wrote a note to her father. She told him that she loved him, that she was safe, and that she was never coming back, making the note brief so she wouldn’t have to fill it up with lies. He had been a good father, and if she couldn’t be completely honest with him, the least she could do was lie as little as possible.
She flew out of her window and back to the Delos compound as soon as she was done writing. It was a comfort to Helen to know that while she was sneaking away later that night her father would still be oblivious. Hopefully, for all of their sakes, Kate would be there for Jerry in the morning when he found the note. Thinking of that, she flew east across the darkening island with a feeling that approached peace.
Before she even touched down, Castor was running out of the house to meet her on the lawn, waving his arms over his head as if to signal her to hurry. He was shouting something about her mother.
Daphne had to wait until the little strategy session broke up before she could sneak into the library and look around. All she needed was the return address on the last few bits of mail from Tantalus to the Nantucket faction of the House of Thebes. Then, after so many years, she might finally be able to figure out Tantalus’s pattern of motion.
She was only missing a few bits of information—a city name and she would know where to go from there. Then she would find Tantalus and kill him exactly the same way he had killed her sweet Ajax. Daphne had imagined it a million times. As soon as he came to the door she was going to chop off his head while his wife watched. If she avenged him, then maybe when Atropos cut her string, Ajax would be waiting for her on the other side of the river. She still had a ways to go and a lot of work to do before she could allow that to happen. First, she needed a city.