you, Dad,” Hector said from the doorway. He limped into the kitchen, his hair damp from a shower. “I’m dying to know how Sparky here does her little impervious trick.”
“I tried to get him to lie down, but he wouldn’t listen,” Pandora complained from the hallway behind him. Hector walked straight over to Lucas.
“How are you feeling?” Lucas asked guiltily.
Hector clasped hands with him. “It’s okay, brother. I would have done the same thing if I were you,” he said. Then he flashed one of his mischievous smiles. “Only I would have hit you harder.”
They hugged each other, and just like that the whole confrontation was forgotten. Ariadne started to ask Pandora a question, but Helen couldn’t hold her tongue for a second longer.
“Will someone please tell me why you all call me ‘Sparky’?” she burst out in frustration. “And if I get stabbed one more time tonight I’m going to lose it!” she added, rounding on Jason, who was sneaking up behind her holding a stapler.
“You haven’t told her yet?” Cassandra said to Lucas with disbelief. “You should have done it days ago.”
“I was going to tell her today, but I never got the chance,” he replied, looking at the floor.
Helen thought about how he had hunted her down in the hallway after school, like he had something urgent to say, and how she had told him she didn’t want to see him. But that was his fault, she reminded herself. He was the one who was forcing himself to teach her how to fight and fly, right?
“Well, tell me now, then,” she said briskly. Lucas looked up at her sharply. His eyes were angry.
“You can generate lightning. Electricity. I don’t know how strong a charge you can create, but from what I’ve felt, and what Hector felt in the grocery store, I’m thinking it’s big.”
“Lightning?” Helen said with disbelief.
She remembered Hector convulsing when he first touched her in the grocery store, and then she remembered Lucas letting go of her so abruptly in the hallway the very first time she had seen him. She had been so afraid of them both, so desperate to defend herself . . . . Was it possible she had summoned a power she had never been aware of? Had she created lightning?
Somewhere in the back of her mind she saw a blue flash, and Kate crumple to the ground. A terrible thought occurred to her. She tried to banish it as she had done since childhood, but this time the thought wouldn’t go away.
“We think that means you are descended from Zeus,” Cassandra said. “But from which House is still uncertain. The Four Houses were founded by Zeus, Aphrodite, Apollo, and Poseidon. Aphrodite and Apollo were Zeus’s children, so Scions from their Houses could display his traits as well. The fourth House, the House of Athens, was founded by Poseidon, so it can be ruled out. Well, maybe.”
“My House?” Helen said, still so wrapped up in her own head that she was having a hard time understanding English. She was remembering a blue flash from her past, and a scary man that kept trying to touch her hair, flying away from her off the back of the Nantucket ferry. The smell of burning filled her throat. Helen rubbed her hand over her face and tried to rebury that memory. She had always believed that she couldn’t have been the cause of that. And worse—had she hurt Kate, too?
“When we say your House, we mean your heritage, Helen,” Castor said gently, noticing Helen’s disquiet. “Zeus had a lot of children, so your House can’t be pinpointed with any certainty yet. But don’t worry, we’re still trying to find out who your people were.”
“Thanks,” Helen muttered, still overwhelmed.
“You can’t control the lightning yet, it sort of jumps out of you when you’re upset,” Lucas said after a long pause. He was looking at her strangely.
“Is it like a Taser?” Helen asked anxiously, suddenly snapping out of her trance.
“Yeah,” Hector said as if he was recollecting both sensations and comparing them in his mind. “But stronger.”
“Does it really hurt?” Helen said quietly. She felt sick to her stomach.
“I guess,” Hector said with a condescending shrug. “You know, if you put in some real training, you could probably generate a lethal charge soon.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Helen said, jumping to her feet, horrified with the suggestion. And with herself.
“Wait, Helen, it could be a good thing,” Jason replied. “You could learn how to use your bolts