Dreamless

him while he stood on the ground. She told him she’d seen a painting that looked just like them, only the one in flight in the painting was an angel. He’d told her the angel wings were nonsense. Now he didn’t look so convinced.
    Helen felt like it had been forever since the day Lucas had taught her to fly, but every second of that perfect time came flooding back in complete detail. She marveled at how much it still hurt.
    Helen decided that the saying about “time healing all wounds” was a bunch of bull and probably only worked for people with very poor memories. The time she’d spent apart from Lucas hadn’t healed anything. The distance had only made her miss him more. Even the few feet between them in that moment were excruciating. Unable to bear it, Helen soared closer and tried to hold him.
    “Lucas, I . . .” Helen reached out, but he jerked away from her with a half-panicked look on his face before she could finish her sentence or lay a hand on him.
    “Text Orion, tell him what happened,” he said in a loud, nervous voice. He took a moment to dial down the volume before continuing. “He’s been around, seen a lot of things. Maybe he knows who that woman is, or at least what we’re dealing with.”
    “Okay.” Helen let her hands fall awkwardly to her sides. She told herself not to act as devastated as she felt. “I should go. I promised my dad I’d work at the store today.”
    “I should find my sister, make sure we’re all okay,” Lucas said through tight lips. He wouldn’t even look at her. “I’ll tell everyone what we saw in the hallway and see if we can come up with a theory. And Helen?”
    “Yeah?” she responded in a thin voice.
    “Let’s keep the invisibility thing quiet for now. We’ll just say you and I hid in all the commotion.”
    “What about the obols?” she asked in a remote way, trying to separate herself from him by acting much calmer than she felt. “I’ve been dodging everyone’s questions about how I got into the Underworld last night, but I can’t put Cassandra off forever. She can’t see my future right now, but sooner or later she’s going to foresee something about you and those obols.”
    “I guess I’m going to have to come clean about stealing them,” he said, sighing. “But we should probably not tell our family how I gave you one in bed last night.”
    Helen knew he’d added that last bit just to remind her that he’d done the right thing by pulling away. Helen knew he had just saved her from a potentially disastrous situation, but it still stung.
    They parted ways and Helen went back to school to get her stuff, trying to put Lucas out of her thoughts. He’s my cousin , she chanted under her breath until the feeling of rejection was replaced with guilt. She felt like an idiot for reaching out for him like that. What was she expecting to happen?
    Helen had the vague feeling that Lucas told her to text Orion just to make her think about him, like a guy asking a girl if her boyfriend knew they were alone together. The more she thought about it, the more miffed she became. Did Lucas think she and Orion were dating or something? Helen wondered exactly what the two of them had been saying about her.
    Throwing her destroyed bike in the Dumpster with a bit more hostility than was necessary, Helen went in the side entrance of the school and walked quickly down the deserted halls. There were broken tables, overturned chairs, and upended trash cans everywhere. The whole place was a jumbled mess, and it stank like that she-ghoul. Helen hurried to her locker, grabbed her bag, and draped a sweater over her arms to fight off the chill as best she could without crushing her borrowed costume, and then went right to the News Store. She didn’t want to hang around and take the chance of seeing that wretched woman again.
    Out on the streets, Helen felt a raucous, almost dangerous mood simmering. Amber-hued autumn light added a crackling vibrancy to the already festively decorated streets. In the town center, orange-and-black Halloween banners snapped in the chilly wind and glowing jack-o’-lanterns flickered, casting spooky shadows in the doorways of the old whaler-style houses and on the cobblestone roads. Helen clutched at her sweater and glanced around suspiciously, looking for the source of the menace she felt.
    Dozens of groups were already out trick-or-treating. At this early hour it was mostly parents with small children, but one or two of the