Starcrossed

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 you can fight.”
    “I won’t allow it anymore,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear and crossing her arms stubbornly. “You’re just going to have to stay in my room.”
    “Because that’s relaxing,” he replied with gentle sarcasm. “I barely shut my eyes last night. Trust me, I’ll get more sleep on your roof.”
    “No,” she said, sticking to her guns, even though she was getting warm and jittery at the thought of him in her room again. “You either come inside or you don’t spend the night here at all.”
    Lucas looked up at her. “We’ll figure something out when I get back. Okay?”
    Helen reluctantly agreed and went into the house to see her dad. Through a wide yawn, he tried to ask her how her weekend had gone but after working double shifts for two days straight he could barely keep his eyes open. Helen sent him to bed, promising to fix breakfast in the morning. Jerry was snoring away before she’d even brushed her teeth. She finished up in the bathroom and put on a pair of boxer shorts and a baggy V-neck tee, thinking that Lucas would appreciate her attempt to cover up, and then went to the linen closet to find an air mattress she was pretty sure her dad had gotten for his birthday a few years ago.
    At the bottom of the closet she found the unused kit herding dust bunnies around its corners and brought it back into her bedroom. She sat down on the floor, opened the box, and took out the different components. As she tried to find any part of the instructions that was written in English, she heard a tap. She smiled involuntarily, and waved for Lucas to come through her unlatched window, marveling at how lovely he looked as he soared in her window, quite certain that she looked nothing like that when she flew.
    “Is that spine cracker for me?” he whispered with a smile as he pointed at the air mattress.
    “Hey, if you don’t like it, I’m all for you sleeping in my bed,” Helen whispered back, making a show of closing up the