Starcrossed

looked through his cousins instead of at them, still thinking. Then he went to the windows by the door and looked out at the raging storm. Lucas watched mini mudslides slosh down Helen’s driveway and out into the street and knew that any path Helen might have left would be long gone.
    “Was there anything else in Cassandra’s vision?” Lucas asked hopefully.
    “The last thing she said was that she thought Helen would still be safe tomorrow morning,” Jason replied, shaking his head doubtfully. “Cass had a brief flash of Helen standing in a window that looked like some kind of hotel on Nantucket, but she couldn’t be sure.”
    “Maybe Cass has seen something else,” Hector said as optimistically as he could. He opened his phone and tried to dial, but a NO SIGNAL sign was flashing on his screen. “Check your phones,” he said to his brother and cousin. Neither of them could connect a call, either.
    Lucas went into Helen’s kitchen and checked her landline for a dial tone, but it was dead. As he joined his cousins back in the entryway, the power in the house went out. Jason went over to the window and looked at the other houses in the area.
    “The whole block is out,” he said. “And massive lightning bolts are headed this way. I guess we’re stuck here for a while.”
    “You two stay here in case Helen gets free and makes her way back,” Lucas said as he turned for the door.
    “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Hector demanded, grabbing Lucas by the shoulder and trying to turn him around.
    “Don’t,” Lucas warned quietly. They stared at each other until Hector finally backed down and removed his hand from Lucas’s shoulder.
    “Just stay out of the sky,” he cautioned. “You’re no good to her dead.”
    Lucas strode off into the dark storm without responding. He was frustrated with not being able to fly and trying to think of where to start. If he could get airborne he could see around, get his bearings and look for anything suspicious, but the storm had him completely grounded. It suddenly occurred to him that if he had just drugged a girl who was known on sight by most of the locals of a tiny island, he would want to get off that island as soon as possible, and if Lucas was grounded, all air travel was almost certainly canceled as well. The only way to get Helen off island would be by boat, and even that was a long shot. Going out on the water would be suicide.
    He ran to the dock, where he learned that the last ferry had left over an hour earlier and that the coast guard had officially suspended all travel in and out of the marina and airport while the storm lasted. New England was going to get pummeled with a good old-fashioned nor’easter that night, and the impassable weather would probably last into the next day. Lucas relaxed a little when he heard that. He’d left Helen less than an hour earlier, after the last ferry had already departed, so the chances were high that she was still on island. Hopefully, she was in a hotel, and relatively safe.
    He wasted a few more hours wandering in and out of every motel and bed-and-breakfast near the ferry, asking if two women had checked in that evening. Unfortunately, although there were a lot of people stranded on the island and filling up the hotels due to the storm, there were none that fit Helen’s description. Lucas knew it was futile. No Scion would be stupid enough to walk into a hotel with an unconscious girl slung over her shoulder and ask for a room. Whoever had taken Helen may have broken in someplace, or even bribed someone at the desk, but either way, Lucas knew they weren’t going to announce themselves. He was chasing his own tail, but still, he couldn’t give up. He checked back at home, found out what Cassandra had seen in her next vision while he’d been gone, and then ran back into the storm before his father could even start to argue.
    The wind was so strong it was tearing down trees and taking apart the stoic Nantucket architecture. Even Lucas, as strong as he was, had to switch over into his supermassive state to stay anchored to the ground as bits and pieces of people’s houses tumbled down the streets around him. His bare face was getting lashed by the swirling debris in the air, and the sideways rain was clawing at his eyes. All night he wandered around outside every hotel, inn, and bed-and-breakfast he could think of, looking in the windows with eyes that could see in even the dimmest of light,