Starcrossed

“Where did you last see her?”
    “The front seat,” Matt replied weakly as he gestured toward his car.
    Jason’s whole body went rigid. Moving so fast he was little more than a blur, Jason tore the door of the car off with one hand and tenderly scooped Claire out from underneath the dashboard with the other. She was unconscious, bleeding, and as limp as a wet cotton doll.
    “No,” Jason whispered to her. “You were supposed to stay away from me.” He placed his lips a hair’s width away from hers and held statue still.
    “How is she?” Ariadne asked urgently.
    “She’s breathing,” he said after a moment, his voice breaking. He lifted his head up and met his twin’s eyes.
    “Well, can you heal her or not?” she asked him calmly, as though she and her twin had prepared themselves for this.
    He clenched his jaw and nodded but didn’t speak, carrying Claire into the back of the truck and holding her carefully on his lap while everyone else organized.
    “I’ll take care of Matt’s car and meet you back at home,” Lucas said to Hector, already obscuring the particulars of the wreck by bending the light around it.
    “Wait,” Daphne commanded. She raised a hand like she was hailing a cab and closed her eyes. “This will draw less attention,” she said. Thick wreaths of pearl gray fog rolled off the water and down the street, the long, ropy tendrils racing toward her delicately tilted fingers. Helen had the feeling that the recent storm was no accident, and wondered if her mother had conjured it.
    “Great Zeus, Cloud-Gatherer,” Hector said under his breath, thinking along the same lines as Helen. The scene of the accident disappeared in the fog, and then he turned to Lucas. “Where are you going to hide the car?”
    “In the ocean. We can clean it up after dark,” Lucas answered as he plunged into the thick mist to push Matt’s lump of twisted metal and leaking toxins off the dock.
    Everyone else squeezed into Hector’s truck. The whole incident, from Creon’s attack to their getaway, had only taken a few minutes and they were a full four blocks from the scene before they heard the first siren sounding through the fog.
    They drove in complete silence, at a completely lawful speed, out to Siasconset, each of them stuck inside their own thought box of shock and worry. As they cruised along, Helen couldn’t take her eyes off of Jason and Claire. Jason had started moving his hands an inch above her body, his palms glowing like his sister’s had when she healed Matt. He whispered in her ear. He blew soft, sparkling breaths against her closed eyes as if he was exhaling energy directly into her unconscious dreams.
    Whatever he was doing was helping Claire, but it was also causing him excruciating pain. A thick, slick sweat beaded up on his graying skin as Claire seemed to settle with more comfort in his arms and gather more color in her cheeks. By the time they parked at the Delos compound, Jason was so spent Helen didn’t even ask, she just picked Claire up off his lap and carried her into the house for him.
    “My room. Quickly,” Jason croaked as Helen carried Claire into the crowded kitchen.
    She ducked past the startled faces of the Delos family, cradling Claire close to her chest to shield her from prying eyes as she and Jason made their way to the stairs. Halfway up the staircase she felt Jason put his hand on her shoulder and lean into her for support. He was so weak he could barely put one foot in front of the other. Eventually, he made it the rest of the way.
    “How can I help you?” Helen asked Jason, easing Claire down into his bed.
    “You can’t,” he replied as he stretched his big frame out alongside Claire. “I made my choice, and we’re tied to each other until she recovers. It’s sort of like a Healer’s last stand. At this point we’ll either make it through that desert together or we won’t.”
    “Oh, good,” Helen sighed, finally feeling hopeful. “Claire would never allow someone she cared about to just go and die, especially not to save her own life.”
    She saw Jason smile and nod humorously as he remembered that no matter how dire the situation seemed, at least he had tied his life force to a genuinely legendary fighter.
    “I did everything I could to keep her out of this, to protect her from our kind,” he whispered, meeting Helen’s eyes.
    “Yeah, I know. All that arguing you two did, even though you’re obviously perfect for each other,” Helen