Starcrossed

didn’t just go back to her husband. People were dying . Helen promised herself she would never make the same choices her namesake did.
    She was up to the part where Achilles, who struck Helen as the world’s most celebrated psychopath, started sulking in his tent over a girl when she heard a definite footstep overhead. And then another. Relying on the extrasensory hearing she’d always known she had but only recently begun to let herself use, she zeroed in on her father, listening to his rib cage moving against his chair as he breathed in and out. He was watching the late news on the TV downstairs and he sounded perfectly normal to Helen. The widow’s walk above her, however, was now suspiciously silent.
    Helen slipped out of bed and grabbed the old baseball bat she kept in her closet. Holding her slugger at the ready she walked sideways, foot over foot, out her bedroom door and to the steps that led to the widow’s walk. She paused for a moment on the landing between the stairs that led down to the first floor and the stairs that led up to the roof, listening again for her father. After a few moments of tense indecision, she heard him cluck his tongue at the antics of some camera-greedy congresswoman on TV and she relaxed. He was still okay, so she knew that whatever she had heard had not made it downstairs yet. With the intention of keeping it that way, she ascended the stairs to the widow’s walk.
    As soon as she stepped outside, Helen felt the cool fall air soak through the thin cotton of her nightshirt, rendering it useless against the elements. A flickering shadow in the starlight caught the corner of her eye and she swung at it, but the top of her bat was stopped before it came around in a full arc. She heard the chunky slap of wood on skin.
    “Damn it, it’s me!” Hector whispered harshly. Helen saw him hiding in the shadows, shaking out his right hand like it stung.
    “What the hell? Hector, is that you?” Helen hissed back. He came closer so she could see him better, avoiding a dark lump on the ground. Helen looked at the lump more carefully and noticed it was her sleeping bag, the one she kept in the waterproof chest her father had given her. “What are you doing?!”
    “What does it look like I’m doing?” he responded peevishly, still trying to shake the feeling back into his hand.
    “Camping?” she said sarcastically. Then it hit her. All of those sounds she’d been hearing at night—sounds she’d thought were the Furies—had a much more mundane source. “You’ve been up here every night, haven’t you?”
    “Almost. One of us is always up here at night to watch over you,” he said, and then grabbed Helen’s arm as she turned away from him in embarrassment. “It’s usually Lucas because he’s the only one who can fly here,” he continued. As if that made it better.
    “And you never thought to ask if I wanted you here, eavesdropping on my dad and me?” she asked, furious.
    Hector smiled at her, smothering a laugh. “Yeah. Because I can see how you’d want to keep all those discussions about politics and baseball to yourself. So private,” he said, rolling his eyes.
    “Do you stay all night while I’m sleeping?” she asked, unable to look at him. He suddenly understood why she was so upset, and his smile switched off.
    “You haven’t had a nightmare in a while,” he started to say.
    “Go home, Hector,” Helen said, cutting him off and turning to leave.
    “No,” he responded immediately, extending his arm across the doorway to block her exit. “I don’t care if you’re embarrassed. I don’t care if you don’t want us here. There are a lot of people who’d like to see you dead, Princess, and unfortunately my family can’t leave you unprotected until I say you can defend yourself.”
    “Why do you get to decide when I’m ready?” Helen crossed her arms and rubbed her shoulders against the cold. The wind off the water had teeth.
    “Because everyone knows that I’m the only one who won’t go easy on you. And just so you know, I’m not about to apologize for making sure you don’t get kidnapped by one of those batty women running around the island,” he warned. Helen’s teeth chattered. He looked at her standing there shivering and Helen could have almost sworn that he looked guilty for a second. Then he looked off to the side and cursed to himself. “But maybe we should have told you that we were sleeping up here,” he admitted finally.
    “You