Free Starcrossed by Josephine Angelini Page A

here?” he asked, almost begging.
    Helen stopped struggling and looked into his infuriating face. He had his eyes closed. He was trying the trick she had used in the alley, she realized. She shut her eyes as well, and felt a tiny bit better.
    “I lied to the police. I didn’t tell them you were there tonight,” Helen grunted, the unbelievable weight of him pressing the air out of her. “You’re crushing me!”
    “Good,” he said, but he shifted his weight, seeming to get lighter somehow so she could fill her lungs. “Do you have your eyes closed, too?” he asked, sounding more curious than angry.
    “Yeah. It helps a little,” she replied quietly. “You see them, too, don’t you? The three women?”
    “Of course I do,” he replied in a baffled voice.
    “What are they?”
    “The Erinyes . The Furies. You really don’t understand. . . .” He stopped abruptly when a woman’s voice called his name from what Helen assumed was his house. “Damn it. They can’t find you here or you’re dead. Go!” he ordered. He rolled off of her and jumped up into a run.
    As soon as she was free, Helen bolted and didn’t look back. She could almost feel the three sisters reaching out with their clammy white arms and bloody fingertips to touch the back of her neck. She ran in a panic for Kate’s car, dove behind the wheel, and drove away as fast as she dared.
    After half a mile she had to pull over and take a few deep breaths, and as she did, she noticed that she could smell Lucas on her clothes. Disgusted, she took her shirt off and drove home in her bra. No one would see her, and if they did they would just think she was out for a dawn swim. At first she left her shirt on the passenger seat, but the scent of him kept wafting up, smelling of cut grass, baking bread, and snow. In a fit of frustration she screamed at the steering wheel and tossed her shirt out the window.
    She was exhausted to the point of collapse when she got home, but she couldn’t lie down in her bed without taking a shower. She had to scrub Lucas off or his scent would chase her around in her dreams. She was filthy. Her elbows and back had grass stains on them and her feet were a black mess.
    As she watched the dirt melt off her shins and ankles under the water she thought of the three sisters and their perpetual suffering. Lucas had called them the Furies, and no name could have suited them better. She vaguely recalled hearing Hergie saying the word at some point, but for the life of her, she couldn’t remember what story they were in. For some reason Helen was picturing armor and togas, but she couldn’t be sure.
    She picked up a pumice stone and rubbed off every last speck of dirt before shutting off the taps. Afterward, she stayed in the steam to put on sweet-smelling lotion, letting it soak in, obliterating every last trace of Lucas. When she finally tumbled into bed, still wrapped in a damp towel, the sun was long up.
    Helen was walking through the dry lands, hearing the dead grass crackle with each step she took. Little clouds of dust puffed up around her bare feet and clung to the moisture running down her legs, as if the dirt she walked on was so desperate for water it was trying to jump up off the ground to drink her sweat. Even the air was gritty. There were no insects buzzing around in the scrub, no animals of any kind. The sky was blazingly bright with a tinny blue light, but there was no sun. There was no wind and no clouds—just a rocky, blasted landscape as far as Helen could see. Her heart told her that somewhere close there was a river, so she walked and walked and walked.
    Helen woke a few hours later with heavy limbs, a headache, and dirty feet. She flopped out of bed, rinsed off the increasingly familiar nocturnal grime, and threw on a sundress. Then she sat down at her computer to look up the Furies.
    The first website she clicked on gave her chills. As soon as she opened it she saw a simple line drawing on the side of a pot.