Helens-of-Troy (33 page)

“I’m sorry. I have to interrupt. You
didn’t try to kill it, did you?” Helena asked. “The wraith rider?
Because if you do it wrong they split in two and then you have
bigger problems. I hope you’ll call me if you ever have to do
that.”

Helen nodded. “Don’t worry, I have
learned my lesson with wraith riders. I can still see their image
to this day. They are nasty beasts, even if they do look
human.”

“It’s another job best left to the
professionals.”

“Maybe that’s why I felt the need to
leave Tony. I don’t like to kill things. He kills things every day.
I try to live my life like I’m normal. What’s so wrong with
that?”

“We may not have a choice.” Helena
said, hugging her daughter tightly. “We’ve all done things we’re
not proud of. Conscience is an unfortunate part of the human side
of us. It can weigh heavy on our minds.”

As she attempted to release Helen she
felt her daughter shake in her arms. The tremble strengthened, and
for a moment Helena thought her daughter was having petit-mal
seizure.

“Take a deep breath, Helen. It’s over
now,” she said reassuringly, as Helen’s body began to
calm.

“It’s far from over,” Helen mumbled as
she tried to regain her composure. Beads of sweat were forming on
her brow even though she felt her internal temperature drop by
about ten degrees.

“Just be quiet for a few moments,”
Helena instructed.

“If I don’t tell you now,” Helen
sobbed, “I’ll never have the courage to tell you. I need you to
call Roy.”

“Seriously Helen, you can apologize
later,” her mother assured her.

“No, I just had a vision. I couldn’t
stop it. There’s been an accident. About six miles out of town. The
section where there’s the S-curve atop the first ridge by the ski
hill. Tell him to go there and to look down to the
right.”

“What did you see?” Helena asked
patiently.

“A woman,” Helen whispered. “She’s in
the front passenger seat of the vehicle next to a man. He didn’t
have his seat-belt on. He’s gone through the front windshield,” she
paused. “Tell Roy there’s no point rushing to get to
them.”

Helena’s face grew grim.

“Is it a white truck, Helen? Is it the
Clark’s? Roy said they were having trouble locating Kevin’s
parents.”

Helen nodded. “I think so.”

“Hellsbelles,” Helena said. “You just
had a pretty strong premonition attack for something that doesn’t
involve our own family.” She paused. “Maybe it does. Maybe it’s all
connected to this situation of Ellie’s.”

“I don’t know,” Helen answered
honestly. “But since we’re not keeping secrets, there’s something
else you need to know about Ellie’s situation. Willie says it’s
going to happen whether I like it or not. He said that you were
going to have to help me stop it, and even then we might not be
able to.”

“Willie’s on crack,” Helena said
emphatically. “Is that why you were so crazy this morning? Because
of him?”

“You don’t understand. He said I had to
watch Ellie. Carefully. And what did I just do? I let her go out
the door with a future Ms. Plaything-of-the-Month, who wears
expensive designer boots in the middle of a snowstorm.”

“You really have been tuning it out,”
Helena said. “I wasn’t kidding when I said Jacey was sensitive. A
sensitive. As in, someone who is perceptive without being psychic.
That’s why she shook our hands. I felt her tapping into my sensory
nerves. Well, attempting to anyway. She didn’t quite have the
technique down, but she sure as hell was trying.”

“I thought she wanted to steal my
ring,” Helen admitted, spinning her old engagement ring around so
the diamond faced her palm. She’d need a ring to replace it when
she divorced Tony. She couldn’t stand the feeling of her finger
without the weight of a ring.

“Well, unless you know something I
don’t,” Helena began, “Ellie is safe enough for the time being.
Nightfall might be a whole other story.”

“So what are we supposed to do?” Helen
asked.

“You go do what you have to do, and
I’ll do what I have to do,” she said rising from the bed. “I’m glad
we had a chance to sit down and talk about this, Helen. I’m not
here to judge you. I’m here to help. I’m very sorry about what
happened between you and the ring wraith and Ellie’s dad. But
please consider giving your talents another chance. For Ellie’s
sake.”

“I will,” Helen said as her mother left
the room. “And thanks.”

“That woman is so gullible,” Helena
thought to herself as she left the room. “It’s like shooting fish
from a barrel.”

Behind the closed door, Helen was
smiling smugly to herself.

“Nice try, Mother. I’ve got you hook,
line and sinker,” she laughed.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Tom looked at the stack of winter
supplies that had come in over the weekend and grimaced. This was
going to take forever, and today he didn’t have forever to spend at
the hardware store.

“Nobody’s ever prepared for the first
big snowfall of the year,” his father said, and as Tom looked out
the storefront window he could see that his father was right with
his weather prediction. The snow was no longer melting as it hit
the ground. It was sticking, and cars were beginning to slide
uncontrollably down the hill.

“Tom,” his father yelled as he watched
his son drag the last salt bag across the floor, “I told you half
an hour ago to use the handcart.”

Tom shrugged. “Sorry, Dad. Do you want
me to bring the shovels up from the basement?”

“I told you to do that first,” his
father sighed. “Look, obviously you’ve got something else on your
mind today. Just go and take care of it. I’ll finish up
here.”

“Do I still get paid for four hours?”
Tom asked.

“Get out of here,” his father
answered.

While this had seemed like the answer
to Tom’s prayers at the time, he soon realized that it meant he had
no excuse not to go over to Ryan’s house. The walk, a walk he had
taken countless times in his life, seemed endless, his feet
seemingly heavier with each step he took. Dread. To anticipate with
alarm, distaste or reluctance. That pretty much summed it
up.

He stopped at the foot of the first
driveway past the corner of Maple and Elm, and sighed. Ellie and
Jacey were outside, standing on separate ends of the “y” formation
the shared driveway divided into, just past the two house
structures. Ellie was on the right and Jacey was on the left.
Neither of them looked particularly happy to see him.

He was dead meat and he knew
it.

“I’m going to have to sweet them,” he
said to himself. “Give them a little of the Tom-boy
mojo.”

He took his time strolling up the
driveway, with a calculated swagger that he knew would say “I am
the man and I am in control.” At least that was the plan before he
hit a slippery patch of wet snow on the driveway and fell flat on
his ass.

“What the hell is he doing?” Ellie
asked, moving closer towards Jacey. Part of her wanted to rush down
the driveway to see if Tom was all right, but a bigger part of her
wanted to clap her hands in delight and laugh herself silly. She
settled for a self-serving smirk.

“He’s trying to convince us that we
want him,” Jacey replied. “Watch, about half way up the driveway
he’ll stop, put his hands on his hips like this, smile, drop his
voice down an octave and say, ‘uh, Ladies’.”

“For real?”

“Sha...” Jacey insisted, as she reached
down to the ground and took some of the wet snow that had fallen on
the ground into her gloved hand, where she easily pressed it into a
compact, hard ball.

Tom studied the girls from his new
vantage point on the ground. They were like two alien robo-babes.
They displayed no facial emotion, but their bodies were poised to
kill at the slightest hint of his vulnerability.

He stood up and smiled
warily.

“Uh, ladies?” he asked, his voice
rising, as he tried to shake the snow from his lower extremities.
He was surprised that he had fallen. His white cross-trainers
normally had good traction in wet snow, but they were no match for
his legs, quivering with anxiety having seen the girls.

Ellie smiled at Jacey. “You were
right.”

“Erm, technically no,” Jacey admitted,
tossing the snowball from one hand to another. “I went for a
statement. He gave us a question. And the voice went up. Two marks
off for the British contestant.” She made certain the snowball was
as packed as hard as she could.

“Was it just me, or did he sound a
little pre-pubescent?” Ellie asked rhetorically. She tried not to
notice the imprint the wet snow had left on his ass as he turned
briefly to wipe it off. As wet asses go, Tom’s was pretty
good.

“Right then, Mr. Williams,” Jacey
began, tossing the snowball directly towards Tom’s head, missing
him by a mile. “What have you got to say for yourself? I hear
you’ve been putting the moves on my bezzie here.” She brushed the
traces of snow from the palm of her gloves and sunk her hands deep
into the pockets of her coat to keep them warm.

“Well,” Tom pleaded. “You can’t blame a
guy for trying.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Ellie answered
back, forcing her voice to sound as ominous as she could possibly
make it. He did look sincere though, and for a moment she wondered
if she was being too harsh with him.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Tom sighed. “I’d
like to try to make it up to you two lovely ladies. Just tell me
what it’ll take.”

“Actually, Tommy-luv,” Jacey began. “If
you really mean it, and you’re not just saying that to try to
wiggle your way back into our hearts, you can do us a huge favor
and watch Stan. Ellie and I need to go run a little errand downtown
and Betty isn’t home yet. I’m supposed to be babysitting, but like
I said, there’s summat we just have to do. We’d be ever so grateful
if you could take care of him for me, just for a little
while.”

Tom smiled. Jacey’s idea didn’t seem
like such a bad one to him. He could take Stan out of the house and
down to the jail where Ryan and the cops could deal with the
situation themselves. That would allow him to wash his hands of the
whole mind-numbing problem. Sure, jail wasn’t the best place for
Stan, but the kid had to learn the cruel facts of life sometime,
and now was as good a time as any. Once Stan was out of the house,
it would then give him time to be alone with Jacey or Ellie,
whoever caved first. The plan made for a perfect afternoon if it
weren’t for that one nagging thing he had promised Ryan he would
do.

“Did you hear me?” Jacey asked.
“Because you’re staring at us like a deer in a headlight or
summat.”

“No, I heard you,” Tom nodded, still
scheming. “Maybe we can make a deal. I don’t suppose you gals know
anything about the art of ... vampire killing? I don’t have my
laptop with me, and I’m thinking that maybe you could do me a favor
and hit the library along the way and pick up some resource
materials for me? I need something like ‘How to Kill Immortals in
Five Easy Steps.’ It could be either a DVD or book, I’m not that
picky. You would really be helping me out. I need them, and it’s
not like I can drag Stan along with me into the occult
section.”

“Vampire killing?” Ellie said
incredulously, his words piercing her like the tip of a sharp
needle. “Is that supposed to be funny? Do you know what you can do,
Tom Williams? You can go straight to hell.”

“It doesn’t have to be the occult
section,” Tom offered feebly. “You could find Stoker in the
classics.”

Ellie turned her back to the two of
them, trying to hold back the tears she felt welling in her eyes.
There was nothing Ellie wanted more right now than for her mother
to poke her head out the window and demand she come back inside to
pack because they were going back to the city to live with Tony. He
might have been god-awful hairy, but he wasn’t crazy. This whole
town on the other hand, no matter how athletic, or cute, or
beautiful it appeared upon first glance...was totally freaking
crazy.

“Okay, okay,” Tom tried to explain,
“Ellie, Ryan told me to tell you he saw your vampire.”

“Really?” Ellie asked, not certain
whether Tom was just trying to appease her.

“Yes,” Tom continued, “and I know it
sounds totally bogus, but he thinks that the dude is out to get
Stan and the only thing that will save the twerp is if Ryan figures
out how to kill the vampire before it kills Stan. So, I was
thinking maybe you, Ellie, could kind of lead me in the right
direction, having had some experience in close encounters of the
fangtastic kind.”

“You’re a right plonker, Tom Williams!”
Jacey retorted indignantly. “How can you mock Ellie when she’s
standing right here?”

“I’m not,” Tom insisted. “Ryan really
wants to know how to do it, and he can’t exactly look it up himself
right now.” He jerked his head to the left a couple of times,
motioning for Jacey to shut-up.

“Oh, and why is that?” Ellie demanded,
turning back to face Tom. “Can’t Mr. Superstar navigate his way
through an ISBN catalogue?”