of the hotel room. With a shake of her head, she remembered she was in Hershey, Pennsylvania, not ancient Athens.
Unnerved, she rubbed her eyes. The dreams had become a constant of her sleeping life. It was taking longer each time she woke to remember where she was. Who she was.
A muscular male arm wrapped around her waist. Laney grasped Jake ’s hand and snuggled back into him.
“ Another dream?” Jake’s voice was husky from sleep.
“ Yeah.” The dreams had plagued her for the last two months; they’d started right after Ecuador. She was always a different woman or girl, from a different time and place.
“ Who were you this time?” Jake asked.
“ I’m not sure. Do you know who Castor and Pollux’s sister was?”
“ Yes, and so do you. They had two. The first one’s name was Clytemnestra. And the second was Helen.”
“ Helen?” Laney rolled over to face Jake.
Jake leaned up on his elbow, his eyebrows raised. His finger traced a path down the side of her face. “Helen of Troy.”
Surprise filtered through her. “Huh. I never knew they were related. In the dream, I was Helen. But young, maybe twelve years old. I’d been kidnapped. Castor and Pollux were coming to save me.”
Jake nodded, and Laney could see the sparkle in his eyes. Myths always intrigued him. “Castor and Pollux were well-known heroes in the Age of Heroes. When Helen was approaching puberty, she was kidnapped by Theseus.”
“ Theseus? As in the minotaur and Crete?”
“ Yes. He wanted to steal the virginity of a god’s daughter. She was taken to Athens, where she was left with Theseus’s mother, Aethra. The brothers, who were only teenagers at the time, saved her.”
Laney felt cold. Jake’s description matched her dream. “I don’t know that story. How did I dream it?”
“ You probably heard it in high school and just forgot.”
“ Is it in The Iliad ?”
Jake ’s face clouded. “Actually, it’s not. Her abduction is mentioned by a number of other authors, though, including Diodorus and Hellanicus of Lesbos.”
“ I’ve never heard of either of those people.”
Jake brought her hand to his lips. “I’m sure one of your teachers mentioned Helen’s back story when they taught The Iliad . Your subconscious probably just retained the information.”
“ I guess,” Laney said, although she was far from convinced. She had, of course, heard about Helen and the Trojan War, but she couldn’t remember ever having heard of Helen’s early life.
And even if she had, why would she dream about it?
Jake took her face in his hands. “Helen was reputed to be the most beautiful woman in the world. I can see why you would dream you were her.”
Laney smiled, chasing away her concerns. Jake was probably right. It was just a dream. She wrapped her arms around his neck. “You just earned a lot of brownie points with that comment.”
Jake gave her a long , lingering kiss, until the phone interrupted them. With a groan, Jake let her go and reached for the phone. He picked up the receiver and let it drop. “Our wake-up call. Now, where were we?”
Laney rolled out of his reach. “Oh, no. We’re meeting everybody for breakfast. We are not going to be late.”
“ A couple of minutes won’t matter.”
Laney gave him a pointed look. “Great. Then you can explain to my uncle, the priest, what we, an unmarried couple, were doing that caused us to be late.”
Jake groaned, sitting up. “Fine. You want to shower first?”
“ No. Go ahead.”
Jake rolled out of bed. He stopped to kiss her on the forehead as he walked past, and then closed the bathroom door behind him.
Laney sat back down on the bed, clutching a pillow to her chest. The dream was beginning to fade. But she could still picture her brothers—
Laney shook her head. Not my brothers. Helen’s brothers .
She looked around the room. The dreams were getting harder and harder to shake. And a small part of Laney’s brain was beginning to worry about
Jean-Claude Izzo, Howard Curtis