“Eureka!”

Ander stopped ahead of her. She skidded into his back. Her cheekbone slammed into his shoulder blade. She felt his muscles stiffen, like he was trying to shield her from something. She stood on her toes to see past him.

A dead girl lay at the edge of the stream. She looked about twelve. Leaves clung to her hair. She was on her side, straddling a long, twisted log. Eureka stared at her white blouse, her pale pink pleated skirt stained with blood. Ebony bangs were matted to her cheeks. Her long ponytail was tied with a cheerful yellow ribbon.

Eureka thought about who she’d been when she herself was twelve years old—big hands and feet like a puppy’s, perpetually tangled hair, a gap-toothed smile. She hadn’t yet met Cat. The summer she was twelve, she’d had her first French kiss. It was twilight, and she and Brooks had been swimming under the dock at his boathouse. Feeling his lips softly on hers was the last thing she’d expected when she came up for air from a br**ststroke. They’d treaded water after the kiss, laughing hysterically because they were both too embarrassed to do anything else. She had been so different then.

She felt a burning at the back of her throat. She wished she were back there, in that warm Cypremort water, far away. She wished she were anywhere but standing over this dead girl.

Then she wasn’t standing over her. She was kneeling next to her. Sitting in the stream beside her. Lifting the girl’s misshapen, broken arm off the log. Holding her cold hand.

“I hurt you,” Eureka said, but what crossed her mind was I envy you, because the girl had left behind this world’s problems and its pain.

She started to pray to the Virgin, because that was how she’d been raised, but Eureka felt disrespectful quickly. Odds were this girl hadn’t been Catholic. Eureka could do nothing to help her soul get where it needed to go.

“I’m going to bury her.”

“Eureka, I don’t think …,” Ander started to say.

But Eureka had already pulled the girl’s body from the log. She lay her flat against the bank and smoothed her skirt. Eureka’s fingers dug through pebbles and reached mud. She felt the silty grit fill the space beneath her fingernails as she cast fistfuls aside. She thought of Diana, who’d never been buried.

This girl was dead because Diana had never told Eureka what her tears would do. Anger she’d never before felt for her mother seized Eureka.

“There won’t be time to attend to every death,” Ander said.

“We have to.” Eureka kept digging.

“Think about your father,” Ander said. “And my family, who will find you if we don’t find the Bitter Cloud first. You can do more to honor this girl by moving on, finding Solon, learning what you must do to redeem yourself.”

Eureka stopped digging. Her arms shook as shereached for the girl’s yellow ribbon. She didn’t know why she pulled on the bow. She felt it loosen as it slid from the girl’s wet black hair. The wind wove the ribbon between Eureka’s fingers and blew a sudden lightness into her chest.

She recognized the sensation distantly—it was an old friend, returned after a long prodigal journey: hope.

This girl was a bright flame that Eureka’s tears had extinguished, but there were more flames out there burning. There had to be. She tied the yellow ribbon around the chain bearing her thunderstone. When she was lost and disheartened, she would remember this girl, the first tear-loss Eureka had seen, and it would spur her on to stop what she had started, to right her wrongs.

Eureka didn’t realize she had tears in her eyes until she turned to Ander and saw his panicked expression.

He was at her side immediately. “No!”

He grabbed her broken wrist. The pain was blinding. A tear rolled down her cheek.

Out of nowhere she remembered the heirloom chandelier back home, which Eureka broke when she slammed the front door in a rage. Dad had spent hours repairing it and the chandelier had looked almost like new, but the next time Eureka closed the front door, carefully, so lightly, the chandelier had trembled, then shattered into shards. Was Eureka like that chandelier, now that she’d cried once? Would the lightest force suddenly shatter her?

“Please don’t shed another tear,” Ander pleaded.

Eureka wondered how anyone ever stopped crying. How did pain fade? Where did it go? Ander made it sound temporary, like a Lafayette snowfall. She touched the yellow ribbon.

She had already cried the tear that flooded the world. She’d assumed the damage was done. “What more can my tears do?”

“There is an ancient rubric predicting the power of each tear shed—”

“You didn’t tell me that!” Eureka’s breath came shallowly. “How many tears have I shed?”

She started to wipe her face, but Ander grabbed her hands. Her tears hung like grenades.

“Solon will explain—”

“Tell me!”

Ander took her hands. “I know you’re scared, but you must stop crying.” He reached around and cradled the back of her head in his palm. His chest swelled as he inhaled. “I will help you,” he said. “Look up.”

A narrow column of swirling air formed over Eureka’s head. It twisted faster, until a few raindrops faded and slowed … and turned into snow. The column became thick with bright, feathery flakes that tumbled down and dusted Eureka’s cheeks, her shoulders, her sneakers. Rain thundered against the rocks, splashing into the puddles all around them, but over her head the storm was an elegant blizzard. Eureka shivered, enthralled.