“Impossible,” Solon said when he returned a moment later, icy bottle of prosecco in one hand, champagne flute in the other. He jerked his head toward Eureka. “You have her. My Byblis is dead.”

Eureka felt for her bag to make sure she still had The Book of Love. Byblis had been one of the previous owners of the book, and a Tearline girl. Ander had told Eureka that the Seedbearers had killed her.

Solon studied Eureka. “You resemble her.”

“Byblis?”

“Your mother.”

Dad raised his chin. “How’d you say you knew Diana?”

“She visited me here years ago.” Solon popped the cork on his bottle. “Opa!” he shouted as it rocketed off one skull’s forehead and lodged in the eye socket of another. There were more than a few skulls sporting cork eyeballs.

“My mother—” Eureka said.

“Diamond of a woman.” Solon raised his glass, toasting Diana. He took a sip. “How is she?”

“She—” Eureka didn’t know how to end that sentence.

“Damn them,” Solon whispered, and Eureka realized that he knew about the Seedbearers’ plans. “Did you know she had made a pact with them?”

“What?”

“She swore to keep you from crying,” Solon said, “and to keep the truth of your lineage a secret from you. In exchange, they were supposed to let you live.”

Diana had never mentioned a Seedbearer pact or a journey to the Bitter Cloud. She had never mentioned so many things. Diana had known what Eureka faced, but she hadn’t borne Eureka’s burden. She hadn’t been a Tearline girl—not born on a day that didn’t exist, not a motherless child and a childless mother, not raised to withhold her feelings until they exploded from within her. Diana had been Eureka’s greatest ally, but she’d never really understood what it was like to be Eureka.

Still, her mother had had a gift for letting chaos swirl until its meaning took shape. Eureka touched her necklace and let the piercing sensation of missing her mother come.

“Diana knew we’d get along,” Solon said.

Eureka squinted. “She did? Do we?”

“I believe her words were ‘If you survive each other, you will become great friends,’ ” Solon said. “I should warn you I am very hard to kill.”

“Same here,” Eureka said. “Believe me, I’ve tried.”

“Yes?” Solon looked admiringly at Eureka. “Now I know we’ll become friends.”

“I’m not suicidal now.” Eureka didn’t know why she said that—maybe it was for the twins, maybe for herself. In any case, it was true.

“What makes you want to live?” Solon asked. “Let me guess.”He snapped his fingers. “You want to save the world.”

“You think this is a joke?” she asked.

“Of course it’s a joke.” Solon jerked his thumb toward Ander. “Especially on him. He’s in love with you.”

“You don’t know us,” Ander said. “We came here for help defeating Atlas, not your twisted perspective on love. Diana must have made you promise to help Eureka. Are you going to or not?”

“You talk as if you’re unique.” Solon spoke like he knew his words stung and was enjoying it. “And the rest of you. You’re the collateral damage of a deadly teenage fling that these two were too self-absorbed to prevent.”

“Hey,” Cat said. “I’m twice as self-absorbed as Eureka.”

“But not a tenth as deadly,” Solon said.

Behind Solon, snow-white water tumbled from the fall. Eureka studied the place where the orchid had been. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting from Solon, but it certainly hadn’t been this.

“Why did my mother think you could help me?”

“Because I can,” Solon said, “and I should. I hope you’re a fast learner. We have only until the full moon before this stupid world comes to its stupid end.”

10

AS IT RELATES TO LOVE

“What happens on the full moon?” Eureka asked hours later when she, Solon, and Ander were alone before the fire pit.

Ever since his assistants had arrived that afternoon, Solon had been quiet. He would offer no further details on Eureka’s Tearline while the redheaded girl Filiz passed in and out of alcoves, clearing dishes, making fires. She looked uneasy, like she’d gone to a party far from home and lost her friends.

Before Filiz left for the night, she’d redressed Dad’s shoulder and brewed a potent pennyroyal tea that tucked him into sleep in the guest room behind the orange and red hanging tapestry. The twins slept on pallets at his side. Cat had refused food or rest until she reached her family, so Solon’s other assistant, a boy introduced as “the Poet,” escorted her to a veranda where there was a slim chance his phone might find reception.

The Poet was tall and sexy with the paint-stained fingertips of a graffiti artist. He and Cat had appraised each other intensely. As they spiraled up the winding staircase, Cat had drawn an aerosol can of paint from his cargo pocket. “So, you’re an artiste.…” Eureka assumed they’d be gone for hours.

At last, Solon led Eureka and Ander to a stone table in the center of his salon. The waterfall’s mist reached Eureka’s skin, dampened the maroon satin bathrobes she and Ander wore while their clothes dried over stones around the fire pit.