A LEADER IS A DEALER IN HOPE.

At some point, Eureka had become Cat, Dad, and the twins’ leader. She wanted to give them hope. But how?

She thought of a popular phrase in the chat rooms she had trolled after Diana died: “It gets better.” Eureka knew it was originally offered as encouragement to g*y kids, but if there was one thing she’d learned since Diana’s death, it was that emotions didn’t travel in a straight line. Sometimes it would get better, sometimes it would get worse. Sure, Eureka had known joy—in the tops of live oak trees, in dilapidated boats cruising the bayou, on long runs through shady groves, and in peals of laughter with Brooks and Cat—but the sensation was usually so fleeting, a commercial in the drama of her life, that she’d never put much stock in it.

“How would joy help me defeat Atlas?” Eureka wondered aloud.

“Solon!” a voice called from behind them. The Poet appeared at the top of the stairs. He looked terrified. “I tried to stop them … but beggars must be choosers.”

“What are you talking about?” Solon asked.

From behind the Poet an enraged voice shouted something Eureka didn’t understand. A young man with a stubbly beard joined the Poet on the stairs. Every muscle in his body was tensed, as if he were in shock. His chest heaved and his eyes were wild. He pointed a trembling finger at Eureka.

“Yes,” the Poet said with heavy regret. “She is the one the dead speak of in our dreams.”

14

STORMING A STORM

“Stay there!” Solon shouted at Eureka. His silk robe trailed behind him as he rushed past the Poet and down the stairs. Without the protection of his cordon, rain returned to the veranda.

“What’s going on?” Cat asked the Poet.

The other boy moved quickly across the veranda, splashing through puddles, trampling on swirls of cherry blossoms, heading for Eureka.

A silver flash caught her eye as the orichalcum chain of Ander’s anchor tightly encircled the boy’s bony rib cage. He grunted, struggling to breathe.

Ander held the shank of the anchor over his shoulder, the chain coiled around his wrist. He shoved the bearded boy and the Poet against the veranda’s rail. He pressed their necks over the overlook. A sheet of mist spread toward them and the boys slipped in and out of foggy, white obscurity.

“Who’s down there?” Ander’s grip tightened on both boys’ necks. “How many?”

“Don’t hurt him!” Cat said.

“Let go, please,” the Poet grunted. “We come in pieces.”

“Liar,” Ander said. Lightning split the sky, illuminating his shoulder muscles through his T-shirt. “They want her.”

“They want food.” The Poet gasped and struggled to break free.

The Poet’s companion beganwhipping his head back in violent jerks, trying to strike Ander’s face.

Claire tugged on the sleeve of Dad’s jean jacket. “Should I spear that boy?”

Dad locked eyes with Eureka. Both of them had noticed the orichalcum sheath in Claire’s hand. Dad lifted it from one daughter and passed it to the other. Eureka slipped it through the belt loop of her jeans as Dad tucked the orichalcum chest inside his jacket.

A series of thumps drew Eureka’s attention to Ander and the boys. The sharp point of Ander’s elbow snapped into the back of the bearded boy’s head, over and over, until the boy grunted and finally went limp.

Dad tried to shield the twins from the violent sight, and Eureka was surprised she hadn’t thought to do the same. It hadn’t shocked her the way it would have once. Now violence was ordinary, like the ache of hunger and the dull edge of regret.

Dad moved the twins toward the staircase. Something in Eureka lightened as they slipped away. The sensation came and went quickly, and she couldn’t put it into words, but it made her wonder whether she would rather be like Cat, with no knowledge of her family, with no special responsibility to protect them.

A crash below made Dad jump away from the head of the stairs. There was nowhere safe to go.

“Stay up here!” Eureka called.

Behind her, the Poet was on his knees, lightly slapping the unconscious boy’s cheeks, murmuring something in their language.

“Take this to your family,” Cat said, her crossed arms full of cherries. The Poet gave her a grateful nod and a shy smile that belonged on the outskirts of a high school football game—not over an unconscious body somewhere near the end of the world.

“We have more food,” Eureka heard herself say.

Ander moved next to her. She felt his heat pulse near her body. He was bleeding above his eyebrow where the boy’s head had struck him.

“If we feed them,” Ander said to the Poet, “do you swear they’ll leave her alone?”

Another crash sounded below. Eureka heard Solon wheeze: “I said hit me, you pathetic weaklings!”

“Solon, you idiot,” she muttered as she rushed for the stairs.

Dad’s arm shot out, trying to block her. “This isn’t your fight, Reka.”

“It’s only my fight,” she said. “Don’t go down there.”

Dad started to argue, then realized he couldn’t stop her, or change her mind, or change the person she’d become. He kissed her forehead lightly, between her eyes, the way he used to after her nightmares. You’re awake now, his soft voice once reassured her. Nothing’s gonna get you.

She was awake now, to a nightmare never more real or more dangerous. She thundered down the stairs. “Solon!”