17

TRYSTS

Cat was gone.

Eureka returned upstairs to find a pallet of empty blankets where she’d last seen her friend. She checked the kitchen, all six candlelit alcoves in Solon’s salon, the tiny bathroom off the staircase. Cat had fled the Bitter Cloud.

Eureka had known Cat long enough to guess where she had gone. The Poet had pointed out his rooftop from Solon’s veranda the night they arrived. It was just across the Tearline pond. For the first time, Eureka regretted not telling the others she’d seen Atlas the night before. Now Cat had crossed the witches’ glaze without knowing he was near. If Atlas found her, he would look like Brooks to her. Cat had no idea how much there was to fear.

Eureka snatched her purple bag. She considered taking the witches’ torch, but it would make her too visible in the dark. At the doorway of the guest room she paused to watch the twins and Ander sleep. William whimpered, nestling closer to Claire, who swatted him, then changed her dream-mind and embraced him.

Part of Eureka would feel safer if Ander went with her, but after Seyma’s death, Eureka no longer knew how to be around him. And she didn’t want the twins to wake up alone. Besides, if she did encounter Brooks and Atlas tonight, she couldn’t risk Ander’s trying to kill them.

She aimed to be back before sunrise, before any of them woke up.

Silently, she climbed the stairs to the veranda. Rain pinged off her thunderstone as she looked over the rail. She scanned the rocks for Cat. For Brooks.

The water had risen ten or twenty feet since that morning. On the far side of the pond, mouthlike black openings marked the Celan caves. One of those caves had swallowed Cat. Unless Atlas had found her first.

After circling the veranda’s perimeter, Eureka discovered a place where she could safely jump to the rocks below. She was lowering herself over the rail when a hand grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back.

“Where are you going?” Ander asked.

Their shoulders touched. She wanted to hold him, to be held.

“Cat’s gone,” she said. “I think she’s with the Poet.”

“We have to tell Solon.”

“No. I’m going after her. Go back downstairs.”

“Are you crazy? I’m not letting you go out there, especially not alone.”

“Cat could die,” she said. “If …”

“Say it,” Ander said. “Say what you think might happen to her. I know he’s out there, Eureka. We both know it. What I don’t know is why you’re so eager to walk into his trap.”

He wanted her to deny it, to touch the smooth line of his cheekbone where it angled toward his jaw, and beg him to come with her. She wanted all of that, too—but she couldn’t want it.

“I can’t lose you,” he said.

“You watched me kill someone today. You know what my tears are doing to the world. You act like Cupid shot us with arrows and we’re supposed to forget that everything is falling apart. We’re in hell, and if I don’t stop it, it’s only going to get worse.”

“If you could love yourself the way I love you, you would be invincible.”

He was wrong. Love wasn’t going to defeat Atlas. Ruthlessness and rage would.

“If you could turn off your feelings for me the way I’ve turned off my feelings for you, you’d never age a day.” Eureka hoisted herself over the rail and leapt to the rocks below. Her ankles throbbed dully from the drop.

Ander sucked in his breath. When he exhaled into the rain it shot sideways across the pond and generated a single angry wave.

“You can stop caring for me”—he began to hoist himself over the rail—“but you can’t stop me from caring for you.”

“Eureka,” a silky voice called from everywhere and nowhere. For an instant the limits of the witches’ glaze glowed purple in the darkness. Through the steady patter of rain on rock, Eureka heard the low drone of buzzing bees.

“Who’s there?” Ander paused. “Eureka, wait.”

A figure wearing a long caftan stepped from the shadows. Esme’s painted lips and eyelids looked like portions of the night. Raindrops pattered against the petals of her dress. Her fingers traced her crystal teardrop necklace, making little swirls.

“I can show you the way to your friend.”

“You know where Cat is?” Eureka asked.

“Don’t go with her!” Ander called as Eureka approached the witch. He had landed on the rocks and moved toward her.

“I can help you lose him.” Esme nodded at Ander. “I heard your little lovers’ quarrel. Didn’t you know shallow worries like those have been washed away?” Her pointer finger beckoned Eureka closer. “It is time for deep women to rise.”

Rain slid down Eureka’s shoulders. “Where are we going?”

“To the Glimmering, of course,” Esme said. “Step through the glaze within the glaze and be free.”

Eureka glanced back at Ander. He was only a few feet away. She took Esme’s icy hand and stepped through one invisible glaze into another.

“Eureka!” Ander shouted, and she knew he could no longer see her. He rushed forward as Esme winked and pulled Eureka aside on the path. Ander spun in a circle.

“Come back!”

They didn’t. They walked through the mountains in the rain.

For several minutes, Eureka wanted to return to him, to race back to the Bitter Cloud and bring Ander with her wherever she went. She didn’t want to be so cruel.