“Albion?” Solon snapped his fingers. “The show’s this way. I’d pay attention if I were you. I used to agree with you. I used to think we had a reason to stop her.” He turned to Eureka. “But nothing can stop her. Least of all us.”

Chora stepped slowly toward Solon. “The game has changed. It’s not what we would have wanted, but we can still use her tears to improve our position. If you were to come back to us …”

“Take the mask off, Cousin,” Critias said.

Solon’s finger moved toward the silver button on the side of his mask. Eureka imagined the poison filling Ander’s lungs in the distance. She imagined his shock becoming defiance as he gagged, his magnificent breath going out of him. The painful resignation as his body stilled. His soul rising. She wondered what his last thought would be.

She thought of the way his voice always sounded like a whisper. And the scissoring motions his fingers made when he ran them through his hair. The way his hand fit inside hers. The shade of blue his eyes took on when she walked by, even if he’d just seen her a moment before. How he kissed her as if his life depended on it. The person she became when she kissed him back.

Solon placed his hand over his heart. Then he grinned and pressed the button. “Bombs away.”

Poisonous gas, as green as the aurora borealis, glided over his face.

21

ILLUSIONMENT

The artemisia spooled over Solon’s face, shrouding his wrinkled brow, then his eyes, then his cheeks. The last thing to disappear behind the vapor was an extraordinary smile.

The Seedbearers circled him. Starling chewed her nails. Chora gulped as if drowning. Albion’s face wore the expression of someone about to be beaten. Critias’s cheek shone with the trail of a single tear as he turned to the others. “Do we have any parting words?”

Solon’s body stiffened and fell forward. He crashed to the veranda like a felled tree. Eureka rolled him onto his back and tore at the chain mail near his neck until her fingers burned. The mask was as welded to Solon as he had been devoted to his final mission.

“Is he dead?” Cat asked.

Eureka rested her head against his chest. Still as ice. The smooth silk of Solon’s bathrobe was wet against her cheek. She waited for breath.

A single labored wheeze came from Solon’s chest. Eureka grasped his shoulders. She wanted his face to reveal the truth of things—why he had done this, what Ander’s fate was, what would become of Eureka and her quest to save the world—but his expression behind the mask was cloudy.

Maybe it was a lie. Maybe artemisia didn’t kill Seedbearers vicariously. Maybe Ander was still alive underwater and would ride a wave over the rail of the veranda, so she could hold him like she had in her bedroom in Lafayette, when love was new.

Maybe the next time she saw Brooks he would just be Brooks, and what possessed him would be gone like a disease someone found a cure for.

Maybe she hadn’t flooded the world with her tears. Maybe she had nothing to do with it. Maybe it was another rumor spun by girls leaning into water fountains.

Maybe her parents and Madame Blavatsky and Rhoda and the Poet were alive and could inspire and frustrate and love her still.

Maybe the nightmare of these past months really was a nightmare, an indulgence of her wild imagination, and soon she would wake up, put on her running shoes, race the sun as it rose along the misty bayou, before Brooks swung by to pick her up for school, a steamy cinnamon latte waiting for her in the cup holder.

Solon’s body convulsed. He gripped his neck and strained for air. He punched once, twice, three times against the side of the mask. There was a hiss, and then a jigsaw crack split the mask down its center. It fell in two pieces on either side of Solon’s face. Acid-green artemisia fumes met their death in the rain. Eureka inhaled a whiff of licorice-scented air—then the vapor was gone.

Solon’s eyes were closed. Scraggly gray stubble had sprouted into a thick beard that crept down his neck like lichen. His close-cropped hair was now the color of a snow leopard and his skin was extravagantly wrinkled, mottled with the freckles of old age.

“Solon,” Eureka whispered.

His eyes flashed open. His lips wavered toward a smile. With a trembling hand he reached inside the pocket of his robe and withdrew a gray envelope. He pressed it into Eureka’s hand. It felt silky and strange.

“I wanted a good death,” Solon whispered. He looked around, like he was deciding whether this one qualified. Then he closed his eyes and was gone.

“It was good,” Eureka said.

A deep, guttural scream grabbed her attention. Albion was staggering toward her. He lumbered forward, off-kilter, like a drunk.

“You’re coming with us,” he wheezed, and lunged for Eureka, stumbling over Solon’s legs, falling onto the body of his dead cousin. He writhed. His fingers tore at his neck. Phlegm dribbled from the sides of his mouth.

Behind Albion, Critias doubled over, wheezing. Chora and Starling were already on the ground. Painful gasps and coughs echoed off the rocks. Eureka, Cat, and the twins held each other as the Seedbearers’ breathing slowed. Albion strained to reach Eureka’s ankle. It was his last act.

All of them were dead.

Which meant Ander was dead. Eureka clutched her head.

She thought of Ovid. He was downstairs, close enough to acquire these new ghosts. Dad and Seyma … and now Solon, and the other Seedbearers. Were they all together now?

Was Ander there?

She faced the water. Where was he? How had he spent his final breaths? Her mind rewound to the first moment they had spoken when he slammed into her car, the weird and lovely way he’d caught her tear. How had they gotten from there to here? Eureka wished she’d done everything differently. She wished she could have said goodbye.