“You look like you,” she said.

He smiled. “You look like you, too.”

What did he see when he looked at her? Was her darkness swelling as visible as the shadows lifting from him?

He reached for the teardrop crystal that had absorbed her other pendants. He gasped and quickly drew his hand away, as if he’d touched a flame.

“From the gossipwitches?”

She nodded. “The locket, the thunderstone, and the ribbon are inside.”

“I can’t tell you how free I feel,” Ander whispered. “There’s no more risk in caring for each other. We can be together. We can go to the Marais. You can defeat Atlas. I can be with you the whole time. We can do this, together.” He touched her lips. His eyes swam over her face. “I love you, Eureka.”

Eureka closed her eyes. Ander loved a girl he thought he knew. He loved that girl very much. He had said it was the only thing he was sure of. But he could never love the person she truly was, a descendant of darkness, more evil than the most evil force Ander could imagine.

“That’s great,” she said.

“I have to kiss you again.” He drew her close, but her heart wasn’t in it. Her heart could never be in something so right, so good.

A violent rapping interrupted their kiss. Eureka jumped away from Ander and spun around. A shadowy figure leaned against the entrance to the Bitter Cloud holding an umbrella over its head.

Her heart quickened. Was it Brooks? She yearned to see him again—even though she knew he was bound to evil. Or maybe she yearned to see him because he was bound to evil.

“Who’s there?” Ander put his body between Eureka and the figure.

“Only me.”

“Solon?” Eureka wiped rain from her eyes and discerned Ovid’s lithe frame. The robot’s left hand had sprouted an orichalcum umbrella. Its face bore the loving, aged features that the lost Seedbearer had worn at his death.

“ ‘O a kiss, long as my exile, sweet as my revenge,’ ” the robot said in Solon’s voice. “That’s Coriolanus. Shakespeare already knew what you are learning, Eureka: the soldier can return from war but he can never go home.” The robot tipped its umbrella toward the Bitter Cloud. “Let’s talk inside. I’m waterproof, so rain makes me lonely.”

Ovid collapsed the umbrella as they entered the cave through the hall of skulls. Water streamed past their feet, the flood flowing toward the salon. The Bitter Cloud was desolate now and filling with salt water, nothing like the fascinating chamber of curiosities it had been when they arrived. The air was cold and dank.

Claire was throwing fistfuls of colored mosaic tiles in the air. William used his quirk to retrieve them before they hit the rising water.

“Eureka’s back!”

The twins splashed through deep puddles as they ran to her. William made it into her arms, but Claire stopped short of the robot andlooked at it distrustfully.

She hunched her shoulders. “Why does Ovid look weird?”

“It looks like Solon,” William said into Eureka’s shoulder. “It’s scary.”

Cat sat in Solon’s cockfighting chair with her eyes closed. Eureka poured some of the witches’ salve into her hands and massaged it over the bees, which now crawled all over her friend’s scalp. Cat flinched at first, then gazed up at Eureka. Tears dotted her eyes.

“Are they gone?” she asked, patting her hair.

“No.”

“It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“Good.”

Eureka helped Cat to her feet. Cat’s heels sank into a puddle—then both of her feet lifted off the floor. It lasted just a second. Cat looked down at her feet, then at Eureka, then down again. She held out her arms and furrowed her brow and made herself levitate, this time for longer, a full foot off the floor.

She touched her bee braids and giggled a laugh that didn’t sound like Cat. “That bitch turned me into a witch.” She gazed at Eureka with wide eyes. “You know, this is the first thing in a long time that actually feels right?”

“Sit down.” Solon’s voice spoke through the robot. “Watch closely. Prepare to have your minds blown.”

They gathered around the fire pit with the waterfall tumbling and the skulls eavesdropping, just as they had when Solon welcomed them to the Bitter Cloud. Ovid presided in Solon’s place, holding his old, empty broken glass.

Solon’s features wavered, then twisted gruesomely, like the robot’s face was made of clay. William whimpered in Eureka’s lap. Then Ovid’s nose tapered. Its lips swelled. Its cheeks grew longer.

“Poet?” Cat leaned forward shakily.

The Poet within the robot seemed to size up Cat’s new do approvingly, then he twisted out of recognition as another face filled the orichalcum void.

Seyma’s features sharpened and squashed as if someone had pressed her face against a sheet of glass. She grimaced and was pulled away, replaced by the thin, old lips of Starling, then, more rapidly, by the dark grimace of Critias, the wizened ruthlessness of Chora, and, finally, by the cold hatred in Albion’s eyes. He struggled to speak through the robot, but couldn’t. Eureka got the gist of what he wanted to say.

At last, their father surfaced.

“Daddy—” Claire cried in the voice she used when she was having a nightmare.

Dad was gone, replaced by Solon.

“You will encounter all of them eventually,” Solon’s voice said. “For now, while they are learning to be ghosts, I control a great percentage of the robot’s drive. I will sow seeds of resistance from inside, but as the others mature they will have their own agenda. We must make our move soon, while I can still be your primary guide.”