“I don’t know—”

Could she fly away from the twins, Cat, and Ander? Would they drown if Eureka left with Brooks?

Brooks smiled. “You know.”

She didn’t have Ovid, and she couldn’t go back for it now. Could she trust that the gossipwitches wanted to get home badly enough to take her to the Marais? Was this voyage what Esme had said she owed them?

Thunder cracked overhead. Eureka ducked. Brooks was still holding out his hand.

“Come on,” he urged.

Maybe he was lying about everything else, but he was right about Eureka. She knew she had to go. She knew her loved ones couldn’t come with her. She knew there wasn’t any time. She knew she had to save the world. And she knew that the only way to get there was with the one she had to destroy. She took his hand.

“Eureka!”

Ander sloshed across the flooded veranda as her feet lifted from the stone.

Water streamed from her running shoes. She dangled a few feet in the air. The hurt in Ander’s eyes pierced her.

Rain soaked his shirt, flattened his blond hair across his forehead. He looked so ordinary and beautiful that Eureka thought if things were different, if every single thing were different, she could fall in love with him from scratch.

“Wait!” she shouted up at the gossipwitches.

Eureka heard what sounded like a whip. The ladder bounced as Peggy’s wings flattened overhead. The silver horse neighed in protest.

“There’s no time for this!” Brooks shouted at Esme.

“There is time for a single goodbye,” Esme said from the gap in Peggy’s wing. “We will wait.”

“What are you doing?” Ander shouted.

“I’m sorry!” Eureka called over the drone of a million wings. Her heart raced wildly. She imagined it bursting from her chest, sending fragments of chaotic love onto the two boys she was caught between. “I have to go.”

“We were going to go together,” Ander said.

“If you knew the things I know, you wouldn’t want to go with me. You’d be glad I was leaving. So be glad.”

“I love you. Nothing else matters.” Ander blinked. “Don’t go with him, Eureka. He’s not Brooks.”

Brooks laughed. “She’s already chosen. Try to be a man about it.”

“Eureka!” Ander didn’t look at Brooks. His turquoise eyes were trained on her for the last time.

“Eureka,” Brooks whispered in her good ear.

“Eureka!” the middle gossipwitch shouted from above. “It’s time to make a choice. Close your eyes and say goodbye to someone. Do not burden our beast of burden with the burden of your beastly heart.”

Eureka met Esme’s eyes and nodded. “Let’s go.”

A million pairs of wings beat in unison. Peggy climbed in the sky.

“Ander!” she shouted.

He stared up at her, hope in his eyes.

“Take care of the twins,” she said. “AndCat. Tell them … tell them all I love them.”

He shook his head. “Don’t do this.”

I love you, too. She couldn’t bring herself to say it. Instead, she would take it with her, packed inside her heart. She would take all of them with her in her heart. She didn’t deserve them, but she would take them. Cat’s life-affirming humor. Claire’s strength. William’s tenderness. Dad’s devotion. Rhoda’s stubbornness. Madame Blavatsky’s intuition. Diana’s passion. Ander’s love. They had given Eureka their gifts and she would take them with her wherever she went.

“Goodbye,” she called through the rain as she flew away.

25

THE MARAIS

Eureka watched the world shrink beneath her. Peggy climbed a thousand feet and leveled off below wispy dregs of clouds. Eureka and Brooks rode her bareback, gripping her glossy silver mane. Two dozen gossipwitches rode atop the horse’s wings. They held the beating fabric like children on a sled.

Below, rivers burst from their banks. Red mud spurted across the land like blood from a wound. Where towns had stood a week ago, buildings sagged and highways buckled, sideswiped by water. Flash lakes drowned former valleys. Forests rotted black. As they flew south, great white waves tumbled into altered shoreline, leaving miles of mud in wakes that once were neighborhoods. Houses floated down streets, searching for their owners.

Eureka vomited over the side of the horse and watched it arc toward the ravaged earth. There had been nothing in her stomach but acid. Now there was even less.

“Are you okay?” Brooks asked. Atlas asked.

She rested her cheek on Peggy’s velvety neck. She stared ahead until her eyes found the horizon. She imagined every devastated thing below sliding over that horizon like a waterfall. She imagined the entire broken world flowing into fire at the end of everything.

Brooks leaned in to her good ear. “Say something.”

“I didn’t think it could be worse than my imagination.”

“You’ll fix it.”

“The world is dead. I killed it.”

“Bring it back.” He sounded like the old Brooks, like someone who believed Eureka could do anything, especially the impossible. She was angry with herself for letting down her guard. She wouldn’t do it again. She had to be careful, confiding in the enemy.

“How did you find them?” Eureka nodded in the witches’ direction.

“I didn’t,” Brooks said. “They found me. When I freed myself, it was like I was waking from a coma. She”—he nodded at Esme, who lay like a sunbather on Peggy’s wings—“was standing over me when I opened my eyes. She offered me a ride. I said I had to find you first. She laughed and said, ‘Mount the mare, stud.’ Then they brought me to you.” He looked around. “I never thought we’d top the time we hitched to Bonnaroo in that convertible van. But we’ve topped it.”