“I know about the Filling.”

“Forget the Filling. I want you.”

“You want my tears.”

“I will admit it,” Atlas said. “At first you were just another Tearline girl to me. But then I got to know you. You’re really very fascinating. What a strange, dark, and twisted heart you have. And what a face! Contrasts beguile me. The more time I spent inside that body”—he sighed, nodded at Brooks—“the more I relished being near you. Then you disappeared with …”

“Ander,” Eureka said.

“Never say that name in my kingdom!” Atlas shouted.

“Because of Leander,” Eureka murmured. “Your brother who stole—”

Atlas grabbed Eureka’s throat. “Everything from me. Understand?” His grip loosened. He composed himself with a breath. “He is flushed from both our lives now. We will not think of him again.”

Eureka looked away. She would try not to think of Ander. It would make her mission easier, even though it was impossible.

“When you were gone,” Atlas said, “the ghost of your beauty haunted me.”

“You want one thing from me—”

“I want always to be near you. And I get what I want.”

“You haven’t gotten what you wanted in a long time.”

“I didn’t have to bring you here,” Atlas said. “I saw your tears fill the lachrymatory. I could have taken it and left you rotting in those mountains. Think about that.” He paused and gazed into the treetops thousands of feet above. “We were getting on so well,” he whispered in her no-longer-bad ear. “Remember our kiss? I knew you knew it was me all along, just as I imagine you knew I knew you knew. Neither one of us is dumb, so why don’t we stop pretending?”

He reached for her with a warm, strong hand. Eureka whipped away, mind whirring. She needed to resume pretending, to never stop, if she was going to survive. She had to trick him and she didn’t know how.

“Are you wishing you had shot me when you had the chance?” Atlas asked, grinning. “Don’t worry, there will be yet more chances for you to end my life—and to prove your love by sparing it.”

“Give me the gun and I’ll disprove it now,” she said. “You know why I didn’t shoot.”

“Oh yes.” Atlas gestured toward Brooks. “Because of this corpse.”

The trees beyond Atlas rustled as ten girls in thigh-high boots and short red dresses with orichalcum breastplates stepped out from behind them. Their helmets shifted colors in the sun and hid their faces.

“Hello, girls,” Atlas said, and turned to Eureka. “My Crimson Devils. They will see to your every need.”

“Her bed isready,” one of the girls said.

“Take her to it.”

“Brooks!” Eureka reached for his dead body.

“You loved him,” Atlas said. “You really loved him best of all. I know it. But you shall love again. Better, stronger”—he caressed Eureka’s cheek—“deeper. As only a girl can do.”

“What should we do with the body?” one of the girls asked, nudging Brooks’s chest with her boot.

Atlas thought a moment. “Have my ostriches had breakfast?”

Eureka tried to scream, but a harness fell over her face. A metal bar snapped between her teeth. Someone tightened the harness from behind as green artemisia vapor swirled before her eyes.

Just before she lost consciousness, Atlas held her close. “I’m glad you’re here, Eureka. Now everything can begin.”

27

THE LIGHTNING CLOAK

Eureka awoke chained to a bed.

Her bed.

Four cherrywood bedposts rose above her on the antique queen she’d slept in before she cried. The thrift-store rocking chair swaying in the corner used to be her favorite homework spot. An Evangeline-green sweatshirt hung over its arm. Eureka’s eyes throbbed from the haze of artemisia as her blurry reflection came into focus in her grandmother’s old mirrored chest of drawers across from the bed.

Wide metal cuffs bound her wrists to the upper corners of the bed, her ankles to the lower corners, and her waist across the center. When she tried to jerk free, something sharp cut into her palms and the tops of her feet. The cuffs were barbed with spikes. Blood pooled over the cuff on her right wrist, then trickled down her arm.

“How does it work?” A husky voice startled her.

A teenage girl stood at her bedside, bent over Eureka’s left hand like a manicurist. A laurel wreath adorned her amber hair. Her crimson dress plunged into a deep V ending just below her tattooed navel. She wore Eureka’s crystal teardrop necklace.

“Give me back my necklace.” The strange Atlantean words hurt as they left Eureka’s parched throat. She tried to kick the girl with her knees. Metal spikes bit her waist. Blood bloomed through her shirt.

A snicker came from Eureka’s other side. Another girl in another crimson dress. Her laurel wreath capped a smooth black bob, and her cold aquamarine eyes were focused on Eureka’s right hand.

Crimson Devils, Atlas had called his guards.

“Where’s Atlas?” Eureka said. Where is Brooks’s corpse? she wanted to ask. She was used to the idea that the two boys occupied the same body. But she had watched her friend die, and only the enemy remained. A raging desire to kill Atlas flooded her.

“Watch,” the second girl told the first.