Waterfall (35 page)

Ander answered by sweeping his arm around her. He was careful of her ribs as he lifted her off her feet and brought her lips to his. They were locked in a deep kiss before Eureka could pretend she didn’t want it. She drank him in—

And felt his joy. It came at her in a deep, profound rush, rejuvenating her soul the way the Crimson Devils’ pain had crippled her. She followed Ander’s lips around past moments of his brightest happiness.

Within their kiss Eureka saw herself as Ander had seen her: Through the dirty windows of her favorite diner in Lafayette, the Pancake Barn, whirling whipped cream clouds onto a short stack. Jogging along the bayou behind her house, her green cross-country sweatshirt flashing in and out of view among the trunks of oak trees. At the mall with Cat, doubled over with laughter as they tried on a store’s most hideous prom dresses. On the brink of tears on the dirt road after Ander rear-ended her. Her teardrop on his fingertip. His breath against her cheek.
There now, no more tears.

This was Ander’s happiness. All of it was her. Eureka’s heart burned with the urge to stay forever, and forever run away.

Ander pulled back first. She expected him to say something, but he stared at her with such amazement she wondered what his experience of the kiss had been, whether it was something he could give words to if he tried.

It was the last time they would see each other. It was so hard to make it end.

“Get to it, Reka,” Ovid said in the guise of Dad.

From the back of the cave, Esme brought forward the enormous winged white horse, who neighed at Eureka and flicked her tail. “Let Peggy speed your way.”

“I’m going to owe you for this, aren’t I?” Eureka asked.

“If you succeed, we are the ones who will owe you,” Esme said. “But you will be beyond us by then and unable to collect, so indeed, the gossipwitches will still come out ahead.”

Eureka took the shivering moth-wing reins. She kissed each twin on both cheeks, making them giggle because no one had ever done that to them before. They hadn’t had Eureka’s mothers.

“When will you come back?” William asked.

“She isn’t,” Claire said.

William started to cry. “Yes she is. She loves us.”

“If she loved us, she would stay,” Claire said.

All her life, Eureka had cycled through the same logic regarding Diana. She didn’t have an answer for William. It was not lack of love but a surplus that was Eureka’s problem.

Esme picked up the little boy. She reached for Claire’s hand. The witches were their mothers now, and maybe that was best.

“Please,” Eureka said to Esme. “I’m all they have. I’m not enough. I brought you home. The least you can do is—”

“They are bright and their magic is valuable,” Esme said.
“A prophet might say someday these mountains will bear the children’s names. But you and I both know prophecies can be a drag.” She touched the tops of the twins’ heads. “They will flourish here.”

Eureka hoped so. She hoped they all lived to be nine hundred and fifty, like Noah and his family had in another story about another flood. She hoped when she was finished with Atlas enough would remain of the world to shelter the bright and the magical. She hoped Ander would love someone else who could love him back as beautifully as he had loved Eureka.

She didn’t say goodbye. That would have been a lie that she was caring, that she was kind, that she was something other than a mission. She mounted the white horse and rode through the moth-wing doors. She felt Peggy’s wings spread above her in the brightening sky.

F
rom a casement in the highest tower of his palace, Atlas watched a pink sliver of light rise from the sea.

After Eureka and Peggy left the Gossipwitch Mountains they’d lost crucial time searching for the king. His castle was vast, its towers numerous, his Crimson Devils stationed in unexpected eaves. Then there were the king’s gaudy wax replicas featured in most of the castle windows: Atlas aiming a cannon out of the armory at an invisible enemy; Atlas studying the heavens through a telescope on his balcony; Atlas corrupting a wax sculpture of an Atlantean maid against the windowsill of his bedroom.

At last, they found a brooding Atlas leaning out the tallest tower toward the ocean. Wind rustled his wild red hair. Eureka steered Peggy toward him.

Crimson Devils stood guard behind the king in what appeared to be a strategy room. Behind the girls, old men with plaited golden hair and red velvet robes gathered around a water map.

Peggy’s coat was camouflaged against the travertine palace. She flew close to the walls, beating her moth wings, staying out of Atlas’s view, brushing Eureka’s legs against the palace every now and then.

“The arks are ready, sir,” a male voice called from the room. “The last survivors will board by first light. Perhaps it is time you let the ghostsmith know Eureka is at large?”

Atlas stared out at the sea. The pink sliver of sun in the east had grown into a copper band. “She will come back. We have unfinished business, and she knows it.”

“That’s right, Atlas,” Eureka muttered. “Let’s finish it.”

She clicked her running shoes against the horse’s sides. Peggy swooped before the casement, directly in front of Atlas. A look of exhilarated intrigue crossed his face.

“Wanna get out of here?” Eureka asked.

“You know what I want,” Atlas said.

A dozen Crimson Devils drew crossbows.

“Hold your fire,” Atlas said, then, to Eureka, “You killed six of my guards, you know?”

“Surprised?”

“I’m getting over it.”

“Then come on,” Eureka said.

A very old man with long white hair called from the back of the room, “Sir, we must advise you—”

“Nice to hear from you, Saxby,” Atlas said. “I was about to check your pulse.”

“I’m going to cry for you,” Eureka said to Atlas. “I want to. And I want you with me when I do.”

Atlas pressed a hand against his heart. “It will be an honor.”

“She’s lying.” An elegant Devil angled her crossbow at Eureka.

“If you shoot her you will spend the rest of your life beneath the lightning cloak,” Atlas said.

Slowly, the girl lowered her bow.

“My subjects don’t believe you,” Atlas said intimately.

Eureka found herself flirting back. “I swear.”

“On what?”

She paused, unprepared to take emotional inventory. What principle other than Atlas’s destruction could she pretend to honor now?

“Swear on his life,” Atlas said. “Brooks. When I was part of him you used to look at us in this very particular way. Swear on what was inside you when you looked like that.”

“I swear on my love for my friend that I will cry if you come with me.”

Atlas’s minions pushed forward, jockeying to be included.

“Just you,” Eureka added.

“Yes. Cozier that way.” Atlas smiled. When he climbed onto the windowsill, Peggy flattened one of her moth-wing wings like a ledge. Atlas walked across it to meet Eureka. She held out her hand and was surprised his fit hers as snugly as Ander’s had.

He slid behind her on the horse, pressed his chest into her back. She felt his heat. His arms encircled her waist. Her heart raced—not with fear, but with a strange thrill, like she was sneaking out with a bad ex-boyfriend.

They lifted skyward, above the sleeping city, passing through an innocent golden cloud on their way to their last stop.

Peggy landed on the beach. Her wings spun whorls of sand before resting at her sides. In the distance, the Gossipwitch Mountains glowed in the rising sun. The waveshop hung suspended a mile down the shore.

“I assume Delphine isn’t joining us, but still working feverishly on the final robot?” Atlas asked as he helped Eureka off the horse.

Eureka shrugged as if she didn’t care about anyone but Atlas. “This will just be us.”

“Most of my fantasies start like that.”

Eureka faced the ocean with a racing heart. “I need to clear my mind, to let the sorrow in.”

“Happiness always overstays its welcome.” Atlas drew a lachrymatory from his pocket. “Water is therapeutic in ways your world doesn’t comprehend. We have powerful water shamans in Atlantis. If you need help—”

“I’ll do it on my own.” Eureka walked to the water’s edge. It licked her toes, warm and wonderful. Soon she had waded in up to her waist. She let her feet lift off the sandy floor. She treaded toward Atlas, who had followed her. Their knees brushed below the water. “Would you turn around?”

“I thought you wanted me to see.”

“Just for a moment.” She touched his hand under the water. Her other hand gripped the bleached coral arrowhead stained with Ander’s blood. “I promise it will be worth it.”

Atlas faced the shore. His gold and red tunic rippled with the waves. Eureka took the tunic’s hem and slid the heavy fabric up his back, along his shoulders. “Lift your arms,” she whispered in his ear.

Goose bumps rose on Atlas’s back. “You know how much I want this, but—”

“Shhh. Lift your arms.”

He raised his arms and let her slip his tunic off. It sank into the ocean. Eureka caressed his back. Her nails etched soft pink waves across his skin.

“What are you thinking about?” Atlas asked.

“Terrible things.” She raised the coral arrowhead. The
dagger that could carve a gateway for Atlas to enter Waking World bodies … and now she hoped it would do the same for her.

“Good,” Atlas said.

She plunged the dagger into Atlas’s back, enjoying the feel of his flesh catching the blade, giving way. His scream rang out. He spun and lunged as Eureka darted underwater.

She had not swum without her thunderstone in a long time. Salt stung her eyes. Atlas’s blood clouded the water. From below, she watched him thrash, then lost him in a pool of panicked splashing.

She twirled, anticipating his attack from all directions. Her lungs burned with the need for air, but surfacing would be surrendering. Atlas could swim like a shark.

She had more work to do. Ander had only one set of gill-like slashes—and had not been possessed. Brooks, who had housed this monster’s mind inside him, bore two sets. If Eureka wanted to get inside Atlas, wherever he was, she had to cut him a second time.

A jet of hot blood spooled over her shoulder. Eureka turned as Atlas’s arm closed around her neck. She tried to swivel free, but he held fast. Her dagger stabbed at the water, his body barely out of her reach. She bit his forearm. Her teeth touched bone. Atlas squeezed her neck until she gagged on bloody water.

His other elbow crushed her nose. She felt the heat inside
her head, tasted thick blood in the back of her throat. Her vision blurred. Blood was everywhere. She clasped her dagger tightly as Atlas pumped his legs to reach the surface.

When they broke through he released her neck, grabbed her wrists, and tried to wrest the dagger from her.

“I hope that felt good,” Eureka said. “Because I’m about to do it again.”

“I can take what I want for free—or you can pay to part with it.” Atlas drove the hand holding the dagger toward her neck. “But I will have your tear.”

Eureka laughed as the dagger sliced her skin and more blood flowed into the ocean. “Yes, you will.”

She strained forward and snatched the coral dagger from her fingers with her teeth. When Atlas dropped her wrists to grab it, she slipped underwater. She swam toward him, a piranha with a single tooth. She found his back. With a nod of her head, she tore into his flesh.

The dagger plunged deeper than she’d expected. She still held it in her mouth, but Eureka’s face now felt like it was a part of Atlas.

She felt something lift away, and then she felt nothing—at least, not in any way she was used to feeling. It had taken forever and happened so soon:

Eureka was inside the monster. Everything else was gone.

His interior was an ocean, barbed with reefs of dead coral, sharper than the dagger she’d used to cut her way inside, sharper
than anything she’d ever conceived. What once she would have seen with her eyes and felt with her body, Eureka now sensed with her mind. All feeling had disappeared, replaced by a new
knowing.

Then the coral slashed her thoughts—and Eureka could no longer … remember … her mission. She blacked out on a sharp shore inside him.