Waterfall (37 page)

“She is dead,” Eureka said about herself to her best friend.

“No,” Brooks said. The waterfall fell from his hand. It smoked and boiled and disappeared into the ocean.

Delphine pushed him aside and splashed toward Atlas. Her skin was one great greenish-purple bruise. Her hair was a matted nest stuck to her cheeks, and her red lipstick had smeared to a bright pink smudge that reached her chin.

“I decide who is dead,” she said.

In her new body, Eureka towered over Delphine. She was amazed by how delicate, how fragile the ghostsmith appeared. She grabbed the back of Delphine’s head, drew her pink lips forward, and kissed her deeply on the mouth.

Eureka had no body to feel pain, but she could sense the rapturous ache explode in Atlas as his mind was blown back to the depths of his being. Then came the vision Eureka had feared since she decided to kiss Delphine to death:

A cave within a rainy mountain range. A fire bright in the hearth. Love thick as honey in the air. A baby cooing at her mother’s breast. And then, in a flash of lightning, the baby was gone. Wrapped in a fox-fur blanket, tucked in a young man’s arms. The man ran down the mountain, toward another world.

Leander … Come back … My baby …

Delphine’s original misery flowed into the recesses of Eureka’s mind. It was supposed to empower Eureka as she absorbed it, as it killed Delphine. That was what had happened when Eureka kissed the other girls. But this was different, deeply intimate, like losing Diana a second time.

Delphine was the origin of everything Eureka hated about herself. She was the source of Eureka’s darkness and her flood. She was also Eureka’s closest family, her Tearline and her blood. There was no choice to reject or embrace this connection—both were happening all the time. Eureka and Delphine belonged together. Both of them had to die.

She cradled the ghostsmith, kissed her harder, more passionately. She sensed Atlas’s body grow faint. Delphine’s eyelids twitched. Her veins lit up like lightning and her skin began to smoke. Charred flesh bubbled along her body like rivers of tar. Atlas screamed as his lips and hands felt the burns, but Eureka would not let him let go.

The ghostsmith fried from the inside. Eureka didn’t stop kissing her until she slackened in Atlas’s arms and, eventually, was still.

At last Eureka pulled Atlas’s lips away and dropped the ghostsmith’s sizzling, blackened body in the water. Pieces of her floated away. Eureka wondered briefly about the fate of Delphine’s ghost.

“There is one death the ghostsmith doesn’t get to decide,” Eureka said, and wiped Delphine’s kiss from her mouth.

Rough hands shoved her—shoved Atlas—so hard Eureka fell backward in the water. Brooks leapt on top of Atlas, wrapped his hands around the king’s neck. Eureka’s mind clouded from the lack of oxygen.

“Brooks!” she gasped. “It’s me.”

“I know who you are.” He plunged her underwater.

“It’s Eureka!” she spat when she surfaced. “I possessed Atlas like he possessed you. Stop! I’m about to—”

He plunged her down again. She didn’t want to fight him, but she had to. He could not drown Atlas before she cried the tears that would release the wasted dead. She kneed him fiercely in the groin. He reeled away and Eureka came up for air to find him on his knees, wheezing.

“If I weren’t me, would I know you were born at nine thirty-nine p.m. on the winter solstice after putting your mom through forty-one hours of labor?”

Brooks straightened, stared into Atlas’s eyes.

“Would I know you used to want to be an astronaut, because you planned on sailing around the world after college and didn’t want to reach an end to exploration? Would I know roller coasters scare you, though you’d never admit it, though you’ve sat next to me on every one I’ve ever ridden? Or that you kissed Maya Cayce at the Trejeans’ party?” She wiped Atlas’s wet face. “Cat told me. It doesn’t matter.”

“This is a trick.” There were tears in Brooks’s eyes. Not sadness, she sensed, but hope that it was
not
a trick, that Eureka was not actually gone.

“Would I know you took theater for three years because I had a crush on Mr. Montrose? Or that you’re afraid your dad walked out because of you, but you never talk about it because you’ve always seen silver linings? Even when all I am is a rain cloud?” She paused to catch her breath. “If I were Atlas, would I know how much Eureka Boudreaux loves you?”

“Everyone knows that.” Brooks cracked the briefest smile.

She clasped Atlas’s hands to his heart. “Please don’t kill him. If you do, I’ll never have a chance to make things right.”

Brooks waded closer. When they stood inches apart, he closed his eyes. He squeezed Atlas’s hand, which was strong and muscular, a boy’s. He let go and drew his hand near Atlas’s face but didn’t touch it. When he opened his eyes, Eureka watched him struggle to see her spirit.

“What now, bad girl?” he asked.

She laughed with unexpected relief. “You’ve been inside the Filling.…”

Brooks nodded, but seemed reluctant to elaborate, or to remember.

“Delphine brought you back with a special tear. If I can do the same from inside Atlas, I can mend some of what I broke. You were right, there’s no way out for me, but maybe there’s hope for the rest of the world.”

Her vision blurred and she lost sight of Brooks. She thought it was Atlas surfacing, but quickly realized someone else now shared his body.

“Did you think I’d simply die and go away?” Delphine spoke through Atlas in a slow, terrifying voice. “I am the puppet master. I get the last word. This has always been my story to complete.”

Eureka took control of Atlas’s voice. “I know how your story ends.” She fought Delphine for Atlas’s eyesight. Brooks was a dim, distant throb of light at the end of a dark tunnel.
“You made an enemy of other people’s joy because it threatens you. But I’m giving it back to Atlas. I’m going to make him feel so much it undoes the ghastly things you and I have done.”

Atlas laughed with Delphine’s icy viciousness. “You don’t have it in you.”

The ghostsmith resurrected the sharpest doubt, what Eureka thought she had shredded on the coral reef. Eureka’s sadness had caused so much pain. How could anyone reach the level of joy needed to undo that? Fear sent Eureka’s mind reeling toward the knife-edge of the dead white coral, but just before it cut her thoughts apart, her vision focused briefly.…

She thought she saw Brooks take the dagger from Atlas’s hand.

Don’t,
she tried to tell him, but she’d lost control of Atlas’s voice.

Then Atlas screamed, and something bright drew near Eureka’s mind, something that hadn’t been there before. It felt—even though she could not feel—as if someone had taken her hand. Brooks had discarded his own body and entered Atlas, too.

You’re not supposed to be here, Brooks.

I’m supposed to be with you
—she sensed him all around her—
until the end of the world and the ride home after.

It
was
the end of the world, and maybe the beginning, too.
Brooks had found Eureka when she needed a lift more than anyone ever had.

Joy hatched at the back of Atlas’s throat. Eureka sensed from his body’s stiffening that the king had never cried before. When her tears sprang in the corners of his eyes, they were joyful—but they were also vulnerable and rueful, yearning and optimistic.

No emotion was pure. Joy was grief turned inside out, and grief was joy in different lighting, and no one could feel one thing at a time. The tears she’d cried when she flooded the world must have done some good somewhere, because they were tears born of love for Brooks. Those were the tears that brought Solon’s wisdom into her life, the tears that had allowed Cat and the twins to discover their quirks. They were the tears that freed Ander from Seedbearer bonds.

Keep going.
She felt Brooks urge her on, even as she knew he knew she couldn’t stop. Her mind was a waterfall of memories: The twins sharing a swing under a powder-blue canopy of sky. Diana slinking behind Dad in their old kitchen, adding too much cayenne to his soup. Rhoda cleaning closets. Eureka running and running and running across bayous into sunsets. Climbing oak trees to meet Brooks at the top of the moon.

When her tears hit the ocean, they parted the water at Atlas’s waist. A wave pulled back and crashed over his head. For a moment, all four minds inside Atlas swam as one to propel his body above the surface of the sea.

But the sea was no longer the sea. It was a field of blooming white narcissus, buds tangling higher every moment, stems growing wild along the shore, planting roots among the limbs of empty ghost robots.

Then the buds blossomed into people, who turned to one another, old souls in a new world bursting into bloom. The promise of a fresh beginning glittered in everyone’s eyes like dew. Tears, Eureka realized, each one a maze of infinite emotions.

When a rainbow colored Eureka’s vision, she realized she was witnessing her redemption bloom into the world from above. She was free. But if her joy had killed Atlas, where was his corpse? And what had become of the ghostly, disembodied minds of Brooks and Delphine?

The Gossipwitch Mountains stood below her. She saw the twins, rainbow-hued and running to the edge of the witches’ lair. When they saw the endless garden of blossoming souls, Eureka felt their laughter buoy her.

A girl in a brilliant purple gown stepped from the cave to join the twins. Esme smiled and caressed the hollow of her neck where an iridescent black pearl sparkled on a silver chain. Smoke rose from the pearl, and Eureka grasped the darkness trapped inside. Delphine and Atlas had been returned to a new Woe, crystallized inside the gem. The Tearline prophecy was complete and would decorate no heart but Esme’s ever again.

A little ways away from Esme and the twins, Ander stood alone. He gazed upon what Eureka had done and wiped away tears. She wished their love could have followed an alternate history, one where Eureka was still at his side, but sometimes pain was the aftershock of love. When Ander’s foundation stilled, she hoped there would be space for joy in his memories of her.

Soon she saw the rings of Atlantis. Huge wooden arks fanned across a bright blue bay beyond the island. Eureka saw Cat at the helm of one, flirting with a sailor. And far beyond those boats, new worlds were rising, flowering into being, coastlines budding with souls Eureka didn’t recognize and never would. Dad would be down there, though she couldn’t see him, along with the rest of the souls once trapped by her tears. She wondered if Dad remembered all that had happened, how his dying message to Eureka made the difference in the world’s salvation. She tried to let him go with love, just as he’d done with her.

Then Eureka was in the rainbow. She was a memory of something poignant reaching across the sky, crossing a flock of doves. She knew she was stretching toward Diana, and that they’d soon be reunited, excavating Heaven’s pearly clouds.

Are you still with me?
Brooks found her on the bars of color Eureka thought she’d been climbing alone. She thought about his first name, which she rarely did.

Until the end and the ride home after, Noah.

Eternal thanks to my readers: you have opened your hearts to Eureka and bravely shared your own love stories. I’m always here.

To Wendy Loggia, whose faith in this story nurtured my own. To Beverly Horowitz, whose insights are precious gems. To Laura Rennert, whose counsel makes the highest mountain a gently sloping hill. To those who touched this book at Random House and at Andrea Brown—I’m honored to work with the best.

To Blake Byrd, who took me on the sailing voyage that inspired Eureka’s. To Maria Synodinou in Athens, for your conviction about Atlantis. To Filiz at Sea Song Tours in Ephesus, for a mystical afternoon. To Tess Hedlund and Lila Abramson, for connecting me to what matters. To Elida Cuellar, for an essential measure of tranquillity.

To my family, for knowing the drill and loving me despite the racket the drill makes. To Matilda, for new eyes. And to Jason, for exploring with me all the wondrous fruits of love.

LAUREN KATE is the internationally bestselling author of the TEARDROP and FALLEN series. Her books have been translated into more than thirty languages. She lives in Los Angeles. Visit her online at
laurenkatebooks.net
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