Eureka staggered against the wall. She wondered what Madame Blavatsky’s last thought had been. She tried to imagine the kind of prayers the woman might have said on her way out of the world, but her mind was blank with shock. She sank to her knees. Diana always said that everything in the world was connected. Why hadn’t Eureka stopped to consider what The Book of Love had to do with the thunderstone Ander knew so much about—or the people he’d protected her from on the road? If they were the ones who’d done this to Madame Blavatsky, she felt certain they’d come in search of The Book of Love. They had murdered someone over it.
And if that was true, Madame Blavatsky’s death had been her fault. Her mind went to the Confession booth, where she’d go on Saturday afternon with Dad. She had no idea how many Hail Marys and Our Fathers she’d have to say to clear that sin.
She should never have insisted they carry on with the translation. Madame Blavatsky had warned her of the risks. Eureka should have connected the old woman’s hesitation to the danger Ander said Eureka was in. But she hadn’t. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to. Maybe she wanted one thing sweet and magical in her life. Now that sweet and magical thing was dead.
She thought she was going to gag, but she didn’t. She thought she might scream, but she didn’t. Instead she knelt closer to Madame Blavatsky’s chest and resisted the urge to touch her. For months she had longed for the impossible opportunity to cradle Diana after her death. Now Eureka wanted to reach for Madame Blavatsky, but the open wounds held her back. Not because Eureka was disgusted—though the woman was in gruesome shape—but because she knew better than to implicate herself in this murder. She held back, knowing that no matter how much she cared, there was nothing she could do for Blavatsky.
She imagined others coming upon this sight: the gray pallor Rhoda’s skin would take on, the way it did when she was nauseated, making her orange lipstick look clownish; the prayers that would stream from the lips of Eureka’s most pious classmate, Belle Pogue; the disbelieving curses Cat would spew. Eureka imagined she could see herself from outside herself. She looked as lifeless and immobile as a boulder that had been lodged in the apartment for millennia. She looked stoic and unreachable.
Diana’s death had killed death’s mysteries for Eureka. She knew death was waiting for her, like it had been for Madame Blavatsky, like it was for everyone she loved and didn’t love. She knew that human beings were born to die. She remembered the last line of a Dylan Thomas poem she’d once read on an online grief forum. It was the only thing that made sense to her when she was in the hospital:
After the first death, there is no other.
Diana was Eureka’s first death. It meant that Madame Blavatsky’s death was no other. Even Eureka’s own death would be no other.
Her grief was powerful; it just looked different from what people were used to.
She was afraid, but not of the dead body before her—she’d seen worse in too many nightmares. She was afraid of what Madame Blavatsky’s death meant for the other people close to her, dwindling as their numbers were. She couldn’t help feeling robbed of something, knowing that she would never understand the rest of The Book of Love.
Had the murderers taken her book? The thought of someone else possessing it, knowing more of it than she did, enraged her. She rose and moved toward Blavatsky’s breakfast bar, then her nightstand, searching for any sign of the book, being as careful as possible not to alter what she knew would be a crime scene.
She found nothing, only heartache. She was so miserable she could hardly see. Polaris squawked and pecked the edges of Madame Blavatsky’s cloak.
Everything might change with the last word, Eureka thought. But this couldn’t be Madame Blavatsky’s last word. She deserved so much more than this.