“What about Brooks? If he comes back—”
“He isn’t coming back,” Ander said, “not in any way you’d want to see him. We need to focus on getting you and your family to safety as soon as possible. Somewhere far from here.”
Eureka shook her head. “Dad and Rhoda would commit me again before they’d agree to leave town.”
“This isn’t a choice, Eureka. It’s the only way you’ll survive. And you have to survive.” Then he kissed her hard, holding her face in his hands, pressing his lips deeply into hers until she was breathless.
“Why do I have to survive?” Her eyes ached with exhaustion she could no longer deny. Ander noticed. He guided her to the bed, pulled back the covers, then laid her down and draped the blankets over her.
He knelt at her side and murmured into her good ear: “You have to survive because I won’t live in a world without you.”
29
EVACUATION
When Eureka awoke the next morning, dim, silvery light shone through her window. Rain drummed against the trees. She yearned to let the storm lull her back to sleep, but her left ear was ringing, reminding her of the strange melody Ander had conjured when he unsealed Diana’s locket. The Book of Love was cradled in her arms, spelling out the prophecy of her tears. She knew she had to get up, to face the things she’d learned the night before, but an ache in her heart held her head against her pillow.
Brooks was gone. According to Ander, who seemed to have been right about so much else, Eureka’s oldest friend wasn’t coming back.
A weight on the other side of her bed surprised her. It was Ander.
“Have you been here all night?” she asked.
“I’m not leaving you.”
She crawled across the bed toward him. She was still in her bathrobe. He wore his clothes from the night before. They couldn’t help smiling as their faces drew near each other. He kissed her forehead, then her lips.
She wanted to pull him down onto the bed, to hold and kiss him horizontally, to feel the weight of his body on hers, but after a few soft pecks, Ander rose and stood at the window. His arms were crossed behind his back. Eureka could picture the way he would have stood there all night, scanning the street for a Seedbearer silhouette.
What would he have done if one of them had come to her house? She remembered the silver case he’d pulled from his pocket that night. It had terrified his family.
“Ander—” She meant to ask what had been inside that box.
“It’s time to go,” he said.
Eureka groped for her phone to check the time. When she remembered it was lost, she imagined it ringing somewhere in the rain-swept Gulf, amid a silver school of fish, being answered by a mermaid. She rummaged through her nightstand for her plastic polka-dot Swatch watch. “It’s six in the morning. My family will still be asleep.”
“Wake them up.”
“And tell them what?”
“I’ll tell everyone the plan as soon as we’re together,” Ander said, still facing the window. “It’s better if there aren’t too many questions. We’ll need to move quickly.”
“If I’m going to do this,” Eureka said, “I need to know where we’re going.” She’d slid from the bed. Her hand rested on his sleeve. His bicep flexed against her touch.
He faced her and ran his fingers through her hair, drawing his nails softly along her scalp, the nape of her neck. She’d thought it was sexy when he ran his fingers through his own hair. This was even better.
“We are going to find Solon,” he said. “The lost Seedbearer.”
“I thought you said he was in Turkey.”
For a moment, Ander almost smiled, then his face went strangely blank. “Luckily I salvaged a boat yesterday. We sail as soon as your family is ready.”
Eureka watched him carefully. There was something in his gaze—satisfaction suppressed by … guilt. Her mouth felt dry as her mind made a dark connection. She didn’t know how she knew.
“Ariel?” she whispered. Brooks’s boat. “How did you do that?”