“Don’t worry. It’s done.”
“I’m worried about Brooks, not his boat. Did you see him? Did you even look for him?”
Ander’s face tensed. His eyes flicked to the side. After a moment, they returned to Eureka’s, released of their hostility. “There will come a time when you will know the entirety of Brooks’s true fate. For everyone’s sake, I hope that is a long way off. In the meantime, you must try to move on.”
Her eyes clouded over; she barely saw him standing before her. In that moment, she wanted more than anything to hear Brooks call her Cuttlefish.
“Eureka?” Ander touched her cheek. “Eureka?”
“No,” Eureka murmured. She was talking to herself. She stepped away from Ander. Her balance was off. She stumbled into her nightstand and back against the wall. She felt as cold and stiff as if she’d spent the night on an icecap in the middle of the Arctic Circle.
Eureka couldn’t deny the change in Brooks the past few weeks, the shockingly cruel and disloyal behavior she didn’t recognize. She tallied the number of conversations in which Brooks had probed for information about her emotions, her lack of crying. She thought of Ander’s immense and inexplicable hostility toward him from their first encounter—then she thought about the story of Byblis and the man she’d once been close to, the man whose body became possessed by the Atlantean king.
Ander didn’t want to say it, but the signs were all pointing toward yet another impossible reality.
“Atlas,” she whispered. “The whole time, he wasn’t Brooks. He was Atlas.”
Ander frowned but said nothing.
“Brooks isn’t dead.”
“No.” Ander sighed. “He isn’t dead.”
“He was possessed.” Eureka could barely get the words out.
“I know you cared for him. I would not wish Brooks’s fate on anyone. But it happened, and there’s nothing we can do. Atlas is too powerful. What is done is done.”
She hated the way Ander spoke in the past tense about Brooks. There had to be a way to save him. Now that she knew what had happened—that it had happened because of her—Eureka owed it to Brooks to get him back. She didn’t know how, only that she had to try.
“If I could just find him …” Her voice faltered.
“No.” Ander’s sharpness stole Eureka’s breath. He glared into her eyes, searching them for signs of tears. When he didn’t find them, he seemed vastly relieved. He slipped the chain with the thunderstone and locket over Eureka’s head. “You are in danger, Eureka. Your family is in danger. If you trust me, I can protect you. That’s all we can afford to focus on right now. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she said, halfheartedly, because there had to be a way.
“Good,” Ander said. “Now it’s time to tell your family.”
Eureka wore jeans, her running shoes, and a pale blue flannel shirt as she walked down the stairs holding Ander’s hand. Her purple school bag was draped over her shoulder, The Book of Love and Madame Blavatsky’s translation tucked inside. The den was dark. The clock on the cable box blinked 1:43. The storm must have made the power go out in the night.
As Eureka felt her way around the furniture, she heard the click of a door opening. Dad appeared in a sliver of lamplight in his bedroom doorway. His hair was wet, his shirt wrinkled and untucked. Eureka could smell his Irish Spring soap. He noticed the two dark forms in the shadows.
“Who’s there?” He moved quickly to turn on the light. “Eureka?”
“Dad—”
He stared at Ander. “Who is this? What’s he doing in our house?”
Ander’s cheeks had more color than Eureka had ever seen in them. He straightened his shoulders and ran his hands through his wavy hair twice. “Mr. Boudreaux, my name is Ander. I’m a … friend of Eureka’s.” He flashed her a small smile, as if, despite everything, he liked saying that.
She wanted to jump into his arms.