She had never run this path of narrow, uneven terrain. In the dark hours before the day, it possessed a strange, elusive luster. She liked the way the still gloom of the night held on, trying to eclipse mist-slathered morning. She liked the way Polaris shone like a green candle in the cloud-colored sky. Even if her mission turned out to be senseless, even if she’d invented the bird’s summons at her window, Eureka convinced herself that running was better for her than lying in bed, furious with Brooks and pitying herself.
She hurdled wild ferns and camellia vines and the purple wisteria shoots that crept down from landscaped yards like tributaries trying to reach the bayou. Her shoes slapped the damp earth and her fingers tingled with cold. She lost Polaris around a hard bend in the bayou and sprinted to catch up. Her lungs burned and she panicked, and then, in the distance, through the wispy branches of a willow tree, she saw him perch on the shoulder of an old woman wearing a vast patchwork cloak.
Madame Blavatsky reclined against the willow’s trunk, her mane of auburn hair haloed in humidity. She faced the bayou, smoking a long, hand-rolled cigarette. Her red lips puckered at the bird. “Bravo, Polaris.”
Reaching the willow, Eureka slowed her pace and dipped under the tree’s canopy. The shadow of its swaying branches enveloped her like an unexpected embrace. She wasn’t prepared for the joy that rose in her heart at the sight of Madame Blavatsky’s silhouette. She felt an uncharacteristic urge to rush the woman with a hug.
She hadn’t hallucinated this summons. Madame Blavatsky wanted to see her—and, Eureka realized, she wanted to see Madame Blavatsky.
She thought of Diana, how close to life her mother had seemed in the dream. This old woman was the key to the only door Eureka had left to Diana. She wanted Blavatsky to make an impossible wish come true—but what did the woman want from her?
“Our situation has changed.” Madame Blavatsky patted the ground beside her, where she’d laid out an acorn-brown quilt. Buttercups and bluebonnets rose from the soil bordering the blanket. “Please sit.”
Eureka sat cross-legged next to Madame Blavatsky. She didn’t know whether to face her or the water. For a moment they watched a white crane swoop up from a sandbar and glide over the bayou.
“Is it the book?” Eureka asked.
“It is not the physical book so much as it is the chronicle it contains. It has become”—Blavatsky took a slow drag on her cigarette—“too perilous to share via email. No one must know of our discovery, understand? Not some slipshod Internet hacker, not that friend of yours. No one.”
Eureka thought of Brooks, who was not her friend now, but who had been when he’d expressed interest in helping her translate the book. “You mean Brooks?”
Madame Blavatsky glanced at Polaris, who had settled on the patchwork cloak covering her knees. He chirped.
“The girl, the one you brought to my office,” Madame Blavatsky said.
Cat.
“But Cat would never—”
“The last thing we expect others to do is the last thing they do before we learn we cannot trust them. If you desire to glean knowledge from these pages,” Blavatsky said, “you must swear its secrets will remain between you and me. And the birds, of course.”
Another chirp from Polaris made Eureka massage her left ear again. She wasn’t sure what to make of her new selective hearing. “I swear.”
“Of course you do.” Madame Blavatsky reached into a leather knapsack for an ancient-looking black-bound journal with thick, rough-cut pages. As the old woman flipped through the pages, Eureka saw they were splattered with wildly varying handwriting in a plethora of colored inks. “This is my working copy. When my task is complete, I will return The Book of Love to you, along with a duplicate of my translation. Now”—she used a finger to hold open a page—“are you ready?”
“Yes.”
Blavatsky dabbed her eyes with a gingham handkerchief and frown-smiled. “Why should I believe you? Do you even believe yourself? Are you truly ready for what you are about to hear?”
Eureka straightened, attempting to look more prepared. She closed her eyes and thought about Diana. There was nothing anyone could tell her that could change the love she had for her mother, and that was the most important thing.