“Another soul put out of her misery, another bump to my arsenal of pain,” Delphine said. “She was also a message to Atlas. We send each other little notes throughout the day.”
“Take me to him,” Eureka said.
“ ‘Take me’ is such a submissive phrase,” Delphine said, trying too hard to mask her jealousy. “Is that really what you want? Because I can give you anything, Eureka.”
“Why would you help me?”
“Because”—Delphine seemed stunned—“we’re family.” She slipped her gloves off and clasped Eureka’s hand with long, cold fingers. “Because I love—”
“What I want is impossible.”
Delphine sat on the edge of the bed and recovered from Eureka’s interruption. She flashed a lovely smile. “There’s no such thing.”
Eureka could have asked for the safe retrieval of the twins and Cat and Ander—but if that were what she truly wanted, she would never have abandoned them. She wasn’t their protector anymore. Maybe Delphine was right about not looking back at what you used to be.
“All you have to do is ask,” Delphine said.
Eureka would call her bluff. “I want my best friend.”
You really loved him best of all, Atlas had said. Had he been right?
“Then you shall have him,” Delphine said.
“He’s dead.”
Delphine lowered her lips toward Eureka’s, the way she’d done to Aida. But no spark flashed between them, only the warmth of red lips on Eureka’s right cheek, then her left. Diana used to kiss her like that.
She heard a series of metallic snaps as the barbed cuffs were released from around her wrists, then her waist, then her ankles. Delphine slipped an arm under Eureka’s neck and raised her from the bed. “Only the ghostsmith decides who is dead.”
28
THE GHOSTSMITH
Delphine led Eureka through a tunnel made of jewel-toned coral reef. They emerged from a sand dune on an empty beach and left matching trails of footprints as they strode toward the sea. The sun was pink and low.
By sunrise, Gem had said. That was how long Eureka had to defeat Atlas.
Farther down the shore, dark purple rocks rose into jagged mountains.
“Isn’t that where you were born?” Eureka asked Delphine. “You were raised in the mountains by the gossipwitches.”
By now, Esme and the others must have made it back. Eureka imagined Peggy alighting on one of the crags, a dozen delighted witches sliding off her wings. After all these years and all they’d seen, would their return home satisfy them?
Delphine stared into the blue horizon. “Says who?”
“Selene. The Book of Love.” Eureka felt for her bag and realized it was gone, of course, stolen by the Devils along with her crystal teardrop. She was bereft of all the things that used to strengthen her.
It was better that way. Rage strengthened her, the way other people’s pain strengthened Delphine.
“Snuff out that dim fairy tale,” Delphine said. “Our future burns too bright.”
Ahead, a soaring wave climbed the water. It curled like a swimming giant’s arm toward the shore. Eureka braced herself for the wipeout, but where the mighty beast was about to break—where the wave’s foaming lip was inches from shore—it defied gravity and the tides and whatever moon still spun in the sky. It hung, on the verge, as if captured in a photograph.
“What is that?” Eureka asked.
“It is my waveshop.”
“You build waves there?” Eureka had come to associate rogue waves with Seedbearers, but maybe Delphine had been behind the wave that killed Diana.
Delphine tossed her head. “Occasionally. Architecturally.” She gestured at the suspended wave like it was a building she’d designed. “I specialize in the dead and dying. That is why I am called the ghostsmith. My range is wide, as all things yearn to die.”
She led Eureka along the shore until they faced the suspended wave’s barrel. Its trough looked dim and cavernous, like a room with a sand floor and curving water walls. A pale oval of daylight shone through the opposite end.