Delphine wiped sea mist from her face. “Did you know I have had thirty-six Tearline daughters? I loved them all—cruel ones, bashful ones, dramatic ones, homely ones—but you are my favorite. The dark one. I knew it would be you who reunited us.”
There was endless adoration in Delphine’s voice that reminded Eureka of the way Diana used to talk to her. It had sometimes made Eureka shy away from Diana’s love. It was the kind of love Eureka didn’t think she would ever understand. Maybe Delphine had not been lying when she said she would do Eureka any favor.
“What you said before, about getting to decide who is truly dead …”
Delphine nodded. “The fate of your friend Brooks. Atlas told me about him.”
“Could you bring him back?”
“Would it make you happy?”
“Then you could bring all these people back.” Eureka pointed at the ghosts filling the machines. “You could stop turning corpses into weapons and bring them back to life.”
Delphine frowned. “I suppose I could.”
“How?” Eureka asked.
“If you’re asking about the limits of my powers, I have yet to find them.” Delphine clasped her hands beneath her chin. “But I believe you’re asking what I will do. These ghosts have a higher purpose. I promise you won’t miss them when they’re gone. But”—she smiled—“our army can spare one. Even a strong one. Assuming he has not been pulverized. You shall have your Brooks, on one condition.”
“Name it.”
“You must never leave me.” Delphine drew Eureka into a tight embrace. “I’ve waited too long to hold you. Say you’ll never leave me.” Then she whispered, “Call me Mother.”
“What?”
“I can give you what you want.”
Eureka glanced up at the suspended wave and saw in it the wave that had killed Diana, that wave that had stolen Brooks away. An instinct rushed into her: she didn’t understand why, but she knew if she could get Brooks back, somehow she could fix things.
She pushed through her sickened heart into a black space where there had never been a Diana and no reason to feel a thing about using this word:
“Mother.”
“Yes! Go on!”
Eureka swallowed. “I will never leave you.”
“You’ve made me so … happy.” Delphine’s shoulders shook as she pulled away. A single tear shone in the corner of the girl’s left eye. “What’s about to happen, what I’m about to do for you, Eureka, you must never tell anyone. It must be our special secret.”
Eureka nodded.
Delphine took a step back and blinked. The tear left her eye and fell.
When it hit the sand, Eureka felt it deep inside her. She watched the earth split open as a single white narcissus flower sprang up from the sand. It grew rapidly, rising several feet, branching out into more flowers, countless blooms, until the plant was taller and wider than Eureka.
Then, slowly, the flower transformed into a figure. A body. A boy.
Brooks blinked, stunned to find himself before Eureka. His hair was long and untamable. He wore cutoffs, a green Tulane sweatshirt, his father’s old Army baseball cap—the same clothes he’d worn the last day they’d sailed together at Cypremort Point. Goose bumps rose on his skin, and Eureka knew that he was real. He looked at his hands, up at the suspended wave, into Eureka’s eyes. He touched his face. “I didn’t know the dead could dream.” He gazed at Delphine, who walked to stand beside them. “Maya?”
“You may call me the ghostsmith.” Delphine bowed slightly.
Brooks gasped, and Eureka wondered how he had experienced Delphine from the other side. His eyes housed a darkness that made Eureka feel less alone.
“I decide who is dead and who is not,” Delphine said. “And you are not.”
Eureka threw her arms around Brooks. He smelled like the old Brooks and sounded like the old Brooks; he held her like no one could but Brooks. Even though she had been tricked before, she knew this was real.
“Eureka,” he whispered in a voice that chilled her to her core. “It’s my fault. I couldn’t climb it, so he took over. Now there’s no way out.”