“I borrowed a band of wind.”
“Then why didn’t you freeze my tears before I cried the first time? Why didn’t someone stop me?”
Ander looked as haunted as Eureka had felt when she lost Diana. Outside of her own reflection, she had never seen anyone look so sad. It attracted her to him even more. She was desperate to touch him, to be touched—but Ander stiffened and turned away.
“I can move some things around to help, but I can’t stop you. There is nothing in the universe half as strong as what you feel.”
Eureka faced the girl in her half-dug grave. Her dead eyes were open, blue. Rain gave them vicarious tears.
“Why didn’t you tell me how dangerous my feelings were?”
“There’s a difference between power and danger. Your feelings are more powerful than anything in the world. But you shouldn’t be afraid of them. Love is bigger than fear.”
A high giggle made both of them jump.
Three women wearing amethyst-colored caftans stepped out from behind scrubby trees on the other side of the stream. Their garments were woven out of orchid petals. One was very old, one was middle-aged, and one looked young and crazy enough to have roamed the halls of Evangeline with Cat and Eureka. Their hair was long and lush, ranging from silver to black. Their eyes scoured Eureka and Ander. Swarms of buzzing bees made clouds in the air around their heads.
The youngest wore a silver necklace with a charm at the end that gleamed so brightly, Eureka couldn’t make out what it was. The girl smiled and fingered the chain.
“Oh, Eureka,” she said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
6
ENEMIES CLOSER
The women were so strange they were familiar, like dreaming of a future déjà vu. But Eureka couldn’t imagine where she would have seen anyone like them before. Then Madame Blavatsky’s scratchy voice entered her mind, and she remembered sitting on the bayou behind her house at sunrise, listening to the sage old woman read from her translation of The Book of Love.
The muscles in Eureka’s face tightened as she struggled to accept that she was experiencing something she had longed for as a child: characters from a book had come to life—and it was terrible. There was no way to flip ahead and reassure herself that this chapter would end happily. She knew no more than the hero of her story knew; she was the hero, and she was lost.
She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin.
The women arched their black eyebrows.
“Go on,” the middle-aged one goaded. “Say it.” Her tongue was forked like a snake’s.
“Gossipwitches,” Eureka said in a tone more dramatic than she had intended.
In The Book of Love, the gossipwitches were ageless sorceresses who lived in the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. They were no one’s confidants but knew everyone’s secrets. They’d warned Selene that she and Leander might escape the island, but they would never escape Delphine’s curse.
Doom decorates your hearts and will forevermore.
When Madame Blavatsky had translated that line, the word forevermore had clutched Eureka’s heart. Selene was her ancestor; Leander was Ander’s ancestor. Could the gossipwitches’ ancient curse touch what Eureka and Ander felt for each other? Was there more to Eureka’s ancestry than forbidden tears? Was love impossible, too?
“Gossipwitches!” the oldest woman hooted, and Eureka realized that all the witches’ tongues were forked. The eldest one’s black eyes were twinkly and enchanting, reminding Eureka of her grandmother Sugar’s. It was easy to see how stunning the witch must have been in her youth. Eureka wondered how long ago that youth had been.
The old witch smacked her two companions’ backs, sending raindrops flying from their orchid garments like fireworks. “The young are so attached to classifications!”