“Do I knock?” she asked the guiding moths. They flitted against the door until it absorbed them. Eureka could no longer distinguish them from the other wings.
The door parted, softly severing a vast web of tiny connections, revealing a dazzling room inside.
The walls were made of amethyst; the floor was strewn with orchid petals. Twenty or so gossipwitches lounged around a purple fire. Three of them shared a giant, swaying moth-wing bower. One hung upside down from a brilliant purple pole, her caftan draped over her face.
The witches smoked a long, reedy pipe that curled to a spiral tip. Bright green, licorice-scented fumes swirled in the air above the pipes’ embers. They were smoking artemisia, but unlike the Seedbearers, the gossipwitches seemed to thrive on the drug. They laughed as tipsy bees bumped clumsily around their heads.
Eureka spotted Esme on the far side of the room. She looked revived, as if the secret void in her head had never been exposed, her butterfly never crushed between Cat’s fingers. Eureka tensed with rage and fear that Cat would never recover as completely.
Esme whispered in another youthful witch’s ear, her hands cupped over her mouth, exuding glee over some secret. The way the witches giggled reminded Eureka of girls at Evangeline, girls she would never see again.
When Esme looked up at Eureka, her crystal teardrop necklace gleamed in the shallow of her collarbone. Suddenly Eureka knew what it was, why it had always drawn her eye.
“Your necklace,” Eureka said, feeling light-headed from the fumes.
Esme twirled the charm on its silver chain. “This old thing? Solon gave it to me ages ago. Don’t tell me he wants it back. Unless he changed his mind about the robot?”
“Solon is dead.”
Esme slid one hand onto her hip and walked directly through the fire to Eureka. “Isn’t it a pity,” she lisped through her forked tongue.
“That necklace wasn’t his to trade. It belongs to me.”
Eureka had come for more than the necklace, but since she had nothing to offer in return, she’d decided to make one demand at a time.
The witches whispered to each other, forked tongues flicking over their teeth. The sound became a single wet hiss that snaked its scaly way into Eureka’s bad ear.
Then the hissing stopped. Pouring rain flowed into the silence.
“You may have your family heirloom back.” Esme slipped her hands behind her neck and unfastened the chain.
Eureka nodded stoically, though she wanted to cheer. She reached for the chain, but Esme swung the teardrop crystal inches from Eureka’s hand. Then the gossipwitch jerked it back and cupped it in her own palm. She whispered into Eureka’s bad ear, her replenished stock of bees grazing Eureka’s cheek.
“You will owe us something in exchange.”
“The necklace is mine. I owe you nothing.”
“Perhaps you’re right. But you will still deliver what we want. Fear not, you want it, too.” She smiled. “May I fasten the clasp for you?”
Esme wrapped her long fingers around Eureka’s neck. She smelled like honey and licorice. Her touch was like the soft fuzz of a bee, or a rose just before you’re pricked.
“There,” Esme breathed.
Eureka felt a burst of heat and heard something sizzle. Blue light flashed as the orichalcum chain holding the crystal teardrop entwined around the bronze chain of her mother’s locket. The pendants shifted, ground against each other, like ghosts within a robot. After a moment, the teardrop crystal, the thunderstone, the lapis lazuli locket, even the faded yellow ribbon had converged to form a single, sparkling pendant.
It looked like a very large diamond in the shape of a tear. But inside its smooth, flat surface was a flicker of yellow—from the ribbon—then blue—from the lapis lazuli locket—then steely gray—from the thunderstone, refracting inside the crystal in the purple firelight.
“It fits,” Esme said.
“But my thunderstone,” Eureka said. “Will it still work?”