“Come close, girls,” a peppery voice echoed from inside the mask.
Gem and Aida had been trying to slip silently out the door. They turned and drew slowly toward the ghostsmith.
“Atlas ordered this done?” the ghostsmith asked.
Eureka discerned the faintest lisp.
“Yes,” Aida said. “He—”
“You will pay for his mistake.”
“But—” Aida began to tremble as the ghostsmith removed his mask.
A long, lustrous mane of black hair tumbled from it, revealing pale skin decorated by a dazzling constellation of freckles. Round black eyes peered from a dense curtain of lashes.
The ghostsmith was a teenage girl.
The ghostsmith was Delphine—Eureka’s very-great-grandmother, source of the Tearline and Eureka’s darkness.
The ghostsmith dipped forward and kissed Aida on the cheek. When her lips met Aida’s skin a spark passed between them. A burning odor stung Eureka’s nostrils and the girl’s eyes filled with tears. Aida fell to the ground. She began to weep. She rolled back and forth, lost in sudden sorrow, a black hole opened with a kiss.
Aida’s shaking gradually lessened. Her sobs quieted. Her final cry broke off midway, leaving a feeling of unfinished desperation in the room. She rolled onto her face. The stolen teardrop necklace clinked when it hit the floor.
Delphine’s red lips loomed close to the other Devil. Gem turned toward the hall and ran. The ghostsmith darted after her, had the girl back inside the room in an instant. Her gloved hand clamped around Gem’s neck.
Gem’s lips quivered. “Please.”
Inches separated their skin. Delphine puckered her lips, then paused. “You have worked for me before.”
“Yes,” Gem whispered.
“Did I like you?”
“You did.”
“That is why Atlas chose you to betray me.”
The girl said nothing. Delphine swooped to the ground, lifted Aida’s corpse, and pushed it roughly into Gem’s arms.
“Show Atlas what happens when he crosses me.”
Gem staggered under Aida’s weight and fled down the hall.
Eureka and the ghostsmith were alone. She turned toward the bed.
“Hello.” Delphine’s voice was softer. She’d switched from Atlantean to English. She avoided Eureka’s gaze, looking instead at the bedposts, the desk, the rocking chair. “This must be distracting.”
One swipe of Delphine’s hand along the wall made the familiar furniture vanish. The room was gray and bare. The bed Eureka lay on was now a cot.
“He commissions convincing holograms,” Delphine said, “but Atlas does not appreciate the horror of nostalgia. No one wise looks back at what they were.” She poured water from a pitcher into a goblet that glistened like a star. “Are you thirsty?”
Eureka wanted a drink badly, but she jerked her chin away. Water spilled down her chest.
Delphine put the goblet down. “Do you know who I am?”
Eureka looked into Delphine’s dark eyes and, for a moment, saw her mother. For just a moment, she wanted to be held.
“You’re the villain,” she said.
Delphine smiled. “I am certainly that, and so are you. We’re a team now. I’m sorry about the lightning cloak. When I designed it”—she stroked the blue band on her wrist—“I never anticipated it might be used on you.”
“What is it?” Eureka sensed she wasn’t finished with the lightning cloak. The more she understood, the more she could withstand.
“It is woven of my agony, so pure and deep that it connects to all agony inside everyone it touches. What you felt was my pain seeking your pain in the astral light. Had I not interceded, you would have felt every shred of misery you’ve ever known and ever would know in the future. Call it a mother’s intuition that I got here in time.” Delphine touched Eureka’s cheek with her gloved hand. “Pain is power. Over time I have absorbed it from many thousands of agonized souls.”
“What about Aida?”