Teardrop (Teardrop #1)

Teardrop (Teardrop #1) Page 43

But her inheritance, the thunderstone, the accidents and deaths and ghostly people, the way this storm’s rage felt too in tune with the storm inside of her …

It wasn’t a hurricane. It was Eureka.

Ander stood quietly at the edge of her bed, giving her time and space. His eyes revealed a desperation to hold her again. She wanted to hold him, too.

“Ander?”

“Eureka.”

She pointed to the last page of the translation, which laid out the conditions of the prophecy. “Is this me?”

His hesitation caused Eureka’s eyes to sting. He noticed and inhaled sharply, as if in pain. “You can’t cry, Eureka. Not now.”

He moved toward her swiftly and lowered his lips to her eyes. Her eyelids fluttered closed. He kissed her right eyelid, then her left. Then there was a quiet moment when Eureka could not move, could not open her eyes because it might interrupt the feeling that Ander was closer to her than anyone had ever been before.

When he pressed his lips to hers, she was not surprised. It happened the way the sun rose, the way a flower blossomed, the way rain fell from the sky, the way the dead stopped breathing. Naturally. Inevitably. His lips were firm, slightly salty. They made her body flush with heat.

Their noses touched and Eureka opened her mouth to take in more of his kiss. She touched his hair, her fingers tracing the path his fingers followed when he was nervous. He didn’t seem nervous now. He was kissing her as if he’d been wanting to for a very long time, as if he’d been born to do it. His hands caressed her back, pressed her against his chest. His mouth folded hungrily on hers. The heat of his tongue made her dizzy.

Then she remembered Brooks was gone. This was the most insensitive moment to cash in on a crush. Only it didn’t feel like a crush. It felt life-altering and unstoppable.

She was out of breath but didn’t want to interrupt the kiss. Then she felt Ander’s breath inside her mouth. Her eyes shot open. She pulled away.

First kisses were about discovery, transformation, wonder.

Then why did his breath in her mouth feel familiar?

Somehow, Eureka remembered. After Diana’s accident, after the car was swept to the bottom of the Gulf and Eureka washed ashore, miraculous, alive—never before had she evoked this memory—someone had given her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

She closed her eyes and saw the halo of blond hair above her, blocking out the moon, and felt the life-giving air entering her lungs, the arms that carried her there.

Ander.

“I thought it was a dream,” she whispered.

Ander sighed heavily, as if he knew exactly what she meant. He took her hand. “It happened.”

“You pulled me out of the car. You swam me ashore. You saved me.”

“Yes.”

“But why? How would you even know I was there?”

“I was in the right place at the right time.”

It seemed as impossible as all the other things Eureka knew were real. She stumbled to her bed and sat down. Her mind was spinning.

“You saved me and let her die.”

Ander closed his eyes as if in pain. “If I could have saved you both, I would have. I had to choose. I chose you. If you can’t forgive me, I understand.” His hands were shaking when he ran them through his hair. “Eureka, I am so sorry.”

He had said those same words, just like that, on the first day they met. The sincerity of his apology had surprised her then. It had seemed inappropriate to apologize so passionately for something so slight, but now Eureka understood. She felt Ander’s grief about Diana. Regret filled the space around him like his own thunderstone shield.

Eureka had long resented the fact that she’d lived and Diana hadn’t. Now here was the person responsible. Ander had made that decision. She could hate him for it. She could blame him for her crazy sorrow and attempted suicide. He seemed to know it. He hovered over her, waiting to see which direction she’d take. She buried her face in her hands.

“I miss her so much.”

He fell to his knees before her, his elbows on her thighs. “I know.”

Eureka’s hand closed around her necklace. She opened her fist to expose the thunderstone, the lapis lazuli locket.

“You were right,” she said. “About the thunderstone and water. It does more than not get wet. It’s the only reason the twins and I are alive. It saved us, and I would never have known how to use it if you hadn’t told me.”

“The thunderstone is very powerful. It belongs to you, Eureka. Always remember that. You must protect it.”

“I wish Brooks …,” she started to say, but her chest felt like it was being crushed. “I was so afraid. I couldn’t think. I should have saved him, too.”

“That would have been impossible.” Ander’s voice was cold.

“You mean the way you saving both me and Diana would have been impossible?” she asked.

“No, I don’t mean that. Whatever happened to Brooks—you wouldn’t have been able to find him in that storm.”

“I don’t understand.”

Ander looked away. He didn’t elaborate.

“You know where Brooks is?” Eureka asked.

“No,” he said quickly. “It’s complicated. I’ve been trying to tell you, he’s not who you think he is anymore—”

“Please, don’t say anything bad about him.” Eureka waved Ander off. “We don’t even know if he’s alive.”

Ander nodded, but he seemed tense.

“After Diana died,” Eureka said, “it never occurred to me that I could lose anyone else.”

“Why do you call your mother Diana?” Ander seemed eager to steer the subject away from Brooks.

No one except Rhoda had asked Eureka that question, so she’d never had to voice a real answer. “When she was alive I called her Mom, like most kids do. But death turned Diana into someone else. She isn’t my mother anymore. She’s more than that”—Eureka clutched the locket—“and less.”

Slowly Ander’s hand cupped her hand cupping the two pendants. He squinted at the locket. His thumb rolled over the clasp.

“It doesn’t open,” she said. Her fingers curled around his to still them. “Diana said it was rusted shut when she bought it. She liked the design so much she didn’t care. She wore it every day.”

Ander rose on his knees. His fingers crept around the back of Eureka’s neck. She leaned into his addictive touch. “May I?”

When she nodded, he unclasped the chain, kissed her softly on the lips, then sat next to her on the bed. He touched the gold-flecked blue of the stone. He flipped the locket over and touched the raised intersecting rings on the underside. He examined the locket’s profile on either side, fingered the hinges, then the clasp.

“The oxidation is cosmetic. That shouldn’t prevent the locket from opening.”

“Then why doesn’t it open?” Eureka asked.

“Because Diana had it sealed.” Ander slid the locket off the chain, handed the chain and thunderstone back to Eureka. He held the locket with both hands. “I think I can unseal it. In fact, I know I can.”

28

SELENE’S TEARLINE

A thunderclap shook the foundation of the house. Eureka scooted closer to Ander. “Why would my mother have sealed her own locket?”

“Maybe it contains something she didn’t want anyone to see.” He slipped an arm around her waist. It felt like an instinctive motion, but once his arm was there, Ander seemed nervous about it. The tops of his ears were flushed. He kept looking at his hand as it rested on her hip.

Eureka laid her hand over his to reassure him that she wanted it there, that she savored each new lesson on his body: the smoothness of his fingers, the heat inside his palm, the way his skin smelled like summer up close.

“I used to tell Diana everything,” Eureka said. “When she died, I learned how many secrets she kept from me.”

“Your mother knew the power of these heirlooms. She would have been afraid of having them fall into the wrong hands.”

“They fell into my hands, and I don’t understand.”

“Her faith in you survives her,” Ander said. “She left you these because she trusted you to discover their significance. She was right about the book—you got to the heart of its story. She was right about the thunderstone—today you learned how powerful it can be.”

“And the locket?” Eureka touched it.

“Let’s see if she was right about that, too.” Ander stood in the center of the room, holding the locket in his right hand. He turned it over. He touched its back with the tip of his left ring finger. He closed his eyes, pursed his lips as if he were going to whistle, and let out a long exhale.

Slowly his finger moved over its surface, tracking the six interlocking circles Eureka’s fingers had traced many times. Only, when Ander did it, he made music, as if sweeping the rim of a crystal goblet.

The sound made Eureka leap to her feet. She clutched her left ear, which was not used to hearing but somehow heard these strange notes as clearly as she’d heard Polaris’s song. The locket’s rings glowed briefly—gold, then blue—responding to Ander’s touch.

As his finger moved in figure eights, mazelike swirls, and roseate patterns around the circles, the sound it produced shifted and spun. A soft hum deepened into a rich and haunting chord, then rose into what sounded almost like a harmony of woodwinds.

He held that note for several seconds, his finger tranquil in the center of the locket’s back. The sound was reedy and unfamiliar, like a flute from a far-away, future realm. Ander’s finger pulsed three times, creating church-organ-like chords that flowed in waves over Eureka. He opened his eyes, lifted his finger, and the extraordinary concert was over. He gasped for air.

The locket creaked open without another touch.

“How did you do that?” Eureka approached him in a trance. She leaned over his hands to examine the locket’s interior. The right side was inlaid with a tiny mirror. Its reflection was clean and clear and slightly magnified. Eureka saw one of Ander’s eyes in the mirror and was startled by its turquoise clarity. The left side held what looked like a piece of yellowed paper wedged into the frame near the hinge.

She used her pinky to pry it free. She lifted a corner, feeling how thin the paper was, sliding it carefully out. Beneath the paper she found a small photograph. It had been trimmed to fit the triangular locket, but the image was clear:

Diana, holding baby Eureka in her arms. She couldn’t have been more than six months old. Eureka had never seen this picture before, but she recognized her mother’s Coke-bottle glasses, the layered shag of her hair, the blue flannel shirt she’d worn in the nineties.

Baby Eureka gazed straight at the camera, wearing a white pinafore Sugar must have sewn. Diana looked away from the camera, but you could see the bright green of her eyes. She looked sad—an expression Eureka didn’t associate with her mother. Why had she never shown this picture to Eureka? Why had she gone all these years wearing the locket around her neck, saying it didn’t open?