Teardrop

locket. The thunderstone had not gotten wet, just as Ander had promised. What did it mean?

What did any of it mean? She’d lost Diana’s book and any answers it could have offered. When Madame Blavatsky died, Eureka had also lost the last person whose advice felt reasonable and true. She needed to talk to Ander. She needed to know everything he knew.

She had no way of reaching him.

A glance at the TV sent Eureka groping for the remote. She pressed the button to unmute the sound just in time to see the camera pan the soggy courtyard in the center of her high school. She sat up straight on the couch. The twins looked up from their movie. Rhoda poked her head into the den.

“We’re live at Evangeline Catholic High School in South Lafayette, where a missing local teenager has inspired a very special reaction,” a female newscaster said.

A plastic tarp had been pitched like a tent below the giant pecan tree where Eureka and Cat ate lunch, where she’d made up with Brooks the week before. Now the camera panned a group of students in raincoats standing around a balloon- and flower-strewn vigil.

And there it was: the white poster board with a blown-up photo of Brooks’s face—the picture Eureka had taken on the boat in May, the image on her phone whenever he called. Now he was calling from the center of a glowing ring of candles. It was all her fault.

She saw Theresa Leigh and Mary Monteau from the cross-country team, Luke from Earth Science, Laura Trejean, who’d thrown the Fall Sprawl. Half the school was there. How had they put together a vigil so quickly?

The reporter pushed a microphone into the face of a girl with long, rain-lashed black hair. A tattoo of an angel wing was visible just above the low V-neck of her shirt.

“He was the love of my life.” Maya Cayce sniffed, looking straight into the camera. Her eyes welled up with tiny tears that flowed cleanly down either side of her nose. She dabbed her eyes with the corner of a black lace handkerchief.

Eureka squeezed her disgust into the couch cushion. She watched Maya Cayce perform. The beautiful girl clutched a hand to her breast and said passionately, “My heart’s been broken into a million little pieces. I’ll never forget him. Never.”

“Shut up!” Eureka cried. She wanted to hurl the mug of tea at the television, at Maya Cayce’s face, but she was too shattered even to move.

Then Dad was lifting her from the couch. “Let’s get you to bed.”

She wanted to writhe against his grip but lacked the strength. She let him carry her upstairs. She heard the news return to the weather. The governor had declared a state of emergency in Louisiana. Two small levees had already crevassed, unleashing the bayou onto the alluvial plain. According to the news, similar things were happening in Mississippi and Alabama as the storm spread across the Gulf.

At the top of the stairs, Dad carried her down the hallway to her bedroom, which looked like it belonged to someone else—the white four-poster bed, the desk made for a child, the rocking chair where her father used to read her stories back when she believed in happy endings.

“The police had lots of questions,” he said as he laid Eureka on her bed.

She rolled onto her side so that her back was to him. She didn’t have a response.

“Is there anything you can tell me that would help them with their search?”

“We went out in the sloop past Marsh Island. The weather got bad and—”

“Brooks fell over?”

Eureka curled into a ball. She couldn’t tell Dad that Brooks had not fallen but jumped over, that he’d jumped to rescue the twins.

“How did you get the boat ashore yourself?” he asked.

“We swam,” she whispered.

“You swam?”

“I don’t remember what happened,” she lied, wondering whether Dad thought it sounded familiar. She’d said the same thing after Diana died, only then it had been true.

He stroked the back of her head. “Can you sleep?”

“No.”

“What can I do?”

“I don’t know.”

He stood there for several minutes, through three bolts of lightning and a long shattering of thunder. She heard him scratch his jaw, the way he did during arguments with Rhoda. She heard the sound of his feet against the carpet, then his hand turning the doorknob.

“Dad?” She looked over her shoulder.

He hovered in the doorway.

“Is it a hurricane?”

“They haven’t called it that yet. But it looks clear as day to me. Call if you need anything. Get some rest.” He closed the door.

Lightning split the sky outside and a blast of wind loosened the lock on the shutters. They creaked aside. The pane was already raised. Eureka leapt up to shut it.

But she didn’t leap fast enough. A shadow fell across her body. The dark shape of a man moved across the bough of the oak tree by her window. A black boot stepped into her room.

27 THE VISITOR

Eureka did not scream for help.

As the man climbed through her window, she felt as ready for death as she had when she’d swallowed the bottle of pills. She’d lost Brooks. Her mother was gone. Madame Blavatsky had been murdered. Eureka was the hapless thread connecting all of them.

When the black boot came through her window, she waited to see the rest of the person who might finally put her and those around her out of the misery she produced.

The black boots were connected to black jeans, which were connected to a black leather jacket, which was connected to a face she recognized.

Rain spat through the window, but Ander had stayed dry.

He looked paler than ever, as if the storm had washed the pigment from his skin. He seemed to glow as he stood against the window, towering over her. His measuring eyes made her bedroom smaller.

He closed the window, slid the bolt into place, and closed the shutters as if he lived there. He took off his jacket and draped it over her rocking chair. The definition of his chest was clear through his T-shirt. She wanted to touch him.

“You’re not wet,” she said.

Ander combed his fingers through his hair. “I tried to call you.” His tone sounded like arms reaching out.

“I lost my phone.”

“I know.” He nodded and she understood that somehow he really did know what had happened today. He took a long stride toward Eureka, so quickly she couldn’t see what was coming—and then she was in his arms. Her breath stuck in her throat. A hug was the last thing she’d expected. Even more surprising: it felt wonderful.

Ander’s hold on her had the kind of depth she’d felt with only a few people before. Diana, Dad, Brooks, Cat—Eureka could count them. It was a depth that suggested profound affection, a depth that bordered on love. She expected to want to pull away, but she leaned closer.

His open hands came to rest against her back. His shoulders spanned hers like a protective shield, which made her think of the thunderstone. He tilted his head to cradle hers against his chest. Through his T-shirt, she could hear his heart throbbing. She loved the sound it made.