Kate, Lauren - Teardrop 02 - Waterfall by Kate Lauren

Author:Kate, Lauren [Kate, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-97632-1
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2014-10-28T04:00:00+00:00

17

TRYSTS

Cat was gone.

Eureka returned upstairs to find a pallet of empty blankets where she’d last seen her friend. She checked the kitchen, all six candlelit alcoves in Solon’s salon, the tiny bathroom off the staircase. Cat had fled the Bitter Cloud.

Eureka had known Cat long enough to guess where she had gone. The Poet had pointed out his rooftop from Solon’s veranda the night they arrived. It was just across the Tearline pond. For the first time, Eureka regretted not telling the others she’d seen Atlas the night before. Now Cat had crossed the witches’ glaze without knowing he was near. If Atlas found her, he would look like Brooks to her. Cat had no idea how much there was to fear.

Eureka snatched her purple bag. She considered taking the witches’ torch, but it would make her too visible in the dark. At the doorway of the guest room she paused to watch the twins and Ander sleep. William whimpered, nestling closer to Claire, who swatted him, then changed her dream-mind and embraced him.

Part of Eureka would feel safer if Ander went with her, but after Seyma’s death, Eureka no longer knew how to be around him. And she didn’t want the twins to wake up alone. Besides, if she did encounter Brooks and Atlas tonight, she couldn’t risk Ander’s trying to kill them.

She aimed to be back before sunrise, before any of them woke up.

Silently, she climbed the stairs to the veranda. Rain pinged off her thunderstone as she looked over the rail. She scanned the rocks for Cat. For Brooks.

The water had risen ten or twenty feet since that morning. On the far side of the pond, mouthlike black openings marked the Celan caves. One of those caves had swallowed Cat. Unless Atlas had found her first.

After circling the veranda’s perimeter, Eureka discovered a place where she could safely jump to the rocks below. She was lowering herself over the rail when a hand grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back.

“Where are you going?” Ander asked.

Their shoulders touched. She wanted to hold him, to be held.

“Cat’s gone,” she said. “I think she’s with the Poet.”

“We have to tell Solon.”

“No. I’m going after her. Go back downstairs.”

“Are you crazy? I’m not letting you go out there, especially not alone.”

“Cat could die,” she said. “If …”

“Say it,” Ander said. “Say what you think might happen to her. I know he’s out there, Eureka. We both know it. What I don’t know is why you’re so eager to walk into his trap.”

He wanted her to deny it, to touch the smooth line of his cheekbone where it angled toward his jaw, and beg him to come with her. She wanted all of that, too—but she couldn’t want it.

“I can’t lose you,” he said.

“You watched me kill someone today. You know what my tears are doing to the world. You act like Cupid shot us with arrows and we’re supposed to forget that everything is falling apart. We’re in hell, and if I don’t stop it, it’s only going to get worse.

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