Waterfall by Lauren Kate Read Free Book Online Page B

do?”
    “There is an ancient rubric predicting the power of each tear shed—”
    “You didn’t tell me that!” Eureka’s breath came shallowly. “How many tears have I shed?”
    She started to wipe her face, but Ander grabbed her hands. Her tears hung like grenades.
    “Solon will explain—”
    “Tell me!”
    Ander took her hands. “I know you’re scared, but you must stop crying.” He reached around and cradled the back of her head in his palm. His chest swelled as he inhaled. “I will help you,” he said. “Look up.”
    A narrow column of swirling air formed over Eureka’s head. It twisted faster, until a few raindrops faded and slowed … and turned into snow. The column became thick with bright, feathery flakes that tumbled down and dusted Eureka’s cheeks, her shoulders, her sneakers. Rain thundered against the rocks, splashing into the puddles all around them, but over her head the storm was an elegant blizzard. Eureka shivered, enthralled.
    “Stay still,” Ander whispered.
    She felt goose bumps as hot tears cooled, then froze against her skin. She reached to touch one, but Ander’s fingers covered hers. For a moment they held hands against her cheek.
    He drew a spindle-shaped silver vial from his pocket. It looked like it had been crafted of the same orichalcum as theanchor. Carefully, he pulled the frozen tears from Eureka’s face and dropped them into the vial, one by one.
    “What is that?”
    “A lachrymatory,” he said. “Before the flood, when Atlantean soldiers went to war, their lovers made presents of their tears in vials like this.” He placed the pointed silver lid atop the vial, slipped it into his pocket.
    Eureka was jealous of anyone who could shed tears without deadly consequences. She would not cry again. She would make a lachrymatory in her mind where her frozen pain could live.
    The snowflakes on her shoulders began to melt. Her wrist ached more deeply and miserably than before. The windy rain returned. Ander’s hand brushed her cheek.
    There now,
she remembered him saying the first time they’d met,
no more tears.
    “How did you do that,” she asked, “with the snow?”
    “I borrowed a band of wind.”
    “Then why didn’t you freeze my tears before I cried the first time? Why didn’t someone stop me?”
    Ander looked as haunted as Eureka had felt when she lost Diana. Outside of her own reflection, she had never seen anyone look so sad. It attracted her to him even more. She was desperate to touch him, to be touched—but Ander stiffened and turned away.
    “I can move some things around to help, but I can’t stopyou. There is nothing in the universe half as strong as what you feel.”
    Eureka faced the girl in her half-dug grave. Her dead eyes were open, blue. Rain gave them vicarious tears.
    “Why didn’t you tell me how dangerous my feelings were?”
    “There’s a difference between power and danger. Your feelings are more powerful than anything in the world. But you shouldn’t be afraid of them. Love is bigger than fear.”
    A high giggle made both of them jump.
    Three women wearing amethyst-colored caftans stepped out from behind scrubby trees on the other side of the stream. Their garments were woven out of orchid petals. One was very old, one was middle-aged, and one looked young and crazy enough to have roamed the halls of Evangeline with Cat and Eureka. Their hair was long and lush, ranging from silver to black. Their eyes scoured Eureka and Ander. Swarms of buzzing bees made clouds in the air around their heads.
    The youngest wore a silver necklace with a charm at the end that gleamed so brightly, Eureka couldn’t make out what it was. The girl smiled and fingered the chain.
    “Oh, Eureka,” she said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”



6
ENEMIES CLOSER
    T he women were so strange they were familiar, like dreaming of a future déjà vu. But Eureka couldn’t imagine where she would have seen anyone like them before. Then Madame Blavatsky’s