Eureka still heard her scream in her mind. She’d leapt from the branch to the ground. She’d knelt beside him on skinned knees. First, she’d tried to pry his eyelids open, because Brooks’s smile was mostly in his eyes and she needed to see it. She’d said his name.

When he didn’t stir or answer, she prayed.

Hail Mary, full of grace …

She said it over and over, till the words were tangled and held no meaning. Then she remembered something she’d seen on TV. She pressed her mouth against his …

Brooks’s arms encircled her and he kissed her, long and deep. His gleeful eyes popped open. “Gotcha.”

She slapped him.

“Why did you do that?” She wiped her lips on the back of her hand, studied the shine their kiss made below her knuckles.

Brooks rubbed his cheek. “So you’d know I wasn’t mad at you.”

“Maybe now I’m mad at you.”

“Maybe you’re not.” He grinned.

In those days, it was impossible to stay mad at Brooks. He’d limped back to the tree, and as he’d ascended its branches, he’d sung new, worse lyrics to the song:

If you shove somebody enough, you’ll tumble wherever they go—

That’s how I got to Memphis, that’s how I got to Memphis.

They never talked about the kiss again.

Now, on the foreign forest floor, Eureka buried her face in his chest. His body seemed at peace. She wondered whether Atlas had finally gone away and left behind the body of her best friend.

She raised her head and studied the galaxy of freckles on Brooks’s cheeks. She brushed hair from his eyes. She felt the scar of his wound. His skin was warm. Were his lips?

She kissed him lightly, hoping like a little girl to revive him, hoping like a little girl to pretend.

She might keep her lips against his forever, penance for having been stupid enough to leave with Atlas, stupid enough to drag Brooks’s body here, stupid enough to abandon everyone else she loved.

He stirred.

“Brooks?” She gulped and said, “Atlas?”

His eyes were closed. He didn’t seem to be conscious—but she had felt something shift. She studied him. His chest was still, his eyelids motionless.

There it was again.

Eureka’s fingers vibrated where they touched his shoulders. A gale swept over Brooks. A warm, buzzy feeling spread to her arms, the back of her neck. She pulled her hands from Brooks’s shoulders as an incandescence rose from his chest and hovered above his body.

Whose essence was this—Brooks’s or Atlas’s? Both of them had shared the body, like the ghost sharing Ovid. Eureka couldn’t see the essence so much as she could sense it. She passed a trembling hand through it.

Cold.

Footsteps sounded on dewy grass. A boy about her age stoodover her. She’d never seen him before, yet he was familiar.

Of course—she had seen him depicted in the illustrations of The Book of Love.

Atlas wasn’t handsome, but there was something alluring about him. His smile was assured. He wore brilliant, finely tailored clothing in shapes and pieces Eureka didn’t have words to describe. They glittered gold and red, as if made of rubies. His reddish-brown hair was curly and wild. His fair skin was lightly freckled, and his eyes were soft copper—but haunted, vacant. They looked past her, into a distance only they could see.

She stood up and matched his height. He’d been with her for so long, but this was the first moment they’d met.

“Atlas.”

He didn’t even look at her.

The incandescence above Brooks’s body swirled toward the boy, and she knew it had not been her best friend’s soul. It was Atlas, discarding Brooks’s body in order to reclaim his own. But where was Brooks’s soul? Atlas closed his eyes and absorbed the incandescence into his chest.

After a moment, when he opened his eyes, they had changed into a deep, penetrating brown, like the center of a redwood tree—far different from the irises he’d had before. Eureka knew she was standing before the most powerful person she had ever met.

She knelt beside Brooks again. His chest was no longer warm. What would happen if she wept now? Could her tears reflood Atlantis and send all of them back underwater? What would happen to the wasted dead?

Atlas tilted his head. “Save your tears.”

His voice was rich and deep and strangely accented. Eureka understood him—and she understood he wasn’t speaking English. He knelt over Brooks, too.

“I didn’t know he was handsome. I can never tell if the inside matches the outside. You know what I mean.”

“Don’t talk about Brooks,” she said. She wasn’t speaking English, either. Intuition for the distant language must flow through her Tearline. The Atlantean tongue rolled fluidly from her, with the tiniest breath of translation in her mind.

“I don’t believe we’ve properly met. My name is—”

“I know who you are.”

“And I know who you are, but introductions aren’t simply polite, they are law in my country, my world.” He took her hand and helped her rise. “You must be my friend, Eureka. Only I am allowed enemies.”

“We’ll never be friends. You murdered the best one I had.”

Atlas’s lips turned downward as he glanced briefly at Brooks. “Do you know why I did it?”

“He was just a vessel to you,” she said, “a way to get what you wanted.”

“And what do I want?” Atlas stared into her eyes and waited.