Waterfall by Lauren Kate Page A

with edges sharp as broken glass. But Solon’s words had made it hard to chew. She thought about Filiz’s penetrating golden eyes.
    “That’s why you sent Filiz and the Poet away before you brought out the food.”
    “Did you really think a deluge of salt water could fall from the sky and not destroy the food chain?” Solon asked. “My assistants think I’m starving, just as they are starving. They must continue to think that. It wouldn’t do for the neighbors to be crawling around on hands and knees, bumping their heads on my glaze. Understand?”
    “Why don’t you share with them?”
    Solon picked up the pitcher, held it high over Eureka’s empty glass, and poured a long stream of water to refill it. “Why don’t you go back in time and not flood the world?”
    Ander snatched the pitcher from Solon and slammed it on the table. Water sloshed onto Eureka’s thighs.
    “How very wasteful,” Solon said.
    “She’s doing the best she can.”
    “She must do better than that,” Solon said. “The third tear is in the world. Soon Atlas will get it.”
    “No,” Eureka said. “We came here so you could help me stop him.”
    Solon dragged a finger down his plate and licked the grease from it. “This isn’t a student council election. Atlas is the darkest force the Waking World has ever known.”
    “How? He’s been trapped under the ocean for thousands of years,” Eureka said.
    Solon stared into the waterfall for a long time. His voice was faint when he spoke at last. “There was a boy who lived two blocks from Byblis when she was a girl in Munich. They took a painting class together. They were … friends. Then Atlas took him. He possessed the mind of an ordinary boy and set a devil loose. At a certain point, Byblis died, but never mind that. Atlas didn’t leave his host’s body for years.” He waved a hand dismally. “The rest, unfortunately, is history. And if Atlantis rises, what the future holds is worse. You haveno idea what you’re up against. You won’t understand until you’re face to face with him at the Marais.”
    Eureka fingered Diana’s locket. Inside, her mother had written the very same word. Eureka popped its clasp and pulled the chain taut to show Solon. “What happens at the Marais?”
    “Time will tell,” Solon said. “What do you know about the Marais?”
    “It’s the Cajun word for ‘swamp.’ ” Eureka pictured the mythical city and its monster king rising from the bayou beyond her house. That didn’t seem right.
    “But a swamp could be anywhere,” Ander said.
    “Or everywhere,” Solon said.
    “You know where it is,” Eureka said. “How do I get there?”
    “The Marais is not on any map,” Solon said. “True places never are. Man has frittered away millennia speculating about where Atlantis once was. Did it droop beyond marlins in Florida, or amid icy Swedish mermaids? Did it sink alongside Antarctic seals? Is it undulating under Bahamian yachts, oozing beneath ouzo bottles in Santorini, wafting like palm fronds off the coast of Palestine?”
    From the bedroom behind the tapestry, William whimpered in his sleep. Eureka rose to go to her brother, who often needed soothing from bad dreams, but the boy grew quiet again.
    Solon lowered his voice. “Or maybe the whole continent just drifted, disinclined to settle down. No one knows.”
    “In other words,” Ander said, “Atlantis could rise from anywhere.”
    “Not at all.” Solon refilled his glass of prosecco. “Over the years the Marais’s latitude and longitude in the Waking World has shifted, but it is and always has been the place from where Atlantis must rise. The seafloor beneath the Marais is pliant in the exact shape of the lost continent. From there, Atlas can bring Atlantis up whole. A successful exhumation.”
    “So it matters where the third tear hits the earth—” Ander said.
    “
If
the third tear hits the earth,” Eureka said.
    “Wherever the third tear hits, Atlantis will still