MONDAY AFTERNOON, AVERY stepped off the monorail in New Jersey and pulled her navy coat tighter around her shoulders. She began the walk up to Cifleur Cemetery, ignoring the lone hover that detected her movements and began to float alongside her, flashing a hopeful green to indicate that it was free. Avery needed the walk right now. She’d woken up this morning feeling listless and hollow, her pillow soaked with tears. No matter how hard she worked at it during the day, every night she forgot that she and Atlas were over, and then she had to wake up and remember the cold harsh truth all over again.
She felt isolated and lonely, and worst of all, she couldn’t even talk to anyone about it. She’d thought fleetingly of Leda, but although they were making peace, the whole Atlas thing was still too raw for Avery to discuss it with her. She really missed Eris.
Which was how she’d ended up here, at the cemetery, wearing her heaviest coat and cowboy boots—the brown ones with white detail that Eris had always begged to borrow. It seemed somehow fitting. She passed the main front gates, nodding at the security cam installed there, and turned left toward where Eris was buried, in the middle of the Radsons’ family plot. Despite everything that had happened with Eris’s father in life, he’d ended up claiming her in death, after all.
Avery hadn’t been back since Eris’s interment, after the funeral service and the seemingly endless visitation—which they’d held in an impersonal rented event space, since Eris’s mom was still living downTower, and Eris’s dad at the Nuage. By that point, the only people left had been Eris’s parents and grandmother, and the Fullers … and Leda. Avery remembered standing in the blistering wind, watching the priest lower the tiny urn containing Eris’s ashes into the ground, thinking that this couldn’t be all that remained of her expansive, vibrant friend.
She picked her way down the gravel path until she found Eris’s headstone. It was smooth, with nothing inscribed on it but her name: until you tapped the top, and a hologram materialized before you, of Eris smiling and waving. Avery thought it was a bit absurd, but then, Caroline Dodd-Radson had always insisted on the newest and trendiest in all things. Even funeral accessories.
Tears pricked at Avery’s eyes as she stood there, wishing more than anything that she could talk to her friend.
So talk, she thought. There was no one around to hear, and what did it matter anyway? She shook out her scarf, spread it over the cut grass, then sat down and cleared her throat. She felt a little foolish.
“Eris. It’s me, Avery.” She imagined her friend sitting there, her flecked amber eyes wide with amusement. “I brought you a few things,” she went on clumsily, pulling the items from her bag one by one. “A gold sequin, from that dress you let me borrow for the holiday party one year.” She set it carefully by the headstone, letting it catch the light of the sun in a way Eris would love. “Your favorite perfume.” She spritzed the jasmine scent Eris always used to wear. “Your favorite raspberry bonbons from Seraphina’s,” she added, unwrapping one of the smooth dark chocolates and then holding it uncertainly, wondering why she’d even brought it. She hesitated before popping it into her mouth. Eris would want Avery to enjoy it here, with her.
She started to lean back, but felt a lump in her bag.
“Oh, and the candle!” Avery fumbled in her bag for a beauty wand, flicked the setting to HEAT, and held it determinedly to the stumpy remain of the IntoxiCandle she’d stolen from Cord’s. It took a while, but eventually a flame guttered to life on the tiny gold wick, dancing wildly in the wind.
Avery propped herself on her elbows and stared at the candle through lowered lids, remembering what Cord had said, that Eris had been the one to buy the IntoxiCandle in the first place. She wasn’t surprised at all. Eris had a magpie-like obsession with anything bright or sparkling, not to mention anything just slightly forbidden—and the fire-hazard IntoxiCandle was a perfect example of both. Even now its movement was quick and capricious, just like Eris.
Little pockets of serotonin drifted upward as the candle melted down. Avery felt her awareness melting slowly away.
And suddenly she saw Eris, sitting there on her own headstone as easy as you please. She was wearing a fluffy pink dress—like something a little girl would wear, playing dress-up—and her bright, fresh face was devoid of makeup. “Avery?” she asked, swinging her bare feet. Her toes were painted a glittering silver.
Avery wanted to hug her friend, but somehow she knew she wasn’t permitted to touch her. “Eris! I miss you so much,” she said fervently. “Everything is really falling apart without you.”
“I know, I’m the best. What else is new?” Eris said airily, with one of those smiles that seemed to dance about her expressive features. Her perfectly arched brows lowered as she caught sight of the flame. “You brought the IntoxiCandle? I love that thing!”
Avery wordlessly held it out, and Eris reached for it, their hands almost brushing as she did. She inhaled deeply, her eyes closing in rapture. “You got this from Cord, didn’t you?”
“He said I needed it more than he did.” Avery looked down, overwhelmed by a sudden flash of guilt at the thought of that night. It had been a mistake, going over to Cord’s. Maybe if she hadn’t made such a point of obviously flirting with him, Atlas would never have gone home with Calliope—wouldn’t have questioned everything about their relationship—and they never would be in the torturous mess they were in now.
“So what’s going on, then?” Eris asked. “Is it Leda?”
“Things with Leda are actually getting better,” Avery said, faltering. “Even though she did, I mean—”
“It’s okay. We both know she didn’t mean to push me,” Eris said gently. Her hair fell loose over her shoulders, red and gold as liquid fire in the slanting afternoon sun.
“She didn’t mean to,” Avery repeated. “And she feels terrible about it,” she added, knowing that it wasn’t useful, that it was nowhere near enough.
Eris winced, a pained expression on her face. “There are a lot of things I should have done differently that night. It’s not Leda’s fault. But enough about that,” she said briskly. “What’s bothering you, Avery?”
“Atlas, actually,” Avery confessed. Her tone was full of meaning, and a look of comprehension crossed her dead friend’s face.
“Wait. You and Atlas? Really?”
Avery nodded, and Eris let out a low whistle.
“I thought my life was messy,” she finally said, with a mix of sympathy and respect. “But it turns out yours is even more of a disaster.”
“That’s not particularly helpful,” Avery pointed out, with a smile. Eris was the same as always.
“Okay, so it’s a little bit complicated …”
“A lot bit complicated,” Avery corrected, and Eris smiled at the silliness of the phrase.
“Who cares? Life is always complicated. Don’t let other people get in the way of you and Atlas, if it’s what you really want. I learned that one the hard way,” Eris added, her voice small.
“Oh, Eris.” Avery felt a million things at once, guilt and loss and a fluttering regret for what might have been. “I’m so sorry. I just—”
“I mean, you’re not actually related,” Eris went on, with the stubbornness that used to get her into so much trouble. “Screw all the haters, and go be with Atlas, and let that be the end of it.”
“Except that Atlas and I ended things. It was for the best,” Avery said unconvincingly.
“Was it? Because you seem pretty damned miserable to me. Here.” Eris held out the candle. “Cord was right. You need it more than I do.”
Avery realized that she was crying, great fat tears sliding down her cheeks to plop like rain on her sweater. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “For all of it. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, when everything happened with your family. And I’m sorry about that night—”
“Like I said, it’s no one’s fault, Avery,” Eris insisted.
“It was my fault! I opened that trapdoor—I let everyone up on the roof! If it hadn’t been for me, none of this would’ve happened!”
“Or maybe it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t gone up to talk to Rylin, or fought with my girlfriend, or tried to explain things to Leda, or flirted with Cord, or worn my tallest heels. We’ll never know.”
“I just wish …” That things had been different that night, that she’d seen the warning signs with Leda, that she hadn’t thrown that party in the first place.
“You really want to do something for me?” Eris said suddenly, her lovely face turned up to the sun. She closed her eyes. Her lashes fell in thick brushstrokes across her cheeks. “Live, Avery. With or without Atlas, here in New York or on the damned moon, I don’t care. Just live, and be happy, since I can’t. Promise me that.”
“Of course I will. I love you, Eris,” Avery vowed, her heart constricting. It came out a whisper.
“Love you too.”
“Avery?”
She woke to someone shaking her shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“Cord?” She sat up blearily, rubbing at her eyes. The candle was burned out, pink-wrapped chocolates scattered over the grass before her. She shivered and wrapped her arms tighter around herself. The air was biting out here in the real outside, where temperature wasn’t regulated by a mechanical system.
“What are you doing here? Did you come to visit Eris too?” she asked him.
“My parents,” Cord corrected. Of course, she thought clumsily, she should have known. “Did I just catch you napping, here in the cemetery?”
“I didn’t mean to! I was talking to Eris,” Avery said, and felt an immediate pang of embarrassment; she hadn’t meant to admit that—it was too intimate. To her relief Cord just nodded, as if he understood exactly what she meant. “I guess I drifted off,” she added, pushing herself to her feet and starting to collect her things.
She should have been bothered, she thought, that Cord seemed to catch her at all her weakest moments—close to tears at the Hudson Conservancy Ball, making a fool of herself with Zay, and just now, sleeping at the grave of her dead best friend. But maybe because she’d known him so long, because she knew he wasn’t perfect either, Avery didn’t mind.
She thought of how Eris had reacted to the news about her and Atlas, as if it wasn’t all that terrible. It had only been a dream, but still … for the first time, Avery let herself wonder what it would be like to share her secret with someone else. What would Cord say, if she told him? Would he be disgusted, or would he somehow understand?
Footsteps sounded on the path behind them, and they both turned around, startled. A girl about their age stood there, her dark hair cut into bangs. She was wearing a heavy puffy jacket and jeans, and holding a single white rose. Belatedly, Avery realized that she wasn’t moving past—that she’d paused at this entrance, as if she meant to come into the Radsons’ plot, but the sight of Avery and Cord had stopped her.
Before Avery could say anything, the girl had turned and sprinted away, vanishing into the air like smoke.
Avery tried to dismiss it as a coincidence, but the whole walk back to the monorail stop, she couldn’t shake the prickly feeling that someone was watching her.