I couldn’t hold on to the tears any longer. A feral sound escaped my mouth, and I broke down and sobbed.
“Hush now,” he said, reaching through the bars to curl his big hand around the back of my neck. “Foxes don’t cry. And you know I’ll be a blubbering damn mess if you don’t stop.”
I huffed out a little laugh and gripped his wrist, pressing my cheek against it. He smelled familiar, like Turkish tobacco and boot polish. “I thought... I worried you were dead.”
“Me? Never. I’ve told you a thousand times, the devil doesn’t want me and Saint Peter’s busy. You’re stuck with me,” he said, flashing me white teeth in the dark. But his mood sobered quickly, and he released my neck. “You aren’t supposed to be here. You were to be on an ocean liner headed back home.”
“Andyouwere supposed to be in Bucharest! We waited and waited, and I heard all about your drunken misadventure with the major’s wife, FYI—”
“Christ almighty,” he muttered.
“And when you didn’t show up, we telegrammed Jean-Bernard and found out he’d been poisoned—did you know that?”
He nodded. “I talked to him yesterday. Long-distance telephone call cost me a fortune. He’s still in the hospital, but he’s awake.”
“Thank God,” I whispered. “Well, anyway, like I said, we didn’t know if he was going to live, and you didn’t show, so I figured out your cipher—”
“Goddammit,” he muttered.
“You told Huck to give me the journal!”
He groaned, but not unhappily. “How’d you get to be so damn smart? Not from my genes, I’ll tell you that. Unless stubbornness counts.”
“Yes, well. I imagine that doesn’t hurt.” As I wiped my cheeks, I saw his other arm tucked to his chest and bound in a dirty sling made from torn cloth. “You’re injured.”
“Not more than usual. Rothwild’s bruisers jumped me at the train station last night.”
“You’ve been locked up in here since last night?”
“We can talk about it later,” he said with his usual stupid machismo. Nothing ever hurt, he never got sick, and there was always a way out of trouble.
God, I’d missed him.
“No more of that, now,” he warned, eyes glossy. “Need to be quick and get out while we can. How did you get into the cavern?”
“Through the castle,” I said.
He gave me a concerned look, squinting over high, ever-pink cheeks that topped his bushy beard. “You just walked in here? Where’s Huck?”
“With Lovena at the Zissu brothers’ shop.”
“The witch?” He squinted at me, confused. “You found the Zissu brothers? Why is Huck there?”
“He got kidnapped and poisoned?”
“What?”
“Some kind of witchy herb—probably the same one Sarkany used on her sister and maybe Jean-Bernard. But Lovena says she can help him. She’s already helped us. You can trust her.”
He blinked at me with gray eyes and murmured, “Told that boy to protect you or I’d kill him.”
“Well, he’s getting a head start,” I said dryly.
“What in God’s name have the two of you been doing?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “A lot of talking, I can tell you that much.”
A guilty look crossed his face. But only for a moment. Richard Fox never admitted to anything. “Anything else I need to know?”
