“Look, I know you don’t believe in magic or anything supernatural, but I do—” I began to say, but she cut me off with the sharp flick of a hand that motioned for silence.
“They found the ring under one of the display cases,” she said coolly.
Relief surged through my limbs. “Really?”
“Apparently, you knocked it to the floor when you were pretending to be a bull in a china shop, so they’ve agreed to let you go if we pay for the broken lamp.”
That was it? After being treated like a common criminal?
No matter. I’d been proven innocent.
“Come,” she commanded. “Before you embarrass yourself any further.”
Not possible.
Feeling a thousand pounds lighter, I rushed to follow my tutor out of the horrible stockroom, through the cramped jewelry stall, and past the crowd of gawkers who’d gathered in the market corridor with uniformed guards. Madame Leroux said something in halting Turkish to the merchant couple and handed them a signed traveler’s check from the booklet that my father had left in her charge. Satisfied, the merchants accepted the payment and made a shooing gesture in my direction.
Glorious, sweet freedom!
I let out a long breath as the guards dispersed the crowd. Nothing to see here. The humiliation of a teenage girl was now complete; thank you for coming. In mere seconds it was as if nothing had ever happened.
“Whew! What a day!” I said to my tutor. She didn’t answer or acknowledge me. She merely marched away from the glinting gold of the jewelry section of the market. I trotted to keep up, and we merged into the fringes of pedestrians strolling under vaulted ceilings. On either side of us, merchants bargained with locals and tourists alike, selling stacks of patterned cloth, rugs, food, spices, and copperware—just about anything you could want. Unless you were a girl with a camera, apparently.
I tried a second time to break Madame Leroux’s icy silence.
“I’m really, truly sorry you had to come down here,” I told her. “I know you’re probably pretty peeved at me right now—”
She stopped suddenly, swinging around to point a finger in my face. “No. I amfurious. And tired of making apologies for you. I was hired to accompany a well-bred, studious lady through Europe. You, Miss Fox, are no lady! You’re a she-demon who attracts anarchy and bedlam.”
“Everyone has a talent?” I said sheepishly with a strained smile.
“You ruined a priceless rug in the middle of the hotel lobby—”
“But I had food poisoning!”
“—and you have the entire Pera Palace staff smuggling newspapers into the hotel for that insatiable habit of yours.”
“Crossword puzzles, Madame Leroux. You’re making me sound like a drug fiend. There’s not a daily crossword in theCumhuriyet.” And if there were, I couldn’t solve it, because the clues would all be in Turkish.
“You caused that poor maid to have a breakdown, reading those devilish books of yours.”
“It was the EgyptianBook of the Dead—an ancient funerary text. I was practicing writing hieroglyphics.” But to be perfectly honest, I’d also been reading a rare translation ofHammer of the Witches, which detailed a selection of medieval magical spells, a subject I found endlessly fascinating. Had I known the housekeeping staff at the hotel was a gaggle of fainting Victorian ladies in need of smelling salts, I would have been more discreet with my personal reading matter.
Madame Leroux, however, had no sympathy. Right now she was shaking her head, eyes squeezed shut, as if somehow in the few short weeks I’d known her, I’d managed to become the biggest disappointment in her life. Well, I had news for her: it takesyearsfor me to properly disappoint someone. Just ask my father... whenever he decided to show up.
“I promise to stay in the hotel until Father returns,” I told Madame Leroux. “Cross my heart, fingers, and toes. Does that make you happy?”
“Do what you want. I cannot stop you. I quit.”
“What?” I glanced around, aware that we were attracting attention.
“You heard me,” she said, long fingers straightening the brim of her hat. “I am done. I quit.”
“You can’t quit. Father has the return train tickets to Europe.”
She tugged down the hem of her jacket. “I’ve been invited to travel through the Middle East.”
I paused, brow wrinkling. “With the hotel’s lounge singer?”
