“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Don’t I? I know you fall into shite and come out smelling of roses and that you never think of consequences because you’ve never had to. Like now. We’re lost in a foreign country at nightfall and everything’s going wrong, but hey ho, it’s anadventure,” he said sarcastically.
That stung. Anger flared, hot and all-consuming, and I seriously considered slugging him in the stomach. “You’re a jackass!”
“Maybe I am. But I’m a jackass who’s responsible for getting you safely to your father, so I guess you’re stuck with me right now, aren’t you?”
“He always had your loyalty, didn’t he?”
It was something my father demanded from everyone in his purview. We didn’t have to like each other, but we’d shed blood for each other. All for one and one for all. Even the Foxwood staff was devoted to the Fox cause.
I made a scornful noise. “Richard Damn Fox, god among men.”
“He’s the closest thing I have to a father anymore!” Huck shouted.
“Yeah, well, he’s the farthest thing from a parent to me right now, so you two can have each other.”
I snatched up my luggage and lengthened my strides across the rocky Bulgarian ground, leaving Huck several steps behind as I tried to cool down. He easily caught up to me. “Where are you going?”
“To find a boat. I’m going to Bucharest if it takes me all night. Then I’m going to strangle my father and go back home to New York. I don’t care about this stupid Vlad Dracula ring anymore,” I said, alarmed to feel angry tears brimming. “I was never intended to know about it anyway, and I’m just a mistake to you anyhow, so what do you care?”
“Banshee—”
“Don’t call me that,” I said, shoving him sideways. “Screw you, Huxley Gallagher. I wish I’d never seen your stupid face again.”
After a loud, anguished bellow that echoed around the field, he didn’t say another word to me, nor I to him. I could hear him marching behind me. For ten minutes. Twenty. Thirty. I wanted to turn around and confront him, but I was terrified I’d break down and sob my eyes out, and as my thickheaded father always said, Foxes don’t cry.
Ugh. Why did Huck always get under my skin like this? No one hurt me like he did. No one! All the desperate, wounded feelings I’d experienced last year after Black Sunday came back at me like an ill wind, and my world fell apart all over again. Because it was just as I feared. That night meant nothing to him. A mistake. He was more concerned with losing Father’s love than mine. And from the sounds of it, he blamed me for ruining his life.
Did I?
Was it my fault?
Were all the moments leading up to that night just in my mind? My heart used to race so fast when he stepped into the room. I lay awake in bed thinking about him, feeling as if butterflies danced on my skin when I pictured his face. His unruly curls. His smiling eyes.
Maybe what I felt for him was all one-sided. A mirage.
A drunken mistake.
After an hour or more passed, my brain grew tired of thinking and my heart was sick of hurting. I forced myself to push it all into the background and instead focused on basic survival worries. Because boy oh boy did I have them. My feet ached, and my shoes were caked with mud. My entire face was turning into an iceberg. We were still lost. What if we couldn’t find a way across the river? Or even the river! Scanning the desolate grassland, I wasn’t sure if we could find a house with indoor plumbing.
The sun began falling after another hour passed. We still weren’t speaking. Huck just followed me in silence while we ran into little of anything resembling civilization. An abandoned farm. The occasional country home, with rounded roofs and clothes hanging out to dry, and several wide-faced peasants who retreated behind doors when I tried to beckon for assistance. But just when I was ready to wave a white flag and collapse into a muddy trench, I spotted something encouraging in the distance.
Just ahead, inside a dark forest, was a golden, flickering light. Enough light that I could see it, and we were easily a mile away.
“What’s that?” Huck asked over my shoulder. The first words he’d spoken in a couple of hours. He sounded exhausted. And crabby.
“It’s people,” I said in a cool, even tone that I instinctually adopted after all our fights. And there had beenmanyover the years. “Want to make a bet that the Danube is on the other side of that forest?”
He grunted. “Looks like a fire. A camp, maybe.”
“People building a fire that close to the river are bound to either want to cross or know how it might be done.”
“Or they’re bandits who want to rob the coats off our backs,” he mumbled.
“This isn’t eighteenth-century France,” I said. “Bandits are extinct.”
“Oh, you’ll believe in magic and myth, but you won’t believe in bandits?”
