He waved a dismissive hand. “We do not know any strangers, only friends. Travel well. And if Ana and I ever find ourselves in New York, we will come stay with you.”
She shook both my hands, and I thanked both her and Valentin in Romanian. And with that he doffed his hat, and the young couple bade us goodbye.
Well, then. We were on our own now. Huck glanced around at the lonely road and rolling hills. “Think you can wait for a bus? Are you still hungover? You need water.”
“I’m fine,” I assured him. Truth was, I had a splitting headache, but at least there was nothing left inside my stomach to heave up.
As luck would have it, we waited only a half hour for the bus, which was small, old, and carried three elderly women and one child. The driver looked at us suspiciously and counted out Huck’s coins from his palm, taking enough for both our fares, and after we sat down near the front, the bus was on its way.
We were in my mother’s country, headed to meet up with my father.
Life was strange.
Huck and I were quiet with each other on the bus. Now that we were alone again, the divide between us grew wider. Everything felt unsettled and confusing. We weren’t friends. We weren’t lovers. We weren’t family. And thinking about yesterday’s argument and last night’s drunken humiliation only worsened my headache. So I didn’t think much. And we didn’t speak... much. We just sat together and stared out the window.
Better than fighting, I supposed.
Thankfully, the ride took a little under an hour and the bus made only two quick stops. I watched the landscape with growing interest as the city appeared in the distance and houses, then buildings began springing up on either side of the road. Slowly, cars and trucks filled the street, and we passed all the signs of civilization—petrol stations, streetlights, and parking lots. Beautiful old buildings. Outside an Orthodox church, I even spied a statue of the Capitoline Wolf, from Roman mythology, suckling Romulus and Remus, and it reminded me of Valentin’s Dacian wolf stories. But before long we were slowing on a busy boulevard near a park, and when the door creaked open, we gathered our things and filed outside with the other passengers.
“Look, Huck,” I said, craning my neck to take it all in.
“It’s a proper city,” he agreed.
“Pavement. Isn’t it the most glorious thing you’ve ever seen?”
He laughed. “Bit better than rocky fields, yeah?” He held up a hand to shield his eyes and looked around. “Didn’t know Bucharest was so big.”
“My mother said it was once called Little Paris of the East.” And it was easy to see why as we walked along the busy, tree-linedstrada. The city was pleasantly charming in an old-world European way, an interesting jumble of old and new. Horse-drawn taxis cantered alongside fast cars, and fedoraed businessmen tipped their hats at dark-haired peasants, carrying baskets of Moldova grapes on the ends of long poles that sat across their necks like oxen yokes.
Despite my lingering headache, the traveler in me wished to linger and sightsee. I got out my camera and snapped a couple of photographs until I noticed passersby giving me a once-over. I glanced down at myself and saw why they stared: stockings covered in runs and snags. Muddy shoes. Rumpled clothes. I looked like a hobo.
“Sleeping outside under the stars has its price,” Huck said, eyes following mine. “It’s rough, dangerous, and untidy. And you’ll never cease to amaze at just how awful the human body can smell. No one writes that part down in travel books.”
Yes, well, I never got the chance to sleep under the stars, as I was always shoved into hotels. I discreetly sniffed my clothes. They still smelled strongly of smoke from the traders’ bonfire and possibly of brandy. God only knew what foulness was lurking in my armpits. “Let’s get to the hotel before we begin to attract rats and insects.” I said, tightly pulling down my beret to cover my scraggly hair. “Sound good?”
“Deal,” Huck said.
We found a public water fountain, from which I drank copious amounts of water under Huck’s direction that it would ease my headache—and it did, a little. Then, after strolling up a couple or ten blocks, we found the Grand Café...approximatelywhere Valentin had said it would be, on a busy boulevard filled with bars, shops, and cinemas. Beneath a massive, striped awning, dozens of people lingered at tables, watching pedestrians while casually dining. But Huck didn’t seem to care. He was too busy looking across the street, where a grand, domed Belle Époque Hotel stood on the corner, one that would not look out of place in Paris. Even the sign above the entrance was an art nouveau style similar to the Paris Métro signs.
Hotel Regina.
Regina. Queen.Take her to that royal hotel...
“Is that—”
Huck nodded. “That’s where Fox stayed when he was in Bucharest this summer, trying to authenticate the bone ring for Mr. Rothwild.”
“What’s so special about this hotel?” I asked. “He must have known you’d remember, the way he said it in the letter, all coded and covert—‘royal.’?”
Huck gritted his teeth. “Uh, yeah. Fox told me a lurid story about something that happened at this hotel. I shouldn’t repeat it.” His eyes flicked to mine. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s not a secret. You just... don’t want to know. There was no woman involved, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
That’sexactlywhat I was thinking. My father hadn’t dated anyone since my mother died. Not anyone he cared to introduce to me anyway. I felt quite sure he wasn’t a monk, but he kept all that private.
“Let’s just get over there and find out if he’s checked in yet. Then he can tell me his dirty secret himself.” Or not. My father played his cards close to his vest. But I cared less about that than actually seeing my father. Now that my head was clearing, yesterday’s worries about Father’s safety shifted back to the forefront of my thoughts. Father. Vlad Dracula’s war ring. The journal. The cipher I couldn’t crack. The Dragon. Mr. Sarkany and his white wolf dog...
What if Mr. Sarkany had somehow trailed us here? I glanced around the busy street as if I’d find him leaning against a streetlamp.
We crossed the street and pushed through gilded doors under a row of flags that jutted from the building, currently being used as a perch by dozens of black birds. Inside, the lobby was grand and spacious beneath a dome of glass and iron. The clientele seemed to be a mix of European aristocrats and traveling businessmen, who were mostly heading in and out of a vaulted corridor that branched from the lobby; a sign pointing in that direction said there was a brewhouse and a cinema on the ground floor.
