Not that night, while I sat up in one of the hotel beds, reading his journal. And not the next morning, while Huck and I took breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant.
When the clock struck midnight on Friday night, I called down to the desk, to bother them for the umpteenth time, inquiring if he’d arrived. But he hadn’t, and as I worried myself sick, Friday night turned into Saturday, and I’d finished every Romanian crossword puzzle I could get my hands on, newspapers stacking up on the floor by my bed, trying desperately to keep myself distracted.... That’s when Huck said exactly the thing I already knew in my heart but didn’t want to hear.
Father wasn’t coming to meet us.
Something was very,verywrong.
JOURNAL OF RICHARD FOX
June 30, 1937
Bucure?ti, Kingdom of România
After I wasted several days in the archives, the only additional mentions of any kind of ring associated with Vlad the Impaler I uncovered were merely in passing and related to a militant organization called the Order of the Dragon. It was founded in the Kingdom of Hungary by the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund twenty years before Vlad was born and was, in fact, the reason his father was given the sobriquet of “Dracul” (“the Dragon”) and why the Impaler was called Vlad Dracula (“son of the Dragon”).
This dragon society was open to only a select few aristocrats, church officials, and politicians. It was modeled after the Order of Saint George, whose legendary defeat of a dragon was used as the order’s symbol. The order to which Dracul, the father, and Dracula, the son, both belonged had a purpose: to drive out the Turks from Eastern Europe and to protect the Catholic church from pagans.
Funny, that last part. Documents mention a special dragon ring being given in ceremony to Vlad’s father upon joining this aristocratic society—a ring that was rumored to have occult powers. After Vlad’s father died, the Impaler inherited the order membership.
Did he also inherit his father’s occult dragon ring?
10
ICOULDN’T SIT IDLY BY ANDdo nothing. My father could be in danger. I mean, maybe he just couldn’t get here in time, or maybe he was hiding out somewhere until the coast was clear. Or perhaps he was in jail—there was always that. I mean, what girl hasn’t had to bail her father out of a foreign jail? Completely normal, our little family. Average in every way.
Thing was, my gut was telling me that it wasn’t jail.
My gut was telling me that he was in trouble.
Early Saturday morning I did what I could. I sent a telegram to Jean-Bernard in Paris, and I sent one to Mr. Rothwild—at his city address in Budapest, which Father had jotted down in his journal. A long shot, but I thought maybe Father had contacted him recently with an update on the search for the ring.
By noon I hadn’t heard anything back from Mr. Rothwild. Total silence. But an hour later I received a response from Paris—from Jean-Bernard’s personal butler. It was not what I’d hoped for. Things were far worse than I’d imagined:
MADEMOISELLE THEODORA FOX= HOTEL REGINA= BUCURE?TI, ROMÂNIA=
REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT MSSR JEAN-BERNARD BISSET IS CRITICAL IN HOSPITAL STOP CONTRACTED UNKNOWN ILLNESS PERHAPS POISON SIX DAYS AGO STOP RECOVERY UNKNOWN STOP WHEN YOU FIND HIM PLEASE INFORM YOUR FATHER TO COME TO PARIS URGENTLY= MSSR DUJARDIN
Standing at the registration desk, I read and read again the tiny strips of type that had been pasted onto the telegram slip before Huck snatched the frail paper from my fingers to read it himself. “Poisoned? By what? Does he mean foul play?”
“Is poison evernotfoul play?” I said, frantic.
“Could be accidental.”
Sure. Like the rest of this wretched mess in which we were embroiled. Though I didn’t know Jean-Bernard as more than a friend of the family and saw him only once in a blue moon, he always sent me pretty cards and gifts for my birthday and books for Christmas—every year, without fail. But it wasn’t even that. It was that my father would be so terribly upset to hear this if he were here.
Then something struck me.
“Huck,” I murmured. “The telegram says it happened six days ago. That’s when you were in Tokat with Father.”
“Six days ago would have been when we returned from the mountain,” he said, following my line of reasoning. “Fox left me the next day. After the mystery meeting.”
I scanned the telegram again. “Now I’m wondering if Father learned about Jean-Bernard being poisoned during that meeting. Maybe that’s why he left you. Because he was worried that whoever came for Jean-Bernard would come for us.”
Hazel eyes stared at me, blinking. Unsure.
“Look, this is what we know. Jean-Bernard traveled with Father in Romania this summer. He did research with Father.... He read books and advised. He’s very knowledgeable about medieval European history. And Father’s journal is filled with entries that mention Jean-Bernard helping him. If someone was following you in Tokat, who’s to say someone didn’t follow Jean-Bernard and Father when they were traveling through Romania last summer?”
“I wouldn’t doubt anything anymore, to be honest.”
