However I imagined it, though, I always pictured myself falling into his arms and him kissing the daylights out of me and both of us blissfully happy forever and ever more, amen. I didn’t picture myself hurting and hollow. Or feeling bewildered. Or still unsure about where we stood. Wondering whether, if I freely opened myself up to all the wild feelings I used to feel for him, my father would snatch him away from me a second time.
“You’re right,” I told him, my voice still a little rough. “We need to focus on finding Father right now. That’s what’s important.”
“Yes, that’s what’s important.” He nodded firmly, hands thrust in his pockets, jingling loose change. “So then... just how do you propose we do that?”
12
HOW TO FIND MY FATHERin Romania. Right. That.
To figure that out, I needed my brain. And to access my brain, I needed to stop thinking about everything Huck had just told me. So I shoved all my erratic emotions into a box, nailed the lid down, and buried it deep and dark. Then I focused on finding a solution to the problem of pinpointing Richard Damn Fox’s whereabouts.
The only way I knew to accomplish this monumental task was to do what I’d already suggested to Huck and continue what we’d started. The widow, the hermit, and the twins... Retrace Father’s summer trip through Romania to find Vlad Dracula’s ring—and pray to God that was whathewas currently doing.
The widow was a dead end. Next on Father’s list was the hermit. I figured I’d look through the journal until I found a clue to the hermit’s identity. The only entry I could recall offhand that even remotely suggested a hermit-type person was one in which Father mentioned visiting someone who lived in a colorful cottage outside Bucharest. But I’d need to decipher the name, because if I remembered correctly, part of that entry was written in cipher.
Sitting against the headboard of my hotel bed, I began half-heartedly flipping through the journal’s pages, but it was well past midnight and I already had a headache from working with the journal for hours this afternoon. Maybe also from all the crying, but I was trying not to think about that.
After a few minutes I found myself staring blankly at the pages, unable to even summon the will to read them. I suppose Huck saw this, because he quietly tugged the journal out of my hands, closed it, and said, “We’ll do it tomorrow, yeah? We’re cold and tired, and neither of us has slept well in... well, days, really.”
“Iamtired,” I admitted.
“Let’s just call it quits and try tomorrow. Things will seem easier in the morning.”
He was right, and I knew it. So I packed away the journal, stopped thinking, and fell into my bed like a body into a grave. I wasn’t sure how long I dozed, but I didn’t stay asleep. I woke suddenly and harshly, blinking into darkness.
Someone was shaking my shoulders.
“Theo!” Huck whispered. His distinctive silhouette blocked the moonlight streaming in from the balcony doors. “For the love of the saints, wake up!”
I started to answer, mildly panicked, but he clamped a hand over my mouth.
All right. Now I wasabsolutelypanicked.
“They found us,” he whispered. “A porter just knocked on our door to warn me that two men in black robes are asking for our room number downstairs. They know we’re here.”
Images of the men who had broken into my hotel room in Istanbul filled my head. I pried his fingers off my mouth and sat up. How had I not heard a knock on the door? And how had these men followed us? Was Sarkany here too?
“Get up, now!” Huck was in his underwear, struggling to get a leg into his trousers, hopping on one foot. “We need to leave. Hurry!”
Body on autopilot, I threw off the sheets and quickly dressed, uncaring about impropriety. We both tossed our possessions into our bags, struggling in the dark, and met at the door. Huck listened, ear against the wood, and then cautiously opened it to peer outside.
“Clear,” he whispered, motioning for me to follow. I closed the door behind me, squinting into the hallway light. Huck headed toward the service stairwell with access to the roof—one that we’d seen porters slipping past during cigarette breaks. But when Huck tried the handle, it wouldn’t budge.
Locked.
He uttered a string of profanities as we changed course and jogged toward the main corridor. We had two options: the guest stairwell or a single, small elevator behind an ornate metal door. I stood on tiptoes to peer through a diamond-shaped window into the black of an empty elevator shaft and moving cables. “The lift is coming up,” I told Huck.
“Might be them. Can’t chance it. Come on!”
We sprinted to the stairwell and raced down several flights, my short legs struggling to keep up with Huck’s generous strides. Why oh why were we unlucky enough to be booked into a room on the highest floor? When we circled around the second-floor landing, Huck peered over the railing and stopped short. I slammed into his back. A shout from below echoed around the walls, and that’s when I saw them: the two black-robed men from Istanbul.
And they saw us, too.
Huck shoved me back up the way we’d come. I raced up a flight of stairs, lurched through the third-floor door, and ran down the corridor. A finely dressed couple was headed toward their room, and I nearly bowled over the woman as I sailed past. Her partner said something nasty in Romanian to my back, but I didn’t turn around. I just made a beeline toward the elevator and pressed both theupanddownbuttons repeatedly.
“C’mon, c’mon!” Huck whispered.
Our pursuers burst onto our floor right as the elevatordinged.
