“Do you believe it?” I asked.
He blinked at me for several moments, eyes wild and panicked. Then he shook his head. “How do we stop it?”
I tried to recall what I’d read about spells like these, grappling with the excitement of discovery and the pounding on the rooftop door, which was sounding louder and louder....
“Destroy it!” I said, hoping I was right.
From his coat pocket, Huck retrieved a box of matches printed with a black cat and gingerly picked up a corner of the banknote. “Here!” I said, taking the matches from him. I struck a match and held it to the paper. Flames devoured it. Huck waited until it was flaming too intensely to hold and dropped it onto the roof. In seconds it was nothing but ash and smoke that scattered across the rooftop.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
We swung toward the roof-access door.
Our pursuers weren’t pounding anymore; they were trying to break down the damn door. No need to tell me twice. I bent down and rapidly shoveled all my things back into my satchel in three quick motions. Huck made a quick assessment and squatted on the edge of the roof to maneuver onto the ladder. “C’mon,” he said, motioning. “Follow me. If you slip, I’m under you. Just don’t look down.”
Why do people always say that? As the battering on the roof-access door intensified, I quickly gathered up my skirt and knotted it between my legs to stop it from blowing. Then I twisted around until I was steady on the rickety roof ladder, and I descended.
Painted rust scraped my palms. The wind was fierce. Another bout of dizziness rolled over me, but I didn’t look down—not until I heard Huck jump onto the narrow ledge. Then his hands were around my waist, and he helped me down the last few rungs.
“Nice trick,” he said, smiling at my skirt. My garters were showing.
I tugged the knot loose and shook out the fabric. “Didn’t want a pervert looking up it.”
He opened his mouth to protest but was cut short by a loud crash from the roof. The men had busted open the roof-access door.
Without a word, Huck led and I followed along the ledge. When we heard noise above, we paused and hid in the shadows, flattened against the building, while silhouettes leaned over the parapet above. My pulse pounded in my temples. My chest rose and fell rapidly. Huck squeezed my hand. Or maybe I squeezed his; it was hard to be sure. But after several excruciating minutes, the silhouettes gave up and disappeared, and we were left alone with nothing but the sound of howling wind.
“We can’t stay out here,” I whispered, trying to see in the dark. If we kept going around the ledge, we might be able to reach a bank of windows. I pointed them out to Huck. He struggled to see them in the dark, so we switched places, and I got in front, carefully skirting along the ledge to the corner, then made the turn to the main part of the hotel.
Windows, and all of them were within reach. We tried four before one opened. “Hallway!” I whispered.
I chucked my satchel inside, and Huck boosted me up until I could climb through, then he followed suit. The hallway was quiet and empty. Two lonely housekeeping carts sat in a row. Maybe this wing wasn’t currently in use. Huck looked around a corner before pausing in front of one of the rooms, ear pressed to the door, listening. He must have liked what he heard, because he wasted no time digging inside his inner coat pocket to pull out an old set of lockpicks wrapped in a scrap of leather. Then he squatted in front of the door. I kept watch while he worked, and within seconds the lock clicked, and we both stumbled into an unoccupied hotel room.
“Hurry,” Huck whispered, locking the door behind us.
Metal rollaway bedframes with folded mattresses were lined up in two neat rows alongside wooden crates of new towels and blankets. The hotel was using this room for storage, it seemed.
We quickly pushed one of the larger crates against the door to block it—and stacked a second on top for good measure. Then we sat on the floor together, back-to-back. Huck watched the barricaded door, and I watched the window.
“You did see that on the banknote,” Huck said in a low voice after several minutes had passed in strained silence. “Looked like a web made out of light? I wasn’t imagining it, was I?”
“I saw it too,” I said.
“You think Sarkany did that? He’s some kind of sorcerer or warlock? Because now I’m thinking about what that man told us at the widow’s house—that she dabbled in the occult. And her husband sold his ring to that Mr. Rothwild fellow who hired Fox. Who are these people, and are all of them practicing dark arts?”
“MyBatterman’s Field Guidesays that Vlad Dracula’s ring has power. And Father talked to people in Romania who claimed there were legends about other people who owned it over the years—mass murderers. Evil people.”
“Let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that some of those stories about the ring are even partly true. What if it grants the wearer some sort of dark, murderous power? Could that be why all these bastards want it so badly—Sarkany and his goons? Maybe even Mr. Rothwild.”
“What if they’re competing occultists?” I said. “Rothwild and Sarkany.”
“Maybe that’s why Sarkany killed the widow—she was acquainted with Rothwild. Maybe they’re in a race to find the ring.”
And we were standing in the middle of their racing track with a journal that held secrets to help the winner get to their goal first.
Not a good place to be.
“Lazy birds,” I murmured, reciting a crossword clue I’d missed yesterday morning, before the telegrams and the journal cipher and the murder scene... before Huck swiping away my tears and making me want him all over again.
