“Pardon?” I said to the concierge. “Did you just say... mybrother?”
He nodded emphatically. “Indeed. Your brother said he’d prefer to wait in your room. He insisted.”
I was an only child. I had no brother.
Suspicious and mildly alarmed, I stared at Mr. Osman. He stared at me. An awkward smile slowly lifted his cheeks. Was it possible my father had returned from Tokat while I was busy getting strip-searched in the market?
“Do you mean Richard Fox?” I asked. “My father? Is he the one who asked you to exchange the tickets?” He was the one who had them, after all. It had to be him.
Before hope could lift its head, Mr. Osman crushed it back down.
“No, miss,” he said almost pityingly. Then he looked at me strangely, mouth twitching, as if something was not being said. But before I could question him further, his manager beckoned, and he jogged back across the lobby, harried and apologetic. Just like that I was completely forgotten.
What in God’s name was happening?
The only logical explanation was that Mr. Osman had confused me with another guest. It had happened once before—he’d brought me a message intended for the unmarried daughter of some British noble who was staying on the floor above mine. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced: this was a mix-up, plain and simple. I’d just go upstairs and check to be sure.
Equal parts apprehensive and curious, I stepped into the hotel’s ornate black birdcage lift, and the operator took me to the fourth floor, where I made my way down a long hallway. Hand-woven Oushak carpeting muffled the heels of my muddy Mary Janes until I came to my room.
I paused outside with my ear to the door. Silence.
The handle wouldn’t budge. Locked, as it should be.
Cautious, I unlocked the door and peered inside to find... nothing. Empty. Just to be sure, I entered the room with my head, craning my neck, and when I spotted no initial danger, my feet followed.
Housekeeping had been here while I was out: the bed was made up. All my imported newspapers were stacked in two tidy piles, one with all the single crossword pages I’d removed. Across the room, the door leading to the balcony was standing wide open to the ancient city, the dark blue water of the Bosporus Strait snaking past stone buildings with clay roofs. A cool breeze carried drizzle into my room.
Hold on. That wasn’t right. The maids never left the balcony door open.
Pulse picking up speed, I peered outside, scanning for an intruder, but stopped short when a muffled noise floated from the room’s en suite bathroom.
Uh-oh.
My thoughts flipped back to the strange man in the lobby. But he hadn’t had time to get up here, had he? I supposed it was possible. Whoever it was, they were in my bathroom, and that couldn’t be good. Dipping into my handbag, I retrieved the only weapon in reach: a small, clothbound travel guide—Istanbul (Not Constantinople): Gateway to the Orient. I wielded it in front of me, arm extended stiffly, then threw open the bathroom door.
I wished I hadn’t.
A few feet away, near a claw-foot bathtub, stood a boy about my age, his handsome face marred by an old white scar that stretched over one cheekbone. Dark hair, a shade lighter than my own raven-black, was clipped short at the sides and neck; the top was a mass of overlong mazy curls.
Every inch of his rangy build was covered in lean muscle, quite a bit of which was brazenly on display: he wore nothing but a towel, slung low around his hips. Water puddled beneath his feet on the tiled floor.
Eighteen-year-old Huxley Gallagher, better known simply as Huck.
My former best friend.
My former more-than-a-friend.
My former more-than-a-friend, who left last year without a single goodbye.
Something tremored deep inside my chest. It quickly grew into an earthquake that shook my entire body. I just stared at him, tongue-tied and dumb as a box of rocks, forgetting everything that had happened that afternoon—the Grand Bazaar, Madame Leroux, the dark-and-brooding man who’d given me the old banknote in the lobby. All of it vanished from my thoughts.
“Hello, banshee,” Huck said, using the pet name he’d called me since we were kids. His deep Northern Irish lilt bounced around the tiled bathroom like a rubber ball. “Miss me much?”
3
ISTOOD IN THE BATHROOM DOORWAY,staring at Huck, utterly astonished. Neither of us said a word for several heartbeats.
After being orphaned, Huck moved in with Father and me—just after my mother died, when I was ten and he was eleven. He became an unofficial member of the broken and grieving Fox household... until an unfortunate incident on my sixteenth birthday, summer before last. The best night of my life. Before it turned into the worst.
