“Lazy birds?” Huck repeated.
“Ten across,” I said. “Sitting ducks.”
“Aye, that’s about right.”
Both of us fell silent. For a long time I could feel Huck’s heartbeat pounding through his spine. He felt solid and safe, a reassuring comfort. Yet even so, even with his back against mine, it still felt as if there were an invisible emotional wall between us. Everything we’d said. Everything we hadn’t. Even with everything that had happened over the last few days, this emotional chaos molded itself into bricks and stacked up.
Losing you shattered me into a thousand pieces.
Did he truly mean that? Did he still feel the same way? I wanted to hear it from him again, to make sure that it wasn’t a daydream or a mirage. I wanted to tell him that I was grateful he was here with me right now. That despite everything that had happened over the last year, I didn’t want to lose him again, not for anything in the world. Even if it meant all we could be was friends. Or family. Or whatever my father decided was acceptable.
Could I, though? Just be friends?
Was it possible to stop loving someone and still be happy, settling for something less than it once was?
13
WE FELL ASLEEP IN THEstorage room. Neither of us meant to, and when I woke, cheek sticking to the leather of my satchel and Huck’s body heating my back, I was so discombobulated, it took me several panicked heartbeats to realize that (a) it was morning, (b) Huck had just woken up too, and (c) someone from housekeeping had found us.
The housekeeper tried to push open our barricaded door, calling out, “Buna?” repeatedly, and by the time she’d sent for the help of a porter, we’d unstacked the crate barrier. After an awkward conversation, Andrei showed up, and he was relieved to see us.
“My friends! We thought you were dead or kidnapped,” he admitted. “Three workers were sedated by the men who chased you—Titus told me everything. He hid in the kitchen for hours.”
Titus turned out to be the elevator operator. But he didn’t know what had happened to the men in robes—only that they’d disappeared. I didn’t like the sound of that. For all we knew, they could be lying in wait for us when we walked out of the hotel.
But we couldn’t stay here forever either.
“This was not as exciting as your father’s unfortunate incident with the mayor’s wife in the lobby this summer,” Andrei said. “But now I think that misfortune follows your family.”
He had no idea.
“Brother, let me tell you what I think,” Huck said to Andrei. “I think if Miss Fox and I make it out of Romania alive, you will have two new refrigerators.”
Encouraged by this promise, Andrei was kind enough to have two guards escort us back to our room, where we washed our faces and changed clothes. After last night’s fiasco and with the ever-dropping temperatures, I decided I was done with running around in skirts. I changed into wrinkled khaki trousers, thick socks, and a pair of short brown leather boots that I’d had the good sense to pack at the bottom of my satchel when we were escaping the train back in Bulgaria. Then we ate a breakfast of buttered bread, Telemea cheese, sausage, and coffee. Huck surveyed the street from the balcony while I broke out my Vigenére square and Father’s journal. After a quick assessment, I was even more certain than I had been last night about where we should go next to find him.
JOURNAL OF RICHARD FOX
July 3, 1937
Snagov, Kingdom of România
Found a driver willing to take us to Transylvania. On the way, an hour north of Bucharest, stopped by a fourteenth-century monastery on a small islet in Lake Snagov. Long rumored to be the final resting place for Vlad Dracula’s bones (minus the head), it was excavated five years ago by a colleague of Elena’s, Dinu Rosetti. He didn’t find Vlad—only the bones of several horses. I hope to meet with him in Târgovi?te, where he is excavating a caste, just to confirm that he didn’t secret away any monastery treasures for himself, i.e., a ring of bone. In the meantime, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to tour the monastery here. Glad I did, because I received a small windfall of information.
The monastery’s caretaker told me about a woman who lives in the woods across the lake, Madmoazela FXPXE. My poor excuse for Romanian is being tested on this trip—Elena would shake her head in shame if she heard me butchering her country’s language—but I thought he called her a “hermit.” Regardless, she was rumored to be in possession of a family heirloom: a medieval ring of bone. Call me crazy, but I wasn’t passing up the chance that this wasn’t a coincidence.
Update, 7PM:
Jean-Bernard and I found this woman’s strange little house, which was isolated and accessible only by a dirt road. Seems the woman is less of a hermit and more of a folk herbalist, for which I have little patience. Let us just say that she and I did not get along. We spent five minutes talking on her front porch, and once she found out who I was working for, she told me that she didn’t have any such ring, but if she did, she wouldn’t let me see it because Rothwild is (and I’m translating here) “not fit to roll in pig shit.” Seems Rothwild had tried to contact her about the ring long before he hired me, and she not only hated him, but she hated me for being associated with him.
Next time I’m keeping my mouth shut about Rothwild. But I’m also telephoning the bastard when we get to Târgovi?te, because what is the point of me revisiting the same places he’s already hit, looking for the ring? If he’s not going to be up front with me about these kinds of details, Jean-Bernard and I will just leave Romania and head back down to Greece to enjoy our holiday in the sun.
“What’s an herbalist?” Huck asked with no small amount of suspicion when I finished reading it aloud. “Please let it be someone who studies plants. I’m up to my eyeballs in occultists right now.”
“Maybe she mixes up natural remedies for the villagers?”
“Where there’s doubt, there’s hope,” Huck quipped.
“Where there’slife,” I corrected.
