She was making jokes? I liked her more and more.
Ignoring Huck, who was squirming on the seat next to me, uncomfortable and anxious, I extended my hand for Lovena to inspect. She held the tips of my fingers, looking and listening. Then she leaned forward, squinting at the veins on the back of my hand, and made a purring noise. “Very interesting indeed. Who is your mother, little empress?”
A cool breeze from the open window rattled the cages above us, and after they stilled, an odd rustling noise swirled around the room. My pulse quickened. Was it the birds? I tried to spot the source of the noise but saw nothing.
“My mother has been dead for almost eight years,” I told her.
“That matters not. You have old Transylvanian blood, do you not?” Lovena insisted. “Your mother’s bloodline is from these lands—it’s as clear to me as water from a stream.”
I blinked. Had my father told her? Or had she investigated him after his first visit last summer? If it wasn’t that, then maybe it was because I’d spoken a little Romanian to her and she’d just made an educated guess.
But I didn’t think so. The way she looked at me made the hair on the back of my neck quiver and itch.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “My mother was from Bra?ov. Her family goes back many generations, I think.”
“Yes, I thought so. Old blood,” she confirmed. “Do you speak with her?”
“My mother?”
“There are ways to speak to some of the dead. Ways to hear, ways to send messages between worlds,” she said, glancing at her crows above us. “Or maybe, like the boy, you have doubts. Maybe you don’t believe...”
An unsettling thrill shot through me along with an unexpected sense of desperation. “I believe,” I insisted. “If there’s a way to speak with my mother, a spell or a ritual, I want to know it—”
Lovena released my hand. “It’s not a recipe I can write down for you.”
“But—”
“Speaking with the dead involves more than your mere desire to hear. I said there are ways to talk to some of the dead. Not all.Some. Some don’t want to talk. Others are too far gone to hear, even for me and my crows.” She gestured lightly to the cages above.
“But how would I know?” I asked. “Do I just talk to her? Does it need to be at her grave or where she died?”
She smiled. “So many questions. That is my fault. You came here to talk about your father, not your mother. Let us just stick to that, yes?”
Frustrated, I bit back a response and glanced at Huck, who couldn’t keep his eyes from darting to the crows above us. All of this was making him nervous. He never had a strong stomach for the unexplainable. Or the dead. When I was at home in New York, I often went to my mother’s grave to talk with her. It gave me comfort. Huck, on the other hand, refused to step foot in the graveyard.
But talking to my mother was one thing... The possibility of her answering was another. Perhaps I was too eager to believe what Lovena had said was possible. I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter. When I pushed her for more, she wouldn’t budge. Subject closed. “Is there anything more you need to know about the ring or your father?” she said, as if she were ready for us to leave now.
“Could I ask you your advice about a symbol?” I said.
She gestured loosely. “You may.”
“See, there’s been this man trailing us by the name of Sarkany.... He’s tangled up in this mess with the ring.”
I proceeded to tell her a bare-bones account of how the man gave me the banknote in Istanbul and then appeared on the train, and how we saw him again outside the widow’s house in Bucharest, hiding in the shadows with his wolf dog.
Lovena flinched. “What did you say?”
“Um, he has a one-eyed white dog?” I said. “He claims she’s part Carpathian wolf—”
“She is,” Lovena said sharply, hands suddenly shaking with rage. “Her name is Lupu, and she ismydog. She was lured into a trap and stolen from the woods outside my home a month ago.”
“Christ alive,” Huck mumbled. “The wolf is yours?”
“I tracked her blood for two miles down the road until I lost the trail and could not hear her anymore,” the woman said, standing up from her chair. “I raised her from a pup. She’d been shot in the eye by a hunter, and I nursed her back to health. Lupu is special. She—” Lovena paused, hands on hips, eyes flicking as she considered something. “I thought Rothwild took her as revenge when I refused to give him the ring. Only someone with knowledge of spellwork could have hidden Lupu from me. But this Sarkany must have bewitched her to follow him. Who is this man? Is he a member of Rothwild’s occult order?”
“We wondered if he was Rothwild’s rival,” I said. “Because it seems as if he’s trying to get Vlad Dracula’s ring too. We think he’s been tracking us with magic on that banknote—the one I just told you about?”
Lovena lowered her eyes. “Tell me everything you know.”
