No matter. We were fairly certain where Father was headed. We just needed to catch up to him, and that was all there was to it.
The train that ran into the Carpathians was due to arrive in an hour. Huck and I waited on a desolate platform, studying railway tourist pamphlets about Transylvania while hungrily dismantling a fat cluster of purple grapes that we purchased from a friendly Romanian peddler. Despite both the taxi and the train tickets being cheap, we were now down to our last couple of lei. Another reason to find Father and fast: it was difficult to lead a daring rescue mission across a foreign country without proper funds.
When the train finally arrived, the Orient Express it was not. It looked as if it belonged in a Victorian museum, to be honest. No Pullman sleepers, no restaurant car... no anything but wooden seats, dirty windows, and facilities that were scarcely more than a hole cut into the floor. On a positive note, it was free of any shady cultist characters who’d been trailing us on this trip; maybe Lovena’s pocket travel talisman was working.
Enduring a few curious stares from the smattering of passengers traveling with us, we chose an isolated seat and were promptly ignored. Then, with a puff of steam and a clacking rumble, the train departed and a five-hour trip into the mountains began.
After our tickets were punched by the conductor, Huck tugged down his flat cap to cover his eyes, slouched in the train seat, and promptly set out to take a nap. I couldn’t understand how someone could sleep at a time like this.
“Hey, Huck?” I said softly.
“Mmm?” he answered, not moving his cap.
“I was thinking...”
“Uh-oh.”
“If Rothwild is as dangerous as Mama Lovena claimed... If he really poisoned Jean-Bernard or put some kind of spell on him... Do you think Rothwild used that as a threat and that’s why Father is chasing after the ring?”
“Maybe,” Huck said in a sleepy, deep voice.
“Because if Father knew there would be people like Sarkany and the robed cultists following us from Istanbul, I can’t believe he would just run off and feed us to the proverbial wolves.”
“Or literal wolf dogs.”
“By the way, what kind of person steals someone’s dog?”
“The lowest kind, banshee,” he mumbled from beneath his cap.
“Do you think Sarkany did it to intimidate Lovena into giving up the ring?”
“Don’t know.”
“I mean, what’s the point of kidnapping if you don’t ask for a ransom?” I considered this further and said, “Maybe all of these people are trying to intimidate everyone into giving up their rings until they find the real one. Rothwild hurt Jean-Bernard, which urged my father into action. Sarkany took Mama Lovena’s dog and used it to kill someone else connected to the ring—”
“Yeah, but it sounds like the widow was part of this dragon society.”
“Maybe she just dabbled in the esoteric. If she was part of the order, wouldn’t Rothwild have had access to the first bone ring and known it was a reproduction before he... conspired with Natasha to kill her husband in order to get the ring?”
“Got me there, banshee. Don’t know.”
I sighed heavily, churning it all over in my head. “None of this explains why Father would abandon you in Tokat without so much as a word. Why not just tell you what was going on?”
“Maybe he wanted to keep us away from Rothwild. To draw fire while we got out of danger. Maybe he thought he was protecting us.”
I snorted. “That worked out well, didn’t it?”
“I never said Fox doesn’t make mistakes. Maybe he was upset about Jean-Bernard. Maybe Rothwild threatened him to find the ring. Maybe he thought we could take care of ourselves.”
Father knew damn well how I felt about Huck, so he must have known that seeing him again after all this time would be a shock. As callous as Richard Damn Fox could be, I didn’t think he would carelessly just throw Huck and me together out of convenience.
Huck slung an arm over the back of our seat. Almost touching my shoulders but not quite. Close enough to cause a little tremor in my stomach. “Whatever the reason, I’m not sorry he did it. I mean, despite the constant terror, the dead bodies, and the witch saying that you’ve got old Romanian blood, some good things have come out of this... don’t you think?”
“Yes,” I admitted, checking to see if his hat was still covering his eyes. “I suppose there have been... um, some good things. It’s hard to tell yet.”
Fox said if he ever allowed me back home, it would be strictly as a member of the family.
“Give it time,” he murmured. “You know what they say. Romania wasn’t built in a day.”
