“Whoa there!” he said. “What’s wrong?”
Maybe my ears weren’t ringing. Maybe it was a noise in the house. A high-pitched whine, and underneath it, strange cadenced noises. Like a dozen distant drums beating out overlapping rhythms. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Huck whispered, looking frantic.
“That music.”
Maybe it was that group of costumed musicians out in the square, playing lutes. Maybe a group of drummers had joined them.
While I tried to pinpoint the source of the noise, something caught my eye. Something in the display case where the man who wasn’t my father had been looking. Between a pair of medieval metal scissors and a glass stopper from a perfume bottle sat an odd little ring on a bed of red velvet. Ugly and crooked, it had been carved from what the nearby placard identified as ivory. Strange symbols were carved into the band—a band that looked a little different from the ring in my father’s photographs.
“?‘Battle ring belonging to Vlad ?epe?,’?” I translated aloud.
“Is that...?” Huck started. Then his face appeared next to mine as he shifted closer to peer through the fingerprint-smeared glass.
The strange noise was so much louder now. It was making me nauseated.
“That can’t be,” Huck said. “That’s not Lovena’s ring, is it?”
“It’s my family’s ring,” a stern male voice said over my shoulder in Romanian. “And I don’t know who you are, but this exhibit is for paid ticket holders only. I’m afraid you must exit.”
I stood up, fighting a wave of nausea, and turned around to find two large guards in black uniforms flanking a dark-haired, slender young man, perhaps a little older than Huck, standing in a stiffly pressed, expensive suit. Agitation flared in his deep-set eyes; he was not happy with our being here.
“My apologies. I thought I saw someone I knew. I’ll leave,” I told both him and the guards in Romanian, one hand up in surrender. I prayed I was being polite enough to placate him. I just wanted to leave, to get out of this musty house and away from this noise, pounding, drumming...
Thump-thump. Thump-thump-thump.
It was disorienting, this vexatious noise. It took me out of my body and made me feel... lost.
Focus, I told myself sternly, trying to pull myself together. A bone ring was here, after all. This was important.
Shaking away a wave of dizziness, I pointed to the display case. “Can you tell me one thing?” I asked the young man. “You said this is a family ring.”
“It is,” he said coolly.
“We just spoke with Lovena earlier today....” I struggled to remember the surname my father had written in his journal. “Blaga? Lovena Blaga?”
“She is my aunt,” he confirmed, shoulders stiffening.
“You’re the baroness’s son?”
He nodded.
I quickly translated this information to Huck.
“Do you speak English?” Huck asked the young man.
“A little,” he answered.
“We came to speak to your mother,” Huck said. “Lovena sent us.”
That seemed to break through his icy demeanor. He considered Huck’s words for several moments and then made a gesture to the guards. They backed away, but not all that far, and they were still watching us. But when they were out of earshot, he said in English, “I am David Kardos. You are...?”
“Theodora Fox,” I said. “And this is Huck Gallagher.”
David nodded in acknowledgment and said, “My mother and Aunt Lovena aren’t close.”
“But this is her ring?” I asked.
