“What happened back there?” Huck said when we were outside. “Are you okay?”
I shook my head, still reeling, and motioned for us to walk. We circled around the side of the mustard-colored house, trying to avoid a steady stream of people strolling past us down a narrow lane.Steel spine, chin high. Do not fall apart. You are fine. Everything is fine.
“Banshee,” Huck insisted, finally pulling me to one side under an arch that connected the buildings on either side of the lane. “What’s going on? Talk to me.”
“You’ll think I’m mad,” I said, shaking my head.
“I will not. Talk to me. Are you sick?”
I held a hand to my stomach to steady my nerves. The nausea was passing. “Are you certain you didn’t hear anything inside the house?”
“I heard people talking.” He paused and gripped my shoulders, ducking his head to bring his face to my level, snagging my gaze with his. “What did you hear?”
I whimpered, and my body loosened under his hands. “I heard heartbeats. People’s heartbeats. Everyone in that room. Huck,” I said. “And that wasn’t all. I thought... IknowI heard the ring.”
Emotions warred across his face. “Are you sure?”
In fractured sentences, I attempted to explain it, the nausea and the thumping. “I know how it sounds, don’t I? I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”
I tried to push out of his grip, but he held on to me more firmly.
“Hey,” he said, his face close to mine, warm breath blowing out in a billow of winter white. “I believe you.”
“You do?”
He nodded. “If you say you heard it, then you heard it.”
His acceptance meant more than I expected. Relief and gratitude poured through me. I wanted to hug him. I wanted to bury my face in his neck and feel his arms around me. For a moment there was something raw and desperate on his face, and I thought he wanted it too. And then a drunken man in a bad Vlad costume bumped into us and broke us apart, apologizing profusely in Romanian before stumbling away.
I looked at Huck, feeling suddenly shy and exposed.
He pulled off his cap, smoothed back his curls, and refitted the wool over his head, pulling the brim down tight. “Can you hear it now?”
I shook my head. “I could still hear it faintly right outside the house when we left, but it faded away.”
“Okay,” he said. “So, basically, what we’re saying here is that based on what just happened, we think that ring inside there could be the real ring that your father is looking for.”
I nodded.
“But Fox thought it was another fake, and he left.”
“Seems that way.”
“What do we do about it? I mean, we aren’t here for the ring. We’re here for Fox. But if Rothwild has threatened him into finding the ring...” He shook his head and considered it. “I think Fox needs to hear from you about what you heard. He needs to know. In a perfect world, we’d just walk in there and get the ring, find your father, and all of this would be over. But David and his family aren’t going to hand over the ring to us, yeah? So we should probably just concentrate on finding Fox. That hasn’t changed.”
“Agreed,” I said, warily looking back at the mustard-colored house. “Maybe the baroness can tell us more. Maybe Father gave her a hint as to where he’s going.”
“That’s obvious, though, isn’t it? If he thinks this ring was a fake, then he’ll go to the next name on his little coded list of suspects.”
“The twins,” I murmured.
“Which could be the brothers Lovena mentioned? The traveling merchants—what did she say their name was? Zifu? Zizu?”
“Zissu,” I said. “I haven’t found any journal entries about any traveling merchants. There’s that page that’s been torn out, remember? Really hope it’s not that. Maybe I missed something.”
“We’ll figure it out,” he told me, rubbing my upper arm in reassurance, a simple gesture that he used to do without thought. Both of us seemed to realize this at the same time, and he withdrew his hand quickly. After a moment of awkwardness, he said, “Sure you’re all right?”
I puffed up my lips and blew out a long breath, shaking my head. “I mean, I just heard a bunch of supernatural heartbeats, so, you know...”
