“Bewitched,” Huck said, making the sign of the cross.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
“A trail of blood is following us wherever we go!” Huck despaired.
It truly was. And this was no random act of violence. In an instant the shock of what we’d witnessed fell away.
Sarkany. He was behind this. Had to be. I didn’t know how. I justknew. And from the look on Huck’s face, he was thinking the same thing.
We both glanced around the crowd in a panic. No sign of him. No white wolf dog. And then it hit me like a bolt of lightning: everyone was out here gawking. All attention here. It was a distraction. A gruesome, horrific distraction...
“We’re idiots,” I said. “The ring!”
Huck understood immediately. In unison, we jogged up snow-slicked cobblestones, zigzagging through the crowd of onlookers. We ran until we came to the mustard-colored house, rounding the corner into the main square.
The line in front of the Dracule?ti Family Living Museum had broken up. The ticket-booth attendant was gone. A couple of people were scattering out of the front door, but I couldn’t make out what was being said. When another person raced out of the exit, I didn’t waste time; I just barged inside as I’d done before.
Glass crunched under my brown boots. Huck raced in behind me, wild eyes flicking across the room. He held up an arm as if he were prepared to take a swing at someone.
He needn’t have bothered. The room was deserted—no Sarkany.
And no infernal thumping. No sound at all.
The display case we’d inspected earlier had been smashed open. Medieval tools were strewn. And the red velvet that cradled the dark family heirloom was now empty.
The bone ring had been stolen.
15
WE EXITED THE MUSTARD-COLORED HOUSE,rattled and confused. Not knowing what to do or where to go. Ambulances were arriving, along with more uniformedpolitiereinforcements, their cars blocking many of the citadel’s narrow streets as they cleared tourists and gawkers. I questioned a stranger, who said that someone who’d been near the stage confirmed that the baroness had, indeed, survived the fall, but her condition was unknown.
The tragedy at the clock tower had been a cruel distraction. I didn’t know how, but I knew Sarkany was involved. He’d threatened the baroness, or drugged her, or compelled her with some kind of dark spellwork to jump. I believed that as much as I believed the earth was round.
Men who compete for power often succumb to violence to reach their goal.
Lovena. Had we brought this horror here to her family? Or were we just standing on the outside, unable to stop what was already in motion? With trembling fingers, I felt around my pocket for the witch’s travel talisman. Still there. If it indeed had offered us protection, I felt horrible that it hadn’t extended to Lovena’s poor sister. “This is horrific,” I told Huck. “What if Lovena’s sister doesn’t survive? Or what if she’s paralyzed? Oh God, Huck.”
“It’s terrible,” he agreed. “But this isn’t our fault.”
“Is it not?” I argued, feeling a sense of frenzy rising in my gut.
“No. I don’t think so? Jaysus, banshee, I don’t know!”
I exhaled and tried to breathe in slowly through my nostrils to calm myself. We’d witnessed something horrible. The bloody fall. The stolen ring. Chaos and confusion. I was still in a little shock. But I needed to get a grip on my emotions so that we could figure out what to do. While I was doing this, Huck realized something more immediately crucial. “They’ll think we did this,” he said, motioning toward the museum house. “They’ll think we took the ring.”
I glanced around, paranoid. “But it was already gone when we went inside. If Sarkany took it, someone had to have witnessed it.”
“Aye, but people panic and get confused, banshee,” he said. “We’re outsiders here. Easy targets. We already had to be escorted out of the house, and David will be looking to blame someone. If nothing else, we’ll be questioned by the police as suspects.”
“Dammit,” I mumbled, glancing around. My nerves were frayed. I still expected Sarkany to leap out of the shadows. But Huck was right. “We need to leave the town.”
“Agreed,” he said.
But where were we supposed to go? “Do we have enough money to take another train? We never got to talk with the baroness and find out where Father was going....”
“We’ll figure something out,” he said, sounding surer than I felt. “All I know is that we can’t find Fox if we’re behind bars, and there’s nothing we can do for Lovena’s sister. We’ve got to leave, banshee.”
Part of me resisted, not wanting to feel like a criminal slipping away from the scene of the crime. But it wasn’tourcrime, and what good did it do us to stick around and volunteer ourselves up as patsies?
