I nodded at Huck, breath white in the cold night air. “Let’s go.”
We made our way across the square. It seemed best not to exit the citadel the way we came in, due to all the police, so we walked in the opposite direction, past drunken revelers and shopkeepers who gossiped together in doorways and beneath the festive white lights strung over the streets. Once we’d serpentined our way to the citadel’s walls and slipped out of an arched exit, I felt a little relieved.
And a little lost.
Huck spotted the river we’d crossed on our way from the train station. It wasn’t until we picked our way down a snowy hill and found a bridge to cross into the newer part of town that we slowed our manic pace, and I forced myself to think about what to do next.
Snow fell harder. After counting what little money Huck had in his pockets, we were positive we didn’t have enough for the train—or even a bus. Hotel? No. Meal? Everything here was closed anyway. The citadel was the heart of the town. This was borderland, something between civilization and countryside, and for the life of me, I didn’t know where to go. Huck didn’t either, if the permanent worry line in his forehead was any indication. But we kept walking. What else could we do?
Several minutes passed. We turned down a street and hiked alongside a paved stretch of highway that wound out of town. A few cars passed us, their headlights flashing in the dark. Huck stuck out his arm, attempting to hitch a ride, but no one stopped.
“These Sighi?oarans are a tough bunch,” Huck said. “Am I that ugly?”
“Maybe you should show some leg.”
“If they hate my face, my hairy leg won’t help. I promise you that.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “We’ll just freeze to death soon. No big deal.”
Buildings were getting fewer and farther between along the road, and the snow wasn’t letting up. We found a lone apartment building and considered trying to hole up in the stairwell but couldn’t get past a barred gate. Had it been a lock, Huck could have picked it, but it looked like it could only be opened from the inside. I remembered my mother telling me that outside cities, Romanians lock up everything at night—farms, homes, barns. Night brought fear, fear brought superstition, and it was very,verydark in the outskirts of this Carpathian town.
“Looks like mountainous countryside out there,” Huck said, shielding his eyes to see past the last lamppost near the highway. “We’ll have to go back. At this point, I’d rather sleep in the clock tower. Maybe one of the churches or taverns will let us inside.”
“Or maybe we could hot-wire a car,” I suggested.
“Why, banshee, how dare you. I’m not a common criminal.”
I huffed out a shivering laugh. “You hot-wired that car in France two years ago.”
“French cars, sure,” he joked cheerfully as he shivered, hands thrust into his coat pockets. “Romanian cars are a whole other bucket o’ parts. Besides, you see any cars to hot-wire?”
Not in several minutes, I hadn’t. However, I did see something else. Something much better. Bigger, too.
“What about that?” I asked, pointing to a metal building at the end of a short dirt road that branched off the highway. It looked like a small warehouse with a covered shed extending off the back. Less a shed and more a hangar, for beneath its metal roof was the silhouette of a small airplane. And on the side of the building, a lone yellow light shone on a painted pair of words:PO?TA ROMÂNA.
“That’s a post office, yeah?” Huck said. “And their mail plane.”
“Airplanes don’t have locks, right?”
“You’re suggesting I steal government property?”
“Better than stealing a crop duster from a poor farmer. Besides, it’s notreallystealing. It’s borrowing.”
“You sound just like bloody Fox,” he informed me, and then mimicked Father in a deep, booming voice: “?‘Go on, pick the lock on that duke’s summer home, Huxley—dumb bastard doesn’t know Greeks from Romans, so we’re almost doing him a favor, taking this priceless statue off his hands.’?”
I snorted a laugh, and Huck flashed merry eyes at me. Maybe the cold weather was making us both a little loopy. Or maybe I was trying to get over the shock of seeing someone plunge several stories from a clock tower. Or maybe, just maybe, hearing heartbeats while under the spell of a four-hundred-year-old ring had damaged something in my brain.
Take your pick.
“Here’s what I think,” I said. “We should borrow the plane and fly it to...”
“To...?”
“You know,” I said, gesturing loosely. “Where my father went. To the twins. It’s next on his list.”
“We don’t even know for certain that these Zissu brothersareyour father’s twins. Didn’t Lovena say they traveled around? Last she knew, they were somewhere near the Black Sea. They could be anywhere now.”
“There’s got to be a clue in the journal. I just missed it,” I insisted. “The hangar has light, so I can look it up there. When I find where they’re at, we can just fly there, find my father, then bring the plane back. Zip-zip.”
