“Like it’s cake with buttercream frosting,” I agreed, repeatedly tapping my nails on the table. “It’s probably none of my business, whatever Dr. Mitu wanted to tell Father. Right? Nothing to do with Vlad’s ring. I mean, we already have a good idea about where Father is now, so speaking with Dr. Mitu wouldn’t give us any insight.”
“Don’t know,” Huck said.
“Then again, there’s the torn-out page in the journal. Could be to do with all of this mess. Might be something helpful to know. Can’t be that far from here...”
“Banshee?”
“Yes?”
“Would you like to go talk to this Dr. Mitu?”
I smiled slowly, flashing him my teeth. “Wedohave a couple hours before our bus, and he is an old friend of my mother’s—and when am I ever going to be able to say ‘I dropped in because I was just in the neighborhood’ again? Maybe never.”
“Grab your stuff,” he said, pretending to be put out. “Let’s find a taxi.”
The ride to the university in Old Town was a few short blocks down wet streets lined with snow-filled gutters. The campus, a pretty collection of classical buildings topped with sculpted marble friezes, was small but elegant, and after instructing the taxi driver to pull over so that I could ask a couple of students for directions to the archaeology department, we stopped alongside a golden-bricked building with arched windows.
After paying the taxi driver, we passed through a pair of elaborate ironwork streetlamps and entered wooden doors into the building’s threshold. It was dim and nearly deserted inside. Perhaps classes had already ended for winter break? We finally spotted someone who pointed us up a wide staircase to the second floor, and we took a long corridor to the history department.
“So strange to think that my mother walked these halls,” I murmured as we passed a line of old photographs from archaeological digs—all before my mother’s time. “She finished two degrees here, you know. Field archaeology and ancient history. She met my father after she graduated.”
“Seem to recall Fox saying that, yes,” he said in a low voice.
It was intimidating, being here. Felt as if decades of studious and serious academics were judging us inside the old walls. Like we didn’t belong. Perhaps this was one of the reasons my father had gotten cold feet. Then again, I couldn’t imagine him being intimidated by much of anything.
We found a small wooden door with an opaque glass window upon which was painted in gold:
DEPARTAMENTUL ARHEOLOGIE
DIR: PROF. DR. TOMA MITU
Heart racing, I pushed open the door, and we stepped inside a musty-smelling reception area with a sad potted plant and a few more photographs on the wall. I recognized the person in the largest picture: an older man in a dark gray suit, brimmed hat, and metal-rimmed glasses. Dr. Mitu.
But it wasn’t the professor at the reception desk. It was a dark-haired girl who didn’t look as if she could have been that much older than me. She looked up from a pile of graded tests and a paper cup of steaming coffee.
“Yes?” she said, looking us over critically. She had the kind of look in her eye that a bank teller might have when trying to decide if the customer who’d just approached could be a bank robber and she was considering whether to punch the panic button beneath the desk.
“Pardon me,” I said in Romanian. “We don’t have an appointment, but we were hoping to speak to Dr. Mitu? I’m an old family friend. Or rather, my mother was. She was a student here almost twenty years ago, Elena Vaduva.”
“Elena Vaduva?” The young woman’s face brightened. “I know her. At least, I feel as if I do. I helped Dr. Mitu work on a project, and she... that is, it concerned her. She was well known in this department. Practically a legend. First woman at the university to earn an archaeology degree... Dr. Mitu brags about her after all these years. You are her daughter? Your father is the American adventurer?”
I nodded, excited that she knew about my mother. And my father? Wow. My mother really must have been Dr. Mitu’s favorite pupil, all right. “Yes, that’s me,” I told her. “Miss Theodora Fox, and this is my, um...” I gestured toward Huck. I’d be damned before I introduced him as my brother again. Friend of the family? That didn’t sound right either. Boy who broke my heart? Love of my life? Best friend?
“Huck Gallagher,” he said simply when I took too long. Then he told the young woman, “I don’t speak Romanian. Sorry.”
“I speak English,” the woman said, switching languages. “I am Liliana Florea, Dr. Mitu’s graduate teaching assistant. Just Liliana is fine.”
“You’re a student?” I asked.
She nodded. “For five years. Like your mother was, I suppose,” she said, fanning her hand above the desk. Then her smile faded, and her brow wrinkled. “I’m afraid I have bad news, however. Dr. Mitu isn’t here. He’s at a dig in Egypt, outside of Memphis. He left two weeks ago.”
My heart fell. Not sure why, exactly. I suppose, unlike Father, I was hungry for connections with people who knew my mother—hungry for memories and stories, anything that kept her alive in my head.
“I’m disappointed to hear that,” I told Liliana. “He’d contacted my father, Richard Fox? My father mentioned that Dr. Mitu was doing some research, and I believe he was coming to see him this past summer but... got sidetracked.”
Liliana nodded, eyes bright with interest. “I know all about that. I helped Dr. Mitu—it was such an exciting project. He was so looking forward to seeing your father to share his discovery.”
“Really?” I said. “Do you mind me asking... what discovery was this?”
