“What the hell are you thinking?”
“Excuse me?”
“You know what I’m talking about,” he said, gesturing flippantly. “Accepting that bloody thing was a mistake.”
“Why? You heard them. The box keeps the band hidden.”
“You trust that? You trustthem? My skin was crawling the entire time we were in that bedeviled shop!”
“That was probably just the magic wards,” I assured him. “Did you see the inside of the window? It’s one thing to read about spellwork like that in books, but to see it in action was—”
“Downright frightening? Made you want to piss your pants and run in the other direction?”
“Impressive?” I said, flashing him a toothy, sheepish smile.
“It’s not funny.”
“I didn’t say it was. Why are you being an ass?”
“Because I’m scared out of my mind, banshee,” he said as a cold wind whipped a wayward lock of curly hair across his creased brow. “I’m bloody terrified of that ring and the people who want it.”
“You think I’m not?”
“We don’t even know if Fox is here. What if he left the country? What if he went back to the hotel in Bucharest and is tearing his hair out, looking for us?”
“Then he should have showed up days ago, when he said he was going to! Or he never should’ve left you in Tokat in the first place! I’m not happy about any of this, Huck.”
“Aren’t you? Earlier today you were as scared as I was when the professor’s assistant told you all that about your ancestry, but now it seems to have settled in your mind. Because I saw the way your eyes lit up when those brothers were shoving the ring box toward you, allDaughter of Draculathis andTransylvanian Princessthat... You looked like someone just told you that you’re the son of God!”
I frowned at him. “Did not!”
“You did,” he said, nodding his head rapidly. “That ring is cursed, and it’s got its claws in you. We shouldn’t have accepted it. No good will come of it.”
“What about Father, huh? The entire reason we’ve raced all over Eastern Europe for the last week?”
“And we’re going to do what now, exactly? Hike miles across a mountain in the dark until a magical castle that’s not on any map appears in the fog? Maybe we’ll run into another wolf pack while we’re at it? That is, if this Rothwild doesn’t catch us first. Or Sarkany. Or the rest of these evil cultists. Hey! Maybe we’ll freeze to death in the snow this time and the ghost of that trapper will hunt us down and carveX ’s into our foreheads.”
“You’re being hysterical.”
“Yes! I damn well am! Taking that ring was a stupid idea! How are we supposed to even bargain with it if we don’t know where to go?”
“If you have another idea, please do share it. And be sure to shout it out on a public street, while you’re at it. I love it when the entire world knows our business!”
A retort was on his tongue until he glanced over his shoulder at a lone elderly couple who clung to each other and stared at us with curious faces as they passed.
The fire in his eyes sputtered and went out.
He dropped his shoulders and made a frustrated whimpering noise. “I have no ideas, banshee. Zero. I’m just scared, is all. This is all so impossible.”
“That’s not true!”
“Is it not? Feels a little like it is. I can’t help but think that we should have never left Bucharest.”
“Oh, is that so?” I said, embittered. “After all this, you still think we should’ve just found a way to get to a port and caught an ocean liner back to the States? And maybe in a few weeks, Father would find his own way home. Or maybe we’d get a cable from the European police letting us know that they found his body somewhere in the Carpathians. Is that it?”
“You know it’s not. It’s just... Christ, Theo. I feel like we’ve failed, and I’m going to lose you all over again, and maybe lose Fox, too. And I just... don’t know what to do.”
The thing about fighting with someone you care about is that it’s no fun when they don’t fight back.
