by Jenn Bennett
“The two of you have been in contact? For how long? This entire time?” I mean, I knew that Father communicated with Huck occasionally at least. Enough to report to me that Huck was still alive and living with his aunt.
“Theo . . .” He said my name as if he pitied me and was trying to spare my feelings—which only made me angry. And paranoid.
“Have you been meeting up with Father at other expeditions?”
“Not necessarily . . . ?”
“What in the hell does that mean?”
“It’s a bit of a long story,” he said, eyes darting away.
“Oh-ho! I bet it is, and I’ve got plenty of time. And apparently so do you, since you’re taking baths in my room and exchanging our train tickets—was that you?”
“Christ alive, this hotel is gossipy,” he murmured. “Remind me to fill out a complaint card when we’re checking out.”
“And to top it all off, you told the concierge you were my brother?” I said, suddenly livid. “My brother? That’s rich.”
Worst part was, he nearly used to be.
Before the birthday incident last year—something I privately referred to in my head as Black Sunday—Father had treated Huck as if he were beloved heir and fortunate son. For the first few years of my teens, while I was continually left behind in hotels when we all traveled abroad together several times a year, Huck was climbing mountains and sailing the seas with my father, having glorious adventures. Huck knew how to fly a plane, pilot a boat, and pick a lock. If my father needed something done outside the law, Huck enthusiastically volunteered and was enthusiastically praised.
In Father’s eyes, I was trouble, but Huck the Magnificent could do no wrong.
And as far as what I thought about Huck? That was complicated. When Huck first moved into our upstate New York Hudson Valley home, Foxwood, both us were children, grieving over the recent loss of parents. Huck’s father was an Irish immigrant who’d served in my father’s unit in the war; they were both awarded the Medal of Honor for swimming across a canal in France under fire to rescue a dozen imprisoned allies, an act that had created an unbreakable bond between our fathers.
After the war Sergeant Gallagher and his wife were killed unexpectedly in a terrible streetcar accident outside their Brooklyn apartment, one that Huck survived . . . the white scar on his cheek a continual reminder. Huck had no relatives in the States to take him in—and no money to return to Ireland. Father didn’t even think about it. He just left Foxwood one afternoon and returned a few hours later with a scared eleven-year-old boy.
At the time I was struggling, grieving. Would wake up in the middle of horrible nightmares, wailing . . . which was when Huck dubbed me “banshee.” Grief bonded us. We became inseparable friends. And the small, broken family of me and Father expanded to include Huck. We were more than family. We were a trio shackled by loss. A band of mourners, loyal to one another. Until I broke the rules with Huck . . . and broke my father’s heart.
Black Sunday.
One minute Huck was in my life every single day, and then . . . he was gone. Poof! I woke up the next morning and he was on an ocean liner to Northern Ireland. No goodbye. No nothing. For months it felt as if I were in mourning all over again—as if he’d actually, physically died. Maybe sometimes I even wished he had, because that would have been better than knowing he was across the ocean, still very much alive . . . and very much unconcerned that he’d broken my heart into a million pieces.
But now here he was, standing in front of me. Brought back from the dead as if he were a cursed mummy, risen from an ancient burial tomb.
Like nothing had happened.
“You are not my brother,” I remind him, poking his breastbone.
“Know that, don’t I?”
“Why did you tell Mr. Osman you were?”
“Was the only thing I could think of on the spot that would get me inside your room,” he argued, looking mildly sheepish. “It helped that the concierge was fairly easy to fool. By the way, is the man’s hair cut like that on purpose? Looks as if he made an enemy of his barber.”
“You could have waited in the lobby.”
He shook his head. “Negative. I needed a bath like you wouldn’t believe. Man was not meant to go without hot water and indoor plumbing for days while climbing mountains. It’s a wonder I don’t have lice.”
It should’ve been me climbing those mountains and attracting lice—not him. I used to go in the field with my parents when I was a child—to ancient ruins, temples, and hidden gravesites. The three of us went everywhere together. But after Mom died and Huck moved in, Father became increasingly paranoid about my safety, claiming every expedition was “not a place for a young lady.” And that’s when I started getting left behind in hotels.
Huck ran a hand through his curls. “Let me just say, the shampoo here smells amazing. Like roses. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, it feels good to be clean, I—” He stopped abruptly, glanced at my mud-soaked dress, and puffed up his cheeks. “Woof ! Have you been rolling around in dog shite?”
“It was raining, and there was this harem ring . . .”
“Harem?” he said, one brow lifting slowly.
“I got falsely accused of shoplifting jewelry when I was only trying to take photographs of a haunted wall in the Grand Bazaar—”
“Wall?” he said, gaze dropping to my camera case. “Should I ask?”
“Probably not.” Huck was superstitious and maintained a “best leave it alone” attitude toward anything ghostly or occult. “It’s been a lousy day,” I mumbled.
He nodded sympathetically. “That fellow downstairs mentioned your tutor quitting.”
“She took all the traveler’s checks, ran off with a lounge singer, and left me here alone!”
“I see . . .”
“No, I doubt you do, but let me explain. While you were running around Turkey behind my back with Father, I was being held hostage in the Grand Bazaar and then accused of being a she-demon, and now I don’t have any money except this”—I pulled out the banknote that the stranger in the black coat had given me and waved it angrily in front of Huck’s face—“which probably isn’t real currency and definitely isn’t mine, but apparently I’m a magnet for the uncanny today, and did I mention how long it took me to hail a taxicab that splashed me with excrement? But if it hadn’t stopped, I was likely well on my way to being murdered in some back alley and being torn apart by wild dogs. So yes, that’s been my day.”
Wide hazel eyes blinked at me. Forget Helen of Troy: those eyes could launch a thousand ships. Sometimes golden, sometimes green, they peered out from a dark fan of overlong lashes.
“Well, then,” Huck said evenly. “Good thing I showed up when I did, yeah?”
I started to lash out with a catty response; yet in that moment a glacier thawed inside my rib cage and flooded my chest, and I was just so thankful he was here. Not because I couldn’t take care of myself. I could. Not because I’d mourned him as if he were dead and buried, sobbing my eyes out for months like some silly child.
It was . . . just such an enormous relief to see his face.
But I would’ve rather hacked off my own arm with a rusty butter knife than tell him that.
The light above the bathroom mirror cast deep shadows, and Huck’s towel was thin and damp. Unexpectedly, my imagination filled in the blanks with gratuitous detail, and I felt my cheeks catch fire. I prayed he didn’t notice. When our gazes connected, I knew that he had, and I wanted to fold myself up until I disappeared.
“Seriously, Huck. What is going on?” I said, flustered, making sure my gaze didn’t slide downward again. “Where is my father?”
“Aye, Fox,” he said. “I couldn’t say exactly.”
“What do you mean? Is he not with you? Why exchange our train tickets? Are we leaving Istanbul tonight?”
He blew out a long breath, and his cocky exuberance faded. “Your father is maybe, just possibly, a tiny bit missing in action.”
“Missing? What do you mean? You lost him?”
“He lost me, if you want to be technical about it. On purpose.”
I blinked. “He left you?”
“I think he has a plan, but I’m not entirely sure. Things got . . . complicated in Tokat. But not to worry. I’ve got instructions, and Fox will no doubt be fine. He has balls of iron, so there’s no cause for worry.”
I couldn’t understand why he was being so blasé about my father’s well-being. “He’s in trouble? Is he trying to avoid arrest?” It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been detained for violating international antiquities laws. “If he needs bail money, I can’t—”
“No, it’s not the police or the government. The people who are after us are unpleasant. I’ve seen strange things, banshee. . . .” He shuddered briefly and said quite seriously, “We never should’ve come to Turkey.”
“I’m going to need more than that. Is Father in trouble or isn’t he?”
“Aye, maybe. The short version of the story is that I flew out to Tokat to meet up with him, and we hiked up the mountains to search for . . . the thing he was searching for.”
My jaw clicked as I flexed it. “Vlad the Impaler’s ring.”
“Right,” he said, as if he would’ve been happier if he could have talked around it. “He mentioned that was a sore spot.”
“Oh, is that what he told you?”
His eyes narrowed. “Do you want to hear this or not?”
I nodded curtly.
He continued. “As I was saying, we found an empty grave up there. No skull of Count Dracula, or Prince Vlad, or Mr. Impaler—whatever you want to call him . . . no ring, either. But we weren’t the only ones looking. We were followed by a couple of men back to Tokat. Managed to lose them, though. Then Fox got a message from someone who claimed to have information on the ring. He sent me out to arrange transportation back to Istanbul, and when I returned to the hotel . . . Fox was gone.”
“Gone?”
Still holding on to his towel with one hand, he gestured for me to move and ducked behind the door, where a canvas rucksack sat on the bathroom tile. Digging under a jumble of clothes, he pulled out a red leather journal bound with a matching strap.
I recognized it immediately. My father’s travel journal.
He had dozens lined up inside a locked case in his home office, one for every year. I was never allowed to read them. No one was.
The Fox family crest was stamped into the cover with a Gaelic motto: Mo teaghlach thar gach uile ní. Family first. A sentiment I’d had chiseled into my brain since I was old enough to speak.
“He left this for me yesterday at the hotel desk with a note,” Huck said, handing over the journal. “It’s tucked there, on top.”
I set down my travel guide on the edge of the sink and briefly ran my fingers over the soft leather before tugging a folded scrap of wrinkled paper from the taut straps. No mistaking my father’s handwriting. I quickly read the scrawled note:
It’s become far too dangerous. I need to finish this alone. Get to Istanbul as quickly and discreetly as you can and give my journal to Theodora for safekeeping. Take her to that royal hotel we talked about on the way here—remember the story I told you? That one. Don’t delay. I’ll meet up with you both as soon as I’m able. If I’m not there by Friday, don’t stick around: take Theo back to Hudson Valley. Whatever you do, don’t go to Paris.
Beware of hounds on your tail: do not allow anyone suspicious near Theo. If you have a gut feeling about someone, trust it. If possible, try to keep the authorities out of this. We’re beyond their help now anyway.
Tell Theo that if she loses the journal, I’ll kill her.
And if you lose Theo? I’ll kill you.
Family first,
Fox
Fear ballooned inside my chest as my father’s words swam in my vision. The only part of his letter that I fully understood was the bit about not going to Paris. That was where Jean-Bernard Bisset lived. He was a wealthy Parisian antiquities dealer, a longtime family acquaintance, and my father’s closest friend. We had plans to go to Paris after Father was finished in Turkey.
But apart from that, everything else he’d written was gibberish.
“Listen,” I said forcefully. “If you don’t start explaining everything that’s going on here in the next five seconds, I will hurt the softest parts of you.”
“Ah, see there. You have missed me,” he said, one corner of his mouth twisting up.
I pointed the journal at his towel. “Something’s going to be missing, all right.”
“You know what they say. Violence makes the heart grow fonder.”
“Five . . .” I began counting. “Four, three, two—”
“All right!” he said, shielding the front of his towel with one hand. “Jaysus, Theodora! Do you want to hear? If so, I’d ask that you lower the bludgeoning weapon, please and thank you.”
“I’ll lower it when you put some clothes on.” My eyes wouldn’t stop glancing at a dark line of hair that arrowed down his stomach and disappeared beneath the towel, and it was infuriatingly distracting. “I can’t think straight. Please get dressed!”
“Afraid I cannot. Hotel is laundering my clothes. Been on a mountain for days, haven’t I? Got nothing to wear that’s clean.”
“I swear to all things holy, if you don’t—”
A noise outside the room drew our attention. We both froze in place and remained still as statues for several heartbeats. Then I heard Huck mumble a blasphemous curse.
“It’s only—” I started, but he waved for me to lower my voice. “Room service.”
“Room service doesn’t pick the lock,” he whispered back in a sober tone.
I listened harder to the soft, metallic clicks emanating from my door. The hair on both my arms lifted.
“The bastards followed me!” Huck whispered. Slinging his rucksack over one shoulder, he urged me out of the bathroom doorway. Then he swung around, desperately searching my room for something.
A place to hide.
My eyes followed his. To the bed. Closet. Drapes.
Balcony.
We quickly stepped outside into cold drizzle and closed the door behind us right before two large men entered my hotel room.
They were dressed in long black cassock robes, like Orthodox monks. If pressed to guess, I’d say they looked Eastern European. They searched my room like lions hunting prey.
Inside the rain-speckled panes of glass, a gauzy curtain covered the balcony door. Even so, I was afraid they’d see our silhouettes. Huck must’ve thought so too, because he dragged me out of view, and we huddled against the stone wall of the building. As traffic sped down slick streets below, I forced my overfast lungs to calm and dared a glance into the room. The curtain obstructed my sight, but I could tell that they were tearing my room to pieces. My clothes torn from hangers. Drawers pulled open. The mattress flipped over. My imported silk stockings twisted like wharf rope . . . and my imported newspapers with all the crossword puzzle pages removed and neatly finished, tossed aside like garbage.
Heathens!
One of the monkish men emerged from the bathroom and mumbled something to his cohort that I couldn’t catch. Then he surveyed the room, and—
He spotted the balcony door.
I quickly moved out of sight.
“We can’t stay here,” Huck whispered urgently into my ear. “They’ll kill us.”
The look on Huck’s face was grave. I didn’t want to die. Particularly not in a foreign country with a nearly naked Huck.
There was barely room enough on the balcony for us and the small patio table that sat in the opposite corner. Nowhere to hide. We couldn’t very well jump four stories to the street below.
My gaze flicked to our side. Each of the rooms on this floor shared one long balcony, broken up by waist-high iron railings. Terrible if you cherished your privacy, but at the moment it looked like a viable escape route.
“That’s Madame Lerou
x’s old balcony,” I whispered.
Huck took a moment to think about it before quickly tossing his rucksack over the rail. With one hand grasping his towel, he swung his long legs and leapt over the iron divider, smoothly landing on the adjoining section of the balcony like a graceful cat. I, on the other hand, still clinging on to both my handbag and my father’s journal, clambered over the rail like some sort of drugged sloth. He grasped my arm to stop me from slipping in a rain puddle, and we stumbled into the recessed shelter of the adjoining room’s balcony door.
As Madame Leroux had only checked out within the last hour, I prayed this room was still currently empty and tried to make myself smaller to remove myself from the intruder’s line of vision. Huck wrapped both arms around my back and pulled me closer. Too close. My breasts grazed his bare chest, and I could smell the rose shampoo in his hair. This was eight down in today’s Guardian crossword: “To bait or ensnare.” T-R-A-P.
On the other side of the dividing rail, my balcony door creaked on its hinges. And that’s when I felt Huck’s damp towel plop onto my shoes.
I didn’t glance down.
I tried not to glance down.
Fine. I glanced down.
There was a blur of darkness and some . . . vague shapes in my peripheral southerly vision. It was hard to see in the rain, but I was more than aware that the fourth floor was not as high up as I’d prefer, because anyone walking on the street below need only look up to see us in a lurid state of disgrace. Just one more black mark on my stellar record.
A scream cut through the wind and drizzle. It was coming from my hotel room, and a commotion soon followed. Banging. Running. Shouting . . .
The robed intruder on my balcony disappeared, and a male voice—one that I recognized immediately—shouted for the police.
“Bless Mr. Osman and his awful haircut!” I whispered.
Huck, however, didn’t share my enthusiasm. At that instant the glass-paned balcony door no longer withstood our combined weight. It flew inward, and we followed, hitting the floor together with a terrible thump.
The wind was knocked from my lungs, and it felt as if a horse had kicked me in my right breast. I seized in pain, unable to think straight. It took me several seconds to realize that my father’s journal was painfully wedged between us.