by Jenn Bennett
He blinked at me for several moments, eyes wild and panicked. Then he shook his head. “How do we stop it?”
I tried to recall what I’d read about spells like these, grappling with the excitement of discovery and the pounding on the rooftop door, which was sounding louder and louder. . . .
“Destroy it!” I said, hoping I was right.
From his coat pocket, Huck retrieved a box of matches printed with a black cat and gingerly picked up a corner of the banknote. “Here!” I said, taking the matches from him. I struck a match and held it to the paper. Flames devoured it. Huck waited until it was flaming too intensely to hold and dropped it onto the roof. In seconds it was nothing but ash and smoke that scattered across the rooftop.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
We swung toward the roof-access door.
Our pursuers weren’t pounding anymore; they were trying to break down the damn door. No need to tell me twice. I bent down and rapidly shoveled all my things back into my satchel in three quick motions. Huck made a quick assessment and squatted on the edge of the roof to maneuver onto the ladder. “C’mon,” he said, motioning. “Follow me. If you slip, I’m under you. Just don’t look down.”
Why do people always say that? As the battering on the roof-access door intensified, I quickly gathered up my skirt and knotted it between my legs to stop it from blowing. Then I twisted around until I was steady on the rickety roof ladder, and I descended.
Painted rust scraped my palms. The wind was fierce. Another bout of dizziness rolled over me, but I didn’t look down—not until I heard Huck jump onto the narrow ledge. Then his hands were around my waist, and he helped me down the last few rungs.
“Nice trick,” he said, smiling at my skirt. My garters were showing.
I tugged the knot loose and shook out the fabric. “Didn’t want a pervert looking up it.”
He opened his mouth to protest but was cut short by a loud crash from the roof. The men had busted open the roof-access door.
Without a word, Huck led and I followed along the ledge. When we heard noise above, we paused and hid in the shadows, flattened against the building, while silhouettes leaned over the parapet above. My pulse pounded in my temples. My chest rose and fell rapidly. Huck squeezed my hand. Or maybe I squeezed his; it was hard to be sure. But after several excruciating minutes, the silhouettes gave up and disappeared, and we were left alone with nothing but the sound of howling wind.
“We can’t stay out here,” I whispered, trying to see in the dark. If we kept going around the ledge, we might be able to reach a bank of windows. I pointed them out to Huck. He struggled to see them in the dark, so we switched places, and I got in front, carefully skirting along the ledge to the corner, then made the turn to the main part of the hotel.
Windows, and all of them were within reach. We tried four before one opened. “Hallway!” I whispered.
I chucked my satchel inside, and Huck boosted me up until I could climb through, then he followed suit. The hallway was quiet and empty. Two lonely housekeeping carts sat in a row. Maybe this wing wasn’t currently in use. Huck looked around a corner before pausing in front of one of the rooms, ear pressed to the door, listening. He must have liked what he heard, because he wasted no time digging inside his inner coat pocket to pull out an old set of lockpicks wrapped in a scrap of leather. Then he squatted in front of the door. I kept watch while he worked, and within seconds the lock clicked, and we both stumbled into an unoccupied hotel room.
“Hurry,” Huck whispered, locking the door behind us.
Metal rollaway bedframes with folded mattresses were lined up in two neat rows alongside wooden crates of new towels and blankets. The hotel was using this room for storage, it seemed.
We quickly pushed one of the larger crates against the door to block it—and stacked a second on top for good measure. Then we sat on the floor together, back-to-back. Huck watched the barricaded door, and I watched the window.
“You did see that on the banknote,” Huck said in a low voice after several minutes had passed in strained silence. “Looked like a web made out of light? I wasn’t imagining it, was I?”
“I saw it too,” I said.
“You think Sarkany did that? He’s some kind of sorcerer or warlock? Because now I’m thinking about what that man told us at the widow’s house—that she dabbled in the occult. And her husband sold his ring to that Mr. Rothwild fellow who hired Fox. Who are these people, and are all of them practicing dark arts?”
“My Batterman’s Field Guide says that Vlad Dracula’s ring has power. And Father talked to people in Romania who claimed there were legends about other people who owned it over the years—mass murderers. Evil people.”
“Let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that some of those stories about the ring are even partly true. What if it grants the wearer some sort of dark, murderous power? Could that be why all these bastards want it so badly—Sarkany and his goons? Maybe even Mr. Rothwild.”
“What if they’re competing occultists?” I said. “Rothwild and Sarkany.”
“Maybe that’s why Sarkany killed the widow—she was acquainted with Rothwild. Maybe they’re in a race to find the ring.”
And we were standing in the middle of their racing track with a journal that held secrets to help the winner get to their goal first.
Not a good place to be.
“Lazy birds,” I murmured, reciting a crossword clue I’d missed yesterday morning, before the telegrams and the journal cipher and the murder scene . . . before Huck swiping away my tears and making me want him all over again.
“Lazy birds?” Huck repeated.
“Ten across,” I said. “Sitting ducks.”
“Aye, that’s about right.”
Both of us fell silent. For a long time I could feel Huck’s heartbeat pounding through his spine. He felt solid and safe, a reassuring comfort. Yet even so, even with his back against mine, it still felt as if there were an invisible emotional wall between us. Everything we’d said. Everything we hadn’t. Even with everything that had happened over the last few days, this emotional chaos molded itself into bricks and stacked up.
Losing you shattered me into a thousand pieces.
Did he truly mean that? Did he still feel the same way? I wanted to hear it from him again, to make sure that it wasn’t a daydream or a mirage. I wanted to tell him that I was grateful he was here with me right now. That despite everything that had happened over the last year, I didn’t want to lose him again, not for anything in the world. Even if it meant all we could be was friends. Or family. Or whatever my father decided was acceptable.
Could I, though? Just be friends?
Was it possible to stop loving someone and still be happy, settling for something less than it once was?
13
WE FELL ASLEEP IN THE storage room. Neither of us meant to, and when I woke, cheek sticking to the leather of my satchel and Huck’s body heating my back, I was so discombobulated, it took me several panicked heartbeats to realize that (a) it was morning, (b) Huck had just woken up too, and (c) someone from housekeeping had found us.
The housekeeper tried to push open our barricaded door, calling out, “Buna?” repeatedly, and by the time she’d sent for the help of a porter, we’d unstacked the crate barrier. After an awkward conversation, Andrei showed up, and he was relieved to see us.
“My friends! We thought you were dead or kidnapped,” he admitted. “Three workers were sedated by the men who chased you—Titus told me everything. He hid in the kitchen for hours.”
Titus turned out to be the elevator operator. But he didn’t know what had happened to the men in robes—only that they’d disappeared. I didn’t like the sound of that. For all we knew, they could be lying in wait for us when we walked out of the hotel.
But we couldn’t stay here forever either.
“This was not as exciting as your father’s unfortunate incident with the mayor’s wife in the lobby this summer,” Andrei said. “But
now I think that misfortune follows your family.”
He had no idea.
“Brother, let me tell you what I think,” Huck said to Andrei. “I think if Miss Fox and I make it out of Romania alive, you will have two new refrigerators.”
Encouraged by this promise, Andrei was kind enough to have two guards escort us back to our room, where we washed our faces and changed clothes. After last night’s fiasco and with the ever-dropping temperatures, I decided I was done with running around in skirts. I changed into wrinkled khaki trousers, thick socks, and a pair of short brown leather boots that I’d had the good sense to pack at the bottom of my satchel when we were escaping the train back in Bulgaria. Then we ate a breakfast of buttered bread, Telemea cheese, sausage, and coffee. Huck surveyed the street from the balcony while I broke out my Vigenére square and Father’s journal. After a quick assessment, I was even more certain than I had been last night about where we should go next to find him.
JOURNAL OF RICHARD FOX
July 3, 1937
Snagov, Kingdom of România
Found a driver willing to take us to Transylvania. On the way, an hour north of Bucharest, stopped by a fourteenth-century monastery on a small islet in Lake Snagov. Long rumored to be the final resting place for Vlad Dracula’s bones (minus the head), it was excavated five years ago by a colleague of Elena’s, Dinu Rosetti. He didn’t find Vlad—only the bones of several horses. I hope to meet with him in Târgoviște, where he is excavating a caste, just to confirm that he didn’t secret away any monastery treasures for himself, i.e., a ring of bone. In the meantime, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to tour the monastery here. Glad I did, because I received a small windfall of information.
The monastery’s caretaker told me about a woman who lives in the woods across the lake, Madmoazelă FXPXE. My poor excuse for Romanian is being tested on this trip—Elena would shake her head in shame if she heard me butchering her country’s language—but I thought he called her a “hermit.” Regardless, she was rumored to be in possession of a family heirloom: a medieval ring of bone. Call me crazy, but I wasn’t passing up the chance that this wasn’t a coincidence.
Update, 7PM:
Jean-Bernard and I found this woman’s strange little house, which was isolated and accessible only by a dirt road. Seems the woman is less of a hermit and more of a folk herbalist, for which I have little patience. Let us just say that she and I did not get along. We spent five minutes talking on her front porch, and once she found out who I was working for, she told me that she didn’t have any such ring, but if she did, she wouldn’t let me see it because Rothwild is (and I’m translating here) “not fit to roll in pig shit.” Seems Rothwild had tried to contact her about the ring long before he hired me, and she not only hated him, but she hated me for being associated with him.
Next time I’m keeping my mouth shut about Rothwild. But I’m also telephoning the bastard when we get to Târgoviște, because what is the point of me revisiting the same places he’s already hit, looking for the ring? If he’s not going to be up front with me about these kinds of details, Jean-Bernard and I will just leave Romania and head back down to Greece to enjoy our holiday in the sun.
“What’s an herbalist?” Huck asked with no small amount of suspicion when I finished reading it aloud. “Please let it be someone who studies plants. I’m up to my eyeballs in occultists right now.”
“Maybe she mixes up natural remedies for the villagers?”
“Where there’s doubt, there’s hope,” Huck quipped.
“Where there’s life,” I corrected.
“There’s more doubt than life right now, banshee.”
He wasn’t wrong. The ciphered word in Father’s entry, FXPXE, I decoded to “Blaga.”
Madame Blaga. I relayed this to Huck, then said, “Father mentioned that this Lake Snagov is an hour north of Bucharest. If I had to guess why she’s on Father’s list—widow, hermit, twins—I’d say he must have thought that this woman actually had a bone ring in her possession; she just wasn’t willing to show it to him.”
Maybe it was another forgery. Maybe it was the real ring.
And maybe, just maybe, Father was there right now, and in a couple of hours all of this would be over. I could tell him about Sarkany and the wolf dog and how we ran across a roof to escape goons who were after us . . . and after I told him everything, I’d punch him in the stomach for abandoning us.
“Well, you know what they say,” Huck said as he peeked out the balcony, scanning the street. “Hope for the best; prepare for a raving hermit lady to chase us off her land. Let’s find out if Andrei can locate the address of one Madame Blaga in Snagov. And figure out how we’re getting out there with our limited funds.”
It didn’t take long for both of those things to get solved. Andrei was able to get an address and a taxi, and because he generously refused payment for our last night in the hotel, we had enough money to pay said taxi, which pulled around to a hidden side entrance in an alley to pick us up—just in case we were being followed by the robed men.
After explaining to the driver where we needed to go, Andrei shook our hands and waved goodbye. “You will tell the Fox I said hello when you find him?”
“I’ll have him send you a check for the broken lock on the roof-access door,” I called back as the cab began pulling away.
He gave me a thumbs-up sign, and then we were on our way.
I was a little sorry to say goodbye to Bucharest as I watched the city roll past my window and turn into farmland and rivers. A petrol station. A roadside memorial cross. A man walking two horned water buffalo on the side of the road. And then there was little more than the road itself, the occasional humble home, and great swathes of wooded land. Everywhere I looked, trees were bursting with gold and red leaves. It was idyllic, but that also meant there were fewer places to hide if someone was following us.
But no one was. In fact, I hadn’t seen a car in miles. It was quiet out here. Very rural. Bandit-free. I realized I should probably have been more worried about the taxi driver getting lost than anyone attacking us. After a few wrong turns, the taxi finally found the right dirt lane leading into the right woods, and it wasn’t long before we found what we were looking for.
Across from a wooden hill at the bend of a river sat a large cottage. Its stone facade was covered in folk paintings. Bands of flowers and murals that looked as if they were straight out of a fairy tale: ravens, bears, wolves wearing clothes, a flying horse. It wasn’t exactly enchanting, and maybe even verged on foreboding.
“This is the right address?” Huck said to the driver, who gestured loosely toward the cottage in confirmation. “Is it just me, or do you feel like Hansel and Gretel?”
“Whatever you do, don’t get inside any ovens,” I told him.
A striking middle-aged woman emerged from a wooden door, a long cigarillo clamped between two fingers. She limped across a front porch in a billowing white dress cinched at the waist by an embroidered black-and-red apron; a red kerchief was tied over silver-streaked hair.
The hermit.
And no sign of my father. Well, here’s to hoping I had better luck with this woman than he had.
In Romanian, I quickly begged the driver to wait for us, just for a moment. And when he agreed, I exited the taxi with Huck and cautiously approached the woman.
“Good morning. We’re looking for Madame Blaga,” I said in Romanian, shielding my eyes with my hand to look up at her on the cottage porch.
The woman blew out a long plume of fragrant smoke and responded in richly accented English. “You have found her. But few ask for me with that name anymore. Most call me Mama Lovena.”
Memories from the traders’ bonfire rose like smoke inside my head. Valentin’s story of a witch who lived in a cottage in the woods . . .
A creaky breath gusted from my mouth.
Huck sounded as if he were choking and tried to pass it off as a cough.
“You’ve heard of me, I can see.” One
corner of her mouth curled. “It’s probably all true.”
“Jaysus,” Huck mumbled, tugging discreetly on my coat sleeve. “I knew ‘herbalist’ didn’t sound right. She’s a witch, banshee. We need to leave.”
I laughed, nervous, hoping she hadn’t heard that comment. And I wasn’t going anywhere. Was it every day that one gets to meet a witch in a forest? I thought not. “I’m Theodora Fox,” I called out. “And this is Huck Gallagher. We’re sorry to show up on your doorstep unannounced.”
“Many do.” She beckoned us with her cigarillo to come closer and looked us over critically, gaze stopping on my silver coin pendant. “But few bearing the name of a Byzantine empress. Interesting souvenir you have there.”
I touched the coin, surprised. “You know about her?”
“I know about a lot of things,” the woman said through squinting eyes. “Just what do you seek from me, little empress?”
Little empress. That was what my parents called me. Hearing it now threw me off-balance and made my throat constrict.
“Yes, sorry . . . ,” I said, a little rattled. “I think you spoke to my father a few months ago, in the summer? He was with another man, and they came here looking for a ring.”
A smile grew. “You are the American treasure hunter’s daughter.”
“We were wondering if perhaps my father had come here again?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Yesterday.”
My heart went wild. “Yesterday? Are you sure?”
“Do you forget a bear growling at you? No, you do not. Richard Fox was here, but he left.”
“Did he say where he was going? Was he with anyone? Was he okay?”
“So many questions, tsk,” she said, more weary than irritated, before lifting her head to the taxi driver and telling him in rapid Romanian to wait. When he lifted a hand and nodded, she beckoned to me with her cigarillo again. “Come inside, little empress, and we can talk. I will tell you what I know.”
Huck was still hesitant, so I elbowed him firmly in the ribs in an attempt to pluck up both his courage and mine. He muffled a groan. Then we followed the strange woman into the stranger house.