The Lady Rogue

by Jenn Bennett

  That made two of us. I shifted my arm to shove a hand into my coat pocket and felt around until the tips of my fingers grazed Lovena’s wooden talisman. Safe. Like us. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

  Dust tickled my nose. The cabin smelled old and dirty. As I switched shoulders on the door, I kicked something with my foot. Toeing it, I realized it was Huck’s broken plank. I felt around until I had it in hand. One end was splintered, but what remained of the board was still a good length. And when we shuffled it around between us, testing, we found that it was just long enough to slide back into both brackets and bar the door.

  “We need something else to barricade it,” Huck said, and after a moment he shoved a heavy table my way. I helped him pull it into place, wedging it against the door.

  “That’s better,” he said in the dark. “Hopefully. Do you hear them out there?”

  “I hear the river,” I said. “How is Lupu here? How, Huck?”

  “She couldn’t have been with Sarkany. It’s not possible for them to have made it here this fast.”

  “Unless she wasn’t with him. Maybe she escaped. We never saw her in the citadel.”

  “We never even saw him,” Huck pointed out.

  A chill ran through me. If it wasn’t Sarkany there, who was it? Rothwild? The robed cultists? How many people were after us?

  “Maybe we’re okay for now,” Huck said after a few moments of silence.

  “You think?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  I let out a little breath and tried to relax. “How okay are we? Okay enough to light a fire? It’s too dark in here.”

  “Couldn’t agree more. It’s giving me the willies. I feel like Sarkany’s going to jump out from behind us any second now. Oh, wait. Think I feel a lantern over here. Hold on.” Metal rattled; liquid sloshed. “Sounds like there’s fuel.” It took him a couple of strikes before a golden flame danced between us. He stuck the match inside a hole in the base of an old hanging oil lamp and lit the wick.

  Light blossomed inside the small room.

  So much better.

  My eyes adjusting, I quickly scanned the space around us. Dried herbs hung from the rafters in a net of dusty spiderwebs. The walls were lined with dusty shelves, and there was an old stone fireplace.

  But it was hard to pay attention to any of that, what with the animal skulls covering the walls. Dozens and dozens of them. Rabbit, racoon, fox . . . any number of small woodland creatures. They hung like trophies, all bleached bone and dark, empty eye sockets. Each one had a tiny symbol carved into the forehead, mostly crude X’s.

  Huck whistled softly as he held up the lantern to inspect the walls. “What the devil is all this?”

  Some bizarre local custom? I didn’t know, but it gave me chills.

  My gaze jumped from the skulls to a shelf filled with rusted iron traps. Ugly ones, with rows of iron teeth built to snap the legs of animals that had the terrible luck to walk into them.

  Huck saw them too. “Trapper’s cabin.”

  “Umm,” I said nervously, tapping Huck on the arm. “T-trapper.”

  In the far corner, tucked behind some dusty open shelving that served to divide a sleeping space from the rest of the room, a human skeleton lay on a narrow cot atop a darkly stained quilt. Trousers and a shirt hung over bare bones. A few bits of gray, petrified skin clung to its skull.

  “Ah Jaysus!”

  I gritted my teeth and stared at the monstrous sight.

  “Oh, my dear holy God,” Huck whispered, craning his neck to see beyond the shelving. “That’s not a real body . . . is it?”

  “A dead one,” I confirmed. “Very, very, very dead.”

  Huck swore profusely and made the sign of the cross in the air several times in a row.

  “It’s just a skeleton,” I assured him . . . and myself. “We’ve seen a million of them in museums. My mother used to dig them up.”

  “Ancient ones, banshee. Not fresh ones!”

  “He’s not fresh. No smell.” Hesitantly, I shifted closer to inspect it. My heart thudded against my rib cage.

  “Small relief, I suppose. An ugly bastard, isn’t he?”

  “He’s, uh, remarkably preserved. I can’t even guess how long he’s been in here. A decade or more? Longer?”

  “Oh,” Huck said from several feet away. “Now it makes sense. That’s why the door was barred from the inside—the trapper was inside. You think he passed on in his sleep? Why did he die in here?”

  “See how his leg is twisted? Maybe he got stuck in one of his traps.”

  “Or he got attacked by something with big teeth,” Huck said. “Hey, Theo?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Now I’m thinking about everything Valentin told us at the camp. . . . This man wasn’t buried right.”

  “He wasn’t buried at all, Huck.”

  “That’s what’s worrying me! What did Valentin call it, the vampire creature?”

  “Strigoi or mullo,” I said. “But I think that involves the body reanimating. Clearly this guy isn’t going anywhere, unless he can figure out a way to keep his bones together.”

  “What about things like fetches? Wraiths? Ghosts?”

  I glanced around the cabin, a little nervous. Maybe also a little interested. “Don’t see any ghosts.”

  “Don’t sound so disappointed! What about . . . ? I mean, the heartbeat sound when you were near the ring in Sighișoara, and all that stuff Lovena told you about your blood . . .”

  “What about it? You think I can attract ghosts now?”

  “No! I meant, can you hear any?”

  Oh. I glanced around the cabin, listening. “I don’t think so?”

  He let out a long breath. “Thank the saints.”

  “Maybe I should take a photograph, just in case it shows up on film?”

  “Please don’t tempt fate. Something’s not right in these woods. Maybe there’s a reason it’s rumored to be haunted. I swear to God, banshee. If we see the trapper’s ghost, I’m giving up—what are you doing? You’re seriously going to take photographs?”

  I pulled my camera out from my satchel and checked the lens to make sure it hadn’t broken during our tumble down the ridge. It seemed fine. While Huck complained, I snapped several quick photographs of the skeleton and animal skulls.

  “Are you quite finished?” Huck said.

  I capped the lens and stowed the camera. “You may thank me later if any apparitions show up on the film and I become famous.”

  “No. I’ll be pissing my trousers in fear, as I’m close to doing now. First wolves. Now this . . .” He glanced at the door. “What do we do about it?”

  “The wolves?”

  “The skeleton! The fucking body on the bed, banshee!” he said, his Irish lilt rising an octave.

  “It’s not going anywhere, Huck.”

  “I can’t stay in here with a dirty, dead hellion leering at me. Isn’t it enough that we have to stare at all of these poor, dead creatures with spooky symbols carved into them? This is a bad place. A man died here. Right here!”

  “Not sure what choice we have. If we open the door to get the skeleton outside, the wolves might tear out our throats.”

  “Death by wolf or death by fright? That’s our choice?”

  “Plus, it’s never a good idea to disturb remains. Could stir up bad bacteria.” Or bad juju. “Best to just hunker down here until morning and forget about it.”

  Huck set the lantern down on the table barricading the door. Then he paced the floorboards, staying well away from the cot. “Okay, okay. Let’s think about this, shall we? We’re alive. That’s most important, yeah?”

  “Would seem so, yes.”

  “And we have shelter,” he said.

  “Maybe warmth, too.” There was a stack of dusty wood in the corner, covered in more spiderwebs.

  “Warm is good,” he said. “No food . . .”

  “But we can surely make it through the night here,” I said. “Better inside these walls t
han out. Let’s just see if there’s something we can use to cover Mr. Trapper over there, and you’ll forget all about him in no time.”

  “You sound just like Fox.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  “You keep sounding like him!” he argued.

  “I’ll make you a deal, then. I’ll stop when we get a fire going.”

  “You mean when I get a fire going with my manly hands.”

  “Terrific idea,” I said sarcastically. “Wish I’d thought of it.”

  “If I survive this night, know that I may strangle you in the morning.”

  “With your manly hands?”

  Grumbling to himself, Huck investigated the chimney flue and managed to get a fire started with the help of some dry kindling in a bucket. Meanwhile, I poked around the cabin and found a dusty newspaper by the bed.

  “December 3, 1901,” I read to Huck. “Do you think the trapper’s been dead in here that long? Thirty-six years?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t care. Not looking at him or his witchy animal skulls. Trying to preserve my sanity, aren’t I?” He’d found a broom and was sweeping a clean spot for us in front of the hearth, to which he gestured now. “You’re supposed to be impressed by this. Me big man, make big fire.”

  I laid sheets of the newspaper over the cot. “Me little woman, cover up skeleton so big man doesn’t get scared.”

  “Hey, I’m already scared, so the joke’s on you.”

  “If the ghost of Mr. Trapper decides to make an appearance, you can hide behind me.”

  He snorted and shook his head. “Remember that autumn in Hudson Valley when they did that haunted maze downtown? I think you were eleven? You were so scared of the vampire jumping out of the coffin, Fox had to carry you back outside.”

  “How could I forget? You laughed so hard, you slipped in that mud puddle when we were walking back to the car.”

  “Oof ! Forgot about that. Must have blocked it out,” Huck said, the corners of his mouth twisting up. “All I’m saying is how could a girl afraid of Mr. Kowalski dressed in a bad vampire costume grow up into a girl who delights in taking photographs of skeletons and ghosts?”

  “When life gives you ghosts, make ghost lemonade?”

  He shook his head, feigning disappointment. “Leave the proverbs to the experts, yeah? And get over here before you freeze to death and I’m trapped here with two bodies.”

  I shuffled across the room to join him, and we both sat in front of the stone fireplace, leaning back against our luggage. The fire was a little smoky, but it felt fantastic.

  “Christ, banshee. You’re shaking like a leaf,” he said, huddling next to me. “Take off your boots. They’ll dry faster closer to the flames.”

  I untied the laces with a groan. “Everything hurts.”

  “Me too.” He waited for me to hand him my brown boots and set them closer to the fire. Now that we had light and heat, it was easier to see that we were both a little banged up from our downhill tumble.

  “Your trousers are torn,” I said, looking at his knee.

  “And your face looks as if it lost a boxing match,” he said, pushing my hair away from my face to inspect it. When he touched my swollen cheek, I winced. “Yep, that eye is going to be black tomorrow. Been there myself. Won’t be pleasant.”

  Yes, I remembered too well. His eye was black when he came to my bedroom that final night at Foxhill last year. Maybe he was remembering it too, because he released me suddenly and stared at the fire, sniffling. Was he thinking about everything we’d said to each other in the woods before the wolves showed up? I was. And I was wondering how I could feel so close to him in that moment, yet so awkward now.

  So awkward. So quiet. Too quiet.

  “Maybe we can find a way to civilization now,” I suggested, trying to thaw the chill between us.

  “Yeah, good idea,” Huck mumbled. He pulled out the train brochures and found the one that had a regional map of the nearby city of Cluj and our current location on the outskirts of the town, the haunted Hoia Forest. He was right: the map was made for tourists, but the dead clearing where Huck had landed the plane was marked, and so was the river outside this cabin—it looked to be a tributary of a larger river.

  “If this is even remotely right,” Huck said, “then Cluj can’t be more than a couple hours’ walk from here. Maybe we can rest here tonight and figure out how to cross the river tomorrow. It’s going to be fine,” he said, as if trying to talk himself into believing it. “We’ll hike to Cluj in the morning and see what happens. Yeah. That’s what we’ll do. . . .”

  What neither of us wanted to face was that while Cluj might be only a couple of hours away, it was several more to Brașov, where the Zissu brothers hopefully were—and my father.

  Wind howled through myriad cracks in the old walls. As my thoughts turned in circles, my gaze roamed past the fire to the walls of animal skulls and the symbols carved into their foreheads. They made me think of the bone ring. How it had made me feel. The bizarre thumping noises. It was so all-consuming that I nearly forgot how the ring looked inside the glass case. An ugly ring. Human bone . . . I couldn’t imagine what kind of person would sit down and carve some poor fellow’s leg bone to make a ring. Perhaps that was why it bent to one side, all crooked—because there wasn’t much bone to work with.

  Huh.

  Funny that it was an altogether different sort of bend on Rothwild’s reproduction ring—the one I’d seen in the photographs stuffed inside Father’s journal. If you’re going to go to the trouble of reproducing a ring in order to confuse people from finding the real one, why not copy it exactly?

  Maybe I was remembering it wrong. I sat up and tugged my father’s journal out of my satchel, unwinding the leather strap to pull out the photographs.

  “What are you doing?” Huck asked.

  “Look at this,” I said, handing him the photographs as I flipped to the final pages of the journal.

  “I’ve seen them. Rothwild’s fake ring.”

  I held up a finger. “Do you remember how the ring in Sighișoara looked?”

  “Like the one in this photograph.’

  “Exactly?”

  He started to shrug, and then his brow tightened. “Now that you mention it . . .”

  “It was different, wasn’t it? It didn’t have the same little crook in it like this one does.”

  “Maybe not. What’s your point?”

  “It’s not an exact reproduction. Don’t you think that’s strange? Look here. This is the next-to-last journal entry, which has the cipher about the boyar’s letter. Remember? This is what my father wrote about the rings—” I pointed at that section of the page:

  Seems to me that there are three rings. Two fakes, one real.

  I can’t be sure, but I think the actual ring was duplicated in Turkey. Two reproductions were sent back to Romania along with the real ring, and all were distributed to three historic families there for safekeeping. (“The power is in one” is what was written in the boyar’s letter.)

  “See?” I said.

  “No.”

  “Father thought two of them were fake because the boyar’s letter said ‘the power is in one.’ But what if that doesn’t mean that only one ring is real? What if it means there are three rings, and they only work when they are put together as one?”

  “Not following.”

  “Here,” I said, pointing to the photograph. “See how the ring bends at the top?”

  “It’s crooked.”

  “And remember the ring in the case?” I asked.

  “Also crooked, just in a different way. Terrible jeweler, whoever made it. Someone should ask for a refund.”

  “What if it wasn’t sloppy craftsmanship? Maybe it was carved that way on purpose because all three rings fit together to form a knot on top. Like a gimmal ring.” I made circles with my thumbs and overlapped them to show him what I meant. “I’ve seen rings like this before, in the bazaar in Istanbul.”

  “T
he one you were accused of shoplifting?”

  I grinned and touched my finger to my nose. “That’s the one! In Turkey, they’re called a wedding ring or a harem ring, and the story behind them was that if the wife took her ring off to cheat with another man, she’d have trouble reassembling it properly and would get caught, which is completely sexist and stupid, by the way.”

  “Very stupid,” Huck agreed with a smile. “The wife could just leave the ring on.”

  “Right? Anyway, the Turkish puzzle rings have interlocking bands, but its English cousin, the gimmal ring, was meant to be taken apart—one ring for each of the betrothed to wear until they could be married.”

  “Separate rings . . . ,” Huck murmured.

  “That fit together,” I said, twining my fingers together. “What if Vlad Dracula’s ring wasn’t one single band? What if it was three bands that fit together like a puzzle?”

  He blinked at me. “That would mean Rothwild’s ring is real.”

  “And Lovena’s is real.”

  “And there’s a third ring out there that fits with them. . . .”

  “Is it possible?” I asked. “You tell me. You’re good at this sort of thing. You’re the one who can take apart a watch and fit it all back together.”

  His brow furrowed as he considered this. Then he rummaged inside his coat pocket and pulled out a battered pack of gum. After unwrapping three sticks, he twisted the foil wrappers into circles, molding them carefully with deft fingers. “This is how the one in Fox’s photographs is shaped, yeah?”

  “Yes,” I said as he laid it on his knee. Then he quickly molded a second ring.

  “This is sort of how the one in the museum looked,” he said, and he gingerly slotted the foil bands together.

  We both stared in amazement at his crudely engineered model.

  “A third band would fit up inside these two,” Huck said, pointing with the tip of his pinkie. “Where the space is between the kinks here on top.”

  It worked. It was possible.

  “Three bands, one ring,” I murmured, taking the foil model from his fingers. “Apart, their power is dormant. Remember? Lovena said she sensed a sleeping power in her ring.”

  “One that you heard in Sighișoara,” he said.