Chapter 6
I’m halfway across the lobby when someone calls my name.
I whirl, hand in my pocket on the trigger of my pistol before I process whose voice it is.
“Dávid!” I run and throw my arms around him. “Dávid, thank God. Where’s Maher?”
“What do you mean, where’s Maher? I’m the one who’s been sitting in this lobby for hours. I followed you here, but they said you’d taken a room and wouldn’t let me go up to you.”
“She knows.” I tug his hand, dragging him toward the door and out into the night.
“Who knows? Please, Anneke, tell me what’s happening.”
“It’s her. She was here. Somehow she knew I was waiting for her, so she broke into my room and found the photos Maher took. Here, read this.” I shove the letter into his hands. I’m loath to let go of this further piece of evidence that she exists, but Dávid needs to understand what’s at stake.
He pauses beneath a flickering streetlamp to read it. His eyes don’t leave the missive, but he asks, “Where did you get this?”
“Slid beneath the door of her room, where I was waiting to kill her. She left the portrait Maher took on my pillow. She knows that’s how I found her; I think she’s going after him. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Dávid sprints. It’s all I can do to keep up with him. He beats me to Maher’s door and shoulders it open without pausing. I fling myself up the stairs and step into Maher’s living space to find him—
Alive. He’s alive. Dávid has his arms wrapped around Maher in a mirror of our same desperate lobby hug. Maher raises an eyebrow at me, puzzled.
“Was she here?” I can’t catch my breath enough to smell anything. All my lung function is focused on getting oxygen. Dávid was very fast.
“Your friend?” Maher smiles, amused by Dávid’s intensity as he holds Maher at arm’s length to check him for wounds. “Yes.”
“What did she do to you?”
“Do to me?” Maher shakes his head. “Nothing. She asked why you came to Budapest and the connection to the other victim and wanted to confirm that he was killed in Amsterdam. She was very intrigued by your photography theory.”
I’m aghast. Not only did Maher not believe me about who this woman is, he willingly gave her information. “You told her about Amsterdam? After I said she killed my father?”
“Yes.” He frowns a little, as though confused by himself now. “Why—why would I do that?”
“His eyes,” Dávid says.
I step closer. Maher’s eyes are such a dark brown in the dim lamplight that I hadn’t noticed, but his pupils are blown all the way out. There’s barely any iris visible.
“Check him for needle marks, or any evidence of what she drugged him with.” I rush around his apartment, doing a quick visual check. For what, I don’t know. It’s no surprise that I don’t find anything.
Maher laughs as Dávid runs his fingers along Maher’s neck, then hands, then pushes up his sleeves to check there. “No marks. How did she do it?”
“Maher,” I say, “this is important. Did she tell you where she was headed next, or what she was going to do?”
“Your hair is so pretty. Like sunshine through autumn leaves.” He reaches for one of my loose curls and rubs it between his fingers. “I gave her money for a train ticket.”
My blood runs cold. “Is there a train to Amsterdam tonight?”
“You don’t think she’d…” Dávid starts, but he has the decency to trail off. Of course she would. I hunted her here, and she’s returning the favor.
“Mama,” I whisper.
Dávid wastes no time. “I’ll go to the station and telegram Van Engelenhoven.
He’ll send officers to your house. The evening train has already left, but she won’t arrive until tomorrow, so he can prepare.
You’ll have to wait until the morning to follow.
And I can’t leave Maher alone in this state.
We have no idea how long the effects will last, or what he might do. ”
I nod, throat tight. An image of Maher, flayed on the floor, turns my stomach. I barely know the man, but I want him to be safe. I need him to be safe. I need everyone to be safe.
“I’m sorry,” Dávid says. “I should have believed you that she was real. I know you well enough to trust you, and I didn’t. It won’t happen again. What did she do to him, though? Drugs? Mesmerism?”
Maher laughs, tipping his head back and almost falling onto the sofa. “Mesmerism isn’t real, you beautiful idiot.” Dávid gives him a gentle shove so Maher actually sits.
My mind spins with possibilities. This is what we were looking for. The reason why and how people did such terrible things. “My father. The others. She did this—whatever this is—to them, and then convinced them to kill themselves.”
Dávid paces, already in puzzle mode. I know it’s part of how we’re both coping with the fear, but it’s a welcome escape. “But there was no camera when your father died.”
I shake my head. “No. And she seemed to have a personal reason to target him. I don’t see any connections between her and a shipping clerk in Amsterdam and a baker’s family in Budapest, though.”
“We don’t need to see a connection for there to be one. But let’s set aside the victims for now. The family here was killed seven days ago. Your victim?”
“Yesterday, midafternoon.”
“So, it’s entirely feasible that she killed the baker’s family, traveled to Amsterdam and killed the shipping clerk, and then returned to Budapest. Possibly on the same train as you.”
“But why come back here at all?”
“Is she trying to lure you?” Dávid asks.
There’s a certain pleasurable horror in the idea that the object of my obsession has been obsessing over me as well.
But I’ve already considered it, and it doesn’t add up.
“She had no way of knowing you’d send those photos to me.
Even if she’s spied on me enough to know of our friendship, we aren’t in regular communication.
And I’m not officially employed by the Amsterdam police, so she’d have to be watching me all the time to know when I’m called in on a case. ”
“And she didn’t know about the victim in Amsterdam, or your work,” Maher says, stretching with a yawn. “She asked me a lot of details. She was very curious.”
I shake my head. “That’s not proof she didn’t already know about the shipping clerk. She was probably fishing for what we’ve discovered.”
Maher shrugs, then leans his head back and closes his eyes.
“Can we be absolutely sure she wasn’t targeting you, though?” Dávid asks. “Maybe not the deaths here, but striking in Amsterdam again, at least, seems suspicious.”
“Her letter expressed surprise. I don’t think she expected to see me again. I don’t think she even knows my name.” She must have seen me in the hotel lobby. I was so fixated on playing a part, she could have been standing right behind me and I wouldn’t have noticed.
“I told her your name,” Maher offers cheerfully.
I don’t respond, because I don’t want him to feel bad. This isn’t his fault. “She might have forgotten about me, but she won’t forget again.” I’ll make certain of it. I’ll never let her have a moment’s peace. I’ll hunt her to the ends of the earth. And if she so much as touches my mother…
Oh God, Mama. I’m as bad as my father, abandoning her to chase phantoms. At least mine is real. I stroke the letter in my pocket, reassuring myself that I’m sane. That I’m right.
Dávid looks troubled. “We’re missing something. This doesn’t add up.”
“It doesn’t have to for now. We know where she’s going; we’ll start there.
But I can’t wait here. I’ll sleep in the train station.
” The idea of her—Diavola, a name oddly similar to the devil I’ve always considered her—safely in a seat, barreling through the night toward my home once again, makes me want to scream.
“I’ll take Maher with me to send the telegraph. And then I’ll come with you?”
I shake my head. “We can’t be certain Maher’s safe.
There’s no proof she actually got on the train.
You need to stay with him.” I saw the panic in Dávid’s eyes when he heard Maher was in danger.
Whatever their past, he cares about Maher.
I won’t let him lose that. “In the meantime, use every connection you have to look for other suspicious deaths. Anything strange, horrifying, puzzling. Especially ones that look like suicide or murder-suicide.”
“You think there are more?” he asks.
I set my jaw in grim determination. “I think there are at least five years’ worth of deaths at her hands. We’re going to uncover them all, and we’re going to make her pay.”