So here we are, both hunted. But it’s not the same. I may have months to be allowed to learn something useful to the Historian. Five years at most, under the watchful eye of a new hunter probably already assigned to me. But Luka’s turned traitor. For all he knows, he has hours. He’s wrong in one thing: This isn’t about protecting just me anymore.

*  *  *

The drive becomes less scenic as we leave the coast behind. Claudia and Piotrek chat in English about the new phones they’ve picked up but I hardly hear them. Luka’s words chase me like monsters.

You loved me once.

I try to remember if I have ever loved anyone. My adoptive parents, of course. I know I loved them. I remember putting so much care into a Mother’s Day card, drawing heart after heart on the inside. I love you, Mommy. Waiting for my father to come home after some kind of trip that kept him away. Throwing myself at him the minute he came in the door. I don’t remember them, but I remember that.

I have fractured memories of crushes—of some faceless, towheaded boy. A jock at school trying to kiss me. The faint sense that he had just eaten a bunch of peanuts. I’m pretty sure that didn’t end well.

Crushes, dates, parents . . . peanuts. But romantic love?

“Well? Let’s see it,” Claudia says.

“See what?”

“The key.”

I’m hesitant. It feels personal, attached in my mind to Goran’s story of the rain, and my mother. But I pull the key out of my pocket and hand it to Claudia.

She turns it over and even lifts her shades to study it closely.

“Where did you get that?” Luka says.

I tell him the story of the chapel in Lubenice, the monastery, the monk. I feel guilty that I didn’t tell him about the key earlier or show it to him first. I feel guilty about a lot.

“I don’t remember you mentioning a Goran before,” Luka says.

She hands it back, and Luka reads the engraving with a frown.

Claudia’s tapping at her phone, apparently looking it up.

“Does anyone even use actual keys anymore?” I say.

“What does this mean?” Luka asks, holding it so the letters glint.

“No idea.”

“Shakespeare,” Claudia says.

Shakespeare?

“Maybe you’re rich!” Piotrek says, I assume for Luka’s benefit. But we all know nothing I’ve hidden would be so mundane as money.

“What we need are passports,” Luka says, handing the key back.

“We will get those,” Claudia says. “Once we meet up with friends.”

“Where?” Luka says, back to playing stupid.

“Zagreb.”

I glance at Luka in the backseat.

They’re taking us to the underground.

23