“I got you some coffee with your cream and sugar,” he says.

As though I haven’t heard that before.

“West to east from Bratislava,” I say.

“What?”

“I went to Bratislava first, said I would get to Nyirbator if I had time, which I did not. That everything was backward. That the entire story is backward.”

Life is beautiful, Audra. I know it doesn’t seem like it, with everything. But it is. And it is new.

“It isn’t where Elizabeth Bathory died,” I say.

“Then where?” Rolan says, setting a tray with no fewer than three coffees on the console.

“I don’t know!” I pull my hair. “It isn’t where she died. She died in Slovakia.” But she was born in Nyirbator—literally “New Bathory”—due east of here, in Hungary.

“Turn around,” I say suddenly.

He looks at me for a hard minute and then starts up the car.

We stop in Esztergom, just within the border of Hungary, for a few hours’ sleep after Rolan almost goes off the road and I barely alert him in time.

Just before dawn, Rolan’s phone chirps. He rubs his face and taps in his code and then, after a moment’s hesitation, glances at me.

“What is it?” I say, feeling instantly ill. Have learned, by now, to fear the worst.

“Luka’s still alive.”

“Let me see,” I say, reaching for the phone. When he hesitates, I shout, “Let me see him!”

It’s a photo. Luka, in the back of what I recognize as a semi trailer. Just like Nino, blood drying on his face.

“Send a message to the Historian—”

“I don’t have direct access to her.”

“Then send it to whoever you report to.”

He glances at me warily.

“Tell him to convey this up the chain of command: I want proof of life every twelve hours. If I see one more bruise on Luka’s body, I will take a running leap off the next building into traffic. Tell them I said that even if you manage to stop me, they can’t get from my memory what I, myself, don’t know.”

With a quiet nod of understanding, he makes the call.

Four days left.

42

East of Hungary’s great plain, the village of Nyirbator looks like what I imagine the Ukraine to be: eastern European and nonaffluent. Car repair shops with names like Zolt and Attila dot the corners, and the best-looking restaurant in town takes prime real estate in the tiny square. As for us, we have had a diet of nothing but coffee since we left Esztergom this morning.

“The Bathory family home is a museum now,” Jester says on speakerphone. “Gutted, except for a few wax figures. Tourists hardly even go there.” I can hear her keyboard clicking in the background.

“What else?” I say, rubbing my eyes.