“A daring move, Audra. From the bravest woman I know,” he murmurs in my ear.

“Thanks,” I say, stupidly.

He holds me away to look at me, and then lets go with a shake of his head. “I never knew what happened after you disappeared.”

“Well, I guess you know now,” I say with a levity I don’t really feel.

“I mean the first time.”

I hesitate. “The first time?”

“Six months ago. It was March. We were in Zagreb. One night, you simply vanished. Gone, the clumsy American who left her traces everywhere.” He lifts his palms. “You became a ghost. And then, just weeks ago, I received an alert that you had died in the U.S.” He’s looking right at me, and it’s awkward feeling like you’re being asked a question no one expects an answer to. Though it doesn’t seem he’s waiting for an apology, either.

I glance at the woman, who has crossed her arms.

“Ah, forgive me,” Ivan says. “This is Claudia, and her sibling, Piotrek.”

“It is an honor,” Piotrek says, in an accent different from Ivan’s as he sweeps in to buss me on both cheeks. Claudia, who has not moved, says something to him in another language and he ignores her. When he moves away, his eyes sparkle with the kind of look that isn’t shy about liking what he sees.

“I felt you when I walked into the café,” I say, and then look at Ivan. “And you, before I even saw you.”

“Naturally,” Claudia says. Her accent, I note, is different from her brother’s.

“My parents were both of the blood,” Ivan says. “Unlike Claudia and Piotrek, whose mothers were, but fathers were not. The legacy is passed through the women.” He lays his hand over his chest. “But I have become something of a hermit. The charisma weakens when the Utod are seen by so few, as it does with age. But you, you always could tell.” Is that admiration in his eyes?

“The Utod . . . ?”

“Hungarian,” he says. “It means Progeny.”

Piotrek studies me as though I am the most fascinating creature on earth. “You really don’t remember anything, do you?”

“No,” I say. “Which is why I was hoping you could give me some answers. Like why I did this.”

“You’re asking us?” Claudia snaps.

“The answer is simple,” Ivan says, ignoring her. “You were protecting something of great value.”

It’s nearly the same thing Rolan said.

“Like what?”

Ivan takes a seat on a column of stacked hymnals, folds his hands between his knees. “Something too important for you to say. Or for me to ask. That is the way it is for us. To speak is to put your life and that of any other Utod you know in the hands of another’s fate. It is a great show of faith that Claudia and Piotrek have come here with me today.”