“Will do.” Russell finished his drink.
“Take a sat phone so we can call you,” Howard added.
Russell scoffed. “No, thanks.” He vanished.
“Dammit,” Howard muttered and stuffed the rest of the donut in his mouth.
Zoltan pushed back his chair and stood. “I’ll be going, too.”
Howard jumped to his feet. “Where?”
“Upstairs to the library. Do I need permission?”
“No. But I want to talk to you about the tours. They’re a huge security risk, so I’m wondering why you allow it to go on. From what I can tell, you don’t need the money.”
“I don’t.” Zoltan carried the empty glasses to the sink. “But the villagers do. The restaurant, hotel, and shops stay in business because of the tourists. And the ladies giving the tour make a nice salary. The guy who drives the bus makes a living for his family. The women who make the shawls and jewelry that are sold in the shops—”
“Okay, I get it.” Howard raised his hands in surrender. “And you trust all those people to keep you safe?”
Zoltan tossed the empty Blissky bottle into the recycle bin. “It’s worked for centuries. I keep them safe, and they return the favor.”
“It only takes one unhappy villager to offer your story to the media for a tidy sum of money.”
“And the other villagers will tell the media that he’s crazy.” Zoltan sighed. “Look. There will always be folktales about vampires, especially in this part of the world. If you tried to hush it up completely, it would only look suspicious. It’s better to play along with it, like a joke no one really believes.”
“I guess so.” With a frown, Howard closed the box of donuts. “But it’s still my job to keep you safe. How is your security in Budapest? Do you have bodyguards?”
“I have a butler and housekeeper who live there. They’re husband and wife, and they’re the only ones who know where the secret door to my bedroom is hidden. I keep the door locked and barred from the inside, so no one can enter unless I teleport inside and open the door.”
“Another vampire could teleport inside.”
Zoltan snorted. “They would have to know where the room is. And they’re not going to teleport during the day because they’re as dead as I am. Trust me, Howard. My security system isn’t high tech, but it works.”
“I’ll want to check it out personally.”
Zoltan waved a hand dismissively. “Not tonight. Go see your poor neglected wife.”
“She’s not neglected!”
“Good night, Howard.” Zoltan strode upstairs to the library off the Great Hall. He gave the bellpull a tug to let his steward, Milan’s grandfather, know he was back in the castle. Then he paced about the room, thinking about everything Neona had told him.
Her mother, the queen, could communicate with birds. Neona’s deceased sister had been able to, also, and another woman, Winifred, could. It seemed too big a coincidence that his own mother had possessed the same gift as three other women in Beyul-La. His mother had come from the East, so he suspected she had lived in Beyul-La. If so, how had his father managed to find her? How had he convinced her to come to Transylvania?
And then Neona had wanted Lord Liao killed with her arrow. Did the women have a long history of seeking revenge against those who had killed one of them? According to the few survivors in 1241, a group of fierce warriors and monsters had killed his father and most of the villagers before setting the buildings ablaze. Had those warriors been the women of Beyul-La? Were they the monsters, or had there been something else with them? How had they traveled such a long distance? How had they disappeared afterward with no trace other than the one arrow embedded in his father’s chest?
“My lord.” Domokos knocked on the door.
“Come.” Zoltan had tried years ago to convince Milan’s grandfather not to address him so formally. But as far as Domokos was concerned, Zoltan was a count from an ancient line of counts, so all the servants had to give him the respect he was due.
Domokos entered with a tray laden with a warm bottle of blood and a wineglass, which he set on the table in front of the hearth. “Would you like a fire, my lord?”
“No. I’m fine, thank you.”
Domokos opened the bottle and poured until the wineglass was half full. When his hand shook, Zoltan moved forward to help him.
“Allow me, my lord.” Domokos set the bottle down and regarded Zoltan with tear-filled eyes. “May I say how honored we are over Milan’s promotion. His success wouldn’t have been possible if you hadn’t paid for his education and taken him under your wing. He will do his best to make you proud.”
“I’m sure he will. Thank you, Domokos. That will be all for this evening.”
“Yes, my lord.” Domokos bowed his head and hobbled to the door.
When had he started to walk like that? And when had his hair turned silver? “Domokos.”
“Yes, my lord?”
Zoltan hesitated. How long had Domokos been his steward? Thirty or forty years? “Are you watching out for your health? You can retire whenever you like at full pay. Just let me know.”
He smiled. “I know, my lord. There are enough servants here that all I really do is supervise. I choose to do this one chore every evening, since it is my pleasure to serve you in person.”
Even after eight hundred years, Zoltan could get caught off guard by the loyalty of those mortals who surrounded him. True, he took care of them the best he could, but they seemed more of a blessing to him than he deserved. “I am the grateful one, Domokos. You’ve taken care of me for . . . years.”
Domokos’s eyes twinkled with amusement. “Sixty years, my lord.”
Zoltan blinked. “That long?”
Domokos grinned. “Yes, my lord. Good night.”
“Good night, Domokos.” Zoltan watched him close the door. Sixty years? How did time pass by so quickly? Working five years with Milan had felt like five months. Apparently he’d become such a workaholic that years were zooming by him unnoticed.
Something nagged in the back of his mind. The six women of Beyul-La. He’d seen them from a distance while they’d sat around the fire, eating. They had all appeared young, most probably in their twenties, but that couldn’t be right. One of them was the queen and Neona’s mother.
He strode to his desk and turned on the computer. He needed more information. Something concrete that he could investigate. Maybe Frederic?
He sat down and typed Frederic Chesterton in the search box. To his surprise, there were several articles. Frederic Chesterton had been one of the members of a doomed British expedition to the Himalayas. They’d planned to map a northern approach to Mount Everest, but the team had gotten lost in a sudden snowstorm in Tibet. In 1922.
Zoltan’s mouth dropped open. This couldn’t be right. He kept reading. A surprising development had occurred in 1933 when a man calling himself Frederic Chesterton arrived in England with a six-year-old boy. His surviving family accepted him back, claiming he truly was Frederic Chesterton. He’d aged eleven years but had no memory of that time. When newspaper reporters tried to interview him, he told them he had suffered from amnesia and couldn’t tell anyone where he had been or who had given birth to his son.
Zoltan swallowed hard. According to Neona, Frederic had fathered two daughters with Calliope. But if the two girls were born in the 1920s, they would be elderly by now. And all the women of Beyul-La looked young.
A chill ran down his back. Was the myth of Shangri-La based on fact? Was Beyul-La a valley where no one grew old?
He recalled the words Neona had said about her sister. The sentence had seemed odd at the time, but he’d figured it was her grief that had been coloring her words. Now he wondered if her grief had actually caused her to be honest.
You don’t understand how long we were together, how long we will be apart. Was Neona facing an eternity without her twin? Was that why she sat crying by her sister’s grave in the middle of the night? And how long had they been together before her sister’s death?
A memory flashed through his mind of his first sighting of Neona. She’d been dressed in armor, looking like an ancient Greek soldier sacking Troy.
“Good God,” he whispered. How old was Neona?