Firstborn

  I mope after graduation. Take a job at the bingo hall if only because no one my age would ever be caught dead there. Buy some weed from the renowned stoner down the street and smoke it in the backyard after work—until the night my dad catches me and takes away the car for a month.

  I don’t care; I’ve become selectively agoraphobic, careful not to go anywhere I might run into anyone from my old school . . . unwilling to see anyone I know from my new one. I make excuses when friends text or call—or I just don’t respond—and after a while, they stop. That’s all it takes to lose new friends: a few weeks.

  I beg off on spending Fourth of July at the lake, say I have to work (a lie), that I’ll catch some barbecue beforehand at Aunt Cherie’s.

  Which is why I’m at home when the police show up.

  It rains the day of their funeral. Standing there with my umbrella, all I can think is, I’m an orphan. Again. Which is stupid, because I’m eighteen and practically an adult, which means I’m too old to be an orphan.

  At my aunt’s house I excuse myself to the all-season room to pace in front of the screened windows. Because I will scream if one more person says they’re sorry or asks if there’s anything I need.

  I need my parents back, you moron. I need them to never have gone to the lake. To not have gone boating.

  Or at least to have taken me with them.

  I stare out at the rain soaking Cherie’s potted geraniums. Right now the kids I grew up with are working summer jobs, hooking up at parties, and getting DUIs. And I’m preparing to box up my parents’ possessions and store them in Cherie’s garage. She’s already hired a lawyer to put the house I grew up in on the market. In which case, I want nothing more to do with Iowa.

  Only problem is, I turned down University of Chicago for Grinnell before all of this went down.

  The next day I load up my car and take off for Illinois. Show up at the admissions office. Plead with them to give me a hearing . . . convince them to extend my invitation.

  And come away, miraculously, with an acceptance and a scholarship.

  The minute I arrive in Budapest a month ahead of my junior year abroad, I am awestruck. By the architecture on the corners of buildings. The millennia of history beneath my feet. The Parisian feel of the cafés I pass by on my way from Erzsebet Square to Andrassy Avenue—the Hungarian Champs-Elysees. By the hilly Buda and the urban Pest. The Gothic dignity of Parliament on the bank of the stately Danube. Especially at night.

  I feel small and intimidated and try not to look like a gape-mouthed tourist as I walk the last few blocks to my hostel. But I also feel free. Free from the strange, sidewise glances of students on campus that make me imagine they’ve found some digital ghost of my fake online past. Of the therapy I know was important in the wake of everything that happened in high school and after—but that caused me to relive it twice a month for years. Of the obligatory trips back for holidays and summers that once took place at the lake I can no longer stand to visit. And of Bryson Wells, who had a religious crisis of conscience shortly after we started sleeping together that caused him to propose as though it were an edict handed straight down from God.

  Free from the Audra Ellison I was. Finally able to start fresh, scorched earth left behind.

  I have twenty-seven days before I officially arrive at Eotvos Lorand University, and I will need every one of them.

  I have come to Budapest to find my birth mother.

  I’ve been to fourteen offices, and visited three leads to a woman that the DNA genealogy site I used before leaving the States said was my closest match. Some kind of cousin or something, last name Szabo.

  But I can’t find this cousin, because when I visit the three addresses associated with her, no one has heard of her.

  In rudimentary Hungarian (those “fluent in three months” learning programs lie!), I leave my mobile number and where I’m staying just in case they remember anything later. But I’m discouraged.

  I had convinced myself if I came here I might find not only the Barbara Bocz of my adoption papers but some missing piece of myself. I had allowed myself the furtive fantasy of seeing her face, of her even hugging and crying over me, the daughter she gave up because of some teenage pregnancy or broken relationship. Had even imagined the possibility that by the time I started classes at the university’s art program, we’d have begun meeting for weekly coffee, or lunch. That she would tell me stories about where she grew up and I could find out if she has the same ADHD I was diagnosed with two years ago. I’d show her pictures of Sioux City, Iowa, and even the parents who raised me. A slow way to get to know one another after twenty years apart while planning future Christmas holidays in my new home country.

  I’ve never allowed myself to dwell on the possibility that she might not want to be found, that she might go out of her way to avoid me if she found out I was looking for her.

  But that hasn’t turned out to be a problem, because right now I can’t even find the cousin who, for all practical purposes, seems to have disappeared.

  I’m sitting in a little café off Andrassy Avenue, several blocks from Heroes’ Square, which I make a point to visit every evening when it’s lit up.

  I love this place, from its bohemian décor to its small plates. Namely, the foie gras I fell in love with in a little café during a weekend trip to Trieste and the Croatian coast.

  I’m eating it in tiny bites with bits of apricot jam—switching between it and the bowl of requisite goulash and glass of red wine—when I realize there’s a guy staring at me from the bar. I feel it before I see it; I know that sensation. I had thought the whole staring-at-Audra thing was distinctly American, but turns out, it’s universal.

  I lift my spoon to my mouth and my middle finger at the same time. I raise my eyes to be sure he got my international message, and end up glancing away.

  Because he’s laughing. Worse than that, he’s sexy—from the shape of his mouth to the light brown hair falling over his eyes. All Euro-masculine chic.

  I fish thirty-five hundred forint out of my purse, lay it on the table, and prepare to leave.

  Too late. Because he’s already walking over, a glass of red wine in each hand.

  And I’m sitting here with liver breath.

  “This is my apology for pissing you off,” he says and sets the glass in front of me.

  “Apology accepted,” I say, getting up.

  “Come on. If you don’t at least take a sip, it is worse than giving me the finger.”

  I sigh. Sit back down, pick up the glass.

  “Egészegedre,” I say.

  He raises his glass and laughs. “You know when you pronounce it like that, it means ‘to your full ass.’ ”

  “Oh. Well, if the toast fits . . .”

  He smiles, and acquiesces. “Egészegedre. But, if I’m going to toast to this, then perhaps I should know your name.”

  I briefly consider lying. “Audra.”

  “Audra,” he says, sitting down across from me. “I’m Luka.”

  University has started, and I’m out with several new classmates at a ruin pub on Kazinczy Street—a funky bar built into a derelict building with an eclectic mix of reclaimed furniture in the Jewish quarter just down the street from an honest-to-God mikvah. We’re sitting in an old Communist-era Trabant that looks like it was cut open with a can opener before it was converted to seating in the middle of the courtyard. Stefan is telling some story, but I am checking my phone. It’s been three days since I’ve heard from Luka.

  Not that he has any reason to call me. I insulted him three times before I gave him a vague indication that I ate in the area most evenings. I deliberately switched to a more obscure café the following night . . .

  . . . and he found me.

  So we toasted our asses and ate foie gras together as he talked about growing up in Croatia and coming to Budapest for university. That night I let him walk me along Andrassy past Heroes’ Square.

  “Do you know who they are?” he says
, gesturing to the semicircle of statues on their columns.

  “No. Not really,” I say.

  “Neither do I.” He laughs. “But they’re impressive guys, right?”

  I excuse myself, move along the back wall past a seating area of converted bathtubs-turned-sofas to the restroom near the back alley.

  The sensation hits my entire body like a wave rolling in from sea. I actually stumble, catch myself against a wall. I can’t possibly be that drunk, having had only a couple of beers.

  From the corner of my eye, I see a group of shadows pass through the alley beyond. All midnight leather and black buckled boots, flowing crimson kimonos and soundless stilettos. The girl in the Frankenstein-green shearling coat swivels her head as she passes, fixes me with a glittering gaze. The others glance at me sidelong. One of them—the guy with a black harlequin diamond painted around his eye—winks as they pass out of sight.

  I hurry down the corridor to the restroom.

  When I emerge, the girl in the green coat is blocking the hallway. The others wait in the alley beyond.

  “Who are you?” she says, stepping in close. Purple lashes framing wide-set eyes take in every inch of my face. She’s wearing yellow lipstick.

  “No one,” I stammer.

  “I doubt that.” She smiles. “What is your name?”

  “Audra.” I don’t know why I tell her, except that I feel an instant affinity for this colorful creature. Which is ridiculous, given that I have as much in common with her as a pony has with a unicorn.

  “Audra,” she says, rolling it over her tongue like wine. “Where did you come from, Audra?”

  “The U.S. I—I should get back to my friends.”

  “You just found them,” she says. “My name is Katia.”

  21

  * * *

  My life has unraveled to bare threads. But for the first time, I see the pattern in it. For the first time, it makes sense.

  And no sense at all.

  “You are one of us,” Katia said the night I met her after I abandoned my classmates and went with Katia and her companions to a secluded basement pub.

  I laughed at her, openly, though the moment she said it something in me knew she was right.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You might as well have that,” Katia said, pointing to the shot I ordered. I noted not one of them was drinking anything stronger than coffee. Nothing but coffee, actually.

  “We have a story to tell you.”

  Within five minutes, I was convinced she was high. Manic, strung out on something. But her eyes were the most lucid blue I had ever seen.

  Of course I didn’t believe her. How could I? A four-hundred-year old vendetta. Descendants of the Blood Countess.

  I don’t even like history.

  “The minute we got to the alley, I knew someone was here. You, Audra. And you felt it, too.”

  But that could have been anything. Curiosity. Envy. Fascination. They were, after all, mesmerizing to look at.

  Which did not explain their fascination with me.

  I didn’t miss the way they exchanged glances when I told them about the search for my mother. The cousin I’d gleaned from the genealogy site. The silent alarm that passed between them.

  “Look it up, if you like,” she said, handing me her phone. “But, Audra . . . You need to know you’re in danger.”

  I meet them at the ruin pub again the next night. That is the first time they take me to the underground court in Budapest. But not directly. We stop at Katia’s flat, and I laugh when her teenage friend Claudia appears with a blue powdered wig, brief bustled skirt, stockings, and a golden mask.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  Turns out, she’s not.

  I sense immediately that Claudia resents sharing Katia’s attention. Still, I laugh as I put on the costume. I take out my phone for a picture, but Katia seizes it from me.

  “No,” she says, shaking her head as though I were a wayward three-year-old.

  That first night at court, the frenetic pulse of the music in that cavern amps my adrenaline, burns it like rocket fuel. A strobe stutters over frenetic bodies, their frozen masks and glowing tattoos spiking my vision in a burst of snapshots—teasing my photographic memory before obliterating it. Pushes me beyond anxiety to the supreme thunder of white noise, and serenity.

  Katia’s right. I may not have found my mother, but I have found my own.

  “This is your family, Audra!” she shouts over the pounding music.

  And I know that I am home.

  I withdrew from university three days ago. I’d been unable to make the morning classes for weeks, sleeping till afternoon. No longer caring about art history, about art at all. About anything but returning to the endless miles of tunnels beneath Castle Hill.

  That, and Luka.

  He hasn’t questioned my story about needing time off from university, helps me move into a sparse apartment on the bottom floor of a house near Buda Hill. The nights that I don’t crash at Katia’s, he comes to visit in the afternoon. Sometimes we go to the market. Sometimes we eat pâté or fisherman’s soup. He talks at length about European politics, sports, and I smile.

  “You’re not listening to me, are you?” he says one afternoon.

  “No,” I say. “But keep talking.” Because I like watching his mouth.

  We make out in alleys behind nightclubs and on the banks of the Danube. I am high from his kisses, his fingers like a drug, touching me until I go crazy.

  “This is a horrible mistake,” he murmurs one night as his lips trail across my shoulder.

  So horrible neither of us stop.

  We leave Hungary to visit the Zagreb court, where Katia and her twin brother, Piotrek, have friends. I don’t want to go, if only because I’m not ready to be separated from Luka, even for a few weeks. But Katia and her lover, Andre, insist that I need to meet Ivan.

  The way they talk about Ivan, I expect superhuman stature, piercing eyes—something. But he’s just a guy. Granted, a guy who fills the room with a vibe I can’t not sense, like a tuning fork that won’t stop vibrating.

  He sucks in a soft breath the minute we walk in.

  “Amerie,” he whispers.

  Do I imagine it, or does Katia pale?

  Luka comes to Zagreb as he promised. But he’s quiet and distracted, and I wonder if something’s changed. If he came just to say that it’s over.

  And I don’t want it to be.

  “I was wondering how you’d feel if I took a flat here for a while,” he says. “So we can be together. I want us to be together.” But he seems troubled saying it, like he’s worried I’ll say no.

  “You’d do that?” I say as relief washes over me.

  “I’d do a lot more than that,” he says.

  That night he tells me he loves me.

  Ivan has given me something—a packet of papers. I’m uncomfortable with the way he stares. I’ve been around staring people—men and women—for years, but he looks at me as though there’s someone else behind my eyes.

  “This is for you,” he says. “It is why I will protect you with my life, as I did her.”

  I don’t understand.

  Until I read them that night.

  I know now who I am. Where I come from. What I am.

  Luka calls five times, texts asking if I’m all right. I was supposed to be at his flat hours ago. I don’t answer.

  I have read for ten hours straight and I am stunned, lost, found.

  My mother’s name was Amerie Szabo. Progeny, like me. But, according to Ivan, she was far more than that.

  He gave me something else of hers as well: the Bathory crest. A gold dragon pendant.

  We’ve been in Budapest long enough for Katia and the others to start climbing the walls. I feel it, too. The nomadic pull of this adrenaline-fueled life that is less bohemian than I thought and more a life simply addicted to the shadows, and being on the run.

  They look at me differently now. Even C
laudia, who wavered for the briefest instant about whether to follow Katia on to Bucharest or stay in Hungary with me.

  I tell her to go. Somehow I think she will be safer.

  Nikola wants to talk.

  I’ve taken nothing but some money and my documents, leaving my life, my tears behind.

  Nothing is what I thought it was. No one is who I thought. Not even Luka.

  Especially him.

  For the first time since the lake accident, I miss Iowa. A place that might as well belong to an alternate universe. That can’t possibly exist in the same world as this one.

  Audra.

  Hidden away in Germany, I am in awe. I am afraid. I miss the court, with its thunderous beat.

  But I don’t trust Nikola.

  Ivan texted an hour ago: Why have you run? Come back. There are things you must do. I will help you do them. This is your destiny.

  Ivan, such a believer. But I am worried about one life now, and it isn’t my own.

  I stare out at the Bavarian countryside. I’m journaling, writing letters to myself. Because one day, I will be more lost than I am now and I will need them.

  By nightfall, I know that I am reckless. I have always been. Ivan would not approve. Neither would Tibor, who doesn’t trust me. I see through him, the protective younger brother. And though I don’t know her, I miss my mother.

  Amerie.

  There’s something I don’t understand about her letters. Came here to figure out. She left a cache of information in Croatia.

  I know where it is, but the rules of this life dictate that I can’t go and get it, let alone lay eyes on it myself. I can’t know the things, the people I know. Can’t love those whom I love. Don’t dare die with a full soul.

  I’ve returned not to Hungary but to Croatia. To Zagreb, where I’ve taken a flat. I’ve carved the Glagolitic symbol into the doorframe. Three. For the claws of the dragon, slain by St. George—the Bathory coat of arms. Three, for the Scions, the Progeny, and their silent partners, the Franciscans. For Ivan, my mother, and Nikola, who should have saved us.