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"Blood calls for blood," the old woman intoned, taking a sip of Pepsi.
I stared. "What?"
A slight smile. "Oh, nothing, dear," she said. "Just an old saying."
I turned my attention back to my food, putting the strange old woman's words out of my mind. Looking back, perhaps that was my first mistake.
2
The sound of the captain's accented voice woke me from a fitful, uncomfortable sleep. "We are now beginning our descent into Palia, where the local time is 5:17 a.m. Temperature is twenty-two degrees Celsius…that's seventy-one Fahrenheit for the Americans in the audience." He chuckled. "Flight attendants, prepare for landing."
Landing. My eyes snapped open, and I shoved the window shade up to look at the terrain below. What I saw took my breath away.
The sun was just starting to peek over the distant curve of the horizon, splashing the cerulean sky with scarlet and coral. The ground was still shadowed, barely visible beneath the streaked-cotton clouds, but I could make out the shimmer of water and a dark, irregular coastline. The landing gear squealed and rumbled beneath my feet, and as the plane tilted toward the ground and the light grew brighter, I saw tumbling hillsides dotted with tiny buildings of white and yellow and bright blue. Domed roofs gleamed, painted with crimson sunrise, and minuscule cars navigated a narrow tangle of roads. The ocean lapped at a beach so pale and lovely that I momentarily wondered if it was possible to Photoshop real life.
"Wow," I murmured.
Beside me, there was a quiet chuckle. "Quite beautiful, no?"
I turned to Ona with wide eyes. "I've never seen anything like it," I confessed.
She reached down to slide a leather-bound book into her purse. "Do you have someone waiting?"
I pictured Theo for a moment, his hair in his eyes, before I realized she meant someone waiting at the airport. "Uh, yeah," I said.
Ona nodded. "Good," she said. "These tourist cars, they'll take your money. Better if you know someone." She seemed satisfied with her pronouncement, nodding as she twisted the massive ruby ring on her finger. "And you'll have enough to worry about, with Kulmeira."
Determined to put her strange words out of my mind, I turned back to the window, watching the details of the picturesque landscape below become more defined. As the wheels touched down, I heard an electronic symphony of phones waking from their airplane-mode slumber, and the chatter of voices as people started to call their families and friends.
I sent a text to my dad: ???. Just landed. He replied with a thumbs-up emoji. It was the most affable message I'd gotten from him about this trip, and it lifted my mood a little. Any other day, I would have contacted Theo, too, but…
I opened Theo’s messages. Despite the three phone calls, he hadn't texted. My thumbs hovered over the keyboard and I chewed my lip until the coppery taste of blood filled my mouth. I turned off the screen and put the phone away.
It wasn't long before it was my turn to disembark the plane, and my hands were sweaty with nerves as I found my bags and made the quick trip through customs. Finally, I stepped into the main terminal, glancing around cautiously.
"River, over here!"
My tension dissipated at the sound of Vanessa's voice. I scanned the crowd, quickly finding her freckled face in the chaos. She grinned at me when I approached.
"It's a lot, huh? Just wait ’til we get out of the airport. What's this, some sort of fashion statement?" She tugged at the towel slung around my neck.
"Don't ask," I said, rolling my eyes. "Is everyone else here already?"
She nodded and shepherded me down the hall. "Raheem's plane got in late last night. He's with Blanton down on the dig site now, getting set up. Everyone from the local university is already at work, finishing up the excavation on the stables they were working on last summer. You can rest up today, and as long as the weather holds, our team gets to start on the southwest quadrant tomorrow. They have somebody local coming in to do a survey first thing in the morning. He's supposed to be an expert on mapping and…”
Vanessa's words faded into the background. The excitement that had been building in me for weeks, ever since I'd been invited to work on the dig, swelled once more, finally enough to overshadow my worry about Theo and the stress of international travel. If only my mom could see me now. Aside from vague memories of dark hair and smiling brown eyes, I barely remembered her—she'd died when I was five—but I knew she'd loved to travel. She and my dad had been all over the world before I'd been born, not that you'd know that to look at my father now. But I liked to think she would have been as excited about this trip as I was.
Vanessa kept up a steady stream of chatter as we made our way out into the sunshine. I knew I must look like the consummate tourist, but I couldn't help myself—I wanted to take in everything all at once.
Sandwiched tightly between Latvia and Lithuania, Velarta was easy to miss: it was tiny and easily overshadowed by its larger neighbors. But it was beautiful. Palia was a coastal city, and the Baltic Sea sparkled merrily in the distance to the west, while distant mountain peaks were visible to the east. Despite the nine-hour time change, I wasn't particularly tired. If I had a day off before work started at the dig, I didn't want to rest; I wanted to see everything.
"River?"
I tuned back in and realized that Vanessa was grinning at me. "Sorry—what?"
"I said it's pretty amazing, isn't it? Here, I'll take the long way back to the dig site. We can drive down by the wharf."
I blinked. "They gave you a car?"
