Betsy shifted in her chair, making the old floorboards creak.
“He is so freakin’ awesome. I’m telling all my Goth friends about him.”
Daisy closed the book with a definitive thud that resounded throughout the room. Ringo looked up at her, his brown eyes questioning.
Obsessive, thought Betsy. Her patient had perseverated on Jung.
“OK. You’ve made your point, Daisy,” Betsy said, the tone of her voice rising in annoyance. “I am impressed with your research and the time you have spent learning about Carl Jung. Now, it is time for your session.”
“OK, Betsy,” said Daisy, collapsing into a wing chair, a victorious smile on her white-powdered face. “Ask me anything you want.”
Betsy nodded. Who was this stranger who sat across from her now, so affable and open?
Chapter 17
CARBONDALE, COLORADO
DECEMBER 10, 2010
It’s time to come back, says the voice from the shadows. A sweep of heavy cloth—taffeta? A waft of perfume, hints of rosemary.
A cold hand touches me, a finger under my chin. I am paralyzed.
Answer my call.
Betsy woke up from her dream to the persistent ringing of the telephone.
“Hello?”
“Hello, is this Dr. Path?”
“Yes.”
“I apologize for calling so early. This is Stephen Cox. I’m Dean of History at the University of Chicago. I have your number as an emergency contact for your mother, Dr. Grace Path.”
Betsy sat up quickly, untangling her legs from the sheets.
“Is something wrong? Has something happened to my mother?”
“Well, that’s why I’m calling. She was supposed to be back to teach a class yesterday, but she didn’t show up. I was only informed of it this morning or I would have called you earlier.”
“She’s not there?”
“No, the last we heard from her was when she submitted a monograph by e-mail for proofreading, and that was several weeks ago.”
Betsy’s pulse began to pound in her head. She forced herself to breathe deeply. The voice on the phone went on.
“We hoped she might have been in contact with you.”
“I had an e-mail from her a few days ago. Let me get it.”
She stumbled out of bed, clutching the phone, and opened her laptop.
The computer whirred to life. She clicked on her in-box.
“OK, here it is. It’s dated—December fourth, so six days ago.
SORRY I CAN’T BE WITH YOU AT THE RED BOOK DIALOGUES—I KNOW YOU WILL ENJOY IT THOROUGHLY. I AM GOING BACK ONCE MORE TO VISIT CACHTICE CASTLE AND BECKOV CASTLE TOMORROW, HOMES OF COUNTESS BATHORY.
There was dead silence on the phone.
“Is that all?” the dean finally asked. “No mention of returning to Chicago?”
“No, nothing. She just ends, ‘I will send you a postcard, darling.’”
Again a silence. The dean filled it at last. “She was doing research in Slovakia and Hungary. She has a deadline for the book in mid-January.”
“I knew she was doing research, but didn’t know what she was working on.”
“She didn’t tell you? Yes, she has a publisher lined up and a title. Countess Bathory: A Study of a Madwoman. ”
Betsy blinked in the early light filtering in through Japanese paper blinds. The bedroom was awash in an eerie rosy pink. “Study of a madwoman? What kind of historical treatise is that? She’s no psychologist, she’s a historian.”
“She told me the publishers came up with the title. The point is that she was in Eastern Europe researching Countess Bathory. She had a special week-long seminar on the Habsburg Dynasty to teach this week. I can’t imagine why she hasn’t written or called. She had a hundred and twenty students waiting for her to appear.”
“That’s not like my mother. She would never miss a class without—”
The heat clicked on and the floorboards creaked. A branch rasped against the windowpane.
Betsy realized she had stopped talking midsentence. She could hear a faint buzzing on the line.
“Yes,” the dean said at last. “That’s why I am so concerned.”
Betsy sat down at her computer and began to hunt through her e-mails. The pink glow of the rising sun reflected on her screen.
Shit, Mom. What have you gotten yourself into now?
Her mother was never good about itineraries, so the e-mail mentioning Countess Bathory was the only clue to where she had gone.
When Betsy looked on the internet, she found hundreds of entries for Countess Bathory, some spelling her Christian name as Elizabeth, some as Alzabeta or Erzsebet—English, Slovak, and Hungarian spellings. The countess had at least a half a dozen castles in the lands that were now Austria, Hungary, and Slovakia, but were then part of the Habsburg-ruled Holy Roman Empire. But Royal Habsburg Hungary was just a meager crescent, a stingy slice of territory. More than two-thirds of the once mighty Hungarian Empire was either part of Transylvania or had fallen to the Ottoman invaders.