She fumbled through her bag and brought out the white foundation. With savage sweeps of her fingertips, she covered the naked skin.
When she came downstairs, the receptionist looked startled. Then she smiled.
“You are Goth,” she said, nodding her head. “Many Goths in Bratislava.”
“Really?”
“Many, many. You see them. I can tell you names of bars that have Goth scene. You like?”
“Sure. I can’t speak Slovak, though.”
“Young people learn English in Bratislava. English to survive,” she said, opening a map of the city. “OK. So. Are you lesbian?”
“What?”
The purple-haired woman shrugged. “I want to send you to the right bar. Straight or lesbian?”
“Straight,” said Daisy in a loud voice, looking over her shoulder. “Like really straight.”
“OK, OK,” said the receptionist. “This is the one.” Then a cloud of doubt crossed her face. “You must be very careful, though. Bars are safe, but do not leave with strangers.”
Daisy sensed the woman’s sudden anxiety.
“Why?”
“There was murder. Goth girl, like you. Last week.”
Her cell phone rang, the ring tone “Riders on the Storm” by the Doors.
Daisy frowned at the number on the screen.
She pressed ANSWER. “What do you want, Morgan?”
“Where the hell are you?”
“Bratislava,” she said, looking up at the pastel plastered ceiling of her hotel room. “Pretty cool. They like Goths here.”
“Do you know Mom has called the FBI, Missing Persons, and Oprah?”
“Oprah?”
“She thought she might do a feature on runaway Goths. Maybe get some international attention. You know Mom.”
“That’s fucking freaky. I’m fine. And I told her where I was going.”
“What are you doing there?”
“Following a hunch.”
“You followed your shrink, right? Mom says she’s there, too.”
“So what?”
“So that’s fucking weird. Patients don’t follow their shrinks to strange foreign countries.”
“Yeah, and you are really an authority on normal behavior. Daughters don’t usually—”
“Don’t say it!”
“Whatever. You are weirder than I could ever try to be, even as a Goth.”
Daisy pressed the END CALL button hard, as if she were killing an insect under her fingertip.
Nightfall came earlier than Daisy expected. By 4:30 it was dark, and it was an ominous reminder that she had traveled to a distant land without a clear understanding of what she hoped to do.
Why had she come?
To protect Betsy. To battle some unseen force.
That seemed pretty lame now, as she lay staring at the ceiling of her hotel room.
No, it was the recurrent dream, the sense of foreboding. The castle and the woman in blood. In her dreams it made her heart jump in her chest, so she woke screaming.
Somehow this dream was connected with Betsy, Daisy just knew it. She couldn’t shake that premonition, no matter how hard she tried. It haunted her, urging her on.
“I’ve got to get out,” Daisy said, her voice strange in the empty room. She yanked her black coat from the armoire. The hangers jangled against each other.
Daisy walked to the corner where the taxi had let her off that morning. She didn’t really feel like sightseeing—that wasn’t a Goth thing, right? But the Michalska Brana Tower, rising above the ancient town gate, was spooky enough to make her want to explore whatever might lie inside.
But the door to the tower was locked. A sign said 9:00-17:00. Daisy looked up and began walking backward, her head tilted up to see the top floor and the green patina of the cupola.
A fat raindrop splashed in her left eye. Then another down her neck.
It had started to rain again and she didn’t have an umbrella. Umbrellas weren’t something that Aspenites carried. She tightened her scarf around her neck.
Her boots splashed through the puddles and rivulets along the cobblestone street as she hurried back to her hotel. She gave the receptionist a wave as she waited for the glass elevator up to her room.
“Wet weather,” said the woman. “But it may pass soon.”
Staring out the window at the night sky, the idea that she had run away to Bratislava seemed absurd. She didn’t even really know where Betsy was.
Daisy rubbed her misaligned tooth with her thumbnail. She stepped into the glass elevator.
“You are a total idiot,” she whispered to herself.
She stepped out of the elevator and walked to her room. With a twist of the brass key, she let herself in. She flipped open her computer and opened her blog.
“OK, Goths. I’m going to check out some local bars here and nail down the Goth scene. Next entry will be a porthole into Eastern Europe’s Freak World.”