Page 40 of Stilettos & Secrets on the 7 Seas

“There was a knock at the door. My mother looked scared. I asked her what to do. She removed a box from under her bed. Inside was a necklace that had belonged to her grandmother. She clasped it around my neck.” Fredericka touched the stone hidden under her shirt. “My key.”

I instinctively ran my fingers over my own.

“She let Sasha and me wear it sometimes, only in the house. Mother wore one, too. I didn’t know what it was. Sasha despised that it glowed when I wore it because Mother was proud.”

“Your mother didn’t know Sasha had the gift because her gift came later than yours,” I said.

She nodded. “The knock came again. Mother ordered me to go with her friend.”

“The man?” I asked.

“No. An older woman with white hair waited at the door.”

“My Aint Elma?”

“Yes. I didn’t know her then, but I hated her for taking me. They knew. Somehow the WTF knew I had the gift. She took me to an older Russian couple living in America. The man had the gift, too. He trained me. He became my defender, and his wife, my friend.”

I remembered the stoic Russian. He turned in his key and retired about the time Campy joined the WTF.

Fredericka’s hands fisted at her sides. “Mother promised to find Sasha and come for me. She promised we would be together.”

“And she never came,” I answered.

“Elma told me that my mother had abandoned us. And she couldn’t find Sasha. I tried to find them, but news to America wasn’t easy to come by for a teenager. One day, Elma showed up and told me my mother had died and my sister was most likely dead too.”

I approached Fredericka, placed a hand on her arm. “My Aint Elma was no fool. If she kept you away from them, it was for your protection.”

Fredericka looked at me with amaybe, maybe notshine in her eyes. “I must find Sasha to know the truth. To know if my mother abandoned us. To apologize to her for not trying harder to find her.”

“Can I see Sasha’s room? Maybe there’s a clue as to what happened.”

She looked at me skeptically but walked toward the door. “This way.”

Fifteen

We walked the length of the castle on the way to Sasha’s room. The high-vaulted ceilings echoed every footstep on the stone floor. Full suits of armor that I swear held the battle scars of a medieval joust were displayed along the main hallway. Tapestries hung in niches, antiques tables with busts of some famous folks, I assumed, perched against walls.

Fredericka stopped at the end of the hall. “Sasha preferred the tower. The elevator doesn’t go up there.”

“Perfect.” I glanced upward at the staircase spiraling above me.

I followed her up three flights of stairs. I had to stop at the top and catch my breath.

“You had better train harder if you want to fight the Mafusos,” Fredericka said, not the least bit out of breath.

She opened the door to a circular room. Mullioned windows ringed the outer half of the room. A four-poster bed draped with white linen fit for a princess sat in the center. The princess in the tower.

“Wow! This room’s amazing.” I crossed to the wall of windows and looked out at the frothy waterfall spilling down the side of the neighboring mountain and into the crystal blue water below. In the distance, a glimpse of the Caspian Sea sparkled against the sunbeams.

Fredericka moved beside me to share the view. “There are no family photos. No journals. No clue to her life before here.”

“Did Elma bring her here?”

“I don’t know. Folded inside her wallet was a write-up of my grandfather in one of his many celebrity hunts torn from a newspaper that dates a few months before she arrived here. I’m not sure how she made the connection.”

“From what I gathered, Elma died before Sasha arrived here.” I turned to face her.

“Sasha was always more clever than me with our trips into town, dealing with people. What is the word?” She paused.

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