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“Nope. This is fun time. You can do that on the train on Sunday.” Lina follows me into the bedroom. She pulls a bluetooth speaker from her bag and turns on some Seventeen. “Right now, we’re going to party!”
The bistro Andi chose is not at all what I expected. Rather than sandwiches and fries—which is what “bistro” means to me—we’re in an elegant restaurant with white tablecloths, glittering flatware, and an extensive wine list. I can read the menu, but many of the dishes are things I’ve never heard of—but neither has Andi.
“It’s Austrian-Asian fusion.” She taps a chopstick on the single white ball on her plate, rolling it through a puddle of purplish sauce. Giving up on the chopsticks, she uses a fork to cut it in half. Thick, potato-based dough hides a filling of ground meat and shredded veggies. The smell is more Chinese than German.
Lina leans across the table to get a closer look. “It’s like a spring roll had a baby with a Knödel.” She stirs the bean threads on her plate with her fork, then pokes the tiny Rouladen beside it. “This is certainly… different.”
Celeste sips her water, watching the people around us. She’s pushed her chair back, putting her back to the wall. Her face is blank, as if nothing she sees really interests her, but her eyes constantly rove over the crowd around us. When something bangs in the kitchen, she whips around to look, then relaxes again.
“Isn’t she eating?” I whisper to Andi.
She shrugs. “I guess she isn’t hungry.”
I take a bite of my goulash. The brown sauce with beef and potato chunks looks normal, but it has a distinct fish flavor. It’s not terrible, but I definitely won’t be ordering it again. Renate’s was much better.
Celeste must be on duty. She hasn’t said much to us, and she’s constantly on alert. But if Andi has a bodyguard from the palace, then she must be connected to Eduard and the Grand Duchess, too—which that “family photo” on the website seemed to imply. If it was real. My dad claimed innocence when I asked about him messing with my browser, of course.
Could the entire Feltz family be a cover for the previous grand duke’s mistress and her children? I nearly choke on a piece of tofu. At least I think it’s tofu. It slides down my throat with a bland slither.
I’ve met Teo’s mother, and I can’t imagine Frau Feltz as a royal mistress. She’s elegant, reserved, intelligent. On the other hand, maybe that’s exactly how a royal mistress would behave. No one would suspect.
Or maybe I have my generations off. Maybe Frau Feltz is the illegitimate daughter of the old guy whose portrait we saw in the palace, making Andi, Teo, and their siblings his grandchildren. That would explain why Eduard called Teo “cousin.” I’ve been dying to ask, but you can’t just walk up to a friend and ask if their mom—or grandmother—was a courtesan.
We finish our odd meal, which Andi charges to a black credit card, then the maître d’ escorts us through a narrow doorway. Celeste takes the lead, pausing to check beyond the door before letting us through, which reinforces my murky suspicions. My experience with bodyguards is limited to what I’ve seen in movies, but Celeste is behaving in a very guard-ish manner.
We step into a huge lobby with high ceilings and parquet floors. Flickering fake gas lamps make the gold trim on the white walls glitter. A man in a black suit greets Andi, then escorts us up a wide marble staircase to another wide room with an arched ceiling. The roar of a crowd rolls over us, and applause drowns out whatever our guide is saying to Andi. We turn right, then right again, then go up some more steps. In the distance, music thumps.
At the top of this staircase, he opens a door, and a wall of music slams into us. “Sounds like a good concert!” Lina’s raised voice is barely audible over the wash of sound. I nod enthusiastically. I don’t know this particular song, which means the warm-up group must still be playing.
We enter what can only be described as a ballroom. We’re on a small balcony above the main floor, where four fancy chairs have been set near the curved stone balustrade. Below, the parquet floor is nearly covered by a dancing, singing mass of people. Many of them hold lit cellphones, others wave blue lights shaped like three-leaf clovers.
Lina points at the stage, where a group of pale young men in colorful hair and hip-hop clothing dance and sing. “That’s BigRed, not Tripl3Threat. They shouldn’t be using their shamrock sticks!”
She’s right, but I try to be charitable. “Those things are expensive. Maybe they just like ’em?”
“But those guys are… actually that one with the pink hair is pretty cute.” Lina drops into a seat and leans her cast on the thick railing, staring down at the group. “These are primo seats.”
I look longingly at the mass of people below us. I’d rather be down there, dancing with the other fans—the Shamrocks, as Tripl3Threat calls their fandom. But these seats are clearly the best. For one thing, there are no chairs on the main floor. For another— “Look!” I grab Lina’s arm and lift a little paper bag beside my chair. “Gift bags!”
Lina swings around, spots the shiny blue bag in my hand, and frantically searches around her own chair. “Where’s mine?” She grabs the little white handle and lifts the bag with a crow of triumph. “Geschenke!”
Ignoring my friend, I pull out the goodies. A blue plastic shamrock with a handle. Yes! Group logo light sticks are almost required at K-pop concerts. I find the switch and turn it on. Lina reaches over and pushes my arm down. “Not yet!” She waves another light stick at me—this one is a round red ball with a horizontal white stripe. Flicking it on, she waves it at the band still singing on stage.
The lyrics seem to be in a mix of German and Korean, with a little English thrown in. My German is good enough now to translate the general gist of the song, and I’ve learned enough Korean since I started watching K-dramas to pick out a few badly pronounced words that seem to go with the lyrics.
While the group sings on, I check out the rest of the goodies—some stickers, a T-shirt with Tripl3Threat’s logo, and some candy. That might come in handy later since the portions at the bistro were tiny, and the fish flavor put me off enough that I couldn’t finish the little bit I’d been served. I’d have been happier with sandwiches and fries. Clearly, I’m not cut out to be a royal—even an illegitimate one.
“Selfie time!” Andi yells as the crowd cheers for the group below us. She grabs my arm and pulls me next to her with our backs against the stone railing. Lina crowds in on her other side, and we hold up our red and white light sticks and smile. Andi raises her phone at arm’s length, angling it to get the band in the background as they take their bows. “Perfect!” She releases me, and her thumbs fly across the screen, then she grins. “I’m so excited to be here!”
I glance at Celeste. She stands near the wall that separates our end of the balcony from the rest. If ours is like the balcony opposite us, there are more wealthy fans sitting in separate boxes behind us, but we have the front corner that lets us look down on the stage. While Andi and Lina hang over the balustrade, taking pictures of the band and the crowd, Celeste stands like a statue, except for her head which swivels smoothly, side-to-side, her eyes ranging over the patrons on the opposite balcony, the fans below, the singers exiting the stage.
She’s definitely working. While her face is turned away, I snap a quick photo to send to Teo. I won’t ask him directly about his heritage, but maybe if I poke him enough, he’ll spill. “Andi’s friend doesn’t seem like a K-pop fan.” I consider posting it on my socials, too, but if she’s really working, that would be a bad idea. Instead, I snap a short video of Lina and Andi gawking at the stage. I get a great profile pic of the two of them, with the ornate white and gold walls in the background. Then I add a caption and hashtags and hit post. “Shamrocks in training. #Tripl3Threat #Shamrocks #Austria #BigRed”
Tripl3Threat takes the stage, and Lina screams. We shove the chairs back so we can dance, ignoring Celeste’s mutters about fire safety.
Halfway through the fourth song, someone pounds on the door. I barely register the sound over the driving beat, but the wildly swinging spotlights catch a glint of something metal as Celeste moves toward the door. I jerk around, staring at the bodyguard. Is that a gun in her hand? No, just the light hitting her zipper. I must be reading too many thrillers. I turn back to the stage.
A mob bursts into our little balcony, lights flashing, voices yelling. Celeste stands between Andi and the raging crowd of… photographers? They wield giant-lensed cameras like weapons, and one man shoves a microphone at Andi. “Princess! When did you become a K-pop fan?” The others yell more questions about the bands, the music, and Andi’s hair.
