The Lost Prince Read online

  Gloria checked her watch. “You take this, Hank,” she said. “I have to get to the bank before they close.” She grabbed her coat from the hook and left.

  Hank said, “Some private gumshoe from the city. Wore a trench coat like Bogart, if you can believe it. He looked like hell. I guess those types have to work through the flu. Thank God for paid sick days,” he said knocking the wooden counter. “But I’ll tell you what I told him. The cops that worked that night are either retired in Florida or dead. Only thing we have is the file.”

  “Can we see your file?” Cat asked.

  Hank escorted them back to a desk and left to retrieve the file. He returned, shortly, perplexed.

  “I can’t find it,” he said. “I know I put it back.”

  Cal bit his inner cheek—a habit he’d given up in his new, calmer life here that had reinstated itself with the return of his memories. Every time they caught a break, something shoved them back a step. He must have put on quite the expression because Hank then said, “Don’t have a cow. We’re in the process of updating all our records onto the computer. That one wasn’t scheduled for scanning yet, but since I had it out anyway, I did it. All the documents are in here,” he said tapping the monitor.

  Hank opened the file and offered them some coffee and Danishes. Cal scrolled through the documentation. It was all there. On a dark, stormy October night, Galen and Linnea were killed instantly when their car hit a tractor-trailer head on. They were driving south on Route 22. They had stopped at a local diner, where an employee named Mitch Sweeny gave a statement about talking to the couple just before the accident. The authorities could find no history for the man and woman, no point of origin for their journey, and they were officially listed as a pair of Does. There was no mention of a child in the report.

  “What’s that?” Cat asked, pointing to a photocopy of a coin.

  “That’s a Phoenix Standard,” Cal answered. He stared at the picture with a modicum of awe.

  “Cal?” Cat nudged.

  “It’s our money,” he said. “All the kingdoms use the Standard, but mint their own sigils. The sigil of Duke Athelstan’s house is the phoenix. It’s almost pure gold. This is it,” he said emotionally. He almost couldn’t believe it. Ever since Lelani’s spell deciphered his memories, Cal hadn’t felt quite himself; it was like halves of himself lived in different universes, neither one of which was right on its own. The entire mission was a bad dream. Cal expected to wake up in his bed in the Bronx at any moment and realize Aandor didn’t exist, there was no prince, and he was only in love with one woman who might be carrying their second child. Either that or he was a patient in a mental ward, wrapped up like a Russian newborn for his own good, and everything he knew about Aandor was an elaborate fantasy of a deluded mind.

  But this was it—proof. Aandor existed in the computer records of a town clerk in upstate New York. He turned to Cat and smiled. “We’ve found the trail.”

  “Do you have these coins?” Cat shouted back at Hank.

  Good question, Cal thought. He scrolled the rest of the file—nothing at all about an infant. Was it possible the prince wasn’t with them the night of the accident? Galen and Linnea were the agreed-upon caretakers. Proust’s spell had their identities written to be the child’s parents, so even if Seth’s miscasting of it overpowered them, they should still have come away thinking they were responsible for the baby.

  Hank returned holding a plate of Entenmann’s Danishes.

  “What happened to the items from the crash?” Cat asked the clerk. “Are they in storage?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t full-time back then. But I’ve never seen them around. Probably stolen.”

  “We should interview anyone that’s still in the area,” Cal said. “Does this Sweeny still live around here?”

  “Yeah. He’s up there in age, but still works at the diner. It’s about a mile down the road.”

  The clerk who filed the report was listed on the corner of the original page: G. Manning. Whoever had pilfered the gold coins would not be forthcoming. That might not matter, though. Cal decided to run a hunch—he loaded Google and searched for local coin collectors.

  “What are you thinking?” Cat asked.

  “I’m thinking you can’t buy groceries with twenty-four-karat-gold coins,” Cal said. “Not exactly something you can throw into the Coinstar machine at Pathmark. And unless you absolutely have a love for obscure, yet impractical, seemingly ancient coinage, you might want to cash in on such a thing, right?”

  “Right,” Cat agreed.

  “So whose hands would something like that eventually fall into?”

  The search hit on a Web site called the Numismatist run by a collector named Nathan Dumont. A link on the site led to a blog he wrote called Exonumianiacs.

  “You think he’s involved?” asked Cat, not really following the thread. “There might be bigger collectors in the city, or even Hartford.”

  “I don’t know,” Cal said. “But these types, they like to share knowledge of their scores—brag and taunt. Otherwise, there’s no glory in possessing something rare if no one knows you have it. Whoever took those coins thirteen years ago, it probably ended up in the hands of a guy like this. He may have brokered a deal, know the people who have the coins, or at the very least heard rumors in his circles, all of which can put us one step closer to the trail.”

  Cat planted a soft, wet kiss on his cheek.

  “What’s that for?” he said.

  “So sexy when you use that brain.”

  “I am a cop,” he pointed out.

  She grinned. “Please, don’t ruin the moment.”

  CHAPTER 2

  SCHOOL DAZE

  Seth walked to the edge of the parking lot and lit his last cigarette. He drew in deep, savoring his last rush, and exhaled a mix of smoke and winter breath. Around the clerk’s building, the air was quiet and crisp with only a hint of frosty sting—peaceful as only winter could be. A mix of birch trees and pines surrounded the lot, and covered the distance to the nearby hills. The occasional squirrel or rabbit skittered over fallen logs. It reminded him of that Stallone movie, First Blood.

  He contemplated his place in the universe, and more specifically, this mission that’d been thrust upon him. Why him? For the part of his life that Seth could remember, there was nothing special to set him above other men; the opposite was true. He was crude, base, common—his acts had been childish, vindictive, preemptive in the way of brats that won’t be ignored and force reactions from others. But as it turned out, he was handpicked for this secret mission to protect the future of an entire kingdom. He even had a protective field cast about him, shielding him from magic.

  Seth pulled down his zipper and relieved himself against a tree at the edge of the lot. Lelani approached behind him. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the sound of her steps—one, two—three, four … once you knew, you could push aside her illusion.

  “Shall we try again?” she asked.

  “Can I finish my business—in private?”

  Lelani folded her arms and arched her eyebrow, broadcasting what she thought of his privacy. Probably pee wherever you want to, just like a horse, Seth thought. Lelani appeared to all like a typical six-foot-something gorgeous redhead, but was in fact, a four-footed centaur sorceress from another reality. Her long athletic legs were part of an elaborate illusion of light and sound she wove around herself to fit into this reality. Seth thought about male centaurs, and how they were likely hung like horses—literally. Last thing he needed was Lelani snickering over his wee human willy.

  Then again, that was not her style. Lelani was all business. She had been on him all morning, parading a pile of salt under his nose, unwavering in her pursuit to squeeze magic out of his … What did one squeeze magic out of? The brain, the heart, the gonads? Wherever it came from, his reservoir was as dry as a ninety-year-old’s cooch. He shook, tucked, and zipped and took another drag from his cigarette.

  It wasn�
��t as though Seth wasn’t interested in learning about magic. Who wouldn’t want the ability to do real magic? Then he’d never again fear people like Carmine, who had goombahs combing the five boroughs of New York for his kneecaps. But Seth felt boxed in—almost suffocated—and unable to tap into the vast reserves of power Lelani kept telling him were out there in the world. It was like someone had wrapped him in magic-blocking cellophane, and he’d only just begun to notice because his new awareness of real magic emphasized how cut off he was. Seth wondered if it had anything to do with the spell of protection around himself—something he had nothing to do with. In how many ways had it affected his life?

  “What’s the deal with this protective shield?” he asked her.

  “It’s complex,” she said. “Really, several spells working in unison. One is a molecular lock. It prevents you from transforming into another type of creature, like a rat or a dog.”

  Interesting choice of examples, Seth thought. Why not a horse or an eagle? Was he so bad, he didn’t even warrant “noble” animals in an example?

  “Another spell prevents an outside mind from bedding upon your own, able to see through your eyes, controlling you like a puppet,” Lelani continued. “And a myriad of other spells to stop poisons and such.”

  “You said this was heavy mojo.”

  “If ‘heavy mojo’ means advanced wizardry, then yes. The enchantments have to be harmonically synchronized.”

  “Why have I got one?”

  “Excellent question. There are few wizards I know of who could cast this type of enchantment. It’s expensive. This lends credence to my theory of your parentage. In Aandor, rulers are born with a natural resistance to magic. They pass this trait on to their children, in some cases, by breeding with members of their extended families. Once in a while you end up with a child as susceptible to magic as any commoner. Sometimes the ‘ruler’ isn’t the true father. That’s why the court’s wizard and cleric administer a test during the child’s infancy. The result for a trueborn is only a slight burn on the skin shaped into the sigil of the ruling house. The prince’s sigil is a phoenix.”

  “And if a kid’s not legitimate?”

  “Its fate is sealed. The test would kill it. Born of a commoner mother, you likely did not inherit the resistance. It’s not unheard of for the very wealthy to purchase such protections—fathers love their bastards, too.”

  Seth didn’t feel like a duke’s bastard. He certainly never felt loved. Could the shield be the reason Seth spent a lifetime wallowing in loneliness? Is love a type of magic that Seth was physically cut off from?

  Lelani poured some salt into her hand and held it before him—like she was waiting to rub it into the open wound that was his life.

  “You’re obsessed with this salt thing,” he said.

  “Fundamental molecular redistribution,” Lelani said.

  “I feel like I’m trying to push a boulder up a hill with one hand.”

  “It is the most rudimentary magic,” she said. “A spell’s complexity equals the time and effort put into casting it. This is why wizards want to choose the time and place of their battles. A wizard on the run is at a disadvantage. Big spells require focus, time to conceive of the effect in the mind’s eye, to build energy, allow transformations—some have elaborate hand movements and chants. But we always start learning with the simplest spell.

  “Few bonds are as precarious as the one that holds together sodium and chloride. If you cannot accomplish this, there is no hope for anything else. We call it ‘threading the needle.’”

  “I call it ‘annoying the Seth.’”

  “The initial step is the hardest part of premeditated magic,” Lelani said. “Confidence is key, but so is state of mind and inner calm. You have to invite the magic, let it settle in you. Anxiety, insecurity, anger, fear, depression, even too much elation, muddles your resonance, repels the energy.”

  “All wizards are happy wizards,” Seth said sardonically. “What if you stub your toe … uh … hoof and make a pouty face?”

  “After a wizard masters the simplest spells, he or she attains the ability to cast regardless of emotional state. Most with a proclivity toward magic never evolve to the premeditative level. Half of Magnus’s academy applicants wash out.”

  “How do evil wizards get past the inner peace part?” Seth asked.

  “Evil wizards don’t believe they are evil, Seth. They are at peace with their natures and feel justified in their actions. This exercise is not a judgment of your character. You are trying to invite this energy into you—to accept you as a station on its journey through the multiverse.” She held a pile of salt before him. “Concentrate.”

  Seth attempted to pull apart the elements that comprised it. In his hand, Seth couldn’t yet draw magic from the environment, so he tried to pull it from a palm-sized smooth stone talisman Lelani had given him. He chanted the words. The salt refused to budge.

  Seth couldn’t focus to save his life. Concentration had never been one of his assets even in the best of times, but now, he wrestled with anger, sadness, and fear while harangued into learning one of the universe’s greatest arts. Old Ben Reyes kept popping into his head. Ben died saving his wife from a pack of gnolls because of the trouble they had brought to his door—the same trouble that still threatened them and the life of a young boy somewhere. The things Seth had seen in the past few days challenged the laws of reality. Now he was thrust into the role of a reality bender himself. As usual, the universe was not cooperating. But it was more than that—he had not cooperated with the universe for years, acting out in ways he knew were wrong deep down in his bones. Seth was always in pursuit of the easy buck. He owed money to a lot of friends, ruined the reputations of women who were naïve enough to trust him—abandoned girlfriends when they needed him most …

  The mistakes of his former life piled together into a tsunami—a merciless wall of past regret set to fall upon his remaining days. “How am I supposed to achieve inner peace?” he whispered.

  “What?” she asked.

  “There’s no calm in me,” he said, louder. “I’m anxious—a jumble of regret. I’ve been angry for so long, I’ve no idea how to turn it off. Now, I have to fight a psychotic sorcerer obsessed with killing us. Except I can’t turn salt into sodium and chloride, and that’s the easiest spell in the universe, apparently.” Seth was hyperventilating. He closed his eyes and tried to control it. The cigarette had lost its allure, so he flicked it into a snowdrift. Thirteen years of his life spent ignorant, exploiting others as punishment for his crappy existence. The rude awakening that he caused all that misery to himself and others put a crick in his neck no less painful than if someone had jammed a chopstick in there. Now his future depended on achieving inner peace. This was a task to be measured in months, not days. When would he find time to untangle the mess? The present situation was so desperate. It was a catch-22.

  “You are in the throes of imaginings that have no bearing on this lesson,” Lelani said, frustrated with him.

  “No duh,” Seth quipped. Was she trying to be his friend? Unlike Callum MacDonnell, Lelani at least acknowledged Seth’s desire to do better.

  “You have no wife, no children, no job,” Lelani said, framing his life’s situation in a way that suggested fewer distractions were to his advantage. It had the opposite effect. It only confirmed that at twenty-six years of age he was beholden to no one when he should have been obliged to many, and they to him. “No true obligations here outside of your service to the duke,” she continued.

  Correcting Lelani’s misread of his situation was pointless. He couldn’t stand to give her more reasons to think badly of him. The patterns on a nearby birch became infinitely more interesting than Lelani’s lecture at that moment.

  “You should not let the actions of your unfortunate past influence inactions toward an unfortunate future,” Lelani warned. “We need every advantage. Unfortunately, you are one of them.” She did not mean this as a rebuke. Seth saw i
n her eyes an understanding of the pressure he was under. Lelani would lift this burden if she could. Her risks, her struggle to travel across dimensions and awaken the guardians to the dangers they faced only strengthened Seth’s resolve.

  “Are you even sure I can do this?” he asked.

  “I saw you do it when you were twelve.”

  He stared at the salt. Seth said the words again and tried to separate them with a thought. Still nothing. “Shit!” He threw the salt on the asphalt. “There isn’t any mojo here! Only way to separate this is with a glass of water.”

  Lelani waved her hand over the salt and the grains sprang from the ground. She stirred them into a white granular circle in the air on the tip of her finger. When she pointed up, the salt shot up in a white line and then dived into a pile in her hand. “If you pull these elements apart, I will buy you a pack of cigarettes,” she promised, resorting to the carrot-and-stick approach.

  It occurred to him he’d never seen sodium or chloride. “What’s the end result supposed look like?” he asked.

  Lelani gazed at the salt and the pile separated into a pale yellow-green gas and some silvery metal dust.

  “That,” she said. “Chloride is an ion form of chlorine.”

  “An ion form of … I didn’t like high school the first time I went,” Seth complained. “Isn’t magic about waving wands and silly phrases?”

  He picked up a stick and waved it at a tree. “Expelliarmus!” he shouted. Nothing. A cold wind continued to blow; a squirrel looked at them and, deciding they were of no importance, skittered up a tree.

  “I am not familiar with that spell,” the centaur said. “What was your intent?”

  “To avoid retaking organic chemistry. Magic looks easy when you do it. You just say some words, wave your hands.”

  “Magic relies on communication,” Lelani admitted, picking up on Seth’s track. “Wait here a moment.”

  She went to the Explorer and pulled a six-foot-long branch from a bundled stack on the roof. Seth wondered why she’d tied them there in the first place. She tossed it to him.