The Man Behind the Mask

And it wasn’t like the two of us were on the brink of something grand. I knew very well that the next time I saw him, it was going to be Hello, how are you? and walk on by. He’d as good as told me so—and I know what you’re thinking. How could he have told me if he didn’t even speak?

Well, he didn’t need to say it. I saw it in those beautiful haunted eyes of his: There was not, and never would be, an us.

And no, it didn’t help that I knew those haunted eyes were right. I mean, what were a recently-back-from-the-dead Gullandrian prince and Dulcie Samples, wannabe writer from Bakersfield, gonna have in common anyway? Couldn’t be all that much, even if we ever did get around to actually speaking to each other.

It was hopeless. I knew it.

And I didn’t care. That’s the way it is with love at first sight.

Sitting there, propped against the carved headboard of that antique bed, amid all the lush featherbedding, I let out a long, sad sigh. I was debating with myself. Would I get back on task with my “what I learned” list? Or was I on another Valbrand roll? If so, it was time to keep my promise to myself and switch to a pen and a notebook and—

What was that?

A flicker of movement. In my side vision, to my right. I glanced that way.

The doors to a heavy, dark armoire, shut the last time I looked, gaped open. My clothes were moving, a head emerging from between my winter coat and a little black dress.

I shrieked. The AlphaSmart went flying. I hovered on the verge of my first coronary.

About then, I realized that the head was Brit’s. “Sheesh,” she said. “Calm down. It’s only me.” She emerged in a crouch and turned to shut the armoire doors.

“Holy freaking kamolie.”Freaking was not the word I was thinking. It just proves what a model of self-restraint I am that I didn’t say that other word. “I coulda died of fright.”

“Sorry.” She didn’t look particularly contrite.

And that bugged me. I adore horror movies, but when it comes to real life—don’t scare me, you know? I have three prank-loving brothers and a devilish dad. They know I’m excitable. When I was growing up, they were always popping out of doorways, shouting, “Hah!” They found my squeals of terror hilarious.

Making ungracious grumbling noises, I kicked off the covers, flung my torso over the side of the bed and retrieved my Alphie, after which I dragged myself back up to the mattress and settled against the pillows again. I tapped a few keys. “At least it’s not broken.” I shot her a thoroughly sour look. “No thanks to you.”

She tried flattery. “Hey. Love your pajamas.”

I grunted. We both favored cartoon-character PJs. That night, mine were liberally dotted with widely smiling SpongeBobs. “How long have you been hiding in there?”

Brit dropped to a wing chair and raked her hair back out of her eyes. “I wasn’t hiding. There’s a door at the back of it.”

I blinked. “Oh, come on…”

She crossed her heart. “Hope to die.”

“A door. As in…to a secret passageway?” I was thoroughly intrigued. It’s hard to keep pouting when you’re intrigued.

She jumped up again and held out her hand. “Come look.”

I peered at her sideways, scowling. “Don’t be cranky. I really am sorry I freaked you out.”

“I’m not cranky,” I insisted. Crankily. “I just don’t see why you couldn’t come in through the door.”

She made an impatient noise in her throat. “Hel-lo, I’m a princess, remember? Around here, I have an image to maintain.” She opened her pink robe to display her own cartoon-character pajamas—Wile E. Coyote, as a matter of fact—then lifted a foot with a fluffy pink slipper on it and wiggled it at me. “I prefer not to go running through the halls once I’m dressed for bed.”

The reminder of her royal status put me right back into pouting mode. “You always used to say that being a princess didn’t mean a thing to you.”

We shared a long look. She said, softly, “I’m learning that it means quite a bit. That it’s an important part of who I am.”

Did those words surprise me? Not really. I could sense big changes in her. A whole lot had happened since she’d boarded the royal jet in L.A., back in June, for her first visit to her father’s land. In June, Valbrand had been missing and considered dead for almost a year; King Osrik, the father she now called “Dad” was a stranger to her—and she’d yet to meet the man she now planned to marry.

“Well?” she demanded, after a too-long pause. “D’you want to see the passageway or not?”

I shoved my AlphaSmart off my lap, jumped from the bed and padded to her side. Brit opened the armoire door and slid my clothes out of the way.

The whole back of the armoire was another door—it opened onto a narrow hallway of the same silver-gray slate as the palace facade. An electric lantern—Brit’s, no doubt—sat on the passageway floor just beyond the armoire, casting a golden glow, making strange, shimmery light patterns on the glossy stone. I could see straight ahead maybe a hundred feet. Then a dead end, a shadowed blackness to the right. A turn in the passageway, I guessed. “Amazing.”

Brit beamed. “Isenhalla is riddled with hidden hallways. They were included in the original construction, back in the mid-sixteenth century, when King Thorlak the Liberator built the current palace on the ruins of an earlier one destroyed by the Danes. It was a dangerous time. Poor King Thorlak. He never knew when he might need to duck inside a curio cabinet and get the hell outta Dodge. And there’s more…”

I loved this kind of stuff and Brit knew it. “Tell.”

“In the mid-nineteenth century, King Solmund Gudmond took the throne. King Solmund was, shall we say, more than a little bit eccentric—enough so that by the end of his reign he was known as Mad King Solmund. In the final years before his death, he would wash his hands a hundred times a day and wander the great halls at night wearing nothing but a look of total confusion.”

“And King Solmund had exactly what to do with the passageways?”

“Before he lost his grip on reality, he had them modernized, adding more hidden entrances and exits, improving the internal mechanisms within the secret doors.”

“Fascinating,” I said, and meant it.

“Yeah. It’s become a minor hobby of mine, to hunt down all the secret hallways and follow them wherever they lead.” Her face was flushed, excited. I’d never seen her look happier.

Or more at home.

“You love it here.” There was a tightness in my chest.

She quirked an eyebrow at me. “Is that an accusation?”

I shook my head. “I guess it just hit me all over again. You’re really never coming home.”

“This is my home.” She spoke gently, with only the faintest note of reproach.

I scrunched up my eyes. Hard. No way I was letting the waterworks get started. “I’ll miss you, that’s all.”

Her mouth kind of twisted. She patted my arm. “Don’t forget the royal jet. Flies both ways. And the phone. And what about e-mail? You know we’ll be in touch.”

“I know,” I said and gave her a big smile. I didn’t want to be a downer, but I was thinking that visits and phone calls and e-mails could never stack up with her living directly across the walkway from me in our charmingly derelict courtyard-style apartment building. In the months she’d been gone, I’d come to realize how much I counted on her friendship.

East Hollywood with no Brit. Could it really be happening?

She grabbed my hand. “I know I’ve been neglecting you.”

Wrong. Yes, I missed her. Yes, I hated that I was going to have to accept that her life was different now and our friendship would change. But I did not feel neglected. “Oh, come on. You’ve knocked yourself out checking on me every chance you get. You’ve been crazy busy.…”

“Still. We’ve hardly had a moment to ourselves since you got here. I’m fixing that. Now. Let’s go to my rooms. We’ll talk till our tongues go numb. Do the mutual pedicure thing. You can mess with my hair.”