The Lost Prince Read Online Free Page A

jewels in the kingdom. For only in death did Cal imagine his life would not be spent with his beloved. He did not anticipate the consequences of a transuniversal expedition, skewed time lines, and incompetent wizards. Some impediments were too powerful for ordinary human love. And yet, he’d found love again. Was his bond with Catherine as fragile? The thought of losing Cat filled Cal with as much dread as confronting Chryslantha with the news of his marriage. He pulled the SUV into the town clerk’s parking lot with a mind in turmoil.
    “You kids stay here and practice,” Cal told his sorcerers. “We’ll check this out.”
    The town hall was an old wooden firetrap, and also served as post office, court, and records office.
    “At least it’s not made out of pink bricks like that other post office,” Cat said.
    “We’re lucky this place hasn’t burned down yet,” Cal responded.
    The floorboards creaked under Callum’s weight, but not so much under his petite wife. There was a hint of mold mingled with old paper and dust in the air—the type of place you expected to find a long-lost manuscript from some long-dead, but brilliant, writer. A tired wooden counter barred admittance to the small office area behind it. A man in a white short-sleeved shirt, square buzz haircut, and about fifty extra pounds sat at the rear desk reading the morning paper. The woman was in her early forties with a bobbed hairstyle. Her name tag read Gloria Hauer .
    “Can I help you folks?” she asked.
    Callum flashed his NYPD badge. “I was wondering if I could look at your police records from about thirteen years ago?” Callum unfolded a piece of paper from his pocket. It was a printout of a short newspaper blurb that Cat had found online about an accident involving Galen and Linnea Ashe. The newspaper had long ago shuttered its office, a victim of the Internet era. “Is this the jurisdiction that responded to this incident?”
    The woman looked at the paper blandly. “Nope. This was in Wassaic. Sorry.”
    The man at the desk put down his paper and walked up to the front desk. His square puffy face, black horn-rimmed glasses, and pocket protector gave him the appearance of a NASA employee from the early 1960s. His tag said Hank Meier . He looked at the printout. “Well I’ll be darned, Glory. Yeah, this was us—there was another feller in here the other day asking about the same incident. Why so much interest in a decade-old pair of roadkills?”
    “I can’t talk about the case,” Callum said. A sinking feeling nestled in his gut. “What other fellow?”
    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