Free Rise of the Lost Prince by London Saint James

equipment and some
of those white hats tumble from an unseen wind an instant before a thick fog
rolled in. And was that Vibe, strolling over to one of the men who cowered
behind the old ticket booth?
    Her eyes narrowed. Yeah. It was,
Vibe. Obviously, the twins had the amusement park rigged with cameras as well
as listening devices.
    “Don’t hurt me,” the man said,
voice shaky.
    “I’m not going to hurt you,” said
Vibe.
    Where
was Petúr? He had to be in the mix somewhere, but she didn’t see him.
    Pulling her attention away from
what was going on outside, she blurted out, “Do you guys have a telephone in
here?”
    Tera glanced over his shoulder.
“Hi ya, doll.”
    Her brow crinkled. “Er…Hi.”
    “What do you need a phone for?”
asked Byte, not bothering to glance in her direction.
      “I lost my purse and laptop last night in the
ruckus outside my bar. My cell phone was in my purse and I need to make a
call,” she said.
    “We’ve got your laptop and your
purse.” Tera pointed to a desk butted up against the far wall. “Vibe brought it
to us last night.”
    She smiled, bounding over to snag
up her purse, then frowned when she didn’t find her phone inside. “No phone,”
she uttered. She tapped her foot. “Can I use yours? I need to make a call,” she
said again.
    “To whom?” asked Byte.
    “My father.”
    Byte turned around at that. “Why
would you need to call Cromwell Darlingheart?”
    “You know he’s my father?”
    He nodded. “Of course. Petúr told
us.”
    She bit at the inside of her
cheek. “I want to call and tell him to call off the surveyors.”
    “No need,” said Tera. “Those
pesky humans will be gone soon enough.”
    “Yeah,” said Byte.
    She glowered at them. “I’m a
human.”
    “We know, doll.” Tera’s nostrils
worked. “No getting around that fact.”
    Wyndi put her hands on her hips.
“What’s that suppose to mean?”
    “Just that we could smell you
from a mile away.”
    She frowned. “Smell me?”
    “Oh, absolutely, doll,” said
Tera.
    “So, not only do I smell, but I’m
pesky?”
    “Never said that.” Tera elbowed
his brother. “Did I, Byte?”
    “Nope,” said Byte, shaking his
head. “He never said you were pesky. Just that you smell.”
    Wyndi sniffed the ends of her
hair. Her shoulder. “What do I smell like?”
    “Candy. Sugar sweet.”
    Candy wasn’t a bad scent as
scents go she supposed.
    “Mm,” Tera agreed.
    “All right, all right,” she said.
She needed to get this conversation back on track. “I don’t really care if you
consider me pesky or not, or if I smell like candy.”
    “Reek actually,” Byte said. “You
reek of candy.”
    She sighed. Exasperated. “Fine.”
    “Not sure reek’s the right term,
Byte,” said Tera. “Reek indicates something bad, and her odor—”
    “Odor,” Byte said, laughing. “As
if odor is any better than reek.”
    “Odor’s better than stink. Or
stench.”
    “True,” said Byte. “Her smell,
while strong, isn’t unpleasant.”
    “Ah. I know.” Tera clapped. “How
about wonderfully odoriferous?”
    “Okay,” Wyndi interjected,
holding up her hand. “I don’t care about your word choices to describe what I
smell like. What I really care about is a—”
    “No phones,” said Byte, face
serious now.
    Tera nodded. “Yep. What he said.”
    “Oh come on, you guys. You expect
me to believe that, with all the technology in this place, including the
internet?” She eyed the computer screen just to the right of Tera where a set
of golf clubs on Ebay took center stage.
    “What?” said Tera, catching her
gaze. “I like to golf. What’s wrong with that?”
    She rolled her eyes. “You want me
to believe you don’t have a phone? Not even a cell phone?”
    “Believe what you will, luv,”
said Byte. “But, no phone until Petúr decides what he’s going to do about you.”
    Do
about me?

 
    Chapter Eight
     
    Vapor and Vibe flanked Petúr as
they headed back to the castle, the