Shane Cordello,” he replied with less courtesy than before. “Who the hell are you? And don’t bother telling me you’re the friggin’ queen of Penwyck, lady, ’cause I ain’t buyin’ it.”
There was a stretch of silence from the other end of the line, followed by a single, hasty chuckle. “I have no intention of telling you such a thing, Mr. Cordello.”
“Good.”
“Because I am not the, ah, friggin’…queen of Penwyck.”
“I knew it.”
“I am, in fact, the royal queen of Penwyck.”
Shane rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on, lady, what do you take me for? I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.”
There was another brief silence, then, “No, I realize that. You were born twenty-three years ago. On April fourteenth. Am I correct?”
Slowly Shane pulled the receiver from his ear and gazed at it with narrowed eyes, as if in doing so, he might force the phone to offer up more information than it was giving him about the woman at the other end of the line. Then, when he realized how ridiculous he must look to his employer, he put the receiver back where it was. “Yeah,” he told the woman. “That’s my birthday. A matter of public record, too,” he added meaningfully. “It still doesn’t tell me who you are or what you want.”
Instead of a lengthy silence this time, the response from the other end of the line was a weary sigh. “Oh, dear,” the woman said, not quite under her breath. “This is going to be a bit more difficult than I thought.” Then, “I understand why you might be skeptical, Mr. Cordello,” she added. “But I assure you that I am indeed Her Majesty Queen Marissa of Penwyck. And it is very important that I speak with you about a very urgent mat—”
“Right,” he interrupted again. “If you’re the queen of Penwyck, then I’m the prince of darkness. Tell me another one.”
“Actually, Mr. Cordello, you’re not far from the truth,” the woman said, sounding a bit less imperious than she had before.
Shane opened his mouth to mutter another disdainful quip, but what came out instead was “Huh?”
“I said you’re not far from the truth,” the woman repeated. “Though you’re not—quite—the prince of darkness.”
Once again, Shane tried to summons a haughty retort. And once again, what came out was “Huh?”
“Perhaps it would be better if I let you speak to your brother, Marcus, first,” the woman said.
“Marcus?” Shane echoed, growing even more confused now.
But instead of hearing the woman’s voice in reply again, Shane was treated to his brother’s. “Hello, Shane. It’s Marcus.”
The confusion that had been wheeling around in Shane’s head for the last several minutes came to a crashing halt, crumbling now into a vast heap of bewilderment. “Marcus?” he said, recognizing his brother’s voice immediately. “Where are you? Who was that woman? What the hell is going on?”
“Answering those questions in order,” Marcus said, “as to the first one, I, uh, I’m in Penwyck. You know Penwyck, Shane, surely. Small island nation? Near other island nations of Ireland and Great Britain? It’s been in the news lately because they’re forming a military alliance with the United States. You’ve heard about that, right?”
“Uh…”
“And I think our mother honeymooned here with husband number three, if memory serves,” Marcus continued blithely. “It’s really a beautiful place. Nice people. I mean really nice people. Food could be a little spicier. Not that I’m complaining.”
Marcus Cordello, Shane knew, was not the kind of man to fool around. His brother hadn’t become a millionaire at the age of nineteen by making prank phone calls, and he didn’t maintain a multimillion-dollar real-estate empire in one of the nation’s largest cities by asking people if they had Prince Albert in a can. No way would Marcus jerk Shane around. If he said he was in Penwyck, then, by God, the man was in Penwyck. And if Marcus was in Penwyck, then that meant that the woman who’d called herself the queen of Penwyck could, by God, very well be—
Uh-oh.
“You’re in Penwyck?” Shane echoed miserably.
“I’m in Penwyck,” Marcus confirmed.
“The Penwyck that has a Queen Marissa?”
“So you have been watching the news,” his brother said, clearly holding back a chuckle.
“Um, Marcus?”
“Yes, Shane?”
“Was that really the queen of Penwyck I was talking to on the phone a minute ago?”
“It was indeed.”
“The woman I just blew off so royally was really a queen?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“So you’re standing beside the queen of Penwyck?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Is she, um, really, really mad?”
“Define ‘really, really,”’ Marcus said.
“Like, off-with-his-head mad?”
There was a moment of silence, as if Marcus were contemplating the mood of the woman beside him, a full continent and ocean away from where Shane was standing himself.
“Nah,” Marcus said finally.
Shane expelled a soft sigh of relief.
Then, “She’ll probably just want to take off your hand when you get here,” Marcus added.
“What?” Shane said.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t the take-off-your-hand part of Marcus’s statement that got to Shane most deeply. It was the when-you-get-here part that made him take notice.
Then again, Shane thought, why was he surprised by this surprise? Marcus was beginning to make a habit out of dropping bombshells whenever he called. Hell, the last time they’d spoken, his brother had told him there was a possibility that the two of them had been adopted as infants, not that Shane had believed that for a moment. Now Marcus was suddenly in Penwyck, visiting the queen. What next? Would he announce his candidacy for president of the United States? Shane wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“Actually, Her Majesty is a very pleasant woman,” Marcus continued, dispelling Shane’s troubling thoughts—sort of. “So she might only want a couple of fingers from you, really.”
Okay, troubling thoughts were back now.
Shane closed his eyes and lifted a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, in an effort—a totally futile effort, he soon learned—to ward off a massive headache that seemed to erupt out of nowhere.
“Marcus,”
