The Prince

Søren glanced at Kingsley.

“Thank you, Father. We’ll be sure to see you before we leave.”

Father Marczak shook their hands again and returned to his office.

“We should ask him more,” Kingsley said. “What she looked like, where she said she was from…”

Søren shook his head. “Too dangerous. Either the woman he spoke to is not involved in this—and likely she isn’t—or she is and would have told him enough lies that his answers would be useless.”

Kingsley couldn’t argue with his logic. “Then what shall we look for, mon père? Where shall we go?”

“The photograph of us…it would have been archived in the library.”

“The library it is, then.”

Inside the library Kingsley discovered that much of Søren’s father’s money had found its way here. Their time at Saint Ignatius, the library had been a cold, sparsely furnished space. Cheap metal bookcases had been filled with decaying religious tomes. Threadbare chairs had sat on even more threadbare rugs. But when they stepped into the room now, they could have been transported to the Vatican library. The metal bookcases had been replaced with dark oak bookshelves carved with biblical scenes and symbols. Easily four times as many books filled the shelves. Elegant sitting areas were scattered about the length and width of the building. Iron chandeliers dangled from the ceiling and sent smiling light down on the boys who sat in those expensive armchairs with books and computers on their laps.

“Oh la la,” Kingsley said, laughing. “A library or a palace?”

“A library should be a palace. You do read, don’t you, Kingsley? I mean, something other than your own files?”

“Bien sûr. I read the novels your pet writes. It pleases me to read them and see how much she steals from my world to put in hers.”

“It is her world, too, need I remind you?”

“It was her world. And she left it.”

“She’ll be back. I know she will.”

Kingsley smiled and sighed. “Lovely to know that I’m not the only one of us who engages in wishful thinking. Yes, she’ll come back to you…the day you come back to me.”

Søren said nothing else to him as they headed to the archive room. Kingsley took that as a victory.

They spent an hour digging through the student archives. Christian’s other photos he’d taken of the school still remained in their boxes. Kingsley took a few pictures and slid them into a portfolio.

“What are you doing?”

Kingsley grinned. “Who knows? We could get fingerprints, peut-être?”

“I’d rather not get your police connections involved in this.”

“Very well, then. I’ll call the FBI.”

Søren glared at him. Again. If he didn’t stop glaring at him, Kingsley was going to kiss him right there in the library in front of fifty Saint Ignatius students. And that might raise an eyebrow or two.

“I don’t see that any other photos are missing. Christian numbered all fifty of them. Ours was thirty-three. This box has one through twenty-five in it. You took twenty-six and twenty-seven from the other box. Just our photograph was gone.”

“How would the thief even know to look for it?”

As soon as Kingsley asked the question, he knew the answer. He tapped the top of each box and looked at Søren.

Søren exhaled and turned his eyes to the ceiling.

“Of course,” he said. “It has to have been another student. One of our classmates. How else would the thief have known about the photos?”

“A student or one of the priests,” Kingsley reminded him.

“We’ll go to Father Marczak and ask for the names of the students who were here with us. Maybe something will come to mind. I don’t recall having any unpleasant encounters with any of them.”

“You wouldn’t. They were terrified of you.”

“You exaggerate.” Søren left the library and headed toward Father Marczak’s office. Kingsley followed him to the quad, then stopped and looked up into the trees.

“I was a student here for all of two weeks when Christian told me you’d killed a student at your last school. I say ‘terrified,’ mon ami, because everyone was terrified. I do not exaggerate. In fact, I might be understating the situation.”

“I don’t even know how the story of what happened in England got out. I told one of the Fathers when I came here—Father Pierre. He acted as my confessor until he died, a few months before you came.”

“He told?”

“No, he wouldn’t. I would trust a priest to keep my secrets as much as I would trust a corpse.”

“Perhaps your father told a priest, and a student overheard.”

“Possibly. He did like to brag that his son had killed a boy. Come. Let’s talk to Father Marczak.”

“Non,” Kingsley said, still staring into the trees. “You go hunt your ghosts. I shall go find ours.”

He strolled toward the tree line with more confidence than he felt. With his first footstep into the woods, a twig cracked under the sole of his boot and the memories of the night he’d run through these very trees came back to him.

Christian had told him that Søren had killed a student at his old school in England. That knowledge hadn’t scared Kingsley, it had merely intrigued him, made him desire Søren more. But that night as he ran through the woods, Søren hard on his heels, he had known real terror. And yet, as hard and as fast as he ran, in his heart he had wanted to get caught. He ran so Søren would chase him. He ran because he wanted to be taken. He ran hard and ran fast, yes. But not as hard and fast as he could have.