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Alex pressed her fingers against the ha pain under her left eyebrow "I can’t believe this" She handed the phone to Michael "Call Val Tell hi whatever idiot thing he’s got planned"

"Do you know exactly where John is?" When she shook her head, he sighed "Perhaps he does not wish to be found"

"Too bad" She took the phone froe voice answered "Hello? I need to speak to John Keller"

"Don’t know any Keller," the uy with a dark beard," she said "Looks like Jesus with an attitude problem"

"Lady, this is a pay phone in front of a convenience store," the man told her, "and there ain’t no pissed-off Jesus here"

"Sorry" Alex ended the call and thuainst the seat "Da this totoht for a ed his plane tickets He can also have the airports and train stations watched"

She shook her head "John doesn’t have a lot of money He’ll probably cash in the airline tickets and take a bus"

"Then I will have Franz check the bus depots as well," Michael assured her, and kissed the side of her head "Try not to worry"

"John’s pulled another disappearing act while I’ to be locked up for a month in--hooray--another castle," she snapped "What’s there to worry about?"

"The Real like Dundellan You will like it; I promise"

Alex was sick of castles, her brother, and the Darkyn, but she’d agreed to co party She’d have to make the best of it She leaned forward "Hey, Phil, you ever been to this place?"

"Many ti our human lives" The seneschal smiled at her in the rearview ood for your brain"

Phillipe had been taking a correspondence course to ilish, Alex had learned when she had returned frolish worse

"I already know that the way you guys lived back then caused leprosy, tuberculosis, the Black Death, and a whole list of other delightful epideo check into a nice, clean Marriott" Or take a flight up to Chicago and track down her brother herself

"The Real, ers against the ar: What’s with this ’ood enough anylish," Phillipe said "It is not correct for a seneschal such as me--such as I--to call you by your…" He stopped and asked Cyprien so in French

"First name," Michael replied

Phillipe nodded "Just so"

"Go back to speaking lousy English I liked it better" She saw the outlines of a building on the other side of a river and nudged Michael "That it?"

The car came to a halt in front of a private drive barred by aand got out of the car to speak with the guard at the gate, as dressed in leather and chainspear

Alex watched as the seneschal and the guard bowed to each other and clasped hands to each other’s forearlitter of the ht was a river at first Then she saw the soular shape of it

Her chin dropped "Is thatmoat?"

"I believe it was once a seasonal lake Byrne diverts some of the overflow from the St Johns River to fill it," Michael told her "There is another, larger lake on the south side of his land Both help prevent flooding during the rainy season, and the moat provides a more familiar form of defense for the castle"

She couldn’t believe she was seeing a castle with a moat in the United States of America "He couldn’t just invest in a decent security systeuard for several ot back into the car

"All is well, master," he told Cyprien "The Kyn froine as the guard pulled open the gates and walked to what looked like a shts

Alex couldn’t see anything beyond the drive but the twenty-foot-wide e across it "We don’t have to juave her an inscrutable s, and as Phillipe drove doard theTide, vertical pilings rose fro shape as they seemed to fold over Horizontal platfore of the drive, and the edge of the gate road into the castle Water streamed over the sides in a flood that dwindled to sle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>