Page 79 of Maid for the Alien Prince

“Quiet! Can you hear that?”

“Of course I can hear it! That’s the reason we’re here, isn’t it?”

I turned back to her, my mind going a mile an intergalactic minute.

“Emma,” I said. “Bring Emma!”

“Emma?” the secretary said. “But she’s not responsible for the noise—”

“Hurry!” I said, leading her from the room. “Get her here now! And have everyone still in the palace come to my suite immediately! There’s not a moment to lose!”

Peering at me as if I had lost my marbles, the secretary sighed and returned to her desk. She made a call on her holo-communicator.

This was it, I thought. This has to be it!

My comment about a “room from nowhere” had sparked a series of thoughts that, if I was right, might very well lead me to discovering where Camila was.

She was beneath my very feet!

* * *

The moment Emma appeared, I gently took her by the hand and led her toward the pipe. She was hesitant, shaking like a mouse. The majority of her face was still black and blue and began to turn a horrible shade of green as it healed.

“I know you’ve been through a lot,” I said. “And I’m sorry about that. I promise it will never happen to you again. But I need your help. Camila needs your help.”

Emma looked me over before peering over at the half a dozen guards and other members of staff that had heard my order to come here.

More filtered in every second and joined the growing crowd. They always asked the same questions: “What’s going on?” “What are we doing here?” “Has she been found?”

And were always met with the same response: A hiss for them to be silent.

“Do you think you can do that?” I asked.

Emma nodded. “What… What do you need?”

“I need to know where the secret passageway entrance is here in this suite. I think whoever took her knows about them too and used them to get into the palace. After she screamed, he couldn’t escape outside but managed to hide her away somewhere in these passageways. I need you to show me how to get inside.”

Camila seemed unsure.

“You grew up with Camila here in the palace, didn’t you? You used to play with her in the palace hallways? I bet you found all sorts of secret places to hide. Maybe even some old secret passageways too?”

Emma nodded her head. “Yes.”

My heart leaped for joy. “Then can you show me where it is in this room?”

Emma didn’t approach the back of the wardrobe as I had expected, but instead approached the unmade bed. She got down on her hands and knees and disappeared underneath it.

“Move the bed out of the way,” I ordered. “Be careful not to crush Emma.”

The staff braced the bed’s awesome weight and grunted as they lifted it and carried it to one side, placing it out of the way. To everyone’s astonishment, Emma was nowhere to be seen. She had up and vanished.

Some of the staff bent down to peer at the underside of the bed and shook their heads when they found she wasn’t there either.

Just when I was about to call out her name, an intricately carved slab in the shape of a sneering gargoyle’s face twisted and lifted upward, attached to some kind of leveraging device.

Emma poked her head out and grinned up at me. With her bruises and wayward hair, I could imagine her the way she must have looked when she was a small child.

I bent down and helped her out. She dusted off her dress and shook the dirt from her hair.

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