Read Online Princess for Hire by Lindsey Leavitt - Free Book Online Page B

with Lilith/Lily’s tone. “I hope she’s doing all right.”
    “Desi, Desi,” Lilith sighed. “If a royal gets caught with a dog walker, she’s totally free game. Plus, gossip is an excellent way to bond with another royal, not to mention a vastly entertaining pastime.”
    I noticed I’d twisted the hem of my T-shirt into a knot. “But what if I think it’s mean? What if I want to stop Lady Lily from trashing someone who might be really struggling?”
    “Method, Desi. You become that princess in your head, and you ONLY do as the princess would do. It’s so much fun that way!” She punctuated her words with her hand, like she was painting the image for me in the air. “Think of it. When you surrogate for a bratty princess, you get to BE bratty. When I was a surrogate, now and then I’d send my food back even if it was perfectly fine. Just because I could .”
    Yeah, but weren’t they ever tempted to see what other uses there were for this magic? Look at the situation—I could help change Lily’s snobby opinion of the dog walker. Help this poor girl out!
    Just because, you know, I could .
    “Oh, dear. Look at the time!” Lilith exclaimed after we’d been practicing our impersonations for what felt like hours. As different princesses, I’d attended a funeral, presented an award, and posed for a photo shoot. “We have a few minutes. Why don’t we go check out Central Command?”
    I followed Lilith into the hallway, feeling like my feet weren’t quite touching the floor. That vaporiness I often felt at home was evaporating fast, almost to the point of a massive happy explosion.
    “Now, Central Command, or CC, is where the tech people work,” Lilith told me. “You know, monitoring bubble flight paths, rouge algorithms, Princess Progress Reports, things like that. Ooh, and you still need to get your manual!”
    Before I could ask what these things were, we came to the wall of portraits. “That’s the CEO or something, right? What’s her name again?” I pointed at Rainbow Hair.
    “Genevieve? Oh, I could write a whole book about Genevieve’s brilliance. She’s the head of the Façade council, and I feel like she’s my personal mentor. When the PPRs are uploaded to our network by the princesses, Genevieve is the one who reviews them for the Court of Appeals. She also monitors all the agents and decides which princesses qualify for our services. She knows everyone who’s anyone and knows all their business. Their private business. If you look at it a certain way, you could say she’s the most powerful woman in the world.”
    What I saw next seemed to confirm Genevieve’s power. In three steps we went from Camelot to Façade’s version of Mission Control. Ten casually dressed, surprisingly young employees, each sitting at a large round table, wheeled their chairs from one computer to another, frantically typing and checking the large screen in the front of the room. Graphs and diagrams and numbers flashed on the screen above a large world map with unlit red lights sprinkled across it.
    “Who are these guys?” I asked.
    “These are people with MP whose special talents are more…technological. I have no idea how we recruit them; they aren’t terribly exceptional. Not like surrogates or agents.”
    On the world map, a light in eastern China blinked for a second, and everyone stopped what they were doing to stare. They let out a sigh when it didn’t stay lit.
    “MP meter,” Lilith whispered. “You should have seen Meredith’s face when they picked up on your signal.
    The strongest one we’d had in a year.”
    “Really?”
    “Indeed. Now, let’s get you your new toy!”
    Lilith led me to an adjacent room, where a cute high school–age guy in a rocker T-shirt and worn Converse was sitting at a desk covered with laptops and crusty coffee mugs. Lilith coughed, and the boy looked up.
    “What can I do for you, Lilith?” he said. “And who’s your friend?” He smiled at me, and I felt my