***
Count Wai Da peered into the house with the white picket fences.
Jessica was not home yet.
He glanced at his watch. 3:15 pm.
The girl was expected home any time now.
As he waited, he adjusted his thick glasses and with a heavy sigh, thought about how he ended up here. How on Earth did he go from being a carefree royal prince (second son of the Emperor Yong Le) during the Ming Dynasty in China to the lower rank of count and having to serve a temperamental queen of the dead?
It didn’t help that he refused to enter the afterlife after he was falsely accused of treason and executed (drawn and quartered). It wasn’t his fault that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And so, desperate to clear his name, he had lingered on Earth and found his way to Purgatorio.
Seeing he had royal lineage when alive, Queen Arbora took pity on him and appointed him a Count...or in his mind, her royal lapdog. He was sent everywhere, no matter how undignified, to do her bidding.
So that was how he found himself crouching behind the bushes like some dog trying to do its business.
The indignity, he thought. I’m a royal prince, no less.
But he didn’t get much time to think.
A very pretty girl was walking toward the house.
This was it. The Count had been sent to kidnap her and bring her back to Purgatorio.
And failure was not an option.
Book 1: The Crown Prince (The Kid Emperor of Occultoria) Page 24