San Diego was much as Jack remembered it from his last visit as a teenager. They still had the side roads for horse-riders, thank god, so his menagerie didn't get trampled by the wailing, monstrous vehicles of all sizes tearing up the highways one lane to the left.

There was Sea World, with the giant billboard displaying Shamu. Beside him was a picture of Keiko, the largest zark in the world, who had his own giant tank and had twice jumped out of it and eaten patrons.

In his all-black cowboy getup, Jack attracted a few stares, some curious, some appreciative, some hostile. But he wasn't the only out-of-towner here, not on a Saturday in the summer, nor was he the most noticeable. He could get around without causing much commentary, as he wasn't a fugitive in these parts. It was the girl he was worried about. She was supposedly famous – a model in addition to royalty.

But her note had said she knew a way to get around unnoticed, and as he didn't have much choice, he took her word for it.

The note had been delivered by mouse. Bless his mice; Castle Santa Clara wasn't the most secure place they'd gotten him into, or out of, and he didn't know what he'd do without them.

Even when they were spotted, as his had been yesterday, by a servant, they were impossible to catch. An ordinary mouse was tough enough. A semi-intelligent mouse, guided by Jack's mental suggestion, could escape an army of screaming servants, no matter how armed they were with brooms.

A whole section of the castle would be fumigated, but Jack's mouse was safe back in his boot, and he'd gotten his note to Imogen – a brief, mysterious one, saying only that he had a message from Leon. His evidence that this wasn't a trap set by the queen: two simple code words, provided by Leon.

Mili's curse.

Leon had sworn she'd know what it meant, and apparently she had, as she'd quickly placed a note back in the pouch the mouse carried, telling Jack to meet her behind the crapod tank at Sea World, today, at this time.

Well, technically, at one minute ago. Where was this supposed princess? She'd picked a good spot; the boring, smelly crapods attracted nobody. They looked like cancerous growths, and moved as slowly, so the only people in the exhibit were Jack and a tall, black-haired boy in a wife-beater who was engrossed in his iPhone.

Jack fiddled with his hat, feigning interest in the crapods, and the boy played with his phone, and time passed. Maybe the princess was waiting for this boy to leave, so she could make her appearance in safety, but if so, she'd have a long wait. Jack knew the look of a man standing his ground, and if this kid were any more planted, he'd grow roots. He had tattooed hands; his hair was overgelled, and he was slouching. Not a typical Sea World patron. Maybe he'd picked this deserted spot for a drug deal, and was waiting for Jack to leave.

The cowboy became convinced of this, and had just resolved that if it were a game of boredom chicken, he'd could darn well outlast some teenage thug, when the thug, without looking at him, said loudly and clearly,

"Waiting for the three-thirty dolphin show?"

Jack would be damned. He allowed his lips to curl into a smile that was half surprise, half pleasure, one hundred percent respect, and answered, "Not me. Dolphins are for girls. Crapods are for men."

There was, of course, no three-thirty dolphin show, and both the question and his answer were scripted.

The boy tossed his phone in a trash can, slouched over to Jack, clapped a friendly hand on his shoulder, and whispered, "I couldn't believe it was you. Could you be any more conspicuous? But never mind, walk me to the park. Have you seen Leon? Tell me everything!"

Jack did walk the boy – the girl, the princess, out of Sea World and down the paths of Balboa Park, so loud and populated on this good-weather weekend, and so spacious, that they could talk on the grass as safely as if they'd been in a sound-proof chamber.

"Holy hell," was the first thing Jack said, when he felt it was safe, "You've got a talent, girl."

Though Leon had had no pictures of Imogen, once Jack reached San Diego he quickly familiarized himself, via magazine covers and video news blurbs, with what exactly the girl he was supposed to seduce looked like. She was ridiculously beautiful, and, in spite of being only twenty, a full-grown woman with a long, lush body. Tall, tan, curved, with acres of reddish hair and small, clean-cut features.

The boy she had transformed herself into resembled Imogen, the princess, only in height. All that hair was tucked away under what had to be a wig. Jack knew, from some experience with disguises and wigs, that it was an expensive one by the realistic hairline, achievable only by hand-weaving through fine, skin-colored mesh. The thick fake eyebrows would have been equally expensive.

The princess had also changed her skin color, not just her face, but her neck and arms as well. From healthy reddish-tan to sallow yellow. Her nose was lengthened by what must be theatrical putty; she'd changed the shape of her eyes by the addition of under-eye shadowing.

And her figure was gone. Must be an industrial-strength ace bandage under that wife beater, to get her so flat, and some kind of padding at her tiny waist to give her the giraffe-neck torso of an overgrown teen boy.

It was an astonishing disguise. He'd have never guessed, and he'd known where to look. This girl was going to be something else once he got to know her.

As he would, within the day.

"Leon didn't warn me you were clever," Jack continued. "My lady, it's an honor to meet you."

Knowing very well how gallant he looked doing it, he removed his hat, and since he couldn't swing it away in a bow to her – that would be pushing their luck, even in an anonymous public place – he kissed the brim while meeting her eyes.

The sparkle he found there matched Leon's. They'd have made a cute couple, if such things existed. In Jack's experience, humans in love never exactly formed couples. Men and women were matter and anti-matter: particles able to exist independently, but put them together, and you got less, not more, than the sum of the parts.

"First," said Imogen, in a voice lowered, but less effectively disguised than her face, "You're a friend of Leon's? You've seen him? He crossed the wastes, he's alive? I'm… wait. I'm so sorry."

The princess squared her shoulders and tried again, visibly remembering her manners.

"Your name," she said. "And your needs. You've had a long journey. If you'll accompany me to the castle, I can make you comfortable, and you'll give me Leon's message then."

"No need for protocol, princess," said Jack, "Though you can take me to the castle, if you want. If it's safe. But I'll put you out of your misery first: Leon's in Nevada, and he sent me to say hi. I came as a favor to a friend, but I think he did me the favor, giving me a chance to meet such a beautiful woman."

"A beautiful woman?" Imogen raised her thick, black, manly eyebrows and increased her slouch, laughing.

"I can see right through that makeup, doll."

"And I can see you've spent too much time in the desert."

But she was flattered. It showed in her unconscious body language, the twitches Jack always inspired in women. The brief flutter of lids, the smoothing of her shirt, the instinctive fingers that went to her forehead in an attempt to brush back long hair that she'd forgotten was confined under a wig.

The car, an unmarked sedan, was driven by a small Mexican man with long hair, who, like Imogen, was desperate for news of Leon, but who, unlike Imogen, didn't give a damn about Jack's comfort or the correct order of operations.

"He's safe? Why did he send you, why didn't he come himself? Did you leave him armed, does he have supplies? I've saved up my paychecks this month, haven't spent a cent, not on food or anything. He can have all my money. Anything he needs me to buy? Weapons, batteries, information? I can go anywhere, I can even go back with you, if he needs help…"

"You must be Hector," said Jack, tipping his hat from the backseat. "Leon's fine. Working on getting y'all out of here, but this is phase one. Take us somewhere we know isn't bugged, yeah? And I'll tell you two everything you want to know about your lover-boy."

He purposely included Hector in the lover-boy comment, meaning a gentle tease, but the man nodded with as much, if not more, gratefulness in his expression as Imogen.

"Yeah," said Hector, biting his lower lip upon noticing Jack's sudden silence. "Other than the king and queen, pretty much everybody's in love with Leon around here."

"It's his face," said Imogen, rubbing Hector's tense upper arm. "His smile."

What was Jack going to say? Straight as a bayonet, he was practically in love with the smiling surfer himself, having only known him a couple days.

But the cowboy had a handsome face as well, and he knew Imogen had noticed it.