The Princess

by Janice Law

About the Author: Janice Law is the Edgar nominated novelist of the Anna Peters and Francis Bacon mysteries. She regularly publishes short fiction in Alfred Hitchcock, Ellery Queen, BlackCat Mystery Magazine and Sherlock Holmes. In addition, she has had a number of scholarly and nonfiction publications. www.janicelaw.com

Excerpt

My college roommate was a princess. Not that she went around in a tiara or had a security detail or traveled in a Mercedes or anything like that. No, she behaved just like an ordinary student, schlepping her books across campus, preparing canvases with her big stretching pliers, and pulling all-nighters when term papers were due.

I wouldn’t have spotted her, myself, if I hadn’t been taking Myth and Fairy Tale and thinking about archetypes and writing papers on Rapunzel and the Sleeping Beauty. Context is all, says our professor and I’m beginning to see what she means.

Anyway, the key thing with a princess is that someone recognizes her, preferably a prince. While you or I could be mistaken, princes and princesses have this sort of magnetic attraction for each other even when one of them is in deep, amphibian disguise.

So, what I’m getting at with Amber is that at first glance there was nothing unusual about her. My roommate was really nice looking but otherwise ordinary. Not particularly sparkly or energetic, she got B’s, the occasional B+ in her art classes, went to the gym once a week, sang with Royale, (a little hint, there maybe) a campus a capella group, and drank no more than two beers with pizza on the weekends.

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