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doesn't. And I'm not a princess. Please call me Noelle. I really prefer it."
    "Inaya Al Hurra was not a princess when she married the prince," Faridah countered. "It is the same with you and the sheikh."
    "My niece." Suzette cocked a thumb at the younger woman. "My sister's child. Such strange ideas. What can I do?"
    Noelle made sympathetic eyes at Suzette. Despite the large woman's apparent irritation, she couldn't help noticing that Suzette didn't make a single move to stop the younger woman. Had she fallen for this princess crap, too?
    Faridah pulled a chair up to the little table, and she even managed to do that with excitement. "I knew who you were when I saw your crown. It looks just like the Palm of Askar. It is a sign that you are a descendant of Inaya Al Hurra, returned to us in our time of need."
    Oh, so now she wasn't just a princess, but a very specific princess. And the mystery of why her replica of the Askari crown had been on her coffee table. Faridah must have been the one to unpack her stuff.
    "That crown is just supposed to look like the Palm of Askar. It's a fake. A replica." Elise had been very excited about the thank you gift. There'd been some story about the giant, deeply green emerald set into the apex of the tiara--the Palm of Askar. At the time, she hadn't really been listening, just thinking about how she'd just agreed to go with her parents on a trip she was bound to hate instead of being with her friends.
    Oh yeah, she realized. Elise had said the jewel was missing.
    Treasure, Bonnie nearly sang. Ask about the treasure.
    Noelle told the women how she'd come to have a fake version of their legendary crown jewel. "It's not a coincidence or a sign. It's designed to look like that. Elise found some old pictures of the emerald online. I'm sorry. It's not real."
    Faridah sniffed the air. "I knew that."
    "You did not at first," Suzette grouched. Whether it was a teasing joke or an actual criticism, Noelle couldn't say. Suzette seemed to have one tone of voice--gruff.
    "It is a sign nonetheless," Faridah insisted.
    "That I'm some princess reborn, only she wasn't a princess?"
    "She was a legendary thief." The young woman leaned across the table, her voice all drama and intrigue. Noelle felt a story coming on... "In the time when this land was young, she came here to steal the Palm of Askar. She had already stolen a bag of diamonds from the Caliph of Baghdad. She took a thousand silks from the Sultan of Turkey, right from under his nose. She smuggled a thousand elephants from the court of Mughal Emperor by painting them green so they couldn't be seen in the jungle. She lived on a fast ship upon the ocean and sailed the world, stealing from the very rich."
    Pirate princess. Inside her head, Bonnie did a dance of excitement. Pirate. Princess. Pirate princess!
    "And she came here," Noelle prompted.
    Faridah was a real storyteller, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "The legend of the beautiful jewels of Askar had reached even as far as her ear. The Heart, the Eye, and especially the Palm--an emerald of such deep color that it had no comparison, the size of a man's palm."
    Noelle found that she'd leaned over the table to hear Faridah better, sucked in by the tale. She also noticed that the women working around them had become much quieter, all of them damping their cooking noises so they could catch what was being said.
    "Wait, wait." It was a good story, but Noelle had to call BS. Elise's story about the Palm was coming back to her. "She couldn't have stolen the Palm. The emerald was here until World War II, when it was lost."
    "Not lost," countered Suzette. "Hidden. And never found."
    Faridah ignored the interruption and continued. "Inaya Al Hurra disguised herself as a poor serving girl and begged to be employed in the kitchens of the palace. She intended to make the sheikh notice her, gain his favor, and then make off with the jewel. She had heard that the sheikh was a kindly man and, while it