“It was my job to make sure you saw this to the end.” Xander looked from Grayson to Jameson. “Both of you. If either of you stopped playing, it was my job to draw you back.”
“You knew?” I said. “All this time, you knew where the clues led?”
Xander was the one who’d helped me find the tunnel. He was the one who’d solved the Black Wood. Even back at the very beginning…
He told me that his grandfather didn’t have a middle name.
“You helped me,” I said. He’dmanipulatedme. Moved me around, like a lure.
“I told you that I am a living, breathing Rube Goldberg machine.” Xander looked down. “I warned you. Kind of.” I thought of the moment he’d taken me to see the machine he’d built. I’d asked him what it had to do with Thea, and his response had beenWho said this had anything to do with Thea?
I stared at Xander—the youngest, tallest, and arguably most brilliant Hawthorne.Where you go, he’d told me back at the gala,they’ll follow.All this time, I’d thought that Jameson was the one who was using me. I’d thought that he’d kept me close for a reason.
It had never once occurred to me that Xander had his reasons, too.
“Do you know why your grandfather chose me?” I demanded. “Have you known the answer all this time?”
Xander held his hands up in front of his body, like he thought I might throttle him. “I only know what he wanted me to know. I have no idea what’s on the other side of that door. I was only supposed to get Jamie and Gray here.Together.”
“All four of us,” Nash corrected. “Together.” I remembered what he’d said in the kitchen.Sometimes you gotta excise a wound before it can heal.
Was that what this was? Was that the old man’s grand plan? Bring me here, spur them into action, hope that the game let the truth come out?
“Not just the four of us,” Grayson told Nash. He looked back toward me. “Clearly, this was a game for five.”
CHAPTER 87
We dropped back down into the room, one at a time. Jameson laid his hand flat against the door and pushed it inward. The cell beyond was empty, except for a small wooden box. On the box, there were letters—golden letters etched into golden tiles that looked like they’d come out of the world’s most expensive game of Scrabble.
The letters on the box spelled out my name:AVERY KYLIE GRAMBS.
There were four blank tiles, one before my first name, one after my last, and two separating the names from each other. After everything that had just happened—Jameson’s confession, then Xander’s—it seemed wrong that this should come down to me.
Why me?This game might have been designed to bring Jameson and Grayson back together, to bring secrets to the surface, to bleed out poison before it turned to rot—but somehow, for some reason, it ended with me.
“Looks like it’s your rodeo, kid.” Nash nudged me to the box.
Swallowing, I knelt. I tried to open the box, but it was locked. There was no spot for a key, no combination pad.
Above me, Jameson spoke. “The letters, Heiress.”
He just couldn’t help himself. Even after everything, he couldn’t stop playing the game.
I reached tentatively for theAinAvery. It came off the box. One by one, I peeled off the other letters and the blank tiles, and I realizedthiswas the trigger for the lock. I stared at the pieces, nineteen of them total.My name.That clearly wasn’t the combination to unlock the box.So what is?
Grayson dropped down beside me. He organized the letters, vowels first, consonants in alphabetical order.
“It’s an anagram,” Nash commented. “Rearrange the letters.”
My gut response was that my name was just my name, not an anagram of anything, but my brain was already sifting through the possibilities.
Averywas easy to turn into words, two of them, just by adding the space that had been in front of the name to split it. I placed the tiles back on the top of the box, pushing each one into place with a click.
A very…
I put another space aftervery. That left two blank tiles and all the letters from my middle and last names.
Kylie Grambs, arranged according to Grayson’s method, read:A,E,I,B,G,K,L,M,R,S,Y.
