“I don’t think that you have to be the villain of this story to be a threat to this family.”
If I hadn’t already met Nash, I would have pegged Grayson as the oldest brother.
“You keep talking about the rest of the family,” I said. “But this isn’t just about them. I’m a threat to you.”
I’d inheritedhisfortune. I was living inhishouse. His grandfather had chosen me.
Grayson was right beside me now. “I am not threatened.” He wasn’t imposing physically. I had never seen him lose control. But the closer he came to me, the more my body threw itself into high alert.
“Heiress?”
I startled when Jameson spoke. Reflexively, I stepped away from his brother. “Yes?”
“I think I found something.”
I pushed past Grayson to make my way to the stairs. Jameson had found something.A book that doesn’t match its cover.That was an assumption on my part, but the instant I hit the second story and saw the smile on Jameson Hawthorne’s lips, I knew that I was right.
He held up a hardcover book.
I read the title. “Sail Away.”
“And on the inside…” Jameson was a showman at heart. He removed the cover with a flourish and tossed me the book.The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus.
“Faust,” I said.
“The devil you know,” Jameson replied. “Or the devil you don’t.”
It could have been a coincidence. We could have been reading meaning where there was none, like people trying to intuit the future in the shape of clouds. But that didn’t stop the hairs on my arms from rising. It didn’t stop my heart from racing.
Everything is something in Hawthorne House.
That thought beat in my pulse as I opened the copy ofFaustin my hands. There, taped to the inside cover, was a translucent red square.
“Jameson.” I jerked my eyes up from the book. “There’s something here.”
Grayson must have been listening to us down below, but he said nothing. Jameson was beside me in an instant. He brought his fingers to the red square. It was thin, made of some kind of plastic film, maybe four inches long on each side.
“What’s this?” I asked.
Jameson took the book gingerly from my hands and carefully removed the square from the book. He held it up to the light.
“Filter paper.” That came from down below. Grayson stood in the center of the room, looking up at us. “Red acetate. A favorite of our grandfather’s, particularly useful for revealing hidden messages. I don’t suppose the text of that book is written in red?”
I flipped to the first page. “Black ink,” I said. I kept flipping. The color of the ink never changed, but a few pages in, I found a word that had been circled in pencil. A rush of adrenaline shot through my veins. “Did your grandfather have a habit of writing in books?” I asked.
“In a first edition ofFaust?” Jameson snorted. I had no idea how much money this book was worth, or how much of its value had been squandered with that one little circle on the page—but I knew in my bones that we were onto something.
“Where,”I read the word out loud. Neither brother provided any commentary, so I flipped another page and then another. It was fifty or more before I hit another circled word.
“A…”I kept turning the pages. The circled words were coming quicker now, sometimes in pairs.“There is…”
Jameson grabbed a pen off a nearby shelf. He didn’t have any paper, so he started writing the words on the back of his left hand. “Keep going.”
I did. “Aagain…” I said. “There isagain.” I was almost to the end of the book.“Way,”I said finally. I turned the pages more slowly now.Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.Finally, I looked up “That’s it.”
I closed the book. Jameson held his hand up in front of his body, and I stepped closer to get a better look. I brought my hand to his, reading the words he’d written there.Where. A. There is. A. There is. Way.
What were we supposed to do with that?
