Alisa shot Libby a look. “You couldn’t be horrible if you tried, Libby Hawthorne.”
Lyra had no ideawhoLibby had been forced to survive, but suddenly,Lyra couldn’t help thinking about Nan’s fingers, about a four-year-old Alice leaving windows open andhopingher father would fall. The Kyrie were monsters. Nora’s scars and the fact that there was a history of wiping out entire families was proof of that. But setting aside the Kyrie, setting aside the Hand and the job, the core idea behind the Blade, women banding together to limit the damage done by men in power, a web of women nudging the world this way or that…
Lyra could understand the appeal ofthat, too.But not like this.She looked back to that picture of her aunt. The Omega who’d been very well suited to that role, a true believer.Never like this.
“I am trying so hard,” Libby said, “to trust that everything is going to be fine, and I just keep telling myself that Avery is her mother’s daughter, that she’s stronger than I’ll ever be, that she’ll be fine.”
From where Lyra was standing, Libby Hawthorne seemed plenty strong. The woman was arock. But something told Lyra that wasn’t what Libby needed to hear right now. “You knew her?” Lyra said instead. “Hannah?”
“She was wonderful,” Libby told Lyra. “And if she really is the Watcher, if they forced her to join them somehow, ifshehas some kind of plan, if she’s cascading all of this, then maybe it really will be fine.”
Too many plans.That thought hit Lyra with visceral force.Alice. Hannah. Katalin and the Kyrie. And Nora isn’t going to just give up…
“I hate this,” Lyra gritted out. “I hate just waiting.”
She hated that Grayson was an ocean away, that he was hurting and there was nothing she could do about it. Frustrated, Lyra looked to the letters they’d written on the board most recently:A,J,K, andQ.
“I am so sick of games,” she said.
“Amen to that,” Alisa muttered.
“What about Odette?” Lyra asked the lawyer.
“We have another lead,” Alisa said in a measured tone that clearly communicated that she wasn’t getting her hopes up. “In Italy.”
“Italy?” Lyra repeated, and then she looked to Jameson’s writing on the board. “Tuscany?”
Alisa shook her head. “Adriatic coast.”
And all I can do, Lyra thought,all we can do—is wait.
“I come bearing cupcakes, ladies.”
Lyra turned. So did Alisa. So did Libby. Nash stood in the doorway, holding a tray.
“How many of them did you eat?” Libby asked him.
“More than his abs would suggest,” Alisa replied.
“Speakin’ of abs…” Nash shot Alisa a knowing look. “Where’s your Mr. Landry?”
Lyra felt the oddest ache then, at the back and forth among the three of them, like what she was witnessing was just the faintest echo of what they were normally like, what Hawthorne House was like when it wasn’t shrouded with darkness.
“This is the part,” Alisa told Nash, “where I tell you to shut up.”
“Actually”—Max came running into the room at full speed—“this is the part where I declare myself Queen of the World!”
It didn’t take Lyra long to read into that. “You figured something out about the puzzle. The letters on the keys.”
Max held out a sheet of paper shaped like a narwhal. “After a good night’s sleep—thank you very much, melatonin—I scrambled the order of the letters, creating every individual permutation of them. Then I reset my brain by pretending Xander and I were playing Spin-The-Bottle Battle, after which I lookedbackdown at my list, andvoilà.”
Lyra took the sheet from Max and took in the precise sequence that Max had circled:
J,Q,K,A.
“Need a hint?” Max said. “Pretend there’s a ten in front of theJ.”
Lyra saw it then, that magical Hawthorne solution that was simple, elegant, andobvious, in retrospect.
