“You might be interested to know,” Rohan said, his voice breaking into Jameson’s mind, “that the first Game was modeled off the Crucible—the less brutal parts of the Crucible, at least.”
“Tell me.” Jameson swallowed. “Whatever those letters said about themostbrutal parts of the Crucible—tell me.”
“No.”
“Because you’re a secretive bastard or because I don’t want to know?”
“Because,” Rohan said, “we’re about to have company.” He strode to open the door, revealing no one—at first. It was another thirty or forty seconds until saidcompanyarrived. Jameson recognized the boy immediately.
“I believe you’ve met Kier,” Rohan said, “who almost certainly shadowed your brothers all the way up to the surface, wondering why the hell I let you lot down here in the first place.”
“I’d never ask such a thing,” Kier said. “Proprietor.”
“You’re too young,” Rohan told him, “by a year or two at least, to be my Factotum.”
“Am I too young to tell you that you’re going to want to make your way to the surface at your earliest convenience?” Kier cocked a very Rohan-like eyebrow.
“You’ve been eavesdropping on Jameson’s brothers,” Rohan said.
“Like I said, Proprietor, you’ll want to make your way to the surface.”
Chapter 77
JAMESON
The Opera House was closed and empty except for Grayson and Xander, the former of whom was holding his cell phone in a way that made it immediately clear to Jameson that it was set to speaker.
“Look for anything that might be a keyhole,” Grayson was saying. He looked up and clocked Jameson’s approach. “And while you search, start from the top for Toby, Jameson, and Rohan.”
“Long story very short,” Lyra’s voice said on the other end of the line, “there were four keys among your grandfather’s collection that formed the basis of a new puzzle. Solving that puzzle led to a seemingly ordinary deck of cards in what I’m informed is ‘the cigar room.’ One card in that deck was heavier than the rest.”
“Key card?” Jameson guessed. “Try it on the walls, the floor—”
“Done and done,” Lyra replied. “We found a passageway no one here knew about.”
This is Hawthorne House, Jameson could hear himself telling Avery what felt like an eternity ago.There will always be another mystery. Just when you think you’ve found the last hidden passage, the last tunnel, the last secret built into the walls—there will always be one more.
“And where,” Jameson said out loud, “did that passageway lead?”
“To a small, spherical room that’s completely black and has an equally spherical projector in the center.”
“A planetarium?” Jameson guessed. That tracked with the constellation theme, though it probably said something about the way that Jameson had grown up that he didn’t bat an eye at the idea that Hawthorne House might have ahidden planetarium.
“A message from your grandfather played the second I opened the door,” Lyra said.
“Play it again, please, Lyra,” Grayson told her, his voice coming out thick. “One more time.”
There was silence, several seconds worth of it, and then there was a voice, one that Jameson knew better than his own, one he would probably always be able to hear in his head.
“Alice, my Alice. So you’ve come back at long last. I was not sure that you would. How many of mylove lettersdid it take to finally bring you home again? Or was it my death that did it in the end? Somehow, I think not, but whatever has brought you back to Hawthorne House, I have no doubt that you’ve already located my file on a certain gentleman of interest and, of course, the keys. Perhaps, Lyra, my Lyra, you’ve played every last game I left you, if only to determine how much of a liability I present, how much Iknow.” The old man paused. “I will confess, with my prognosis being what it is, I was forced to make an inference or two in my rush to the end—my end.
“With this, my dying breath, however, I am not guessing, my Lyra. Iknownow where you went—both times. I know where the Gilded Blade took you when they took you from me. Small world, isn’t it? And thus, I die with that puzzle solved, with your name on my lips.Alice, my Alice, my love, my love, my one and only love—I know now that it was you. Always and ever you. Well played, my darling, but you have your legacy, and I have mine. I leave them as works in progress and ask only that you save your judgment for when they are done.”
And that was it. That was the entire message. Jameson’s eyes locked on to Grayson’s.
“He said almost the exact same thing to us once, do you remember?”
Let’s save my Alice’s judgment for when you’re done.
