It took Jameson the span of two more seconds to get there. “Pyramus and Thisbe,” he breathed.
In Greek mythology, the two lovers had fallen for each other by talking through a crack in a wall. They’d been meant to meet under a mulberry tree, but a lion had scared Thisbe away, and when Pyramus had discovered her torn cloak, he’d thought her dead—and killed himself.
Something, Heiress. This is something.Jameson turned to the next section of the wall. “A ship. A horse. A woman.”
Xander didn’t even hesitate. “Helen of Troy.”
Jameson’s mind raced as he turned to the final section of the mural. “And last but not least: a man and a woman, a string instrument of some sort, a snake.”
“Is that a harp?” Xander asked. “Or a lute?”
“A lyre,” Jameson said, the rush of adrenaline into his blood more powerful than any drug. “It’s alyre, and the man and woman are Orpheus and Eurydice. She was bitten by a snake and died. You see this?” Jameson gestured to the lines surrounding the figure. “That’s the underworld, and this is Eurydice following Orpheus out of it.”
There was one last image to the right of that: a male figure, alone.
“There was a test,” Xander recalled. “Orpheus was told that his love would be returned to the world of the living if he kept faith and led her out of the underworld without looking back. But eventually, he gave into his doubts and turned, and then she was gone for good.”
Gone for good.The words reverberated through Jameson. If he had to go to hell and back to find Avery, he would.
“What’s the pattern?” Xander said, his voice buzzing with the kind of energy Jameson recognized all too well. “The puzzle. Theclue.”
“Myths. Tragic love stories.” Jameson’s brain turned over possibility after possibility as he thought about his grandfather, about Alice. “Maybe it isn’t a puzzle. Maybe it’s a story—theirstory.”
The old man had always said that when you loved the way a Hawthorne loved, there was no going back.
“Love.” Jameson stared at the mural, thinking out loud. “Thisbe and Pyramus—a love that, in the eyes of the world, was not meant to be.” Jameson walked forward and touched the spot where he’d seen a lion the moment before. “A death that wasn’t a death.” Jameson stepped backso that he could make out Orpheus again. “He would go to the ends of the earth to get her back, but it’s hard for him to believe, hard to have faith. He needs toseeher.”
“And this one?” Xander asked, nodding toward the woman and the ship. “Helen of Troy?”
Jameson flashed back—suddenly and abruptly—to the feeling of blood trickling down his neck, to a voice sayingI think we can agree that this situation merits more than watching.Jameson tried—desperately tried—to remember more, but there was nothing except the faintest smell of smoke and something about the price of wheat.
“Maybe it wasn’t an accident,” Jameson said, his voice coming out hoarse. “Launching all those ships. The Trojan War. What if Helen knew exactly what she was doing? What if she was the one in control the whole time?Damn it.If I could justremember—”
Jameson closed his eyes. For a moment, there was nothing, and then… thesmell of smoke… voices.
And then Xander was calling his name, and Jameson realized he’d lost time—how much, he wasn’t sure. He opened his eyes to see Xander at the wall, running a hand over it, up and down, left to right.
“Xan?” Jameson’s body practically vibrated. “What is it?”
“You know how the old man liked to say that the mind tricks you into choosing between two options when there are really seven? This mural—is it a mesmerizing, swirling but somewhat random design? Is it a story? Is it a puzzle? Or…” Xander was moving faster across the wall now, his fingers skimming over the swirling lines of the mural like a roller coaster on a twisting track. “Is it a depiction of a complicated system? A Rube Goldberg machine of sorts.”
Xander, a four-time national Rube Goldbergchampion, came to a sudden stop—at the arrow.
Jameson’s stomach twisted and sank. “I’ve already solved that part.”
“Youmight have solved it.” Xander probed the arrow with his fingertips. “ButIhaven’t.” Xander tested the lines of the arrow until there was an audible click, and the next thing Jameson knew, Xander was slidingthe middle line leftward and rotating it counterclockwise until the three lines formed a triangle.
The wall-behind-the-wall began to rise, and the voice of Tobias Hawthorne—a voice Jameson would have recognizedanywhere—filled the air.
“Alice, my Alice.” The old man lingered on his beloved’s name. “You should have known I wouldn’t be able to stop looking—for you, for answers. But I can assure you, my love, my love, my one and only love, that I will not be caught. Love letters may take many forms. What I know is for your ears only—if you care to play. You always did love puzzles.”
Jameson took in yet another wall, newly revealed. It held a single shelf. On that shelf was a bottle of wine and what looked to be an offering plate—gold, like the mural.
“And if youdon’twant to play, Alice, my Alice,” the voice of Tobias Hawthorne continued, “well then, I suppose you’ll have to find a way to stop me.”
Silence filled the air. Jameson had the wine bottle and the offering plate in his hands in an instant. “A game,” he whispered. “The old man made one of his games for Alice. He built this suite and left a map of Prague forher, marking the hidden passages, showing off what he’d managed to figure out about her secrets.”Abouttheirsecrets, Alice’s and this group’s.
“He left the mural for her, too,” Xander replied.
