CHAPTER 15 ROHAN
ROHAN
R ohan surveyed the room around him. The fifth-floor library was circular, its curved shelves stocked with what had to be at least a thousand books. Rohan trailed his hand along spine after spine, committing the titles of the books to memory and waiting for Savannah to say it.
“Use me again to get to my brother, and you will find yourself flat on your back and seeing stars.” The lady did not disappoint. Rohan admired her restraint, given that she’d waited until they were well and truly alone to issue those words in that cut-crystal voice of hers.
“Is that a promise?” Rohan replied, his inflection just wicked enough to make it clear that the prospect of being flat on his back was not altogether unappealing. There was, after all, more than one way to see stars.
He began to circle the room, and Savannah blocked him. “What are we doing up here?” She punctuated that question with a hand on Rohan’s chest.
He shifted his gaze from the books on the shelves to the champagne glass in Savannah’s other hand. “You should try it.” He nodded to the liquid in the flute.
“If I work up a thirst, perhaps I will. My question remains.”
She wanted to know what they were doing here.
Rohan obliged her. “Stained glass on the ceiling. Shelves. Books.” He held Savannah’s silvery gaze for a moment longer, then side-stepped her and continued his circuit of the room.
“Ever work a maze, love? Start at the beginning and there might be dozens of wrong turns you can take, dozens of dead ends. But start at the end of the maze and work your way back, and you’ll find far fewer.
In a game that goes from clue to clue, each puzzle’s solution must point to the location of the next clue. ”
“Landmarks.” Savannah’s icy blue-gray eyes narrowed very slightly, emphasizing the equally slight widening of her pupils.
“Landmarks—or notable objects.” Rohan finished his circuit of the room.
“A finite number of solutions, no matter how dazzlingly complicated the puzzles. Perhaps there’s a book on those shelves whose title relates somehow to darts—or targets.
Perhaps not. But the fact that we’ve been up here, that we’ve reminded ourselves of the contents of this room, will open our mind to possible answers—for this clue and the next and the next. ”
With that, Rohan headed for the spiral staircase.
They had more ground to cover. “For the record?” he said, beginning his descent.
“I wasn’t using you to get to Grayson downstairs.
I was allowing you to use me.” Rohan had overheard Savannah’s warning to Lyra at the bonfire, and he’d inherently understood that Savannah had not just been talking about Lyra falling into the Hawthorne trap.
When Savannah had said he won’t choose you , she’d been speaking from experience.
“Your brother hurt you.” Rohan took his life in his own hand by daring to say that out loud. “Badly.”
“Half brother, and I’ve told you before: I do not do anything badly.” Savannah’s control was absolute. “Steps,” she noted pointedly. “A railing.” Possible end points to clues. They came to the fourth-floor landing, and Savannah continued, “Seven bedrooms. A clock.”
“Not just a clock.” Rohan took note of the minute and hour hands, the Roman numerals showing the time. “It’s thirty seconds faster than our watches.”
“And that means…?” Savannah had a way of making every question sound like a challenge.
“Nothing yet,” Rohan replied. “Perhaps nothing in perpetuity.” He hopped up on the railing and slid the rest of the way down to the foyer.
He landed on the marble and immediately crouched to run his hand over the floor.
“The dining room, study, and Great Room all played a large role in phase one,” he noted, “which makes them lower-value targets for our purposes, excepting the new additions to the Great Room.”
“The dominoes. The table. The darts and champagne flutes.” Savannah sank into a crouch next to Rohan, seemingly for the sole purpose of staring him down.
“I would wager, however,” she said, “that our first puzzle won’t lead to another clue in the same room, which means the Great Room is out.
In fact, I would wager our next clue isn’t in this house at all. We’re dressed for the elements.”
Indeed you are, love.
“What would we find if we went down another floor?” Rohan challenged.
“Two doors.” No one did unimpressed like Savannah Grayson. “One covered in gears and the other made of white marble, struck through with gold.”
“Awfully fond of gold in this game, aren’t they?” Rohan said, producing his dart.
“Golden dart, golden door.” Savannah stood. “Too obvious. Besides which, the door in question has a three-tiered dial on it. We’ll know when a clue leads there, because the answer to the previous puzzle will be three numbers.”
“In that case, love…” Rohan rose to his feet beside her. “Shall we see what the great outdoors has to offer? Race you to the place where we first met.”