CHAPTER 23 LYRA
LYRA
E V ERY STORY HAS I TS BEG I NN I NG… TAKE ON L Y YOUR OWN KEY.
Energy surged through Lyra’s body as she stared at the writing on her key. Solving a puzzle, getting the next clue—it felt like flying, like walking through fire without getting burned.
V , Lyra thought, her brain and body buzzing. I, I, I, L . She looked to Grayson. “These letters don’t spell anything. Not enough consonants, too many I ’s.”
“Three of them.” Grayson considered that. “The letter I is a homophone, which would give us three eyes .” His gaze flicked up to hers. “Alternatively, letters aren’t always letters.”
V , I , I , I , L .
Something clicked in Lyra’s brain. “Roman numerals. V is five. I is one. L is fifty. It could be a combination.” Lyra’s mind went to the second floor of the mansion, to a marble door with a multi-tiered dial.
“The letters could be grouped in different ways to produce different digits, but if we need three total, the most obvious grouping is V , I - I - I , L . Five, three, fifty.”
“Five and three,” Grayson said beside her.
Like the dice , Lyra thought. “Grouped a different way, it’s six and two,” she replied, and then she thought about the dominoes on the floor of the Great Room. “Echoes.”
Grayson strode back to the bull’s-eye. Lyra watched as he latched his hand around the hilt of their sword. He turned it, locking away the ledger they’d both signed. When that deed was done, he withdrew the sword like Excalibur from the stone without even blinking.
“I would suggest we take a moment,” he told Lyra. “A person can lose hours in a game like this one, chasing a possibility that seems promising, but nine times out of ten, when you’ve hit on the right answer—”
“You know it,” Lyra finished. There had already been two names on the ledger when they arrived. Savannah and Rohan had the lead, which meant that Lyra and Grayson didn’t have hours to lose.
Giving herself the moment Grayson had suggested, Lyra began pacing the outside edge of the helipad, her strides deliberate and long.
“You think better in motion,” Grayson noted, longsword still in hand.
He was right, and that made Lyra remember something else he’d said to her.
You never stopped dancing. Every time you move, you dance.
She paused on the helipad’s ocean side. With wind in her face and Grayson Hawthorne at her back, Lyra closed her eyes and felt the letters engraved on the bronze key with the pad of her thumb.
She willed herself to think about only the ones in the clue.
V , I , I , I , L .
Her left hand moved of its own volition, sketching those letters at her side—and then suddenly, Lyra felt an eerie, familiar sensation, physically felt it like ghostly fingers on her face and neck.
Someone’s watching.
Lyra’s eyes flew open. The helipad was lit, but the moon had disappeared behind a cloud, and the world beyond the edges of the helipad’s light was dark—the island, the ocean, all of it.
Lyra tried to glance back over her shoulder at Grayson, but she couldn’t move.
Her head and body stayed oriented toward the ocean and the expanse of night.
The feeling lingered— more than lingered. Persisted.
“Where are you going?”
Until Grayson’s words hit her ears, Lyra hadn’t even realized that she’d just leapt down from the helipad. Grayson followed, landing beside her. Without so much as glancing at him, Lyra walked to the very edge of the light cast by the helipad, stopping before she hit darkness.
“Lyra?”
She kept her gaze focused ahead—on the water. There’s something out there. Someone. “You’re going to think I’m ridiculous.” Frustrated with herself, Lyra pushed a hand back through her hair.
“Try me.”
“Just now… I felt something.” Lyra turned her head to look at him and realized that he’d positioned himself just a little bit ahead of her—half in darkness, half in light.
“What kind of something?” he asked. Holding that longsword, a line of shadow down the center of his face, Grayson Hawthorne looked more than human.
“It’s nothing,” Lyra told him.
“What kind of nothing?” Grayson amended his question very slightly, but his intonation didn’t change.
Lyra shook her head, but she answered all the same. “Like someone was watching.” Was, she realized. Past tense. The feeling was gone.
With a curt nod, Grayson drove the sword in his hand into rocky sand, let go of the hilt, and tapped the face of his watch.
“What are you doing?” Lyra demanded.
“Sending a message. It won’t hurt for my brothers and Avery to have security do a boat run on the perimeter of the island, just in case.”
“It’s probably nothing,” Lyra insisted. She didn’t want to be coddled by anyone, let alone him. “If someone is watching us, it’s probably just another player.”
“Perhaps,” Grayson acknowledged. “But you felt something out there .” He nodded toward the water. “And Hawthornes are raised to treat our instincts like a very close ally. Trust—but verify .” Message to the game makers sent, he lowered his hands to his sides.
Without warning, the light on the helipad behind them went out.
Motion sensors , Lyra told herself. In near-total darkness, she shifted her weight. Grayson must have done the same, because their shoulders brushed. A shiver went through Lyra—and not an entirely unpleasant one this time.
Beside her, she heard the unmistakable sound of Grayson unzipping his jacket.
Lyra narrowed her eyes. “Don’t even think about it, Hawthorne.”
“One of these days,” Grayson said beside her in the dark, “you are going to let me give you my jacket.”
For now, Lyra’s body contented itself with the feeling of his shoulder against hers. “We should get back to the game,” she said. “We’ve wasted enough time.”
As if the universe was agreeing with her, the light on the helipad behind them turned back on.
Motion sensors , Lyra reminded herself. We have company.
She whirled to see who, but her gaze caught on a cluster of large rocks off to one side.
On top of one of those rocks, she saw something. White and green.
Feeling like she was walking through a dream— bare feet on pavement —Lyra made her way slowly forward. She stared down at the flower, then watched as if from a great distance as her own hand picked it up.
A calla lily.