CHAPTER 29 GRAYSON
GRAYSON
I n the Great Room, the dominoes had vanished from the gleaming wood floor, and a violin sat dead center on the round table.
Grayson scanned the room for a bow and saw it balanced on the raised wood paneling of the wall.
Based on experience, he knew better than to take that to mean that the key to solving the music box puzzle was the music.
It might be. It might not be.
Hawthorne games often contained traps—rabbit holes down which one could disappear for hours. The clue could just as easily have been the box itself. Or the calla lily inside.
Why that flower, Jameson? Grayson hadn’t been lying when he’d told Lyra that the one they’d found near the helipad was assuredly not a part of the game, but the choice of a calla lily for the music box was just as certainly not a coincidence.
Grayson had chosen his words to Lyra with care: His brothers and Avery would never intentionally do this to someone.
Grayson would have wagered every dollar he had that the calla lily was Jameson’s doing, and that Jameson had no idea that calla lilies held any significance for Lyra at all.
Thus, the real question was why that flower had been floating around in Grayson’s brother’s subconscious to begin with.
It has something to do with Alice. That much was clear—as was the fact that Grayson was going to have to break his word.
He’d given Jameson until the end of the game to get a handle on any threats, but as far as Grayson was concerned, that timeline had changed.
He would not sit back while an unidentified threat played with Lyra. Hurt her. Jameson clearly was not handling this—so Grayson would.
As if on cue, his watch buzzed, a message in response to the one he had sent the game makers, requesting a perimeter run.
(LITERAL) COAST IS CLEAR. FOCUS ON THE GAME.
The second part of that message had Jameson’s fingerprints all over it. Focus on the game. Grayson had been trying to get Lyra to do the same—and for much the same reason. He resisted the urge to send another message back to the game makers. Prudence dictated watching what one put in writing.
You have until midnight, Jamie , Grayson thought, and that is all .
For now, Grayson claimed the violin and the bow.
He brought the violin to his chin. From memory, he began to play the waltz from the music box.
In his mind, an image formed: Lyra dancing, turning and turning, the lines of her body perfection.
As he continued playing, as the waltz gave way to a tango, Grayson’s mind conjured up a dance of a different sort. A more aggressive one.
A tango for two.
And then Lyra appeared in the doorway to the Great Room, looking like something out of a myth, her dark hair long and loose, silver music box clasped in front of her body like a bouquet.
Grayson stopped playing. “What happened?” He could tell just from the look in her eyes that something had.
“A memory,” Lyra said. “A very faint one.” Amber eyes flicked away from his. “Why…” She stopped and then started again. “Why did you draw me like that?”
It took Grayson a second to process what Lyra was referencing, what she’d found. “It was part of the game,” he told her.
“No.” Lyra shook her head. “I didn’t ask why you drew me. I asked why you drew me like that .” Her voice went hoarse on the end of that sentence.
Grayson did not fully comprehend the question. He was not one to take artistic license. “I simply drew what I see.”
Lyra turned away from him with another shake of her head that sent her dark hair rippling down her back. “You are impossible,” she bit out. “And I…” Her tone shifted in ways that Grayson couldn’t even describe. “I am not fine.”
Grayson didn’t know whether or not she’d allowed herself to dance, but clearly, something had shifted in her. “It’s liberating in a way, isn’t it?” he said quietly. “Letting it all come.”
“I wouldn’t say all .” She was still holding back.
That’s a no, then , Grayson thought, on the dancing .
Grayson walked toward her, but before he could get too close, she turned to face him again. “We should get back to the game.” Lyra looked to the violin in Grayson’s left hand—and the bow in his right. “Can I borrow your bow?”
Unable to even guess at what she intended, Grayson lowered the violin and handed the bow to her.
Lyra sank gracefully to the floor, set her music box down, and flipped it open.
The expression on her face difficult to read, she dug the sharp end of the bow into the velvet lining of the box, tearing at the fabric.
“A hunch, I presume?” Grayson asked.
The velvet began to rip beneath her assault. “Maybe I just felt like taking a risk,” Lyra said. “Or doing some damage.” She set the bow down and grabbed the torn edge of the lining.
Taking a risk. Doing some damage. Grayson could not help thinking that, to Lyra, he undoubtedly looked like a risk, too. And the two of them together…
The right kind of disaster just waiting to happen.
There was another rip . “Got it,” Lyra said, tearing the velvet lining the rest of the way out of the music box.
Grayson closed the space between them and looked down at the silver of the box, at what Lyra had found beneath the lining—the reward for her risk , the result of the damage she’d wreaked.
A symbol, etched into metal.
“Infinity.” Lyra traced it with the tip of her finger, and then her eyes found their way to Grayson’s once more. “Or eight.”