CHAPTER 67 GIGI
GIGI
G igi stared at the Woman in Red—at her eyes. One blue eye. One brown. Gigi knew those eyes. She’d seen those eyes before—in a picture belonging to Brady Daniels.
As the cloaked woman interrogated them about the Grandest Game, about the players, about the game makers, all Gigi could think about was the triangular scar at the base of Knox Landry’s neck, the one the girl he’d loved had given him when she left .
He’d called it a Calla Thorp good-bye .
“You must know something else about her.”
Gigi blinked. She’d lost track of the present for a moment. “Who?”
Eve shot Gigi an incredulous look. “Lyra Kane.” Apparently, Eve did not believe this was an appropriate time to be zoning out, but Gigi’s brain was a mess of memories and what-ifs and revelations.
Calla Thorp. Not missing. Here. Alive.
“Or we could return to discussing your brother,” Calla—the Woman in Red, the Lily, the Watcher—told Gigi. “Or his brother.”
Gigi swallowed. “Grayson has three brothers.”
“Three,” Calla repeated. “That is a number of some significance. Tell me why that is the case, and I will let you go—all of you.”
Gigi glanced at Slate. Still out. If he’d been awake, he probably would have told her to just answer the question, but the number three didn’t mean anything to Gigi—and those eyes did.
“You’re… her ,” Gigi said. Some people loomed larger than life, even if you didn’t know them, even if you’d only ever heard their name. “Calla.” Gigi’s heart twisted in her chest. “Brady thinks he’s playing for your life. He thinks you were taken .”
“I am not Calla.” The voice that spoke those words was eerily detached. “Calla is no more, and I am no one, by design.”
“You left.” Gigi’s mind was reeling. “That’s what Knox said. You ran away, and you warned him not to follow.” Gigi brought her right hand to the base of her own neck, just above her collarbone. “He has a scar right here. And Brady… Brady loves you.”
For Brady, there had never been anyone but Calla .
“Brady Daniels loves a memory. He loves a dream.” Calla-not-Calla reached a gloved hand out for Gigi’s chin. “I assure you, Juliet Grayson, I am quite real. And I am no one .”
No one, by design. Gigi swallowed again. “You’re the Watcher. You’re the Lily. Calla .” Gigi’s eyes widened. “You left that flower for me.”
The Woman in Red did not deny it. “There is an order to things. There are rules. Warnings must sometimes be delivered when a person of a certain sort is being watched.”
“What sort?” Eve demanded. “And what do you mean, warnings ?”
“I am not,” Calla, who was no one , told Eve, “talking to you.”
“Maybe you should be.” Eve stepped in front of Gigi once more, shielding her. “Omega.” Eve let that word—that one word—hang in the air. “Calla lilies.” Eve paused again. “Alice Hawthorne. Lyra Kane asked me about all of those things.”
Calla went silent for a moment, and Gigi had the oddest, eeriest sense that behind the veil, the Woman in Red was smiling. “Evelyn Blake—or do you prefer Laughlin? Shane? Hawthorne?” The Woman cocked her head to the side. “Regardless, Eve, you do not disappoint.”
With that, the Woman in Red— Calla , not-Calla, the Lily , the Watcher —turned to walk away, like Eve had given her what she wanted, what she’d been trying to get from Gigi.
“You can’t just leave us here,” Eve called.
“I can do many things. Mine is a higher law.”
Gigi managed to free her vocal cords. “Calla—”
“Calla,” the Woman in Red replied in that frightfully even tone of hers, “was a naive, sheltered seventeen-year-old girl in love. She was also the only great-granddaughter of Helena Thorp, and that mattered a great deal, so much so in fact that it did not matter to Helena that Calla, among all of her great-grandchildren, was the only one that had no Thorp blood at all. Calla did not know, growing up, that her father was not, in fact, her father—but Orion Thorp knew from the day she was born. Calla’s eyes made her true paternity quite obvious to him, you see.
For a man like Orion, an insult like that, a betrayal like that, was unforgivable—but giving his family the first daughter in three generations made Orion the Thorp heir.
And that mattered more than any insult or betrayal. ”
Gigi felt dizzy just trying to follow that—all of it, any of it.
“After all,” not-Calla continued, “it was not as if Calla’s so-called father did not have a biological child of his own.”
“I don’t understand,” Gigi said.
“You are not meant not to.”
“Why are you telling us this?” Eve asked.
“I am not Calla Thorp. There is no Calla Thorp anymore.” The wall parted. “And thanks to dear, dear Eve, the time for watching is done.”