CHAPTER 38 JAMESON
JAMESON
It didn’t take Jameson much longer to discover that there was a work of art—a drawing—currently residing in London, rather wordily entitled An Alchemist with Angel’s Wings and a Skull Cap, Pouring Fluid from a Ladle into a Crucible.
“Why the sudden interest in alchemy?” Toby probed.
“The old man left a game for Alice. I’ve been playing it, and it brought me here.” To London. To the flat. To the Mercy.
“Tell me,” Toby ordered as a pajama-clad Xander padded into the room, but before Jameson could say a thing, Toby’s phone rang. Jameson fully expected his uncle to ignore it, but Toby answered the moment he registered who was calling.
Jameson wasn’t sure what to read into that. Within thirty seconds, Toby had hung up after having barely said a word.
“Tell me.” Jameson weaponized his uncle’s own words against him. Toby had a good poker face—but not good enough.
“I have to go.” Toby was already on the move.
Jameson flew into action, following his uncle to the door. “Go? Go where?”
“This doesn’t concern you, Jameson.”
“Does Avery concern you?” Jameson bit back.
There was no reply, and a desperate sort of fury rose up in Jameson.
“Does Hannah?” That was probably cruel, but Jameson didn’t care.
Toby didn’t get to swoop in, drop that postcard in their laps, lecture Jameson about dousing the fuse, and then walk away.
“Take a step back, Jameson,” Toby ordered, his voice low.
Jameson took a step forward instead. “What if your Hannah got another offer when Avery was fifteen? What if her death was staged?” Jameson didn’t believe that.
Not really. Not based on Avery’s description of her mother’s illness.
But if there was one person on the planet who understood what Jameson was feeling right now—everything he was feeling—it was Toby.
To hell with his uncle for even thinking about walking away.
“What if your Hannah the Same Backward as Forward is out there somewhere and that postcard was her way of telling you where?” Jameson challenged. “What if she’s been waiting for years, and you never even looked?”
He willed his uncle to take the first swing.
Toby looked past Jameson to Xander. “I have to go,” Toby told Xander. “I don’t know when I’ll be back. Make sure this one doesn’t get himself arrested—or killed—while I’m gone.”
“Who was on the phone?” Jameson’s voice was rough in his throat. “What did they tell you? What do you know?”
“I know,” Toby replied quietly, his intensity a match for Jameson’s own, “what it’s like for your entire world to begin and end with another person’s eyes, to have fallen so deeply in love with her mind and her strength and her soul that you will never be the same.
I know slippery slopes and that little voice that says that without her, life isn’t worth living.
I know what it’s like to want to burn the whole world down, and I know Avery.
” Toby fixed Jameson with a look. “I know it would break Avery’s heart to come back and find you covered in ashes.
So you are damn well going to find a way keep a handle on that fuse. ”
“So,” Xander said five minutes later, eyeing Jameson with caution. “What are we thinking?”
I’m thinking that I do want to burn the whole world down. Jameson pushed back against that thought. “The Devil’s Mercy.” Jameson’s jaw hardened. The Mercy was what had brought him to London. That was the next logical step, crucibles be damned. “I need a way in.”
“What are our options?”
Xander’s use of the words we and our did not go unnoticed. She’s your Avery, too.
The muscles in Jameson’s chest loosed very slightly.
“The Devil’s Mercy is underground,” he told Xander.
“Literally. There are multiple entrances, all of them hidden, but I am only acquainted with one. It’s in a famous opera house, and even if I were to break in, without the right key, there would still be the matter of the elevator to deal with.
Followed by other security measures. Followed by the consequences of forcing my way in. ”
“Do we care about the consequences?” Xander asked, the question making it clear: Xander would be right there with him, regardless.
And that meant that Jameson did care. “The safer and more discreet option,” he admitted, “is to go in invited.”
“Invited.” Xander nodded. “Yes. Good. I like it. How do we make that happen?”
“Two options,” Jameson said immediately, having already thought this through. “One involves making so much noise that the Mercy sends someone to shut us up and then we bargain like our life depends upon it with whoever the Proprietor sends.”
“Theoretically,” Xander said delicately, “would our lives depend on it?”
The last time Avery and Jameson had drawn out an emissary of the Devil’s Mercy, that emissary had been Rohan. Jameson wondered if the Proprietor would send the duchess this time. Two birds, one stone—but risky.
“I’m liking option two,” Xander declared. “Based on vibes alone.”
“Option two,” Jameson told Xander, “is finding a member to quietly and discreetly bargain on our behalf.”
Xander stroked his chin. “And do we have a specific member in mind?”
Jameson reached for his phone. “As luck would have it, Toby is not my only uncle.”