CHAPTER 68 GIGI
GIGI
With Toby on a plane to London, Gigi only had Slate and Knox to look after, but still: easier said than done.
Over the last few hours, she’d alternated between wondering how Nora was faring, trying to think of more details to add to the whiteboards, and fine-tuning her skills at herding cats.
Broody, loner cats. Gigi had seen to it that the cats were fed.
And sunned. She’d shown pictures of literal cat memes to the metaphorical cats.
And still, in Gigi’s estimation, Knox was maybe two mentions of Calla’s name away from trying to leave again.
Slate was looking pale, if muscularly robust, and kept insisting that the dressing on his wound didn’t need to be changed when it clearly did.
So the last thing Gigi needed—the very last thing—was to take on custody, however temporary, of another Hawthorne.
But Zara reminded Gigi so much of Savannah that Gigi hadn’t really had a choice about following the woman up those five flights of stairs.
Did Knox and Slate appreciate being literally dragged along with her?
No. No, they did not—well, maybe Slate enjoyed the dragging a little.
A girl could hope. But regardless, they came, and so did Alisa, and as much as Gigi hated cardio, she persevered.
And that was how they ended up in the tower with Zara.
Tobias Hawthorne had apparently been very fond of keys—like really, really, unusually fond of them. To each their own! Gigi focused on the details of the keys spread out on the floor, rather than the Freudian implications.
There were 107 of them, divided into two perfectly straight lines on opposite sides of the tower room.
The line to the left of the door contained seventy-three keys in total, jewels glistening in the head of every third or fourth key.
The line on the right side of the tower room had thirty-four keys—and fewer jewels.
“We’re here to help,” Gigi told Zara.
“Resistance is futile,” Knox muttered. “She’ll wear you down.”
Zara arched a brow, a very Savannah-esque brow, and Gigi deployed scooty hands. Very emphatically.
“My father told the boys the story of his life was in these keys,” Zara said, seemingly resigned to her fate. She pointed to the longer of the two lines. “These are the ones that Oren, Nash, and I were able to match to a specific biographical event or events in my father’s life. Nan helped a bit.”
“Nan is Grayson’s great-grandmother,” Gigi informed Slate and Knox. “She’s terrifying, I’ve only met her twice, but I can safely say that I hope I have her dexterity and arm strength when I’m ninety.”
“And these”—Zara crossed to stand over the shorter line of keys, the light from the window casting her shadow over at least half of them—“are the ones whose meaning I have yet to ascertain. If there’s a puzzle here or a story about the Gilded Blade, it’s somewhere in these.”
Gigi squatted next to the second row of keys and took stock. I am one with the world, she thought, taking it all in, and the world is thirty-four keys.
Twenty of them were letter keys, one for each letter of the alphabet except…
“B, D, S, T, W, and Z,” Slate said from above her.
“Gold star,” Gigi told him, and then she looked over at the other line of keys and picked those letters out, one by one. “So originally, every letter of the alphabet made an appearance,” Gigi observed.
That didn’t give them much to work with.
There were number keys in both sets as well, only three of which were in the smaller line: four, eleven, and twenty-three.
Gigi reached out to lightly touch the outer edges of the number keys.
“They’re all different,” she noted out loud.
“The flourishes and braids of metal around the letters and numbers—they’re unique. ”
“You don’t miss a thing, do you?” Zara said quietly.
“Not much,” Gigi replied, turning her attention to the remaining keys. There were eleven of them, which struck Gigi as a lucky number. One by one, she took them in, focusing on the design at the head of each key:
A pair of cherries.
An acorn.
Five octagons, one inside another.
A cluster of hexagons—ten, total.
A mermaid.
A dragon.
A scorpion.
A swirl of what looked like solid gold barbed wire.
A smaller circle partially covering a larger one, both of them made of vibrant copper.
An eagle.
A harp.
Gigi looked up to see Knox edging toward the door. “Is that an invitation to jump on your back?” she asked innocently.
Knox glared at her but stayed put, and Gigi decided to take that as her cue to concentrate on the most abstract keys of the bunch. She started with the key with the two copper circles, turning it one way and then another, and then cocking her head to the side. “This one—I think it’s an eclipse.”
One of the benefits of being perpetually chaos-brained was that it was easy sometimes to see things that more orderly minds missed.
“And this one…” Gigi picked up the key with the cluster of hexagons. “I’m guessing honeycomb.”
Slate crouched beside her and without a word picked up the key with the octagons—five of them, embedded one inside another.
The moment Mattias Slater touched that key, Gigi saw it. “A web,” she said. “Spin, spin,” said the spider to the web.
“Delightful,” Zara said. “The web again, yet another inheritance for which I was passed over. That, it seems, is the story of my life.”
Gigi knew what it was like to always be second-best. If that.
“Allow me.” Alisa bent down to briskly pluck three keys from the bunch: the honeycomb, the eclipse key, and the one with what looked like solid gold barbed wire.
“These three—I know the stories they correspond to: one Mr. Hawthorne told me when I was nine and two that I was there for. None of them have anything to do with Alice.”
“You and this family.” That was from Knox. “You go way back.”
Alisa neither confirmed nor denied that statement as she transferred the keys to the other side of them.
“Eight left, plus the letters and numbers,” Gigi announced, placing the web key back down and rearranging the entire line. “A pair of cherries, an acorn, a mermaid, a dragon, a scorpion, an eagle, a harp… and a web.”
“Roger that.”
It took Gigi a second to recognize that voice as Oren’s and another to realize that the head of security wasn’t talking to her. He was talking to his earpiece.
“Alisa, we have company. At the gates.”
“And whoever they are,” Alisa inferred, “they’re a PR liability or you wouldn’t be consulting me.”
Gigi’s mind went first to Nora, then to Savannah, as Oren positioned himself between Knox and the door.
“I see,” Alisa said.
See what? It didn’t take Gigi long to connect the dots, to read into both Oren’s movement and Alisa’s reply. “It’s Brady, isn’t it?” Gigi said. That was why Oren hadn’t answered the question out loud, why he’d blocked Knox’s path. “He went to England with Rohan and Savannah. What’s he doing here?”
That question hung in the air for a second or two.
“Have Mr. Daniels brought onto the estate,” Alisa told Oren, “but make it look, for the paparazzi’s sake, like he’s being sent away.”
And just like that, Alisa and Oren were on the move—and so was Knox.
Gigi had to follow—back down five sets of stairs and through multiple corridors and out onto the estate. Unlike Nora, Brady apparently wasn’t being allowed anywhere near the House.
Cardio, my old nemesis, we meet again. Sunset had come and gone, the day lost to whiteboards and puzzling and herding metaphorical cats. The Texas twilight was on its last legs before true nightfall, and it wasn’t until Gigi paused for a breath-and-a-half that she realized:
“I know you’re back there.” This time, she did know. She could feel him. “You really should be going easy on the cardio, given the gaping bullet wound in your abs.”
“It’s a nick in my side, and you’re obviously still holding a grudge about it.”
“A grudge?”
“I thought you believed in rehabilitation.” Slate pulled even with Gigi and had the absolute temerity not to be winded in the least.
“Tell you what,” Gigi replied, as she realized exactly where Oren, Alisa, and Knox were headed. “When we get Eve back, I’ll rehabilitate her myself.”
Even from a distance, Gigi could tell that the hedge maze was lit.
It glowed against the not-quite-blackness of the early evening sky.
By the time Gigi and Slate made it to the entrance, Oren had already disappeared inside.
The rest of them weren’t allowed in until Alisa got a text from Oren, at which point, Alisa navigated through the maze at a speed that reminded Gigi that Alisa had practically grown up on the estate, alongside Nash.
As Knox had said, Avery’s lawyer and the Hawthorne family went way back.
At the center of the maze, Oren blocked the way to a small clearing. “He’s clean,” Oren told Alisa. “No bugs. No weapons. Doesn’t even have a cell phone on him. Heart rate is within expected range.”
“Do I even want to know how you know my heart rate?” Brady called.
Knox pushed past Alisa, then Oren, who allowed it.
They want to see how this plays out, Gigi realized. She tried to wriggle her way around Alisa and Oren, too, but settled for obtaining a mostly unobstructed view. Brady’s head was bowed. Knox stopped maybe three feet away from him.
Brady spoke first. “Calla.” That was all he said for a second or two, just the name. “Calla failed. All my sponsor would tell me is that Calla failed.”
Gigi’s stomach twisted. Helena was right—about the necklace. Some years, all three Candidates survived the Crucible. And some years, they didn’t.
“I’m sorry,” Knox said quietly.
“No.” Brady had clearly still been holding out some hope that failure didn’t mean… that.
“Helena said the same,” Knox told him. “She’s gone, Brady. Calla’s gone.”
“I don’t care about Helena Thorp.”
“And you think I do?” Knox bit back.
Brady’s hand lashed out, his fingers locking around the collar of Knox’s shirt. He pulled the fabric roughly down, exposing Knox’s scar. Gigi tried again to oh-so-subtly edge past Oren.
“Slate?” Knox’s voice rang out. “How’s that nick of yours?”
“Tolerable.”
Knox never took his eyes off Brady. “Keep her out of this.”
Slate laid a light hand—a very light hand—on Gigi’s shoulder.
“Calla talked about us, you know.” Brady released his hold on Knox’s shirt. “You and me both—but you more. My sponsor said that Calla loved me in her own way and you in all ways.”
Gigi saw something snap in Knox. He lunged at Brady, and Gigi knew that if she tried to throw herself into the mix, Slate would hold her back, and he wasn’t in any shape to do that.
So she just stood there, watching grief explode out of Knox and Brady as they traded blows, knowing in her soul that neither one of them was really angry with the other.
They were raging at the world.
“Maybe Calla was never what I thought,” Brady said, wiping blood from his lips with the back of his hand.
“Calla was exactly what you thought.” Knox didn’t bother wiping a damn thing. He spat blood. “She was stubborn and spoiled and strong and smart. Fierce. And she was loyal enough to shred her own heart to save some fraction of mine.”
Knox took another swing, and Brady caught his hand. “Where is this coming from?” he asked Knox. “For years, you didn’t even care that Calla was gone. Now, suddenly, she’s worth mourning to you? After what she did to you?”
The fight went out of Knox, all at once, and Gigi felt his next words coming, felt them like the rumbling of earth right before seismic activity tears it apart.
“Orion Thorp wasn’t Calla’s father, Brady, but apparently, he is mine.”
Brady dropped his hold on Knox’s fist, and just like that, the fight was over.
“Helena told Calla the truth the night Calla left,” Knox continued. “Calla didn’t want me to know. She was trying to spare me. I was nothing to Orion Thorp. He left me to rot, but I wasn’t nothing to Calla. We weren’t.”
“Just like the duchess said,” Brady replied hoarsely, and something occurred to Gigi.
“Zella wasn’t even supposed to know who Calla was,” Gigi said. “Candidates choose new names. But Calla talked about the two of you. She must have told Zella enough for her to track you down. The Watcher, too.”
“Calla just couldn’t let us go,” Brady said quietly.
“I know,” Knox rasped.
“Then you know,” Brady told him, “that I can’t let this go.”
“I know,” Knox said, “and that’s why I’m telling you that Nora made another appearance, that she has a plan of some kind to end this, to rid the world of the Gilded Blade.”
Nora hadn’t said those exact words, but Gigi couldn’t help thinking back to the scars on Nora’s arms, and deep down, she knew Knox was right. For Nora, this wasn’t just about making sure that the current Hand never became the Judge.
She wanted to end it all.
“Then why are you here right now?” Brady asked Knox. “Why aren’t you out there, doing whatever you can to help her end this?”
“Because,” Knox replied, “I’m a selfish son of a bitch.”
“No. You’re not.” Brady turned his head to look at Gigi.
Knox is staying for me, Gigi thought. Maybe also for Alisa, but definitely for me. And Brady—Brady wasn’t going to stay. Brady was going after Nora.
Part of Gigi wanted to try and stop him, to try to make Brady focus on the living over the dead. Another part of her wanted to tell Knox to go.
But what she said was: “Before you go anywhere, Brady, you’re going to do something for me.” Brady Daniels was a doctoral student whose specialties included symbols and meaning, ancient civilizations, and material culture, especially anything involving rituals or tools.
And constellations.
“Inside Hawthorne House,” Gigi continued, “there are whiteboards full of information about the history of the Gilded Blade and random mentions of mythology and constellations and details about the ritual of the Crucible.” Gigi took a breath—not a deep one, just a breath.
“It’s too late for Calla,” she said, “but it’s not too late for Avery. ” Gigi glanced at Slate. “Or Eve.”
Gigi looked back to Brady. “And maybe you don’t care about that right now. That’s fine. I’m not even going to try to convince you that you should, but you owe me for the way you treated me, the way you used me.”
It didn’t hurt anymore, thinking about that. It didn’t even sting.
“For the way you would have kept right on using me,” Gigi continued, “you owe me. Just take a look. That’s all I’m asking.”
Brady stared at Gigi, then looked back at Knox and said, “One look.”