CHAPTER 77 JAMESON
JAMESON
The Opera House was closed and empty except for Grayson and Xander, the former of whom was holding his cell phone in a way that made it immediately clear to Jameson that it was set to speaker.
“Look for anything that might be a keyhole,” Grayson was saying. He looked up and clocked Jameson’s approach. “And while you search, start from the top for Toby, Jameson, and Rohan.”
“Long story very short,” Lyra’s voice said on the other end of the line, “there were four keys among your grandfather’s collection that formed the basis of a new puzzle.
Solving that puzzle led to a seemingly ordinary deck of cards in what I’m informed is ‘the cigar room.’ One card in that deck was heavier than the rest.”
“Key card?” Jameson guessed. “Try it on the walls, the floor—”
“Done and done,” Lyra replied. “We found a passageway no one here knew about.”
This is Hawthorne House, Jameson could hear himself telling Avery what felt like an eternity ago. There will always be another mystery. Just when you think you’ve found the last hidden passage, the last tunnel, the last secret built into the walls—there will always be one more.
“And where,” Jameson said out loud, “did that passageway lead?”
“To a small, spherical room that’s completely black and has an equally spherical projector in the center.”
“A planetarium?” Jameson guessed. That tracked with the constellation theme, though it probably said something about the way that Jameson had grown up that he didn’t bat an eye at the idea that Hawthorne House might have a hidden planetarium.
“A message from your grandfather played the second I opened the door,” Lyra said.
“Play it again, please, Lyra,” Grayson told her, his voice coming out thick. “One more time.”
There was silence, several seconds worth of it, and then there was a voice, one that Jameson knew better than his own, one he would probably always be able to hear in his head.
“Alice, my Alice. So you’ve come back at long last. I was not sure that you would.
How many of my love letters did it take to finally bring you home again?
Or was it my death that did it in the end?
Somehow, I think not, but whatever has brought you back to Hawthorne House, I have no doubt that you’ve already located my file on a certain gentleman of interest and, of course, the keys.
Perhaps, Lyra, my Lyra, you’ve played every last game I left you, if only to determine how much of a liability I present, how much I know.
” The old man paused. “I will confess, with my prognosis being what it is, I was forced to make an inference or two in my rush to the end—my end.
“With this, my dying breath, however, I am not guessing, my Lyra. I know now where you went—both times. I know where the Gilded Blade took you when they took you from me. Small world, isn’t it?
And thus, I die with that puzzle solved, with your name on my lips.
Alice, my Alice, my love, my love, my one and only love—I know now that it was you.
Always and ever you. Well played, my darling, but you have your legacy, and I have mine.
I leave them as works in progress and ask only that you save your judgment for when they are done. ”
And that was it. That was the entire message. Jameson’s eyes locked on to Grayson’s.
“He said almost the exact same thing to us once, do you remember?”
Let’s save my Alice’s judgment for when you’re done.
“People are never done,” Xander said quietly. “We’re always works in progress.”
“Some of us,” Jameson said roughly, “more than others.” He closed his eyes and remembered slipping the infinity ring onto Avery’s finger—her right ring finger, not her left. He’d thought they’d have more time.
All the time in the world.
“Have you found a keyhole yet?” Jameson forced himself to ask Lyra. “One that will let you turn on the projector?”
“It’s small. Oddly shaped. Like a…” Lyra’s next intake of breath was audible. “Like a ring.”
“Did Nash give it to you?” Grayson asked, his voice coming out quiet and low and wholly intense. “Alice’s ring?”
“Yes.” Another audible breath from Lyra. “It fits in the keyhole.” She paused. “The projector is on.”
“Constellations?” Grayson guessed.
“They’re cycling through,” Lyra reported, “one after another.”
Rohan beat Jameson to the next and most obvious question. “Which ones?”
It took time and an assist from whoever Lyra had with her, but soon enough, they had their answer.
“Vela, Andromeda, Norma, Triangulum, Ara, Gemini, and Equuleus.”
If you played enough games, certain tricks—like certain patterns—always repeated.
“Only at night,” Jameson murmured.
Grayson knew exactly what he was saying. “The first letters.”
The old man had said that he knew where Alice had gone when she disappeared at nineteen, when she’d died decades later. He’d known where the Crucible was held.
Vela, Andromeda, Norma, Triangulum, Ara, Gemini, Equuleus.
V-A-N-T-A-G-E.