CHAPTER 82 JAMESON
JAMESON
Do you know the difference…” Toby’s voice was rough but not hoarse. “Between a labyrinth and a maze?”
They’d been in this one for almost an hour.
“A maze has branches,” Jameson replied automatically. “Dead ends.”
“And thanks to Greek mythology, labyrinths are associated with monsters.”
Jameson allowed himself to read into that.
“I’m not sure I believe Alice is a monster anymore, and I know you don’t believe Hannah is one.
No matter what was done to her, no matter what kind of training she’s been forced to undergo, you don’t believe your Hannah the Same Backward as Forward is capable of being truly monstrous.
You think she’s on our side—or at least Avery’s. ”
“I know her.” Toby said that like it was the underlying, overarching core truth of his life.
“With every cell in my body, every fiber of my being, all I am, all I’ve ever been, all I ever will be—that is the way that I know Hannah, so believe me when I tell you that she isn’t just on Avery’s side.
She’s on Eve’s, too. I don’t know why she took her, why she chose to bring Eve into this, but I do know that she would see any child of mine as ours.
Whatever Hannah has done until this point, whatever she’s doing, she’s doing it for them.
For Avery and Eve. Somehow. Some way. We just can’t see it. ”
“The art,” Jameson said quietly, “of the cascade.”
The path in front of them branched again. Jameson turned. This time, Toby didn’t follow. “Our chances of finding something increase if we split up.”
And so do the chances of them picking us off one by one, Jameson thought, but he didn’t argue.
He just tightened his grip on his knife and took the right-hand path.
Eventually, he arrived at what appeared to be the center of it all.
There was no sign of a monster, but there was a sword—a long sword.
He bent to pick it up, and then there was a sound like a faint rush of air and a pinch in his neck, like the bite of a mosquito.
The sword clattered from Jameson’s fingers. The knife in his left hand joined it, then Jameson’s body did the same. He fought the darkness closing in and the onset of paralysis—fought them, or he tried to. His vision blurred as a woman crouched beside him and put two fingers under his chin.
She had Lyra’s eyes.
First there was darkness. First there was nothing. And then there was Prague. There was her.
Avery.
The world around them was ice—nothing but ice. Jameson could see his breath in the air… and Avery’s. He could see their breath, interwoven like their hands. Her fingers were interlocked with his, and on her right ring finger, there was a ring.
Infinity.
“Like it?” Jameson knew on some level that he’d said those words before, just like on some level, he knew that he needed to wake up.
He was cold.
He was so cold, and she was so warm.
“Like the sun and the moon, I loved her,” Jameson murmured.
He’d let Avery read the words herself last time, but he needed to say them this time.
“Saint Avery.” She wasn’t a saint. He very much knew she wasn’t a saint.
Just like he knew he probably wasn’t going to live long enough to give her another ring. “Until death and beyond.”
When Jameson had given Avery that ring, he’d told her it was a promise. He’d told her that he was a work in progress, that he wasn’t yet the person he was going to be—someday.
I’ll be that person, he’d said, and you’ll be you, and this is what we’re going to have.
Infinity. As Jameson stared at the symbol, it dissolved. And then there was smoke.
And then there was fire. And then there was blood, running down his chest.
“I think we can agree,” a familiar voice said, “that this situation merits more than watching.”
For the second time in his life, Jameson woke up in manacles, his wrists chained up over his head. No. Not again. Last time, there had been a bag over his face. This time, there was none.
Because this time, they’re not letting me go.
The world was blurry until it wasn’t. He managed to make out the form of someone, chained up across from him.
No, two people.
Jameson’s head lolled, and he tried in vain to lift it, tried until that trying wasn’t in vain anymore. He managed to make out the people across from him. One was Eve’s minion. What was his name? Slate. What the hell’s he doing here? And the other…
“Damn it, Grayson.” Jameson had sent his brother away, but Grayson had clearly gotten Xander out and then headed right back into the fray. You just had to be a hero, Jameson thought, staring at his brother’s very still body.
His chained, still body.
Wherever they were, it was cold—freezing, and all three of them were shirtless… and unarmed. Grayson’s platinum hair hung in his face. Jameson willed his brother to stir, to lift his head—or at least his eyes.
You have to be okay. You have to be, Gray.
There was a noise then, a whimper—but it was coming from beside Jameson, not across from him. It took everything he had to crane his head sideways. He saw a fourth figure in chains, this one female.
Avery? His first and only thought was for her, even as his senses registered that it wasn’t her.
“Eve.” Jameson had come here for Avery, and he’d gotten Eve. There was no justice in this world, and still, Jameson drank in the sight of her, because if Eve was okay, Avery might be, too.
Tangled strawberry-blond hair hung in her heart-shaped face. She wore only a white shift—like a nightgown or possibly an old-fashioned slip. The fabric was dirty, and so were her bare feet.
“What did they do to you?” Jameson asked in a whisper that scraped his throat.
“They call it remediation.” Eve managed to lift her head.
“I spent days working my way through chamber after chamber, puzzle after puzzle. I thought I was never going to get out. I thought I was going to die. And then I came to a room with a table and a long line of champagne flutes on it with liquid inside. There was a riddle that told me to pick my poison, and I picked wrong.”
Poison. Jameson strained violently against the chains that held him.
“You have to get me out of here,” Eve said, her voice breaking. “Please, Jameson. I know that I don’t deserve to ask you for anything. Ever. But I can’t do this. I thought I could, but I can’t.”
Jameson fought until blood ran down his arms from the shackles cutting into his skin, and still…
“I’m sorry, Eve.” Jameson had really never thought he’d say those words.
“Don’t be,” she said quietly, and then, across from Jameson, a voice spoke.
“No.” Slate lifted his head, the muscles in his chest, shoulders, and arms visibly rippling.
“Is this the part where you say that, in fact, I should be very sorry?” Jameson meant that to come out wry. His voice came out desolate instead.
“This is the part,” Slate bit out, “where I tell you that isn’t Eve.”
The world around Jameson slowed to an unnatural halt, and then there was a sound—an audible click of metal. Shackles opening. It broke Jameson’s stupor, and his mind raced as he realized: Four years.
A feeling both like and unlike horror rose up inside him. The last Crucible, the one that had determined the current Watcher, had taken place between four and six years earlier.
And the old man, on that last good-bye message of his, had told Alice that he’d been forced to make some inferences. In other words, he’d made his best guess—about the Watcher. Not Hannah. Toby was right all along. The Watcher—it isn’t Hannah.
The real Watcher lifted a hand to Jameson’s face, stroking his cheek. “Hello, Jamie.”