CHAPTER 10 LYRA
LYRA
A person could only play chess against herself so many times before giving into the urge to ransack dozens of online historical databases for information related to mysterious cloaked women who sat in judgment of others—women who watched, women whose hands wielded blades.
If you know where to look, Odette had promised, history tells the tale.
Well, Lyra apparently didn’t know how or where to look. It had been hours—hours she’d spent alone, locked down at Toby’s place, hours during which Grayson had been doing who-knows-what to try to get that file out of Eve.
And still, Lyra had found nothing.
She should have been used to that—finding nothing. She’d spent years unable to piece together answers about her father’s death, about the Hawthorne family’s involvement in it. But the Grandest Game had changed everything.
Grayson had.
Together, he and Lyra had solved riddles that Lyra hadn’t even realized were riddles. They were so close to finding answers Lyra had wanted for so long, but this was bigger than that now, bigger than Lyra.
As she waited for Grayson to return, she kept thinking about his words back on Hawthorne Island, when he’d said that he would choose her, not over his family but as a part of it.
It defied all logic that he could be that sure of this thing between them so soon, but Lyra knew he’d meant it.
Grayson Hawthorne was a man made for oaths, the kind of person who would never make a declaration like that lightly.
Family meant everything to him. And Lyra knew that Avery Grambs was at the very heart of Grayson’s family.
Grayson would have died for her, no questions asked, and Lyra was absolutely certain that if Avery wasn’t okay, Grayson wouldn’t be okay, either.
Not ever again.
Where the hell is he? Lyra thought. The sun had long-since set.
The entire day had passed. Lyra had slept—not much but some.
She’d dreamed, and in her dreams, she’d heard her father’s voice, heard him pronouncing her name wrong, heard her preschool teachers saying how very alike the two of them looked.
What’s taking so long? The more time passed, the more Lyra regretted not going with Grayson.
She’d agreed that he’d stand a better chance of getting information out of Eve alone, but Lyra had made a deal with Grayson back on Hawthorne Island: She got to pull him back from cliffs, too, and she couldn’t do that if she wasn’t with him.
She couldn’t do a damn thing here.
“That’s it.” Lyra said the words out loud, because the alternative was to scream.
If there was room in here, I would dance.
That thought, vehement and restless, took Lyra by surprise.
It had been so long since she’d been the Lyra who felt everything and could dance like she had nothing to lose. She’d thought that Lyra was gone.
Regardless, there was no room to dance in here, so she resorted to pacing the room instead, stopping in front of Toby’s bookshelf.
Of the five books it held, Lyra recognized three: A Little Princess, The Secret Garden, and Carrie.
The fourth book appeared to be about a girl and a horse.
The fifth was The Westing Game. Lyra reached for that one, but a knock at the door froze her in her tracks.
Grayson had made her promise to keep the door locked.
If that was him, Lyra realized, survival instincts unfurling inside her, he wouldn’t just knock. He’d say something to let me know it was safe to open the door. Lyra crept toward the kitchen counter and silently opened drawer after drawer until she found a knife.
Another knock—and then: “We come in peace.” The voice that issued those words was male and unfamiliar, the speaker’s utter lack of intonation unnerving.
Lyra tightened her grip on the knife. “Who’s we?”
“Me, my associate, and your boyfriend.” That voice, Lyra recognized. Eve. The sound of a key being inserted into the lock told Lyra: Eve has a key to Toby’s place.
“I wouldn’t say boyfriend.” Lyra shoved the knife behind her back just as the door swung inward.
“I would,” Grayson murmured. His voice was oddly liquid, his Armani suit rumpled, his blond hair mussed in a distinctly un-Grayson kind of way. “I would say boyfriend.” Grayson arched a most dignified brow. “Boyfriend, Latin, meaning more than a friend who’s more than a boy.”
“Not Latin,” Lyra told him. She narrowed her eyes at Eve and her muscle, Mr. We Come in Peace. “What the hell did you two do to him?”
“Drink or Dare,” drunk Grayson replied archly. “I did not much care for Eve’s dares. Her scotch, however, was of an acceptable vintage.”
“Pour him onto the mattress,” Eve told her companion, who slipped his shoulder under Grayson’s arm and did exactly that.
Lyra didn’t trust the way the guy moved, like Grayson’s weight was nothing, like there was no order this guy could not carry out.
Blond hair hung in his face, but that did nothing to mask charcoal eyes that narrowed at Lyra as he straightened.
“Give me the knife,” he ordered.
Lyra did not give him the knife. He must have decided against trying to take it from her, because he just stood there, staring holes in her instead.
“So,” Eve mused, “this is the place my father built for himself—away from me. It’s telling.
He’s clearly trying to re-create another time, mattress on the floor and all.
” Eve’s gaze fell on the chess table. “Except that. This place is practically a shrine to Toby’s precious Hannah, but the chess table has Avery’s name written all over it. ”
Jealous, Eve? Lyra’s hand tightened around the hilt of the knife. “And the books?” she said. “Whose name is written all over those?”
Eve turned toward the shelf—and froze. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet. “It hardly matters.” After another second or two, Eve managed to shift her gaze back toward Lyra. “Grayson gave me what I wanted, so you get what you want. Lucky girl. Slate?”
The dangerous, dark-eyed boy produced a file folder with one hand and held out the other hand, staring Lyra down. “The knife,” he said flatly.
Lyra glanced at Grayson, who inclined his head subtly—so subtly that Lyra suddenly doubted he was actually drunk at all.
Taking quite-possibly-not-drunk Grayson’s cue, Lyra exchanged her knife for the file.
“I hope Grayson’s efforts were worth it,” Eve told Lyra. “I hope you are worth it. I hope you’re ready.”
“I usually am.” Lyra didn’t give Eve the satisfaction of asking: Ready for what?
“Good,” Eve replied sweetly. “Because I give it a matter of days before the press discovers that Grayson Hawthorne has a girlfriend. I could tip the paparazzi off myself, but I won’t, just like I won’t say a word to anyone about our missing heiress.”
Grayson told her Avery’s gone? That seemed risky to Lyra, but Grayson knew Eve better than she did. “Why hold your tongue?” Lyra asked.
“She’s going to try to make you feel sorry for her,” Grayson warned, and then he fell drunkenly off the mattress.
Laying it on a little thick, aren’t you? Lyra thought, but Eve didn’t seem to notice.
“When I was a kid,” Eve said softly, “there were four children’s books I read over and over.
” Eve looked back to Toby’s bookshelf. “I got lost in them every chance I could, dreaming that someday I would matter the way the girls in those books did, that I would belong.” After a long moment, Eve reached up and pulled the only non-children’s book off the shelf.
Carrie. “I was older when I read this one, older and angry and desperate for adult attention. My English teacher gave it to me—a copy of Carrie and his attention. I was sixteen. The man groomed me, used me, branded me a liar, and threw me away.”
Eve stared at Carrie a moment longer, then slid it back on the shelf.
“So in answer to your question, I’m holding my tongue about Avery’s disappearance because it suits me to do so.
I’m done waiting to matter, done being thrown away or overlooked.
I have plans of my own.” Eve made her way to the door and cast one last look back at Grayson.
“I was made for grander things,” she said, “than Hawthorne boys or a self-important billionaire’s little games. Grander things than any of you.”
An instant later, she was gone. Slate went to follow, pausing in the doorway. “Whatever’s going down, I’ve got Eve’s back,” he said, “but someone needs to have Gigi’s.”
The door slammed behind him a second later.
“Note to self,” Grayson said, rising effortlessly from the floor and straightening his suit, “kill Mattias Slater if he goes near my little sister again.”
Lyra snorted, then her gaze went to the file in her hand. “You fake drunk pretty well,” she told Grayson, walking over to the table. She swept the chess pieces aside and set the file down.
“I have an impressive tolerance,” Grayson replied, “second only to my aunt Zara’s.” He reached a hand to her face and tilted her eyes up toward his. “And you, Lyra Catalina Kane, are stalling.”
Lyra didn’t deny it. She allowed herself to lean into Grayson’s touch, and then she took a seat and stared bullets at Eve’s file. “What if there’s nothing in here? No real leads?”
“What if everything makes sense after you read it?” Grayson took the seat opposite her. “What if it’s exactly what you’ve been looking for?”
His hand made its way across the table to hers. Lyra’s fingers bent, interweaving with his. She breathed, and so did Grayson. They breathed, together.
“You don’t have to be okay,” Grayson told her. “You don’t have to be fine.”
“I’m not,” Lyra admitted. And then she flipped open her father’s file.