“We found a sketch of the man who took me.” Lyra’s fingers tightened around the phone. “The dead man—he looked just like me, Mom, and he called meLie-ra.”
“You wereLyra,” her mom said, her voice tightening. “From the beginning. Tomás never pronounced it any other way.”
“Did he ever say anything about having a brother?”
“He wasTomás,” Lyra’s mother replied. “Sometimes he had two brothers and sometimes they were sisters and sometimes he was the youngest of seven. But he was very handsome and very charming, and I was young and easily charmed, and he was so good with you.” Lyra’s mom paused again. “And then he was gone.” Yet another pause. “I don’t like this, Lyra. Any of it.”
The paparazzi. My name being out there. These questions about my father.
“As soon as you’re able to, baby,” her mom said, “come home.”
When Lyra hung up the phone, she took a step toward Grayson.“My father was the one who named me. Mom has no idea if he had any siblings—or how many.” Restlessness building inside her, Lyra did a three-sixty, taking in the greenhouse, the piano, and all of those flowers—those vivid, vivid flowers, many of them unlike any she’d ever seen.
“Why would Alice have come forme?” Lyra finally asked that question out loud. “Why wasmyname on that ring box, Grayson?”
“I don’t know.” A rare admission, from him.
“If I could justremember—” Lyra cut herself off, because who knew if therewasanything else to remember? She reached out to touch a nearby bloom, a pink so deep it was nearly red.
Blood on my feet.Lyra couldn’t see it, but she could feel it.
“Jameson’s memory of his encounter with Alice,” Grayson said slowly. “It was shattered, too. He was obviously drugged, and your parents said that you lost time. And Gigi—she said Calla Thorp knocked her out with a single touch.”
This time, when Lyra stared at the vivid red bloom in front of her, she didn’t just see a rare flower. She saw… possible ingredients.
Alice’s secret passageway led here.
“How much would you like to bet,” Lyra asked Grayson, “that Gigi’s and Jameson’s tox screens would have come up clear, too?”
We buried her, Zara had said about Alice.I saw her body.The kinds of drugs necessary to do that didn’t evenexist.
Did they?
After a long moment, Grayson turned back toward the piano. “We still haven’t found the box.”
Alice’s passageway had led to the greenhouse, and in the greenhouse, there was a piano.
“Do you play?” Lyra asked.
“I’m passable,” Grayson said, which probably meant he could have gotten into Juilliard. “Do you find yourself in need of music?”
That hadn’t been why Lyra had asked, but the second Grayson said the words, Lyra found herself very much in need of music. “You aren’tpassableat anything,” she told him. “And I need to dance.”
The words were hard-won. It had been so long, but for once, Lyra needed to take a page out of Grayson’s book and let it all come.Let go.
There was almost certainly something more to that piano, some puzzle, some trick, but once Grayson started to play, an achingly beautiful song that Lyra had never heard before, it banished every other thought from Lyra’s mind. A big part of her was afraid that dancing wouldn’t feel the same, but her body remembered.
Her body had never forgotten.
Lyra let go. Dancing was ecstasy and agony and real. It was balance. It was gravity defied, passion and control, and once she started, Lyra couldn’t have stopped if she’d tried. The more she danced, the more she felt. She danced for herself, for sixteen-year-old Lyra and the little Lyra with blood-covered feet. She danced for Grayson, for Avery, for Latin words on a plain river rock, for Zara, who was grieving her mother in an entirely new way now.
Lyra danced until shecouldn’tanymore, and when she finally stopped, when the last notes of Grayson’s music faded to nothing, a voice spoke behind her.
“You dance like I used to play.” Nan stepped out of a nearby aisle. As the old woman’s hand tightened over the handle of her cane, Lyra realized for the first time that Nan’s fingers didn’t look quite right. They were misshapen, gnarled.
“Piano lid,” Nan said, detecting the direction of Lyra’s gaze. “My husband had a temper, and I was never good at pretending to be less than I was. I played a little too well one night, got a little too much attention for it, and Alice’s father made sure I never played again.” Nan lifted one of her twisted, wrinkled hands to the bloom of a bright flower. “They say poison is a woman’s weapon, but I’ve always found an open window to suffice myself.”
“Long story,” Grayson told Lyra under his breath.