“An offer that would have required Hannah to disappear.” Toby opened his eyes. “An offer that Hannah turned down, because she would never willingly have left her daughter.”
“Disappear.” Lyra felt that word in every inch of her body. “Like CallaThorp did.”The current Watcher.Lyra had to look away from Grayson’s eyes to continue. “Like Avery?”
Was that what this was? Had they taken Avery for the same reason that, once upon a time, they’d taken Calla?
Calla, whowasn’tCalla anymore.
“Enough talk.” Toby seemed to reach a breaking point, or maybeboiling pointwould have been more accurate. “I have an Avery to find—by any means necessary.”
“I would suggest you start with Eve,” Grayson said, clipping the words. “Your daughter is in possession of a file.” That, as much as the fact that Toby had known Alice was alive, was why Lyra and Grayson had flown all the way to Texas.
“What kind of file?” Toby said, as he moved once more toward the door.
“My biological father shot himself when I was four years old,” Lyra said, drawing Toby’s attention back her way. “He knew something about this group, enough that he attracted their attention. Enough that he killedhimselfrather than wait for the Omega—forAlice—to show up. I was there that night. The man was a total stranger to me, but hemade sureI was there, and he laid out a twisted little game for me.A calla lily. Three. Omega. A Hawthorne.He was trying to tell me something.”
Something she’d had no business knowing.You should not be here, little one.
Lyra reinforced every mental wall she had. “I don’t even know my father’s real name. If there’s something in Eve’s file that could help us figure out who he was—he had to have come across this group somehow. If we can figure outhow—”
“I won’t be any help on that front,” Toby cut in. “Last night, I read Eve the riot act about coming after Avery and hauled her ass back to Texas. Eve responded by banning me from the Blake compound. She won’t even look at me right now. I’ll be of more use elsewhere.” Toby shifted his gaze to Grayson. “But I think we both know, nephew, that my daughter might be amenable to striking a deal withyou.”
Chapter 6
JAMESON
Prague at nighttime was a world unto itself, this street more than most. Vinárna Certovka was all of twenty inches wide, narrow enough that Jameson had to traverse it at an angle for his shoulders to fit. Making it out the other side, he ignored the chill of the night air and turned back toward the narrow passageway, toward the surrounding walls and buildings.
There has to be an entrance around here somewhere.That thought pumped through Jameson’s brain like blood through a vein, like the constant, pulsing need at his core to push harder and faster and further.
Butno—he was beingdiscreet, and a discreet individual could not spread his arms, raise his head toward the night sky, and yell out, daring his adversaries to come and get him.
You did it once before, Alice. Do it again.Jameson’s memory of that night wasn’t fuzzy so much asshattered, like a broken mirror missing far too many shards, but he knew he’d disappeared from this exact spot. There had to be a trap door nearby or a wall that wasn’t a wall orsomethingthat hadn’t been marked on the old man’s map of Prague’s secretpassages, which Jameson had unearthed his last time in the City of a Hundred Spires.
He searched and found nothing.
Searched more and still found nothing.
Eventually, with a roar building in his throat and pressure mounting in his head, Jameson gave up on Vinárna Certovka and made a beeline for one of the passageways hehadfound his last time in Prague. But this time, the wall in question, near the Basilica of St. James, didn’t open. And neither did the next one Jameson tried—or the next or the next.
Every single hidden entrance had been disabled, dead end after dead end after dead end.
I have to think. I have to breathe.Trying not to explode and feeling like his insides were nothing but shrapnel, Jameson gave himself a moment—just one—to remember being in Prague with Avery, to picture her smiling slightly more with one side of her mouth than the other, to recall the way she’d taken her time inking a clue in a game ofhermaking onto his skin.
We have so many games left to play, Heiress.Holding to that thought and trying desperately to stay in control, Jameson made his way to higher ground: the Royal Suite, located on the top floor of a luxury hotel that had once been Hawthorne-owned.
And, more importantly, Hawthorne-made.
Fortunately, the Royal Suite was unoccupied, and just as fortunately, Jameson’s childhood playroom had been lined with all manner of locks that he and his brothers had learned to pick.
No one needed to know he was here—discretionat its finest.
Slipping into the Royal Suite, Jameson turned to watch the door close behind him. It disappeared into the wall, into a shining, golden mural, metallic to the touch, raised in parts, depressed in others, three-dimensional in the most subtle of ways. Swirling, twisting lines made the design appear almost geometric, but if you stepped back, as Jameson had once before and did again now, you could start to pick out abstract figures—humans, objects, there one minute and, if you lost your focus, gone the next.
The first time Jameson had seen this mural, the first time he’dstudied it, it had taken him seven minutes to pick out the only three perfectly straight lines of the bunch, all raised and parallel to the floor, none thicker than his smallest finger.
Three lines stacked one on top of another.
Awash in déjà vu, Jameson took the top line between his forefinger and thumb and twisted it until he heard and felt a click that allowed him to rotate the raised line clockwise forty-five degrees. He went for the bottom one next and repeated the process—counterclockwise. The ends of the two lines met at a point. The third didn’t need to be rotated, only pressed into the wall, but just as Jameson braced his fingers against it, his phone rang.