Glorious Rivals(25)

“Rest assured”—Gigi lifted her chin—“I am always, never careful.”

Slate eyed her. “Can’t have you getting hurt on my watch, now can I?” he said. Relief shot through Gigi, but it was short-lived, because the next thing she knew, Slate had picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder.

“Put me down!”

“Playtime’s over,” Slate told her, climbing back down the ladder like holding a candle and a Gigi was nothing. “I have work to do.”

That broody-faced, muscle-goblin bastard carried Gigi all the way down the stairs.

“For the record,” Slate said, putting her down on solid ground, “I am always careful.”

“I’m going to hit you now,” Gigi announced. “With my fists! Fists of fury.”

“Knock yourself out, sunshine.” He just stood there, waiting.

Gigi did not hit him. “I don’t like you,” she said instead.

Slate’s lips twitched very slightly. “You shouldn’t.” He nodded toward the fur blanket on the floor. “Get comfortable.”

“Why?” Gigi demanded.

“Can’t leave you with an open flame,” Slate said. “Can’t have you trying to scale those stairs in the dark and falling to your death while I’m gone.”

“Gone?” Gigi said.

“I’ve got a job to do.”

Gigi’s mind went to Eve, to Savannah, to the island. “So you’re ordering me to… what? Lay down on that incredibly soft blanket? Get some z’s while you’re off helping your boss manipulate my twin sister into doing something we’ll probably all regret?”

“I am sorry about this.” For once, he placed the slightest emphasis on one word over the rest. Am.

I am sorry about this.

“Which part?” Gigi asked, her voice coming out a little rough.

“The part,” Slate replied, “where I’m going to have to have to tie you up.”

Chapter 23

LYRA

EVERY STORY HAS ITS BEGINNING… TAKE ONLY YOUR OWN KEY.

Energy surged through Lyra’s body as she stared at the writing on her key. Solving a puzzle, getting the next clue—it felt like flying, like walking through fire without getting burned.

V, Lyra thought, her brain and body buzzing. I, I, I, L. She looked to Grayson. “These letters don’t spell anything. Not enough consonants, too many I’s.”

“Three of them.” Grayson considered that. “The letter I is a homophone, which would give us three eyes.” His gaze flicked up to hers. “Alternatively, letters aren’t always letters.”

V, I, I, I, L.

Something clicked in Lyra’s brain. “Roman numerals. V is five. I is one. L is fifty. It could be a combination.” Lyra’s mind went to the second floor of the mansion, to a marble door with a multi-tiered dial. “The letters could be grouped in different ways to produce different digits, but if we need three total, the most obvious grouping is V, I-I-I, L. Five, three, fifty.”

“Five and three,” Grayson said beside her.

Like the dice, Lyra thought. “Grouped a different way, it’s six and two,” she replied, and then she thought about the dominoes on the floor of the Great Room. “Echoes.”

Grayson strode back to the bull’s-eye. Lyra watched as he latched his hand around the hilt of their sword. He turned it, locking away the ledger they’d both signed. When that deed was done, he withdrew the sword like Excalibur from the stone without even blinking.

“I would suggest we take a moment,” he told Lyra. “A person can lose hours in a game like this one, chasing a possibility that seems promising, but nine times out of ten, when you’ve hit on the right answer—”

“You know it,” Lyra finished. There had already been two names on the ledger when they arrived. Savannah and Rohan had the lead, which meant that Lyra and Grayson didn’t have hours to lose.

Giving herself the moment Grayson had suggested, Lyra began pacing the outside edge of the helipad, her strides deliberate and long.

“You think better in motion,” Grayson noted, longsword still in hand.

He was right, and that made Lyra remember something else he’d said to her. You never stopped dancing. Every time you move, you dance. She paused on the helipad’s ocean side. With wind in her face and Grayson Hawthorne at her back, Lyra closed her eyes and felt the letters engraved on the bronze key with the pad of her thumb. She willed herself to think about only the ones in the clue.

V, I, I, I, L.

Her left hand moved of its own volition, sketching those letters at her side—and then suddenly, Lyra felt an eerie, familiar sensation, physically felt it like ghostly fingers on her face and neck.

Someone’s watching.

Lyra’s eyes flew open. The helipad was lit, but the moon had disappeared behind a cloud, and the world beyond the edges of the helipad’s light was dark—the island, the ocean, all of it. Lyra tried to glance back over her shoulder at Grayson, but she couldn’t move. Her head and body stayed oriented toward the ocean and the expanse of night.

The feeling lingered—more than lingered. Persisted.

“Where are you going?”

Until Grayson’s words hit her ears, Lyra hadn’t even realized that she’d just leapt down from the helipad. Grayson followed, landing beside her. Without so much as glancing at him, Lyra walked to the very edge of the light cast by the helipad, stopping before she hit darkness.