Glorious Rivals(37)

Not that Lyra’s father had given her one the night he died. Not anything else about what that particular flower meant.

Then why send me one? Lyra wasn’t about to burn her last question on that.

“I’m waiting,” Eve said.

Make it count. Lyra went straight for to the heart of the matter. “What does your file on my father say about Tobias Hawthorne’s dead wife?”

“Alice Hawthorne?” If Eve knew Alice wasn’t dead, she gave no sign of it. “Absolutely nothing.” Eve stared bullet holes in Lyra for a few seconds.

She wasn’t expecting that question. If anything, Eve seemed to be wondering now what Lyra knew—but she got over it. “I almost feel bad about all the questions you didn’t ask,” Eve said finally. “So out of the goodness of my heart, I’m going to give you something—proof that you want the file that I have. Your father used dozens of last names. The man who made my List had it narrowed down to three possibilities for his real one.”

Lyra didn’t want that to mean anything. It was such a small thing—a last name. But after the Grandest Game was finished, a name would at least be something to go on.

A name might tell her something she’d never known about herself.

“I’m listening.” Lyra’s throat tightened around the words.

“Drakos. Reyes. Aquila.”

Lyra filed those names away for future reference, refusing to let them mean too much.

“Now it’s my turn,” Eve said. “Here’s my offer for you, Lyra: Lose this game and ensure that Grayson Hawthorne does the same, and I will give you two-point-five million dollars and the entirety of your father’s file.”

Two-point-five million dollars was more than enough to save Mile’s End. It was more than enough for Lyra, period. And that file…

Lyra’s jaw tightened. “Why do you want me to lose?”

“Does it matter?”

Maybe it didn’t. So Lyra focused on what did. “Why would I take any deal from you? Why would I believe anything you’re saying when you’ve been playing mind games with me since I got here? My father’s names on self-destructing notes. Sending me that flower.”

There was a long, barbed silence.

“I never sent you a flower,” Eve said. “But I’m guessing it was a calla lily?”

“You’re lying,” Lyra replied, but she didn’t really believe that.

“I’ll admit,” Eve said, “you’ve piqued my interest, but I can’t count on this little interlude of ours lasting much longer. I had those notes with your father’s names planted to remind you what you lost, what the Hawthorne family took from you. And you can trust my offer because I have no reason to fail to follow through. Two-point-five million dollars is nothing to me. That file is nothing to me.”

“What’s the catch?” Lyra refused to believe there wasn’t one.

“Well, I suppose there is one other thing,” Eve said, as she walked back toward the ladder. “If you want the money and the file, I’m also going to need you to break Grayson Hawthorne’s heart.”

Chapter 33

GRAYSON

Grayson returned to southeastern side of the island to find Lyra exactly where he’d left her: on top of the boathouse, standing Hawthorne-close to the edge. Even from a distance, Grayson clocked Lyra’s posture, the width of her stance, the tilt of her head.

Grayson would have known it was her even if the only thing he’d been able to see was the outline of her body. Picking up his pace, he made quick work of the distance separating him from the boathouse and scaled the ladder to join Lyra on the roof.

Grayson greeted his partner in crime with a question. “What did you see?”

Lyra kept her back to him and her gaze locked on the island. “One more flash after you left. No lemniscates. No discernable pattern.”

Grayson walked to join her, right at the edge. “Are you going to ask me what I found?”

“If you’d found something,” Lyra replied, “I would know.”

Grayson was not a total stranger to being known. His brothers knew him. Avery did. But Grayson had never been an easy person for others to pin down. “So,” Grayson said, joining Lyra in staring out into the night, “where does that leave us?”

“I don’t know.” The later it got, the lower Lyra’s voice went, and in that deeper register, there were more layers to her tone than Grayson could count. “You never told me what you thought about the possibility that the calla lily in the music box was an echo,” Lyra said finally. “Not a coincidence but not necessarily intentional, either.”

Lyra was coming far too close to the truth for Grayson’s comfort. An echo—but not from one of the old man’s games. From something else. What, Grayson did not know.

“I recall no such clue in any game I ever played,” Grayson said—a truth, and one he could give her. Something in him compelled him to give her more. “You have my word,” he said slowly, “that if midnight brings us face-to-face with the game makers, I will ask my brothers and Avery about the calla.”

Clearly, Lyra wasn’t letting this go, and promising to ask was not the same thing as promising to tell her the answer.

“But if you want to win the game,” Grayson continued, pitching his voice to cut through the night, “we can’t keep circling the same drains.”