Glorious Rivals(7)
Unveil evil plot first, tackle later, she thought. “What does Eve want with me?” Gigi smiled her most endearing smile. “And on a scale of one to ten, how dastardly are her intentions and/or yours with regards to the game?”
No response.
“Fine,” Gigi said, as agreeable as agreeable could be. “On a scale of one to twelve and a half, how—”
“Eve doesn’t know I took you.” Dark, dark eyes stared at her from behind the blond hair in his face. “I didn’t do it for her.”
Gigi suddenly flashed back to the moment he’d knocked her out, to his voice in her ear. Easy there, sunshine. Gigi swallowed. “Did you take me to protect me from Eve?”
Maybe that was overly optimistic. Maybe not.
Mimosas was silent for the longest time. Finally, he crouched, bringing his eyes level with hers, his forearms braced lightly against his thighs. “What makes you so sure that Eve is the only threat I might be protecting you from?”
Chapter 6
LYRA
The dream started, as ever, with the flower. A calla lily. Then came the candy necklace. Only three pieces of candy. Somewhere in Lyra’s consciousness, Odette Morales said: There are always three. But in the dream, Lyra was small. In the dream, there was no Odette. There was only a shadow and a gun and a man’s voice saying, “A Hawthorne did this.”
Only this time, Lyra saw the man’s face. She saw his eyes, her father’s eyes, amber just like her own.
And then everything was dark.
And then her feet were sticky with blood.
And then she was running barefoot on pavement, out into the night.
Lyra’s eyes snapped open. She forced herself to exhale the breath trapped in her chest, forced the muscles in her body to relax, one by one. She reached for the feeling she’d had running the island, that clarity, and rolled out of bed and into a stretch, lifting her knee to her chest. After a few seconds, she rotated her hip and extended her leg back and up—and up and up, until she could feel a low, familiar ache in her hips and back. She switched legs, stopping only when the watch on her left wrist began to buzz.
A message appeared on its screen: DON YOUR ARMOR.
The night before, it had been gowns and masks. Today, it was armor. Lyra couldn’t help wondering what that said about phase two. She tapped a red circle that had appeared beneath the words, and in response, the back wall of her room began to part.
Within seconds, Lyra was staring at a hidden closet—hidden no longer.
A single rack held two outfits, identical but for their color. One was white, the other black. At first glance, Lyra thought she was looking at body suits, but a closer inspection revealed three separate pieces for each outfit: tank top, outer jacket, and pants. The fabric looked almost like leather, but touching it ruled out that possibility. Whatever the fabric was, it breathed. It stretched.
Lyra knew instinctively that a person could dance in this fabric—or run or climb or fight.
She donned her armor—black. The clothes felt like nothing she’d ever worn, the fabric molding to her body. There were pockets on the outside of the jacket and more in the pants. Lyra made use of them. Room key. Glass dice. Grayson had their longsword, but Lyra had kept possession of the opera glasses Odette had given her as a parting gift. Picking them up by their diamond-encrusted stem, Lyra tucked the opera glasses through the belt loop of her pants, securing them directly over her hipbone. Then she retrieved the key-shaped pin she’d been given in phase one of the game and affixed it to her left sleeve, just above the place where her wrist met her palm. Finished, she turned her hand back over and looked back down at her watch.
The message about donning armor had been replaced by a timer—2:17:08.
Lyra watched as it counted down, second by second. Prior to the first phase of the game, there had been a masquerade ball—and a challenge. With more than two hours to go until the start of phase two, Lyra had to assume that this night would follow a similar pattern.
So what’s the challenge?
Bringing her index finger to the face of her smartwatch, Lyra tried to scroll but quickly realized that there were only two screens, the timer on one and an isolated symbol on the other. A spade. Lyra tapped it and was presented with a keyboard.
“Feels like a test,” she mused. Lyra thought about the only piece of instruction she’d been given: DON YOUR ARMOR. And then she thought about Grayson Hawthorne, telling her that she was no one’s weapon.
That she was lethal in the best possible way.
If nothing else, Lyra was a competitor. She chose her reply to the game makers. READY FOR BATTLE.
Lyra hit Send. Within a minute, she’d received a message back—a map.
Chapter 7
LYRA
The map led Lyra down to the north shore and around to the western bank. If the tide had been much higher, she would have had to walk through ocean to squeeze past the base of yet another cliff and around to a thin slice of sandy beach. Rock formations out in the water broke enormous waves as they came crashing in from the west—from open ocean as far as the eye could see.
There was only one person standing on the hidden beach. Avery Grambs. The Hawthorne heiress stood with her arms loose at her sides, staring out at the Pacific horizon and the setting sun. She looked almost nothing like the girl on all those magazine covers—the billionaire, the philanthropist, the angel investor, the beauty. This Avery was wearing faded jeans that were torn at the knees and a men’s sweatshirt that hung down nearly that far. Her hair was braided back from her face in a loose, messy braid that matched the utter lack of makeup on her face.