Ordinary. Jameson felt like the old man had reached into his chest and ripped out his heart. The fingers on his good hand curled into a fist. “You’re saying I’m not as smart as they are.” The words came out angry and fierce—but deep down, Jameson knew it was true. He’d always known it. “Grayson. Xander.” He swallowed. “Nash?” That one was less clear.
“Why are you asking about Nash?” the old man said sharply. “The truth, Jameson, is that you are indeed intelligent.”
“But they’re smarter.” Jameson wasn’t going to cry. He wasn’t. He hadn’t cried when his arm had snapped, and he wasn’t going to now.
“Grayson’s mind is more efficient than yours and far less prone to error.” The old man placed no special emphasis on that statement, but he did nothing to gentle it, either. “And Xander—well, he’s the brightest of all of you and certainly the most capable of thinking outside the box.”
Grayson was perfect. Xander was one of a kind. And Jameson just… was.
“Their gifts are not yours.” The old man placed a hand on Jameson’s chin, preventing him from looking away. “But, Jameson Winchester Hawthorne, a person can train their mind to see the world, to really see it.” Tobias Hawthorne gave his grandson a frank, assessing look. “I have to wonder, though, once you see that web of possibilities laid out in front of you, unencumbered by fear of pain or failure, by thoughts telling you what can and cannot, should and should not be done…” The intensity in the old man’s words built. “What will you do with what you see?”
I don’t have to be ordinary. That was what Jameson heard. I won’t be. I’m not. “Whatever I have to.”
That was his answer—the only possible answer.
Tobias Hawthorne bestowed upon him a slight nod and an even slighter smile. “When you have certain weaknesses,” he said softly, rapping once on Jameson’s cast, “you have to want it more.”
Jameson didn’t wince. “Want what more?”
“Everything.” Without another word, the old man started climbing the stairs. Three steps in, he looked back. “I’ll see you at the top.”
Jameson didn’t take the stairs. Or the ladder. Or the slide—or anything that could even remotely be considered the easy way up. Forget your arm. Ignore the pain. He tuned out the sound of perfect Grayson’s beautiful music.
If he was going to be the best, he had to want it.
He began to climb.
CHAPTER 32
JAMESON
Night two at the Devil’s Mercy had, thus far, passed much the same as the first: Avery losing at poker and Jameson winning down below—never too much, never at any one table for too long. Winning, after all, wasn’t the point. Getting the lay of the land was. Seeing.
This was what Jameson saw in that underground palace of a gaming hall: mirrors that weren’t just mirrors, moldings shaped to mask peepholes, triangular jeweled necklaces worn by the dealers that he deeply suspected contained listening devices or cameras or both. Jameson remembered the way that Rohan had thrown his voice in the atrium—a trick of the walls—and thought about Zella’s response when asked about the Proprietor. He’s everywhere.
And all Jameson had to do was impress him—or if not impress, intrigue.
A Hawthorne knew how to bide his time, so that was what Jameson did, playing at one table, then another, noting everything, including the fact that there were at least twice as many people here tonight as there had been the night before.
Word of the Hawthorne heiress’s overconfidence at the poker tables was spreading.
Jameson stayed down below as Avery put on her show up in the alcoves, making his way through the old-fashioned games one by one. Hazard was easy enough to pick up but didn’t require any real skill. Piquet was more interesting, allowing one player to face off directly against another. Points were awarded across multiple rounds. The deal alternated between the two players, with the strategic advantage to the non-dealer. The exact mechanisms of scoring were complicated.
Jameson was good at complicated. “Quatorze.”
The man across from him scowled. “Good.”
In the language of the game that meant the man couldn’t best Jameson’s set. “That gives me thirty,” Jameson noted, leaning back in his chair. The man opposite him was, he had gathered, a power player in the financial sector—one who’d generously warned Jameson that he’d been a mainstay at the Mercy for longer than Jameson had been alive. “Thirty points on combinations alone,” Jameson reiterated, and then he put the poor sod out of his misery. “Repique.”