CHAPTER 25 LYRA

Chapter 25

LYRA

I n the Great Room, Lyra stared at the numeral 8 on the screen. Then the screen went black, and the cursors—three of them—reappeared and began to blink.

Eight players. Lyra's heart pounded in her throat.

"You do realize who the eighth player in this game is?" Odette aimed that question squarely at the last occupant of the Great Room.

You-Know-Who.

Why had Lyra come back to the Great Room? She'd made it into the foyer before backtracking. Why couldn't she have followed the chimes into any other room ?

"Your brother Jameson made it a point to tell all of us that you were just as in the dark about this game as we are," Odette continued. "Search that tuxedo, Mr. Hawthorne. I wager you'll find one of these."

Lyra turned just in time to see Odette bring a gloved hand to the high neck of her black gown—and her player pin. Ten feet away from Lyra, Grayson executed an efficient search of his tuxedo and found a pin, just as Odette had predicted.

He's not running the game. He's a player. We're a team. Something in Lyra rebelled against that thought. Hard. Odette. Me. Him.

She could still hear Grayson saying consider it done in the exact same tone with which he'd once ordered her to stop calling .

"I am not in the habit," Grayson informed Odette, "of allowing myself to be manipulated. My brothers and Avery know that."

"You must admit that your inclusion does add a certain level of challenge," Odette said. "We may be a team at the moment, but in the end, to win it all, one must best a Hawthorne."

Something about the way Odette talked about winning and besting reminded Lyra that the gloves in this competition were already off. Mind games. Those notes. Lyra studied Odette Morales more closely. The old woman held something in her left hand, a jeweled object that reflected the chandelier's light, preventing Lyra from seeing exactly what it was.

"It is well within my power," Grayson said, directing his words to Odette and only Odette, "to refuse to play."

Refuse to play? Lyra felt that like a slap to the face. She whirled on Grayson. "You can't refuse without taking us down with you." She took a step toward him, every muscle in her body taut. "Either the whole team makes it out before sunrise or all of us are out of the game."

She didn't know why she expected him to care. Lyra knew what came of expecting things of Grayson Hawthorne. But that didn't change the fact that right now, she needed him. Regardless of what her masquerade mask was worth, Lyra knew her parents—her dad, especially—wouldn't take a penny of that money from her.

To save Mile's End—long term, with any kind of certainty—she had to win it all.

"You'll play," Lyra told Grayson fiercely. "And you'll hold nothing back."

He owed this to her. For whatever role his grandfather had played in her father's suicide; for giving her hope and taking it away; for talking to her and then not talking to her; for that dance and the way she could still feel his hand on her back—Grayson Hawthorne owed her.

"You are not going to ruin this for me." Lyra's voice tipped over the line from low to husky. "I need this." She hadn't meant to admit any kind of weakness to him.

"If it's money you need," Grayson said, "there are other ways."

"Spoken like a Hawthorne," Lyra retorted.

"It's funny." Odette walked slowly over to the wall of windows and stared out into the night. "Until just now I hadn't seen the resemblance." She turned her head sideways, her profile striking. "To Tobias."

"You knew my grandfather." Grayson did not phrase that as a question, but he did follow it up with one. "How?"

Lyra thought again about the notes—and her father's names. How had Odette Morales known Tobias Hawthorne?

"Help us get to the dock by sunrise, young man," Odette said, "and perhaps I'll tell you."

There was a beat of silence and then: "There's a lever," Grayson stated. "Underside of the screen."

Lyra turned and saw it. She crossed the room. I should pull the lever. She didn't. Not yet. "Is that a yes ?" she demanded, twisting back to face the last person on the planet she wanted to be locked in a room with. "You'll play?"

Grayson stared back at Lyra, his pupils expanding, inky black against irises that walked the icy line between blue and gray. "It hardly seems I have a choice," he said. "I value my life, and you appear to have a temper." Muscles shifted over his granite jaw, like he'd entertained the idea of smiling—and decided against it.

Locked in. With Grayson Hawthorne. Lyra's mind went to the quote in the ruins—her hint about the nature of the game. Escape. All she had to do was survive the next twelve hours and beat what was probably the world's most complicated escape room. With him.

It's just one night , Lyra told herself. She pulled the lever. There was a mechanical whirring sound. The wall behind the screen opened to reveal a hidden compartment. Inside it was a chest made of gleaming mahogany, accented in gold.

Lyra walked toward it. Engraved on a gold plate on the front of the chest was a phrase that she deeply suspected was Latin. Et sic incipit.

Grayson walked to stand directly behind her and translated: "And so it begins."