CHAPTER 56 GIGI

Chapter 56

GIGI

D ollhouse was an understatement. Gigi took it all in. The entire spread was eight feet long and three deep. To one side, there was a four-story Victorian mansion, to the other, a castle that looked like it had been lifted straight from a fairy tale. In between, the streets were lined with shops—some Victorian, some medieval.

A toy shop. A dress shop. A magic shop. A forge.

The two worlds came together at the midpoint with a pair of royal carriages facing an early-model car.

The level of detail in every single piece was astounding. A single flower—of which there were at least eight dozen in the window boxes of the mansion—consisted of a stem and six detachable blooms. There were nearly a hundred dolls, each with one or more accessories.

A maid's apron. A child's teddy bear. Easily three dozen different hats.

Opposite Gigi, Knox was systematically disassembling and reassembling pieces, one by one. Brady's eyes moved, shifting from one piece to the next, but his body was perfectly still.

Gigi played to her own strengths. She made her merry way to the bookshelves and started to climb.

"What are you doing?" Knox pulled apart the forge.

"Casing the joint," Gigi replied. A bird's-eye view usually helped. She scaled higher—ten feet up, twelve.

Knox grabbed a display of teeny, tiny weaponry and stomped toward her. "For the last time," he bit out, climbing after her, "your bones are not bendy ."

"I think better up high." Gigi made it to the top shelf and looked down at the world in miniature below. Take it all in, Gigi. Every detail. Every tiny window. Every little exit.

Knox arrived at her side, and he didn't look happy about it.

"On a scale of one to ten," Gigi said, "are you going to toss someone out a window, yes or no?"

But what she was really thinking was: Why would you work with Orion Thorp? She knew Knox cared about Brady. They were a we . Family of choice. Brothers. Gigi thought about the tone in Knox's voice when he'd said that Brady knew every last damn constellation.

Why would you sell him out to Calla's family? Even if Knox did believe that Calla had left of her own volition, even if he believed there had been no foul play, he knew Brady believed her family was responsible.

You knew, and you got in bed with them anyway.

"There are no windows," Knox said gruffly. "Which, based on the view from the back of the house, suggests that there's significantly more to the fifth floor than we can currently see."

Gigi shifted her weight.

"You need to be careful," Knox said darkly.

"I'm fine," Gigi insisted.

"You're really not." Knox gave her a look , and Gigi noticed for the first time that his eyes were a muddy hazel, shot through with gold. "This is a competition, Happy. Brady isn't your friend. No one here is."

Knox's warning was eerily close to Savannah's. "Including you?" Gigi said.

" Especially me. If you're not careful, you're going to get eaten alive in this game."

Gigi thought about sponsors, about the dragon on the island, about the warnings, plural, that Brady had given her about Knox.

"I don't mind," Gigi said stubbornly. "Being eaten alive, I mean. If you can get them to spit you out, it's pretty much just a massage."

Knox's eyes narrowed. "You're irritating me on purpose."

Gigi shrugged and nodded down toward their puzzle below. "No dragons," she noted.

Knox's brows drew together. "The words on the door."

" Here there be dragons ," Gigi recited. "Except there aren't any down there."

She shimmied down a couple of shelves, then leapt for the floor. Her landing wasn't exactly graceful , but Gigi didn't let that slow her down. Squatting next to the castle, Gigi marked the points of entry she'd seen from above. There was no staircase, no way to get from the bottom stories upward. Activity—as indexed by the dolls—was densest in the courtroom, the feast hall, and the throne room.

Throne. Fireworks detonated in Gigi's brain. Glorious fireworks!

The king doll was sitting on his throne, but the queen wasn't on hers.

Twenty minutes later, Gigi found the queen under one of the beds in the Victorian mansion. She wasn't exactly subtle about the way she tossed the place, so by the time she vigorously slammed the queen onto the empty throne, Knox and Brady were both staring at her.

"The poem." Brady got there first. "From the chamber. An empty throne. You're brilliant."

Brilliant. Gigi could get used to that.

"Nothing's happening," Knox pointed out.

Gigi turned her attention to the queen's accessories. The same nothing happened when she popped the crown off the queen's head, but when she grasped the tiny scepter between her forefinger and her thumb and tried to pull, she was met with resistance.

The head of the scepter was a dragon .

Gigi persevered. When she finally wrenched the scepter free, there was a pop.

"Quiet," Knox ordered. He lowered himself chest-down to the ground, his palms flat against the floor, his head slightly raised, just inches from the Victorian mansion. "Do that again," he told Gigi.

"I think it came from over here." Brady crouched and zeroed in on the room in the Victorian mansion that Gigi had mentally dubbed the parlor. A fancy red sofa sat opposite two blue wingback chairs. A maid pushed a tea cart. Behind her, there was a grandfather clock and a cabinet filled with books.

Gigi returned the queen's scepter and pulled it again. Another pop. Knox and Brady reached at the exact same time for the cabinet full of books. Knox let his hand drop, allowing Brady to be the one to open the cabinet. Tiny, plastic books spilled out onto the dollhouse floor.

Scrawled onto each of them, there was a number.