CHAPTER 64 GIGI

Chapter 64

GIGI

G igi shimmied up the rope like a person with actual biceps. It wasn't a feat of athleticism so much as an energy-fueled, near-incandescent need to see what came next. As her hand latched around thick, solid stained glass, she could feel someone starting to climb the rope behind her, but she didn't look back at Brady and Knox.

She pulled herself through the hole and climbed to her feet.

The attic—if you could call it that—was shaped like a pyramid, maybe eight feet tall at its highest point and lit along every edge. All four of its walls were made of glass. The very top of the house. Gigi pictured the roofline—and then she looked out into the night. "It's so dark outside."

"Not for long." Knox effortlessly pulled himself up and in, Brady—with the longsword somehow strapped to his back—coming next.

"We have, at most, two and a half hours until dawn," Brady commented.

Two and a half hours , Gigi thought, until this, with the three of us, is over.

She placed her hand on the ocean-side pane and ran her fingers over the word carved into the surface of the glass. FINALE.

"Here." Brady squatted. "There's a loose pane in the floor." He lifted a large stained-glass square and began pulling objects out of the compartment beneath.

A pair of sunglasses.

A roll of wrapping paper.

A ball of a yarn.

A bottle of nail polish remover.

"One of these has to contain a clue about what we're supposed to do next," Gigi said intently. The wrapping paper boasted unicorns and rainbows. The sunglasses were black with rhinestones. The yarn was multicolor—a rainbow, just like the paper.

Brady unscrewed the cap of the nail polish remover and took a whiff. "Smells like acetone," he confirmed. "Or something with a very similar chemical composition."

"This is the part where he rattles off a chemical formula," Knox said, putting on the sunglasses.

"The rhinestones really bring out your eyes," Brady deadpanned.

Gigi unrolled the wrapping paper and scoured it for some kind of clue: a unicorn that didn't fit with the rest, a rainbow missing a color, hidden letters or numbers, a variation in the pattern. When she was done with her examination, she flipped the paper over.

The back side was solid red.

Knox took off the sunglasses. "Nothing written on the inside," he reported briskly. "The lenses appear to be normal lenses."

Gigi grabbed the ball of yarn and started unraveling it on the off chance that there was something hidden at its center. Nothing. She turned her attention to the attic room. The floor was made of stained glass. The walls and ceiling were transparent. There was nothing in the room but the objects they'd already found.

Gigi knelt to examine the stained glass. None of the other panels were loose—but the trapdoor was still open. "Every other time we moved to a new room, we lost access to the old one," she said out loud. She made a snap decision. "Bombs away!"

Gigi dropped back down to the library. Knox cursed, but he followed her, and so did Brady.

Gigi took in the room around them. "It's gone," she whispered. The Victorian mansion and the castle. Every last doll. Every last accessory. Every last everything. And that wasn't all.

The bookshelves were bare.

"How is this even possible?" Brady said. "We were gone under two minutes."

"I know this one." Gigi raised a hand. "There are actually two sets of shelves positioned back-to-back, built to rotate." Gigi placed her hands together, palm against palm, to demonstrate. "We went up, they spun the bookshelves, swapping in the empty ones. And bonus—those empty shelves have a little something extra."

Symbols, carved into the wood.

The three of them spent the next hour trying to decode those symbols, looking for patterns. There were easily fifty different emblems carved into the bare shelves. Some shapes repeated. Others didn't. Gigi worked her way through each and every one.

A starburst, a heptagon, the does-not-equal sign, the letter G , the number 9, a sun…

"What's going on inside that mind of yours?" Brady came to stand shoulder to shoulder with Gigi, peering at the symbols she'd been trying to stare into submission for the past five minutes.

"Chaos," Gigi replied honestly. "Pretty much always."

Brady's lips curved. "Remind me to tell you later about chaos theory."

"Tell me something about it now." Gigi moved down the line and looked at the next symbol: zigzagging lines, stacked one on top of another. A wave?

"Something about chaos theory?" Brady considered that—and her. "Let's see… Initial conditions. Strange attractions. Fractal geometry."

"Give it a rest," Knox snapped on the other side of the room.

"Or what?" Brady replied. "There is no chain of command here, Knox. I'm not fifteen anymore, and we're not brothers."

That sucked the oxygen out of the room. Brady didn't so much as check Knox's reaction, but Gigi did. Wounded eyebrows.

"Fine." Knox's tone was bladed and unwavering. "You two keep flirting about chaos theory. I'm going back up."

Knox went for the rope. For reasons Gigi couldn't even begin to understand, she followed. By the time she pulled herself through the trapdoor and to a standing position, Knox had already claimed all four of their objects.

"What is your problem?" Gigi demanded.

"My problem?" Knox didn't even bother to turn around. "This team. Brady. You ."

"Growl all you want, honey badger," Gigi told him. "You don't scare me."

"Why would I want you scared?" Knox replied. "The more strategic move would be to win your trust and use that to my advantage. It's a good thing I'm so personable, isn't it, Happy?"

It was the use of the nickname that got to Gigi. "Why did you do it?" she asked.

"Do what?" Knox said tersely.

"Last year." Gigi looked down. "Why did you take a deal with Orion Thorp?" Knox didn't answer, so Gigi rephrased. "With Calla's father?"

"Brady told you… something."

"He told me all of it," Gigi said.

Knox looked down at the objects he'd come up here to fetch: the wrapping paper, the nail polish remover, the sunglasses, the yarn. "Calla wasn't taken. She ran away."

"Brady said—"

"Calla left ." Knox's voice went guttural, but when he spoke again, it was in a dispassionate tone. "She wasn't abducted. Her family isn't holding her captive somewhere. She's not missing. She didn't meet with foul play. And I know that, because the night before Calla left , she came to me to say good-bye."

Gigi stared at him. "Why wouldn't you tell Brady that?" She paused. "Why would you tell me that?"

"Maybe I'm not just telling you." Knox turned and jerked his head toward the front of her dress. The bug. "The Thorps aren't the only game in town, and Orion Thorp isn't the only member of his family who likes to play. I don't know who's listening, but maybe I'll say something to spark their interest and they'll make me a more competitive offer."

Money. That was what Knox wanted her to believe this was about, but Gigi's gut said that he'd told her because he wanted her to know that he wasn't all bad.

Knox doesn't let people in , Brady had said.

"Why wouldn't you tell Brady that Calla said good-bye?" Gigi said, quietly repeating her question. "Why would you tell me?"

"Maybe I'm telling you because I can't tell him." Knox shifted the objects to one hand as he lifted the other to the collar of his dress shirt. "And I have never and will never tell Brady, because Brady couldn't even begin to understand a Calla Thorp good-bye."

Knox pulled his collar roughly down, baring the skin at the base of his neck—and a white, puckered, triangular scar.