One by one, the remaining players returned to the Great Room. Rohan was guessing they’d been summoned. Even without the hourglass to mark the passing of the final minutes, it was clear: It’s time.
Grayson Hawthorne stepped into the room unaccompanied. No Avery Grambs. No Jameson, Nash, or Xander.
A sound, high and clear, broke through the air. A chime. Then another— from the foyer. Rohan moved liquidly in that direction. The second he stepped out of the Great Room, there was a cacophony of notes, coming from all around him. Chimes—and bells.
Rohan tracked each individual sound back to the location from which it had originated. The dining room. The study. That one—it came from back in the Great Room. Rohan wasn’t the only player in the foyer now, not by a long shot.
He tuned out the chimes and listened only for the bells. Never send to know for whom the bell tolls… He turned sharply toward the dining room. There.
A tall blond blur tried to cut him off, but Rohan didn’t let her. He squeezed through the door to the dining room half a second before Savannah crossed the threshold.
An instant later, the door slammed shut behind them.
Savannah tried the knob. It didn’t turn. Through the thick, wooden door, Rohan heard a flurry of movement in the foyer, and then another slam. And
another. Three total—for three doors. Dining room. Study. Great Room.
“Locked in.” Rohan leaned back against the wall next to the door. “That’s one way to start a game.”
A screen descended from the ceiling. An image filled the screen: Avery Grambs. Three Hawthornes. Rohan wondered if the four of them had made use of strategically placed cameras and remote triggers for the doors, or if they’d used motion sensors to track the locations of the players and the number of people in each room.
Had this game been one of Rohan’s design, he would have opted for cameras.
“Good evening, players.” Xander Hawthorne appeared to be channeling his inner James Bond, accent and all. “And behold: the Grandest Escape Room. Your mission: Get out of the house before sunrise.”
Twelve hours, Rohan thought. Give or take.
“The good news,” Avery announced on the screen, “is that you won’t be working alone. Look around the room, whatever room you’re in now. The people you see? From now until sunrise, they’re your teammates.”
The previous year’s Grandest Game had been individual. There had been alliances, of course, players who had chosen to work together—right up until they didn’t. But official teams? That was new.
“No man is an island, entire of itself,” Rohan murmured. “In other words: No one is doing this alone. Clever.”
Savannah’s hand went to the chain encircling her hips, but her face didn’t betray any surprise she felt that he’d already read the words on the lock. Rohan wondered idly what it would take to bring down those walls of hers.
Or scale them.
“Either your entire team makes it out and down to the north dock by sunrise,” Jameson Hawthorne declared on-screen, “or none of you moves on to the next phase of the competition.”
“Vincit simul, amittere simul.” That was Xander again—and Latin. “Win together,” Savannah translated out loud. “Lose together.”
“Almost.” Rohan flicked his gaze to her. “The second part is closer to give up together, technically.” He was playing with her—a bit too much, perhaps. But Rohan did love to play.
And glowering was an excellent look for her.
“If, at any point, your team finds itself stuck,” Avery announced on- screen, “you may request a hint. In each room, you will find two buttons: one red, one black.”
Right on cue, the dining room table parted on one end to reveal a hidden panel with the promised buttons.
“Push red to request your team’s one and only hint,” Jameson instructed. “But be warned: That hint won’t be free. Everything comes at a cost.” Now Jameson Hawthorne was speaking Rohan’s language. “Hints in this game,” Jameson continued, “must be earned.”
One hint. Twelve hours. Rohan’s brain cataloged the situation with a certain amount of dispassion, and then: No one in this room except Savannah Grayson and me.
On a completely objective level, Rohan could see the benefits to that. “And now for the rules.” Xander was enjoying this way too much.
“Don’t break the windows. Don’t break the doors, walls, or furniture. Don’t break any of the other players.”
“Except by mutual consent.” Jameson flashed a wicked little grin at the camera.
That earned Jameson a warning look from Nash. “Your team can’t strong-arm or lock-pick your way out of this,” the oldest Hawthorne brother summarized in his characteristic, laid-back drawl. “Solve the puzzle, unlock the door. More puzzles, more doors.”
Rohan thought back to Nash’s prediction: It ain’t gonna be you.
“We won’t be able to see or hear any of you while you’re locked in.” Avery took back over. “What happens in the Grandest Escape Room stays in the Grandest Escape Room. If there’s an emergency, we can be contacted by pressing the black button.”
Red button, hint. Black button, emergency.
And just like that, the screen went black. Three blinking white cursors appeared, each on its own line.
“To solve the first puzzle, insert your answers here.” Jameson’s disembodied voice rang through the room. “And no, we’re not going to tell you the question. Also, you should be aware…”
An image flashed across the screen. Rohan recognized it as the symbol from the head of their keys.
“There are three teams,” Jameson said, a self-satisfied lilt in his tone.
On-screen, the swirls on the head of the key were pulled apart into three directions, dividing them into distinct shapes, the patterns that had been masked before suddenly unmistakable now: a heart, a diamond, a club.
Three symbols. Three teams. Rohan turned his attention to the lone remaining image on the screen: the infinity symbol. As he watched, it rotated ninety degrees clockwise.
“Not infinity,” Savannah said suddenly. “Eight.”
Rohan suddenly knew exactly what the game’s architects had been hinting at by building that image into the key. Damn it all to hell.
“There are three teams,” Avery reiterated, her voice coming from all around them. “And eight players.”
