That night, in honor of Thea’s visit, Mrs. Laughlin made a melt-in-your- mouth roast beef. Orgasmic garlic mashed potatoes. Roasted asparagus, broccoli florets, and three different kinds of crème brûlée.
I couldn’t help feeling like it was pretty revealing that Mrs. Laughlin had pulled out all the stops for Thea—but not for me.
Trying not to seem petty, I sat down to a formal dinner in the “dining room,” which probably should have been called a banquet hall instead. The massive table was set for eleven. I cataloged the participants in this little family dinner: four Hawthorne brothers. Skye. Zara and Constantine. Thea. Libby. Nan. And me.
“Thea,” Zara said, her voice almost too pleasant, “how is field hockey?” “We’re undefeated this season.” Thea turned toward me. “Have you
decided which sport you’ll be playing, Avery?”
I managed to resist the urge to snort, but barely. “I don’t do sports.” “Everyone at Country Day does a sport,” Xander informed me, before
stuffing his mouth with roast beef. His eyes rolled upward with pleasure as he chewed. “It is an actual, real requirement and not a figment of Thea’s delightfully vindictive imagination.”
“Xander,” Nash said in warning.
“I said she was delightfully vindictive,” Xander replied innocently.
“If I were a boy,” Thea told him with a Southern belle smile, “people would just call me driven.”
“Thea.” Constantine frowned at her.
“Right.” Thea dabbed at her lips with her napkin. “No feminism at the dinner table.”
This time, I couldn’t bite back the snort. Point, Thea.
“A toast,” Skye declared out of nowhere, holding up her wineglass and slurring the words enough that it was clear she’d already been imbibing.
“Skye, dear,” Nan said firmly, “have you considered sleeping it off?” “A toast,” Skye reiterated, glass still held high. “To Avery.”
For once, she’d gotten my name right. I waited for the guillotine to drop, but Skye said nothing else. Zara raised her glass. One by one, every other glass went up.
Every person in this room had probably gotten the message: No good could come of challenging the will. I might have been the enemy—but I was also the one with the money.
Is that why Zara brought Thea here? To get close to me? Is that why she left me alone at the foundation with Grayson?
“To you, Heiress,” Jameson murmured to my left. I turned to look at him. I hadn’t seen him since the night before. I was fairly certain he’d skipped school. I wondered if he’d spent the day in the Black Wood, looking for the next clue. Without me.
“To Emily,” Thea added suddenly, her glass still raised, her eyes on Jameson. “May she rest in peace.”
Jameson’s glass came down. His chair was pushed roughly back from the table. Farther down, Grayson’s fingers tightened around the stem of his own glass, his knuckles going white.
“Theadora,” Constantine hissed.
Thea took a drink and adopted the world’s most innocent expression. “What?”
 |
Everything in me wanted to follow Jameson, but I waited a few minutes before excusing myself. Like that would keep any of them from knowing exactly where I was going.
In the foyer, I pressed my hand flat against the wall panels, hitting the sequence designed to reveal the coat closet door. I needed my coat if I was going to venture off into the Black Wood. I was sure that was where Jameson had gone.
As my hand hooked around the hanger, a voice spoke from behind me. “I’m not going to ask you what Jameson is up to. What you’re up to.”
I turned to face Grayson. “You’re not going to ask me,” I repeated, taking in the set of his jaw and those canny silver eyes, “because you
already know.”
“I was there last night. At the bridge.” There were edges in Grayson’s tone—not rough, but sharp. “This morning, I went to see the Red Will.”
“I still have the decoder,” I pointed out, trying not to read anything into the fact that he’d seen his brother and me at the bridge—and didn’t sound happy about it.
Grayson shrugged, his shoulders pulling against the confines of his suit. “Red acetate is easy enough to come by.”
If he’d seen the Red Will, he knew that their middle names were clues. I wondered if his mind had gone immediately to their fathers. I wondered if that hurt him, the way it hurt Jameson.
“You were there last night,” I said, echoing back what he’d told me. “At the bridge.” How much had he seen? How much did he know?
What had he thought when Jameson and I had touched?
“Westbrook. Davenport. Winchester. Blackwood.” Grayson took a step toward me. “They’re last names—but they are also locations. I found the clue on the bridge after you and my brother had gone.”
He’d followed us there. He’d found what we’d found. “What do you want, Grayson?”
“If you were smart,” he warned softly, “you’d stay away from Jameson. From the game.” He looked down. “From me.” Emotion slashed across his features, but he masked it before I could tell what, exactly, he was feeling. “Thea’s right,” he said sharply, turning away from me—walking away from me. “This family—we destroy everything we touch.”
