The key was old-fashioned, made of gold with bloodred jewels inlaid at the top and center. Golden vines encircled the body of the key, swirling to form a flower at the top. Small pearls dotted the vines. Jameson dragged his thumb lightly over them.
“One key down,” he said. He meant the words for Avery but couldn’t take his eyes off the prize in his hand. “One to go.”
The chances that the key in his hand opened the box—the one they needed to win—were one in three, one in two if Jameson’s assumption that the smugglers’ cave key wasn’t the winning key was correct. But fifty-fifty wasn’t the kind of odds a Hawthorne accepted.
Not when there were better odds to be had.
“Smuggle nothing out, the book, the caves,” Jameson rattled off. “The mark, the table, let the wheels turn. We’ve already uncovered a third clue in the room, but it’s unclear which, if any, verbal clue it corresponds to.”
“Watch yourself,” Avery murmured. She had this way of speaking to herself where her voice went quiet and her lips barely moved. Jameson had always loved the feeling of eavesdropping on her thoughts, letting them weave in and out of his own. “And the remaining verbal clues,” Avery continued, “the most likely ones at least—are the idioms. Leave no stone unturned and no rest for the wicked.”
Unbidden, the image of the stone garden came back to Jameson. Thousands upon thousands of stones had paved the ground. Maybe what they were looking for was there, but Jameson wasn’t about to risk this game on maybes.
Not when his gut was telling him there might be something else here in this room to point the way to the correct stone.
Not when he could almost taste the win.
“No stone unturned,” Jameson repeated, echoing Avery’s words back to her. “And no rest for the wicked.”
It was the second phrase that held his attention now. Rohan had said it in an offhanded, charming kind of way, the words directed at Zella, but Jameson knew in his gut that the Factotum was one of those people who could make anything seem offhand.
And charming.
No rest for the wicked, my dear. Jameson let the words play in his mind over and over. But it would hardly be sporting if I hadn’t given you everything you needed to win.
What were the chances that Rohan had given them what they needed in that exact moment, just a sentence before?
“No rest for the wicked.” Jameson said the words again, the pace of his speech speeding up, his heart rate doing the same. “Biblical in origin. Popularly used to mean that work never stops, but in the context of the Devil’s Mercy, it could imply that there are always more sins to be had… or that the wicked are given no peace.”
“No peace,” Avery repeated. “No reprieve. No mercy.” She locked her fathomless gaze on his. “Biblically, that would mean what? Fire and brimstone?”
Hellfire, Jameson thought. Damnation. The Devil’s Mercy. Those three things cycled through his mind, faster and faster, louder and louder until the words felt like they were coming from outside him.
And then Jameson’s gaze locked on to the stone fireplace, and his mind went silent.
Avery followed the direction of his gaze. Without either one of them saying a word, they both began to move—back to the fireplace.
“What do you think the chances are,” Jameson asked Avery, “that somewhere in this not-a-castle, we’ll find something to help us start a fire?”
