Someone was playing mind games. As Lyra stepped onto a stone porch framed by enormous wooden pillars on either side, she looked to the western horizon, where the setting sun dyed the ocean in shades of stormy purple and a deep, burnt orange.
Sundown couldn’t have been more than three minutes away.
Lyra had resisted the urge to run to the house on the north point. Her dancer’s body could focus even when her mind was elsewhere, but she’d very pointedly taken her time, because if the person responsible for those notes had hoped to throw her off her game, if they’d hoped to either make her miss the deadline or make her rash, they were going to be sorely disappointed.
Lyra was not that easily manipulated.
The enormous house in front of her was made of brown stone and natural wood that might have looked rustic if the structure’s design—the angles, the pillars, the height—hadn’t called to mind something more like a church with a soaring steeple. The front door looked like it was made of solid silver, its surface etched with a geometric design.
Lyra ran her hand over the silver door, then opened it. Crossing the threshold into an enormous foyer, she saw a white spiral staircase rising up from an obsidian floor. Moving toward the staircase, light on her feet, Lyra realized: The stairs didn’t just spiral up.
What had appeared from the front of the house to be the ground floor
was actually the third story. The stairs spiraled up; the stairs spiraled down. Lyra saw now what would have been obvious if she’d explored the north point in detail earlier: This house hadn’t just been built on a cliff, at the tallest elevation on the island.
It had been built into the cliff.
On either side of the sprawling entryway were identical doors, with a third visible beyond the staircase. All three doors were made of dark, gleaming wood, each standing ten feet tall, each closed. In the foyer, there was a black granite table bearing seven silver trays, each marked by a card on which a name had been written in extravagant calligraphy.
The entryway was eerily silent as Lyra read through the names, one by one.
Odette.
Brady.
Knox.
Lyra.
Savannah.
Rohan.
Gigi.
Six players besides me, Lyra thought. Six suspects. As far as Lyra was concerned, neither Rohan nor Savannah was in the clear on the mind games front. Either one of them could have planted those notes then circled back. But at the end of the day, Lyra hadn’t come to Hawthorne Island to solve a mystery—not about notes on a tree and not about a man with more than his share of names who hadn’t even known how to pronounce hers.
Instead, she focused on the object sitting on the tray marked with her name. A key. It was large and bronze. Elaborate swirls of metal met to form a complicated shape at the head of the key. In the center of that shape, there was a symbol.
An infinity sign. That felt significant to Lyra—but significant how?
She looked back to the silver trays. All the others, except for one, were
empty. The lone remaining key—on the tray labeled Gigi—appeared nearly identical to Lyra’s, the only visible difference the pattern in the keys’ teeth.
They unlock different doors, Lyra thought. And I’m the second-to-last player in. She looked down at her key once more and noticed words engraved along its stem.
EVERY STORY HAS ITS BEGINNING… Lyra rotated the key in her hand, reading the words on the reverse side. TAKE ONLY YOUR OWN KEY.
Lyra thought about Jameson’s welcome to the island. In some senses, the game starts tonight. But in another very real sense… it starts right now.
The front door burst open, and a petite, brown-haired figure dashed inside. Just two seconds later, the heavy silver door swung shut on its own, followed by a sound like a gunshot—the deadbolt locking.
The door had just slammed and locked itself.
“Sunset,” gasped the newcomer, bending over with her hands on her knees.
Lyra observed her for a moment. “I take it you’re Gigi?” She noted that hers was the only key left on the table.
“That’s me!” Gigi replied, straightening up. “Question,” she panted. “Human wolverine, eyebrows like this.” She placed her index fingers on her forehead at opposite angles, forming a V above her nose. “Conceited vest, darkened soul. Seen him?”
The mention of the vest clued Lyra in on who Gigi was searching for. “Knox Landry?” Conceited vest, darkened soul. Lyra had to admit, Gigi’s description was spot on. “I haven’t seen him recently, but his key was already gone when I arrived.”
Gigi followed Lyra’s gaze to the trays on the table. Within seconds, she had claimed her own key. “Every story has its beginning…” Gigi quickly deciphered the tiny script faster than Lyra had. After reading the reverse side, she looked up, pondered for a moment, then reached for her name card and flipped it over.
A poem stared back at them from the reverse side. Lyra turned her own card over and found the exact same thing. Instructions.
FIND YOUR ROOM. USE THE KEY.
LEAVE THIS CARD FOR ALL TO SEE.
DON YOUR COSTUME AND YOUR MASK. THE BALL BEGINS AT QUARTER PAST.
