Consciousness came slowly, like a wave over unstable sand. The first thing Jameson became aware of was the cloth bag over his head, its rough fabric scratchy against the skin of his face.

The second thing that penetrated the inky blackness of his mind was the feeling of his hands, bound at the wrists, his arms strung up over his head. He struggled against the binding and heard the clinking of metal.

A chain.

He was chained.

Fear came first, like ice in his veins, and then full awareness hit him all at once, as the crush of memory after memory began rushing in. The Royal Suite. The wall behind the wall. Three lines. The pearls. Jameson remembered the moment, the day before Avery had come to Prague, when he’d pieced it all together.

The map. He remembered finding the first passageway. And the second. Thinking—or trying to—made it easier not to feel. Fear was a beast that went for the jugular, if you let it.

Chains. I’m chained.

“You shouldn’t be here.” The voice was familiar, but Jameson’s brain was hazy enough that he couldn’t place it—other than that it belonged to a woman. Or a girl. He heard footsteps coming closer. He felt the tip of something sharp and metallic come to rest at the base of his neck, just over his collarbone.

A knife? No amount of fighting through his mental fog to think could prevent Jameson from tasting fear, like metal on his tongue. A knife or—

The blade—if it was a blade—dug into his flesh, bit by bit. With pain came clarity and the stubborn refusal to be afraid at all. In the blink of an eye, Jameson remembered what he’d been doing when the darkness had overtaken him.

Vinárna Čertovka. He’d been making his way through that most narrow of streets, Avery behind him, when he’d seen—Not possible.

He’d seen a ghost. A ghost who had, as he’d given chase, disappeared. A ghost who, almost certainly, had not expected him to follow beyond a hidden door.

“Alice.” The second Jameson said his long-dead grandmother’s first name, the person standing in front of him—the woman, the girl—began the task of meticulously cutting the buttons off his shirt, one by one.

Baring more skin.

More.

Jameson was hit by the sudden, sickening thought that she was broadening her canvas.

And then a new voice spoke, light and airy, calm and controlled. “That’s enough.” This woman, Jameson was sure, was older.

She sounded a bit like his aunt Zara.

“I think we can agree,” the first voice said, bringing her weapon of choice to rest once more at the place where Jameson’s collarbone dipped, the place she had already marked, “this situation merits more than watching.”

There was a moment of silence, and then the second voice, the older one—Alice, the old man’s Alice, the love of his damned life in that Hawthorne-men-love-only-once kind of way—spoke again. “Tilt his head back.”

Hands grabbed Jameson by the chin. This time, he didn’t fight the fear. He used it, fighting with everything he had. And still, something was poured down his throat.

Thick, like syrup. Bitter, like fear.

Strong hands forced his jaw closed, blocked his ability to breathe through his nose. He fought swallowing the liquid.

Fought—and lost.

Within thirty second, darkness claimed him once more.

When Jameson came to, the air smelled of smoke. Not just smelled—he could feel the smoke on his skin, feel the fire closing in. The heat was already unbearable, the crackle of flames—multiple flames—jerking his body violently into survival mode. Fight or flight. There was no in between.

Jameson pulled against the chains that bound him, against the cuffs on his wrists. No. A Hawthorne didn’t give up. Hawthornes fought.

The chains. The flames. Have to—

He kept fighting. He breathed—and tried not to.

Breathed—and tried not to.

In the distance, he heard voices. Three of them, calmly discussing the price of wheat.

Let me go. Saying the words would have meant taking another breath, and the smoke was so thick now that he couldn’t afford to breathe.

He couldn’t—

He breathed.

And not long after that, he stopped breathing.

The third time Jameson woke, there was no fire, no chains on his wrists, no bag on his face. He was outdoors on a rooftop terrace, sitting at a small, round table surrounded by the quaintest flower garden imaginable.

Sitting across from him was his dead grandmother. Jameson was struck by how very much she looked like Skye.

“You favor your grandfather,” Alice Hawthorne said, her own thoughts running eerily parallel to his. “When he was young.”

“You’re—” Jameson’s voice burned his throat.

“No one,” Alice Hawthorne said, lifting a cup of tea to her mouth. So casual. So dainty. “I am no one, dear boy.” He couldn’t tell if that was affection in her tone or a warning—or both. “You have seen and heard nothing. Prague is a wonderful city, but it is not for you to explore.” She set her teacup down, and it clinked lightly against the saucer. “I hear Belize is lovely this time of year.”

Jameson’s mind was the type that never stopped. Questions were meant to be answered, mysteries solved. And when your last name was Hawthorne, there was always one more mystery.

One more puzzle.

One more game.

But this—the cuts at the base of his throat, the smell of smoke still clinging to his body—did not feel like a game. He thought back, trying to remember anything before this moment, but suddenly, the last thing—the only thing—he could remember was coming out of Vinárna Čertovka.

Seeing Alice.

Giving chase.

And then—nothing.

Nothing, except for heat and pain and fear and, oddest of all, something about the price of wheat.

“Just to be clear here,” Jameson said, searching his memory and finding almost nothing. “Am I dead?” He gave his grandmother a look. “Because you are.”

“As already established, dear boy, I am no one and nothing.” Instead of reaching for her teacup this time, the impossibility that was an alive and well Alice Hawthorne reached for the napkin in her lap. When she brought her hand back up to the table, she was holding what appeared to be a shining gold compass.

She hit a hidden trigger, and its face flipped open. From inside the compass, Jameson’s dead grandmother removed what appeared to be a small, iridescent bead that looked a bit like a pearl.

“There are ways, Jameson Hawthorne, to take care of problems.”

His grandmother dropped the bead in his tea and then removed a second, identical one from the compass and set it down on his saucer. “That one you may keep, as a reminder.”

Jameson stared at it. “Poison.” He’d meant to make that a question, but it didn’t come out that way.

“Quite untraceable, I assure you.” Alice smiled a bit, and again, she reminded Jameson so much of Skye. “I understand that you are quite close to your brothers.” The dead woman took another sip of her tea. “I also understand that there is a girl.”

Avery, Jameson thought. The memory of the last few days with his heiress—of everything that had come before that and the lifetime of memories that they were supposed to have still to come—hit Jameson like a knife to the gut.

He jumped to his feet. “Stay away from Avery. And my brothers.” An untraceable poison. An unmistakable threat. Who the hell was Alice Hawthorne?

“I can sense that you might be on the verge of attempting a little threat of some kind, but I assure you, you needn’t bother.” Alice nodded again to the bead. The poison. “Go ahead. Take it. If there is one thing that loving a Hawthorne man taught me, it is that there are benefits to physical reminders of the past. To reminders of costs and risks, stories told and untold.”

Jameson stared at her. “I don’t understand.”

“I know,” Alice Hawthorne said. “If I thought you did, well, then we would have a problem.” She let her gaze travel down to the cuts on his neck and then lower.

Jameson looked down at his own body. Dried blood and ashes.

There are ways, Jameson Hawthorne, to take care of problems.

“You really should be going,” his grandmother said, finishing her tea. “It’s nearly dawn now, and I believe your little heiress is getting quite antsy about your absence.” Alice stood. “She’ll have questions, I’m sure.”

Jameson heard the threat inherent in that sentence. As much as he wanted to know what the hell this was—how the hell any of this was possible—Avery was the one thing that he would not, could not risk.

Fear wasn’t just ice in your veins or a beast at your throat. Fear was loving someone so fiercely that there was no point in your heart beating if hers did not.

Jameson looked Alice Hawthorne directly in the eyes. “There’s nothing to tell.”

The old woman gave a soft hmmm, and as she began to walk away, leaving Jameson staring out at the city of Prague and the coming dawn, he couldn’t bite back one more question—just one of all the thousands he had.

“The old man,” Jameson called out. “Did he know?”

Silence was his grandmother’s only reply, but Jameson’s mind, wired as it was for puzzles and riddles and codes, came up with an answer of its own.

Who else would have drawn that map? The old man had known that his beloved was alive. That she was in Prague. The real question was what else Tobias Hawthorne had known.

What else there was to know.

Fire and pain and fear and the price of wheat. Memories hovered like ghosts over graves. Jameson didn’t linger. He scaled down the building and snaked his way back through the streets of Prague.

And the entire time, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched.