Rebecca answered the door before we even had a chance to knock. “My mom’s right through there,” she told Eve quietly. Taking a deep breath, Eve walked past Rebecca.
“On a scale of one to pi,” Xander murmured, “how bad is it?”
Rebecca pulled her hand from his and laid three fingers on his palm. Her normally creamy skin was red and chapped around her nailbeds and knuckles.
Three, on a scale of one to pi. Given the value of pi, that definitely wasn’t good.
Rebecca led Xander and me from the small entryway into the living room, where Eve and her mother were. The first thing I noticed were the snow globes sitting on a shelf. They looked like they had been polished until they gleamed. In fact, everything that I could see looked freshly cleaned, like it had been scrubbed and scrubbed again.
Rebecca’s hands. I wondered if the cleaning had been her idea—or her mother’s.
“Rebecca, this was supposed to be a family affair.” Mallory Laughlin didn’t take her eyes off Eve, even once Xander and I came into view.
Rebecca looked down, ruby-red hair falling into her face. She always looked like the kind of person an artist would want to paint. Even partially obscured, there was something fairy-tale beautiful about the pain on her face.
Eve reached out to take her grandmother’s hand. “I’m the one who asked Avery to come with me. Toby… he considers her family, too.”
Ouch. If Eve had meant that as a guilt trip, it was both brutal and effective.
“That’s ridiculous.” Mallory sat, and when Eve did the same, Mallory leaned toward her, drinking in her presence like a woman gulping down sand in a desert mirage. “Why would my son pay that girl any attention when you’re right here?” She lifted a hand to the side of Eve’s face. “When you’re so perfect.”
Beside me, Rebecca sucked a breath in around her teeth.
“I know I look like your daughter,” Eve murmured. “This must be difficult.”
“You look like me.” Rebecca’s mom smiled. “Emily did, too. I remember when she was born. I looked at her, and all I could think was that she was me. Emily was mine, and nobody was ever going to take her away from me. I told myself that she would never want for anything.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Eve said quietly.
“Don’t be sorry,” Mallory replied, a sob in her voice. “You’ve come back to me now.”
“Mom.” Rebecca cut in without ever looking up from the floor. “We talked about this.”
“And I’ve told you that I don’t need you or anyone else to infantilize me.” Mallory’s reply was sharp enough to slice through glass. “The world is like that, you know.” The woman oriented back toward Eve, sounding more maternal. “You have to learn to take what you want—and never, ever let someone take what you don’t want to give.” Mallory laid a hand on Eve’s cheek. “You’re strong. Like me. Like Emily was.”
This time, there was no audible response from Rebecca. I bumped my shoulder gently against hers, a silent, deliberate I’m here. I wondered if Xander felt as useless as I did standing there, watching her oldest scars seeping.
“Can I ask you something?” Eve said to Mallory.
Mallory smiled. “Anything, sweet girl.”
“You’re my grandmother. Is your husband here? Is he my grandfather?”
Mallory’s reply was controlled. “We don’t need to talk about that.”
“All I’ve ever wanted is to know where I come from,” Eve told her. “Please?”
Mallory stared at her for the longest time. “Could you call me Mom?” she asked softly. I saw Rebecca shake her head—not at her mother or at Eve or at anyone. She was just shaking it because this was not a good idea.
“Tell me about Toby’s father?” Eve asked. “Please, Mom?”
Mallory’s eyes closed, and I wondered what dead places inside of her had seized with life when Eve had uttered that one little word.
“Eve,” I said sharply, but Rebecca’s mother spoke over me.
“He was older. Very attractive. Very mysterious. We used to sneak around the estate, up to the House, even. I had free rein of it all in those days, but I was forbidden to bring guests. Mr. Hawthorne valued his privacy. He would have lost his mind if he’d known what I was getting up to, what we did in his hallowed halls.” Mallory opened her eyes. “Teenage girls and the forbidden.”
“What was his name?” Rebecca asked, taking a step toward her mother.
“This really doesn’t concern you, Rebecca,” Mallory snapped.
“What was his name?” Eve co-opted Rebecca’s question. Maybe it was supposed to be a kindness, but it felt cruel because she got an answer.
“Liam,” Mallory whispered. “His name was Liam.”
Eve leaned forward. “What happened to him? Your Liam?”
Mallory stiffened like a marionette whose strings were suddenly pulled tight. “He left.” Her voice was calm—too calm. “Liam left.”
Eve took both of Mallory’s hands in hers. “Why did he leave?”
“He just did.”
The doorbell rang, and Oren strode to the door. I followed him to the foyer. As his hand closed over the knob, he gave an order, doubtless to one of his men outside.
“Close in.” Oren glanced over his shoulder at me. “Stay put, Avery.”
“Why is Avery staying put?” Xander asked, coming into the foyer beside me. Rebecca took one step to follow him, then hesitated, frozen in her own personal purgatory, caught between us and the words being murmured between Eve and her mother.
My brain got to the answer to Xander’s question before Oren could articulate it. “This is the first time I’ve left the estate since the last package was delivered,” I noted. “You’re expecting another delivery.”
In reply, my head of security answered the door with his gun drawn.
“Hello to you, too,” Thea said dryly.
“Don’t mind Oren.” Xander greeted her. “He mistook you for a threat of the less passive-aggressive variety.”
The sound of Thea’s voice shattered the ice that had frozen Rebecca’s feet to the ground. “Thea. I wanted to call, but my mom took my phone.”
“And someone turned mine off,” Thea said. She looked from Rebecca to me. “While I was in the shower, someone came into my house, into my bedroom, turned off my phone, and left this beside it, with handwritten instructions to bring it here.”
Thea held out an envelope. It was a deep golden color, shining and reflective.
“Someone broke into your house?” I asked, my voice hushed.
“Into your bedroom?” Rebecca was beside Thea in a heartbeat.
Oren took possession of the envelope. He’d set a trap for the courier here, but the message had been delivered elsewhere—to Thea.
Did you see her photos? That video? I asked Toby’s captor silently. Is this what she gets, for helping me?
“I had a guard on your house,” Oren told Thea. “He didn’t report anything unusual.”
I stared at the envelope in Oren’s hand, at my full name written across the front. Avery Kylie Grambs. Something in me snapped, and I snatched the envelope, turning it over to see a wax seal holding it closed.
The design of the seal took my breath away. Rings of concentric circles.
“It’s like the disk,” I said, the words catching in my throat.
“Don’t open it,” Oren told me. “I need to make sure—”
The rest of his words were lost to the roar in my mind. My fingers tore into the envelope, like my body had been set to autopilot at full throttle. Once I’d broken the seal, the envelope unfolded, revealing a message written on the interior in shining silver script.
363-1982.
That was it. Just those seven digits. A phone number? There was no area code, but—
“Avery!” Rebecca yelped, and I realized the paper I was holding had caught fire.
Flames devoured the message. I dropped it, and seconds later, the envelope and the numbers were nothing but ashes. “How…” I started to say.
Xander came to stand beside me. “I could rig an envelope to do that.” He paused. “Honestly? I have rigged an envelope to do that.”
“I told you to wait, Avery.” Oren gave me what I could only describe as a Dad Look. I was clearly on very thin ice with him.
“What did the message say?” Rebecca asked me.
Xander produced a pen and a sheet of paper shaped like a scone, seemingly out of nowhere. “Write down everything you remember,” he told me.
I closed my eyes, picturing the number—and then wrote: 363-1982.
I turned the paper around so that Xander could see it. “Nineteen eighty-two.” Xander latched on to the numbers after the dash. “Could be a year. The three-hundred-and-sixty-third day of which was December twenty-ninth.”
December 29, 1982.
“Looks like a phone number to me,” Thea scoffed.
“That was my first thought, too,” I murmured. “But no area code.”
“Was there anything that could indicate location?” Xander asked. “If we could derive an area code, that would give us a number to call.”
A number to call. A date to check. And who knew how many other possibilities there were? It could be a cipher, coordinates, a bank account…
“I recommend we return to Hawthorne House immediately,” Oren cut in. His expression was downright stony. “That is, if you’re still interested in letting me do my job, Avery.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I trusted Oren with my life, and I owed him better than making his job harder than it had to be. “I saw the seal on the envelope, and something in me snapped.”
Rings of concentric circles. When Toby was taken, I’d thought that the disk might have something to do with why, but when his captor had sent it back, I’d assumed that I was wrong.
But what if I wasn’t?
What if the disk had always been part of the riddle?
“The number could be a misdirection,” Xander said, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. “The seal might be the message.”
“Out!”
I turned back toward the living room. Mallory Laughlin was stalking toward us.
“I want all of you out of my house!”
Our presence here had never been welcome, and now there’d been fire.
“Ma’am.” Oren held up a hand. “I’m recommending that we all return to Hawthorne House.”
“What?” Thea asked, her honey-brown eyes narrowing.
Oren flicked his gaze toward her. “You should plan for an extended stay. Call it a slumber party.”
“You think Thea’s in danger.” Rebecca looked around the room. “You think we all are.”
“Breaking and entering is an escalation.” Oren’s tone was measured. “We’re dealing with an individual who has proved that he is willing to go through intermediaries to get to Avery. He used Thea to send a message this time—and not just in the literal sense.”
I can get to anyone. You can’t protect them. That was the message.
“This is ridiculous,” Rebecca’s mom spat. “I won’t be accompanying you anywhere, Mr. Oren, and neither will my daughters.”
“Daughter,” Rebecca said quietly. I felt my heart twist in my chest.
Oren was not dissuaded. “I’m afraid that even if you weren’t already at risk, this visit would put you on our villain’s radar. As much as you don’t want to hear it, Ms. Laughlin—”
“It’s doctor, actually,” Rebecca’s mother snapped. “And I don’t care about the risk. The world can’t take any more from me than it already has.”
I moved closer to Rebecca, whose arms were wrapped around her middle, like all she could do was stand there and just keep taking the blows.
“That isn’t true,” Thea said quietly.
“Thea.” Rebecca’s voice was strangled. “Don’t.”
Mallory Laughlin spared a fond look for Thea. “Such a nice girl.” She turned to Rebecca. “I don’t know why you have to be so nasty to your sister’s friends.”
“I am not,” Thea said, steel in her voice, “a nice girl.”
“You need to come with us,” Eve told Mallory. “I need to know you’re safe.”
“Oh.” Mallory’s expression softened. There was something tragic about the moment the tension gave way, like it was the only thing that had kept her from crumbling. “You need a mother,” she told Eve. The tenderness in her voice was almost painful.
“Come to Hawthorne House,” Eve said again. “For me?”
“For you,” Mallory agreed, not even sparing a look for Rebecca. “But I’m not setting a foot in the mansion. All these years, Tobias Hawthorne let me think my boy was dead. He never told me that I had a granddaughter. It was bad enough that he stole my baby, bad enough that those boys killed my Emily—I am not stepping foot in the House.”
“You can stay at Wayback Cottage,” Oren said soothingly. “With your parents.”
“I’ll stay with you,” Rebecca said quietly.
“No,” her mother snapped. “You love Hawthornes so much, Rebecca? Stay with them.”