It makes no sense,” I told Max that afternoon. “Jameson never lets up on a puzzle. What’s his angle here?”
Nash and Libby had agreed to go to Cartago. I was sitting in my bedroom, staring at the photograph of the Cartago house. A quartet of columns held a tile roof over a large porch, but the house itself was small, less than a thousand square feet.
“Maybe he doesn’t have an angle,” Max said.
My eyes narrowed. “He’s Jameson Hawthorne. He always has an angle.”
A sharp knock at the door cut off whatever Max would have said in reply. I went to answer it, annoyed that a part of me couldn’t think about Jameson without thinking about the way it felt when his lips brushed lightly against my neck.
I opened the door to find someone holding a tall stack of fluffy white towels. The towels blocked the person’s face, and my mind went to the bloodied heart that someone—likely a staff member—had left in my room.
I took a step back. My heart rate jumped. Then Eli stepped into view. “She’s clear,” he told me.
I nodded and stepped back. The person holding the towels walked past me. Mellie. She didn’t say a word to us and made her way into my bathroom.
“I will never get used to someone else doing my—” I didn’t get to say the word laundry before a gut-rattling scream tore through the air. My body responded before my brain did, launching me into the bathroom just in time to see Mellie slamming closed the doors to my bathroom armoire.
“Snake,” she wheezed. “There’s a snake in your—”
Eli pulled me back into the bedroom. I heard him making a call, and less than two minutes later, my room was flooded with guards.
“What the elf!” Max demanded. “Did she say snake?”
“Rattlesnake.” Oren took Max and me aside. “Dead—no actual danger.”
I met his eyes and said what he wasn’t saying. “Just a threat.”
Someone wanted me scared. Who—and why? Deep down, some part of me knew the answer. An hour later, I went back to Toby’s wing. Max went with me—and so did Oren.
The entire wing had been bricked up again.
I turned back to Oren. “The Laughlins did this.” I wasn’t sure if I was talking about the wall—or the snake. They don’t want me asking questions about Toby.
“The threat level has been assessed,” Oren told me. “It will continue to be assessed, and we will respond accordingly.”
“Avery?”
I turned and saw Grayson making his way down the hall toward us. He always seemed so in control, so certain that the world would bend to his will. If he wanted me safe, I would be safe.
“I take it you heard about the snake,” I said wryly.
“I did.” Grayson arched an eyebrow at Oren. “I trust it’s being handled.”
Oren did not dignify that comment with a response.
“I also talked to Jameson.” Grayson’s tone gave away nothing. I saw myself with Jameson at school, in Toby’s wing, in the hot tub, and I had to look away from Grayson’s piercing silver eyes. “I understand we’re in a waiting pattern.”
It took me a moment to realize that when he said he’d talked to Jameson, he meant about the numbers—about Cartago. Not us.
“I thought perhaps,” Grayson said evenly, “you could use a distraction.”
“What kind of distraction?” Max asked, her tone just innocent enough to make me think the question wasn’t innocent at all.
“A friendly one,” I told her sternly. That’s all Grayson and I were.
Friends.
He straightened his suit jacket and smiled. “Either of you ladies up for a game?”
