hey y'all!
I'm so excited to be able to post another chapter so soon! I'm going to try and update as soon as physically possible, but we'll see!
please rxr guys! I'd love to hear your predictions of who the murderer is!
p.s. if you're reading Perfect Forever, stop now and read this instead. Please.
p.p.s. sorry about all the angst...gray gets a break soon I promise :)
thanks everyone!
peace out!
—AVERY—
Not again.
The door to Grayson's room was ajar, and so were the front doors, open to the wind, letting it blow rain onto the marble floor of the entrance hall.
She should have locked his door. Why hadn't she locked it when she left? She knew he sleepwalked, knew and didn't take any measures to prevent him from getting out and hurting himself. He could be out there, now, in the storm, walking right over the edge of the steep, rocky cliffs.
Avery flew down the grand staircase, almost slipping on the bottom step. She pulled her hoodie tighter against the chill and splashed across the cold marble, bursting out into the rain.
Squinting through the downpour, through the dark locks of her hair whipped around her face, Avery called out, "Gray!"
Her voice was whisked away, and she mustered all the power in her lungs and screamed his name into the wind. For a moment, she stood alone on the front step of Vantage, blood thundering through her ears, and then she saw the dark silhouette breaking into a run.
Grayson sprinted across the wet grass and up the stairs. He took Avery by her upper arms, eyes wild, and asked, "What's wrong? Did something happen?"
His voice was still hoarse, and his hair was wet and tousled. Rain dripped down his face, droplets rolling off his chin as he looked at her with an anxious, penetrating gaze.
"Everything's fine," said Avery. "I just—I thought—were you sleepwalking?"
Grayson rubbed the back of his neck. "I believe so. I woke up standing on the edge of the cliff about twenty minutes ago. I'm honestly amazed at what I get up to while I'm unconscious."
"Are you okay?" Avery demanded. "You're soaked; that can't be good for your pneumonia. Why didn't you come right back in?"
"I'm alright," Grayson soothed. "I'm not hurt, and I've only just gotten wet. I'll be fine once I change."
"Then let's get you inside." Avery seized Grayson's wrist, not very gently, and tugged him back through the double doors into the entrance hall. She let go and shut the doors, which thudded back into place, sealing them back inside the warmth of Vantage.
"Go get changed," Avery ordered. "Then come right back down."
"Yes, ma'am."
Avery made tea rather aggressively and lit a fire in the drawing room, watching the flames lick against the dark stone of the hearth. When Grayson came back downstairs, dressed in only a tank top and a pair of sweatpants, Avery spared only a moment to look at his biceps before snapping, "You'll freeze to death, Gray, couldn't you have put on more clothes?"
"As it turns out, I only brought one pair of pajamas," Grayson sighed, running a hand through his already tousled hair. "Perhaps there are blankets somewhere around here?"
He went to a wicker basket next to the drawing room couch and opened it, pulling out what appeared to be a folded tartan-style blanket—dark blue and green with gold shot throughout and a fringe on the edges. "Will this do?"
"Probably."
Grayson wrapped himself in the blanket, then screwed up his face in a confused manner. After a few moments of watching him struggle, Avery realized that the blanket was more of a shawl, with a hole for Grayson's head. It was far too big for him—most likely sized for Ian—and Grayson looked rather like a tent had been draped over him.
"Do I look ridiculous?" Grayson asked once he'd finally put the shawl on correctly.
"Very much so," said Avery, and it was true, but—he didn't just look ridiculous. For once in his life, Grayson looked soft, warm, instead of the coldly angular ice sculpture he'd used to be. A lock of darkened, wet hair hung down over his forehead, and his cheeks were flushed now that he was back in the warmth.
Avery wanted nothing more than to kiss him.
Instead, she went into the kitchen and poured two cups of tea. Most people would assume that Grayson took his tea black; however, Avery knew him better than that. She poured milk into Grayson's cup until the tea was a warm brown and dropped three sugar cubes into it.
Three sugars. Before she'd known him, she would never have guessed that Grayson Hawthorne was a three-sugar kind of man.
Personally, she took her tea black, so when she was done with Grayson's cup, she took them both from the kitchen into the drawing room. Grayson was sitting in front of the fire, perfectly still, staring into the flames.
Without turning around, he spoke. "Ave, can you draw?"
"Not well," she said, kneeling down and pressing his cup into his hands. He murmured a thank you as she continued. "I guess I've never really tried. Maybe a rough sketch or a schematic diagram. But when it comes to real art? I don't think so."
Avery looked into the fire and murmured, "Why do you ask?"
"I just realized I didn't know," said Grayson. "There are a lot of things I know about you, Avery, and none of them actually matter. I feel like I know what you are, but not who you are. I haven't taken the time to truly understand you. And for that, I'm sorry."
"We never had time for each other," Avery told him. "It's not your fault. I was…infatuated. With, you know, Jamie. And you were hurting in a million different ways. I hardly ever noticed."
"You never told me why you ended it," Grayson whispered. "Everyone thought you two were perfect."
"Well, the drinking was a problem. And…I guess I missed the quiet. Jamie's a good man, but he's loud, he's intense. He's very passionate. I'm alright with passion, but I needed a break from all that fire."
Avery let the crackling flames fill up her eyes, reminding her of those things that might have been. "He blazes, you know. Jamie is…he's a forest fire. Untethered."
She took a sip of her tea. "I think all of you are fire in a way."
"Oh?" Grayson seemed to be closer to her than earlier. Had he moved, or had she? "Enlighten me."
"Nash is a candle," said Avery. "Like the one you would take to bed to read, to keep the dark out. Xan is a spark, maybe a firework. Something that explodes. And you…you're the embers. The little bright spots in all the ash."
"Poetic, aren't we?" Grayson's voice was soft. "But I'm not sure I'm the embers."
"What do you think you are, then?"
"A lantern," Grayson said. "Artificial. In need of new batteries. Surrounded by glass. Always broken in some way or another."
"Oh, Gray," Avery whispered. "Please don't think you're broken."
"I don't think." His lip was trembling. "I know."
Silence followed, in which Grayson stared into his cup of tea. "I'm sorry, Avery. I don't know what's wrong with me."
"You might be sleep-deprived," said Avery. "But—Gray, look at me."
He looked up, barely, confusion and barely concealed sadness evident in his wide eyes and clenched jaw. Avery set her cup of tea down on the hearth and took Grayson's chin in her hand, tilting his face up to her.
"There is nothing wrong with you," she hissed. "Nothing, Gray, do you understand? Maybe you're not perfect—but you don't have to be. You're not made of glass, Gray. You're made of steel."
And she kissed him, his face still in her hands, and he melted into it, into her, until she was locked in his embrace and her fingers gripped his cheekbones with a ferocity that startled even her.
The fire was warm, but Grayson was warmer, and as he leaned his forehead against Avery's and their lips separated, he whispered, "Est unus ex nobis."
She is one of us.
"Et nos defendat."
She had heard similar words before—we protect her—but these were different.
"She protects us," Grayson said, and his breath was warm against Avery's face, stoking embers. "If we are fire, Avery, do you know what you are?"
"A fire extinguisher," she deadpanned, but she was smiling, and so was Grayson as he pressed his lips to hers again and breathed his words into her lungs.
"You are a phoenix."
That night, it snowed.
Avery woke on the floor of the drawing room, cheek pressed into the carpet. Grayson was curled nearby, still wrapped in the shawl. His hair was even messier than it had been last night, and his side rose and fell evenly as he breathed, the sound no longer rattling. It was the most peaceful Avery had ever seen him.
She stood up and took the cold tea from the hearth, in which the fire had dwindled into a pile of ashes and embers. As Avery carried the teacups into the kitchen and placed them in the sink, she caught a glimpse of white outside.
Just as she went to open the back door, Xander came flying into the kitchen, screaming. "Snow! Oh my gosh, you guys, it snowed! Nash, Jamie, get out here! Gray! Why are you on the floor? It's still snowing!"
He flung open the back door and promptly crashed into a newly formed snowbank. Avery sighed, knowing what his reaction would be, and couldn't stifle a laugh when Xander popped back up with a shriek. "Holy-crap-it's-so-cold-I'll-die!"
Nash and Jameson tore through the room and out into the powdery drifts, flinging themselves down, and Avery didn't think she'd ever heard either of them scream that high. Max was close behind, dressed in warmer clothes, and she tackled Xander back into the snow, pinning her boyfriend down as he laughed hysterically.
"What in tarnation is going on?" came Grayson's voice from behind Avery, and as she turned around, his cheeks went bright red. "Sorry, I—stupid accent. What on God's green earth are my idiot brothers doing?"
"Playing in the snow," Avery told him. "Like toddlers. I won't think any less of you if you join them."
Grayson lifted his chin haughtily. "I find it very undignified."
"No one else does, Gray, and if you don't go have fun for once I'm going to tackle you into having it."
He sighed. "I suppose I'll go get my shoes on."
And then all the Hawthornes—grown men, at this point—were flinging snow at each other and dumping it down shirts, and Libby, wrapped in a blanket, had joined Avery at the back door, laughing as she quietly filled her fiancé's abandoned hat with snow. After several minutes, Ian came down too and stood on the other side of the door, sipping tea with a look of utmost disapproval on his face. But he didn't stop the boys, and Avery suspected that he was secretly enjoying watching them.
When the boys had traipsed back inside, soaked and flushed from the cold, Avery left them to make their own fire and hot chocolate and went upstairs to change out of her pajamas. Putting her key into the lock on her door, she turned it with a scraping sound and slipped into her room, shutting the door behind her.
As she turned to take a sweater out of her bag, she saw it.
Taped to the back of her closed door was a piece of lined paper, folded in half. The jagged block letters on the outside of it read simply HELP.
Avery froze for a moment, then flew back to the door, pulling the paper off so forcefully she nearly ripped it. With shaking fingers, she unfolded it, finding one of the most oddly formatted clues she'd ever seen.
Letters, perhaps thirty or so of them, ringed the words You're Going In Circles. Avery wasn't sure where she was supposed to start, but from the central top letter, going clockwise, the circle read OWLIGPCSLOEQSIGYIRTLOWTBUSGPSGQA.
Well, that was helpful. More cryptic clues. More riddles.
Avery changed quickly and then sat down at the desk in the corner of her room, pulling out an embellished piece of stationery paper and setting the provided rose gold pen to it. She wrote out the letters, tallying their counts.
G appeared four times, making it the most common letter. O, S, L, and I were next, with three appearances each. She had to assume that one of those five letters was E, the most common letter in the English language.
She tried the cipher with E instead of G, ending up with OWLIEPCSLOEQSIEYIRTLOWTBUSEPSEQA. The only real words in that configuration of letters were owl (another bird, did that mean something?), lie, slow, low, and bus. Not any more obvious, of course.
Maybe O was E? It was a stretch, but with the whole cipher referring to circles…
Swapping out E for O gave Avery EWLIGPCSLEEQSIGYIRTLEWTBUSGPSGQA. She stared at it, frustrated, for several moments, and then remembered that in substitution ciphers, assuming that was what this one was, the last few letters of the alphabet usually ended up having no substitution; they were just themselves. The closest letter to the end of the alphabet in this cipher was Y. Could Avery assume that YIR was likely YOU, one of the most common words starting with Y?
Swapping those letters out revealed EWLOGPCSLEEQSOGYOUTLEWTBUSGPSGQA. Still a jumble of complete nonsense, but it was starting to look more like words.
S and G both appeared next to each other often. They could be a common bigram—th, he, in. In caught Avery's eye first, since it was in the clue within the clue, so she swapped the letters out to get EWLONPCILEEQIONYOUTLEWTBUINPINQA.
Q came right before ION. Did that make Q a T?
EWLONPCILEETIONYOUTLEWTBUINPINTA…
L and T were the most common remaining letters. Avery had already used the most common vowel—what if one was the most common consonant, R?
She tried with L first. EWRONPCIREETIONYOUTREWTBUINPINTA
That seemed to get closer to actual words, so Avery studied them. WRON immediately jumped out to her—maybe the P after those letters was a G, making the word WRONG.
EWRONGCIREETIONYOUTREWTBUINGINTA
After E and T, A was the most common letter in English. So if T hadn't been R, it had to be A.
EWRONGCIREETIONYOUAREWABUINGINTA
WABUING—walking? It was the only action verb starting with a W Avery could think of, barring wafting, which seemed unlikely.
When she swapped out all the letters in walking, she got EWRONGCIREETIONYOUAREWALKINGINTA. She knew she was likely to have split the circle in the middle of a word, so the letters on the end and beginning of the line were probably meant to be together.
The last actual word was in, so Avery assumed that the TA was the beginning of the word she'd split though. With wrong near the beginning of the line, that made the split word TAE—easy enough. That word was the.
Avery moved it to the beginning of the sentence: THEWRONGCIREETIONYOUAREWALKINGIN. It wasn't hard to figure out what the last few letters were.
And just like that, she had it.
YOU ARE WALKING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION
Heart pounding, Avery wrote down all the letters in order, eyes flicking up and down the page. The keyword could tell you so much about a cipher.
This one's keyword was…thecompasdu.
Avery saw it immediately—this was an unscrambling puzzle. She pulled out her phone and plugged the letters into a site that did exactly that, raising an eyebrow at the only word that came up: moustached.
None of the boys had mustaches. Neither did Ian. Neither did any man she knew.
She pulled out her phone and took a picture of the clue, then one of her notes. Then she crumpled both pieces of paper into her hand and opened the door, fully intending to go downstairs to throw them into the fireplace.
Avery did do that, but not before she passed Xander's door and saw the sign.
Property of ABH.
Do Not Enter.
That means you, Gray!
Taped under the text was a fake mustache.
—GRAYSON—
He was pretty sure he hadn't left a flashlight on his pillow.
Not a flashlight, Grayson corrected himself as he picked it up and clicked it on, revealing an ultraviolet glow. A black light.
Under the black light, resting on the soft dark blue fabric of his pillowcase, was a yellow sticky note that read LIBRARY.
Grayson swept the black light over the sticky note, checking to make sure there was no invisible ink on it. It revealed nothing, which didn't rule out all invisible ink, only the kind that could be read under ultraviolet light. He'd keep the note for later, just in case this was a Chekov's gun kind of situation.
He stowed the note in his pocket and left to go find Avery. Now that Grayson thought about it, he hadn't seen her since he woke up. Where was she? Was she okay?
Upon checking, Avery's room was empty, so Grayson went downstairs. Everyone was finally out of their rooms, the shock of the clues having worn off. Jameson, looking rather bored, was being given a tour of the house by Ian as Grayson passed. Xander and Max must have still been playing in the snow, because Grayson could hear shrieks and giggles outside.
Maybe Avery was still out there with them. Grayson turned into the kitchen and found Nash and Libby sitting on the bar stools at the counter, eating donuts. He intended to walk past them, but Nash seized Grayson by the sleeve of his suit jacket. "Gray! Where're you goin'? I don't want you out in the snow anymore; you're still sick."
It was true—Grayson's head was still pounding, and his nose was so congested he could barely breathe through it—but he shook Nash off. "I'm alright, Nash. I was just going to see if I could find Avery."
"She's not outside," said Libby, twirling a cerulean strand of hair around her finger. "Went upstairs an hour ago and hasn't come back down. Did you try her room?"
"Yes," Grayson affirmed. "She didn't answer. I suppose she could be out on a balcony; I'll check those next. Thank you, Nash, Libby."
"Hang on!" Nash took Grayson by the shoulders, turning his little brother to face him. "When was the last time you ate, Gray?"
Grayson opened his mouth to reply, then realized he didn't remember. How long ago had they arrived at Vantage? The last thing he could recall eating was a donut on the boat ride. So…three days ago?
"The boat," Grayson sighed. "I haven't felt much like eating; I suspect it's the pneumonia. But I think I'm fine."
"You've gotta eat something," Nash insisted, taking Grayson's face in his hands and running his thumbs over his brother's cheekbones. "Gosh, Gray, I don't think you've got any blood left in your face. And you've dropped a few pounds. You feelin' okay? We've got more donuts if you want 'em."
"I'm fine," Grayson repeated. "Really, Nash."
Nash snatched a sugar donut from the box on the counter. "Seriously, take this; I don't want you passin' out halfway up the stairs." He pressed the donut into Grayson's hands, then pulled him into a hug. "Tell me if you need anythin', 'kay?"
Grayson sighed again, his face buried in Nash's shoulder. "Alright, Nash. Thank you."
Nash let Grayson go and ruffled his hair. "Course, kiddo. Don't forget to eat that."
The donut was good, Grayson had to admit. He nibbled on the edge as he walked up the stairs, then realized that it might seem undignified if he walked in on Avery while eating a pastry and managed to finish it in less than a minute.
He checked the balconies—empty except for several inches of snow. Grayson was just about to try Avery's room again when he saw, at the end of the hall, a panel cut into the ceiling. Below it, in the center of the wall, was a small black button.
Grayson strode over to the wall and pressed the button, the sharp edge leaving a little red circle on the tip of his index finger. The panel began to descend, a ladder unfolding from the ceiling. He stepped back, waiting for the last rung to hit the ground, and then climbed the ladder, trying valiantly not to pop any seams in his suit jacket.
The roof, when he emerged, was somehow not covered in snow, though flakes still fell lightly. They seemed to evaporate when they hit the roof, and Grayson concluded that there must be heating underneath.
Bracing his feet against the slippery shingles, Grayson climbed to the peak of the roof where the gables met, then walked carefully along the ridge. He'd had ample time to practice this art in his youth, whenever he tried futilely to escape from the old man. Jameson had always been better at it, but Grayson knew enough not to fall.
On the south-facing side of the house, staring out into the ocean, sat Avery. The wind tossed the ends of her hair around her face, and she wore only a hoodie, but she didn't shiver, only watched the cloudy puffs of her breath rise into the overcast sky.
"Hey," Grayson said softly, sliding carefully down to stand beside her. The roof was wet, and he slipped his jacket off, spreading it over the shingles before sitting. "Is everything all right?"
"Yes." Avery didn't look at him.
"Are you sure?"
Grayson knew they both hated it when people pried, but he couldn't help but worry. What if Avery was experiencing the same feeling of nothingness, of being lost, that he had last night on the cliff? Grayson couldn't let her feel that alone. It was his duty, to his family and to himself, to protect her.
"I'm scared," Avery finally admitted. "I've come across…concerning new leads in the case. I just don't understand how…how it could be…"
She trailed off, and Grayson hesitated before speaking again. "How it could be what?"
How it could be who?
"I shouldn't tell you," said Avery. "I don't—I think it would hurt you. I'm sorry, I know you want to understand everything they—that I've found. But I don't think you're ready yet."
Grayson caught the slip and filed the words away to dissect later. "It's fine, Avery. Everyone involved in this is keeping secrets, some to our detriment. But I trust that your reasons for keeping this one are good."
"Thank you," she whispered, and then she finally turned to look at him. "But I don't think you should work with me on this case anymore, Gray. Even if I'm wrong, you probably won't like what we find. I…I don't want you to get hurt anymore. You've been through enough."
"I've gone through what I had to," said Grayson. "I can take a little more. Besides, when you finally have to go to the police—because you will have to, Ave—it will be that much more painful for everyone if we don't know." Even though I already do.
Avery sighed, and her warm fingers found their way into Grayson's freezing ones. "Okay. Just…don't hate me, okay? If what we find isn't what you want?"
"I could never hate you," Grayson murmured. "No matter what you do, Avery, no matter what secrets you keep, I will never think of you that way. I know you would never do anything without making the right decision first."
Avery's grip tightened, and she said quietly, "You'd be surprised at how many things I don't think through."
He didn't respond. He was guilty too. Two years ago, he had made a hurried, rash decision, and it was because of him that everything was falling in. It was his own fault that Avery didn't trust him—would probably never trust him again. He didn't deserve it, anyway.
They were both hiding things from each other, trying to protect innocence that no longer existed, and because of that, Grayson knew that what they found would never be what he wanted.