hey y'alls! sorry it's been a while!
hoping you like our firefighting younger two Hawthornes and super mopey Gray! sorry we don't get Avery waking up in this chapter-don't worry, the next one won't be far off!
thanks to everyone who's read and reviewed! I'd greatly appreciate your feedback on this one!
we're getting close to the murderer reveal! who's excited? what are your thoughts! send them in reviews or dms!
thanks everyone!
peace out!
—XANDER—
Pulling a pin was not something Xander ever thought he would do.
He hooked his index finger through the silver ring on the top of the fire extinguisher and pulled, releasing the pin and dropping it so it clattered to the floor. The clamp next to the pin unlocked, and Xander seized the nozzle in one hand, the clamp in the other. Pointing the nozzle at the base of the fire, he squeezed the clamp, and white foam sprayed from the nozzle, smothering the flames.
Another clattering of metal—Jameson's pin—and another wave of foam cascaded over the mezzanine. Xander, unable to resist, sprayed a jet from his extinguisher at Jameson, who began spluttering and immediately returned the gesture.
Xander, one arm raised to shield himself from the onslaught, pushed forward into the amorphous mass of foam, trying to find the edge of the fire. Much earlier than expected, he ran up against a wall of heat and only just managed to back away before it seared his skin. Orange light flickered against the walls, much higher up than Xander would have liked.
"Jamie!" he yelled. "It's not going out!"
"We need something bigger!" Jameson shouted back.
"Maybe the fire department?" Xander started to edge backwards, aiming the fire extinguisher at anything that flickered. "They could put it out!"
"But we can't call them!" Jameson's voice had jumped half an octave. "They can't know!"
He was right. They needed something more powerful than two fire extinguishers, something that could aim higher and spray farther.
Xander pushed through the foam toward Jameson, reaching out blindly for his brother, and after a few searching moments managed to grab Jameson by the elbow. Jameson, startled, nearly disappeared back into the clinging whiteness before Xander could shove his fire extinguisher into Jameson's hands.
"Take them both!" Xander implored. "I'm getting the hose!"
"Can it even reach up here?"
"The grounds are huge, so it better!"
Xander grabbed the railing and sprinted back through the foam, coughing on it and the smoke. He'd have to be fast; he couldn't simply leave his big brother fighting an out-of-control fire by himself.
He slipped halfway down the stairs, yelping as both his hip and his elbow slammed painfully against the marble. There was water on the stairs—the fire sprinklers had come on. This thought gave Xander a faint hope, but he knew the sprinklers wouldn't be enough. What they needed was the fire department, but with them out of the picture…
The rest of the journey down the stairs was more of a slide than a run, but Xander picked himself up at the bottom and sprinted through the entrance hall, wiping his watering eyes with the back of his hand. He wasn't sure if he was tearing up because of the smoke or because of the horror of the situation. Avery had looked nearly dead, Grayson was clearly injured, and Jameson was battling a blaze that could kill him if it spread too far.
Xander burst out through the front doors of Vantage, the chill air shocking his system, stinging against his face. He flashed past Nash and Grayson, who stood together, staring out at the ocean, and ran around to the side of the house, where the huge metal box that housed the garden hose stood.
He seized the end of the hose and started unwinding it, wanting it to be fully lengthened before he ran back inside. As coil after coil piled in the snow, Xander's heart began to lift. It looked long enough to reach up the grand staircase. But how far had the fire spread? If it had reached the bedrooms, then there was no saving the house.
Finally, when the hose was at its full, massive length, Xander grabbed the knob mounted over the spigot and twisted, sending a jet of icy water out of the end of the hose. Should he pull it back through the front door? No, it would have to go around half of the house to do that. Better to pull it in through the window above the spigot—he might soak the majority of the carpet, but better soaked than burned.
Xander scrabbled at the edge of the window, scraping his knuckles against the freezing molding, but it looked to be frozen shut, or at the least unable to be opened from the outside. He'd have to go in and open it from the inside, then climb back out to get the hose.
"Don't go in!" he shouted at Nash and Grayson as he tore back around the corner of the house. "Stay out there, I mean it!"
As Xander leaped up the few steps to the door and exploded into the house, he seemed to run into a wall of smoke, so thick that it obscured his vision completely. Inadverdently, he sucked it into his lungs and burst into a coughing fit, realizing with horror that he could hear the same sound echoing from upstairs. Jameson was running out of time.
Xander felt more than saw his way through the smoke to the small spare room whose window was above the spigot. He yanked his sweatshirt up over his nose and twisted the lock on the window to the right, then threw the glass pane open. Just outside, pumping water into the snow, was the hose, and Xander leaped down and grabbed it, climbing back through the window and breaking into the most reckless sprint of his life toward the grand staircase.
He slipped three or four times—thankfully, none of them actually hurt, but it took him much longer than he'd like to get to the stairs, and by then Xander was coughing so hard that it felt like something was clawing its way up his throat. Finally, though, he reached out and touched the fire-warmed railing, and he dragged himself and the hose up the stairs.
"Jamie, I'm coming!" Xander screamed, his eyes watering so badly that he could barely see. "Hang on!"
When he reached the top of the stairs, he jammed his thumb into the end of the hose, and the water sprayed out in a huge, glittering arc of droplets.
"Spray the walls!" Jameson yelled. "I've got the floor! Spray the walls!"
Xander aimed the hose higher, firing blindly into the flames. Had they reached the ceiling? If they had, he wasn't sure there was anything he and Jameson could do.
The searing heat began to subside, but the smoke was still so think that Xander couldn't see if the fire was out or not. His sweatshirt slipped down off his nose, and he yanked it back up, eyes squeezed shut against the smoke. He pointed the hose toward the ceiling and continued to spray, unsure if the water reached a full twenty feet up but unable to open his eyes.
"Xan!" Jameson's voice was higher than Xander had ever heard it. "Move!"
Xander opened his eyes just in time to the blur that was Jameson hurtling toward him. Jameson slammed into Xander's chest, and they flew backward into open space.
Right down the stairs.
Both of them let out decidedly unmanly shrieks as they half-slid, half-tumbled down the water-slicked grand staircase. The edges of the stairs scraped over Xander's ribcage, and for whatever reason, the feeling reminded him of a xylophone, but much more painful.
His forehead met cold, wet marble, and stars exploded in Xander's vision as he finally reached the bottom of the staircase, sliding several feet across the wet floor. The breath was driven out of his lungs, and he lay on his back, chest heaving as he struggled to suck in air.
When his vision finally cleared and his breath came without choking him, Xander found himself staring at the ceiling forty feet above him. The ceiling seemed to be raining. That was odd. Did ceilings normally rain?
No, the fire sprinklers were still on. To Xander's relief, they seemed to have done their job—he couldn't see anything on fire. Had they really done it? Just him, Jameson, two fire extinguishers, and a garden hose?
He turned his head, wincing at the throbbing just above his left eye, and rasped, "Jamie?"
Jameson lay on his stomach five feet away from Xander, breathing hard. With what seemed like immense difficulty, he flipped over onto his back, rolling one shoulder with a hiss of pain. "Ow. Hey, are you good?"
"I think so," Xander groaned, pushing himself halfway to sitting and bringing a hand to his forehead. His fingers touched warm liquid, and he pulled his hand away to see them stained scarlet. "Shoot, I'm bleeding. Are you okay? Why'd you jump at me like that?"
Jameson gestured vaguely at the room. "I guess the fire got to the chandelier. It was going to fall, and I kind of didn't want you to get flattened by a light fixture."
For the first time, Xander noticed glittering shards scattered across the floor. It must have been the crystal from the chandelier hanging above the grand staircase—the huge, magnificently ornate one. It also looked quite heavy—it could have bashed Xander's skull in if he'd stayed under it.
"Wow," he mumbled, lying back down as he rubbed his forehead. "Thanks. Although you didn't have to push me down the stairs."
"Which other way was I going to push you?" Jameson's voice was pained, but he was smiling. "Over the railing?"
Xander laughed, ignoring the little twinges of pain in his side. He'd definitely scraped up his ribs, and he could feel bruises throbbing in more places than he'd like, but the gash to his head seemed to be the worst injury. Not bad for fighting a fire and then falling down the stairs.
Jameson staggered to his feet, still rolling his shoulder back and forth. "Come on, let's go check out the upstairs. I think we got the fire put out, but I want to see whatever exploded."
He held out his hand, and Xander took it and pulled himself up, still rather dazed but more curious. Together, he and Jameson traipsed up the stairs to the mezzanine, and Xander couldn't help but gasp at what he saw.
The carpet in the hall had been scorched, as had many of the doors. Huge swathes of soot streaked the walls, and the balcony was covered with chunks of plaster and flakes of paint, presumably from the ceiling. The twisted, blackened remnants of the chandelier had actually cracked the floor, as well as sending shattered fragments of crystal all across the mezzanine, down the stairs, and through the entrance hall.
In the center of the balcony lay the shattered remnants of the black pyramid, still smoldering. Half of the obsidian structure was gone, and Xander could see its little black shards scattered everywhere. But part of it was intact, so—despite Jameson's shouted warning—Xander picked it up.
The sharp-edged half-pyramid held several scorched circles of cotton, and the remnants of what looked rather like a firework were nestled into the soft material. Tucked into the last remaining corner was something small, round and metal.
"A pressure sensor," Xander murmured, fingering it. "And an explosive—well, what's left of it, anyway. If the pyramid was dropped and landed on that corner, it would have triggered the explosive. I'm guessing that's what happened."
"But then…" Jameson's face was ashen in more ways than one. "That means the killer set an explosive. They're willing to kill us just like the old man."
"He wouldn't," said Xander, then clapped his hand over his mouth.
Jameson stared, and Xander's face burned, and the ceiling dripped.
"Um," Xander managed to squeak out. "I—I mean, obviously they would, whoever h—they might be, because I have no idea who could have done such a thing. Except me, of course, you know, being, uh, the crazy stupid genius that I am—did I ever tell you I did it? Weird thing, really—"
Jameson held up his hands. "Hey, Xan, stop."
Xander, for once, fell silent.
"You don't have to tell me anything," Jameson said. "I'll forget you said that. I knew you were gonna be the first one to figure it out; looks like I was right. Just—don't go to the police with the name, okay? This is a Hawthorne matter, and it needs to stay with the Hawthornes. I just need you to tell me one thing, though, okay?" Jameson's voice had lowered. "Was it Gray?"
Xander shook his head slowly. "No. He…he isn't lying."
"Good." Jameson looked visibly relieved. "What gave you the answer?"
"The chessboard," Xander mumbled. "I just had to look at it the right way. It's pretty obvious, really, when you consider everyone's clues."
"Everyone? Like—we all have our own clues?" Jameson's face screwed up in concentration. "I've got one, but I didn't think everyone else had them."
"That's 'cause you don't know how to hack phones," Xander said, as if this explained everything. He grinned halfheartedly at Jameson. "You can go look at the chessboard if you want; it's down in the hall on the floor. But we'd better get going—Nash is gonna be livid if we wait any longer."
Both brothers descended the grand staircase, with Jameson scooping up the clues that lay abandoned on the marble floor of the entrance hall. Had Avery had the rest of the clues with her? If she had, they'd likely been destroyed in the fire—they were better off gone, Xander supposed. The less evidence that exonerated him, the better.
Nash and Grayson were sitting near the edge of the cliff, still staring out at the choppy sea. The moment Jameson and Xander reached them, Nash stood and pulled both of them into a bear hug. "Fire's out, then?"
"Yeah," Xander told him. "Thanks to my hose."
"And y'all are okay?" Nash pulled back, looking Xander and then Jameson over. "Xan, what in tarnation happened to your face?"
"Jamie pushed me down the stairs," said Xander innocently.
"The chandelier was gonna fall on him!" Jameson defended as Nash gave him a death glare. "I pushed him out of the way—Xan, tell him!"
"It really happened," Xander admitted. "It was epic."
Nash sighed. "'Course it was. Let's get you two cleaned up; we ain't lettin' the girls get back while y'all are covered in blood."
"Any word on Avery?" Jameson asked as Nash gathered up the first aid kit and dragged all three of his brothers into the house. "I mean, has Ian said anything?"
"I don't think they're even at the hospital yet," said Nash. "Probably be at least an hour before we hear anythin'. Don't worry, though; she was doin' fine when I checked her over. Bleedin' a bit, yeah, but I think she's gonna be okay."
Nash steered them all into the living room and sat them down on the couches. He slapped the largest Band-Aid in his first aid kit onto Xander's forehead, wiped the soot off everyone's faces, and offered ibuprofen to anyone who wanted it—no one did, but Nash made Grayson take it.
The minute he finished swallowing the pills, Grayson stood and limped up the grand staircase toward his room. Xander, still slipping on the wet floor, followed him. He knew Grayson probably wanted to be left alone, but Xander had never been good at leaving people alone. Besides, if Grayson was really upset, he'd leave.
"Gray!" Xander said accusatorily as his brother turned to look back at him with narrowed, exhausted eyes. "Don't look at me like that! I'm trying to help you!"
"Help has never worked for me," said Grayson. "Thank you, Xan, but no thank you."
"Okay, no help then," said Xander. "I want to talk to you."
Grayson sighed, then winced and glared at Xander. "About what?"
"About Avery. What'd she say to you? Or—what'd you say to her?"
"It's not what I said," Grayson murmured, and his voice softened. "It's what I didn't say."
Comprehension dawned. "You didn't tell her you knew. And she was upset about that."
"How did you know?"
Xander shrugged. "You telling me to smash the vase? And the Davenport cipher with the fountain pen? Please, Gray. I've known you've been trying to frame yourself for a long time."
"It never works," Grayson said, looking indescribably tired. "Trust me, Xan, taking the fall doesn't work. It's only going to hurt you more."
"Not if I do it right," Xander insisted. "Not if you help."
"I am not letting my little brother go to prison for something he didn't do!" A flash of indignance sparked in Grayson's eyes. "It's not worth it, Xan. Nothing's worth that."
"But it's worth it if you go?" Xander challenged. "Come on, Gray; nobody wants you to go to jail. I get that you don't want to tell anyone what you know, but you don't have to go down for it. Let's just keep this under wraps. Stay out here for a while. No matter how worthless you think you are, there are people here who don't want to lose you."
He brought his voice down, aware that he was bordering on shouting. "Including Avery."
"Not her." Grayson's face was downcast, crumpled. "I failed her. I hurt her and I lied to her when I promised I wouldn't. You know how much promises mean to a Hawthorne. This is inexcusable."
"According to you, everything is inexcusable." Xander took Grayson by the shoulders and looked him dead in the eyes. "Look, Gray, you made a mistake. And I'm not saying that lying is okay. But you can fix it—because this time you're going to be the one who's there when Avery wakes up. You're going to apologize to her and tell her anything she wants to know because you care that much about her. And I think—obviously I don't know, but I'm pretty sure—she's going to forgive you, because you're enough of a man to admit that you were wrong."
He pulled Grayson into a hug. "Don't give it up just because you think it can't be saved. You have to at least try."
To Xander's immense surprise, Grayson returned the embrace, and they stood like that on the mezzanine for several seconds, Grayson's face buried in Xander's shoulder and Xander's arms wrapped more tightly around his brother than they'd ever been.
"Thank you," said Grayson, and as they broke apart he gave Xander a watery smile. "I needed that."
—GRAYSON—
Sleep wouldn't come.
Grayson wouldn't let it.
It had been two days since the explosion, since Avery had left him for a room full of tubes and wires. Two days of doing nothing but lying on his bed and staring at the wall, at the ceiling, wrapped in the soft gray shawl and trying so very hard not to cry.
He'd forced himself to stay awake the whole time, afraid the news of Avery's condition would come while—if—he slept. Coffee and acetaminophen were his allies, keeping his overworked mind from shutting down. When those were combined with his extraordinary willpower, Grayson knew he could stay awake as long as he needed to.
His ribs still hurt if he didn't take pain medication, but the acetaminophen helped, though its primary purpose was to stave off sleep. Grayson's throat was still scratchy and his voice slightly hoarse, but everyone's was; they had all inhaled more than enough smoke.
More often than not, he was plagued with pounding headaches and lucid nightmares, and occasionally he wondered if he should do something to take his mind off Avery, but staying here worked for him. Grayson worried that if he stopped thinking about her, he would lose any hope he had of reconciliation.
He wanted so badly to apologize, to take Avery's hand and beg her forgiveness. He would understand if she wouldn't give it to him—Grayson wouldn't have given it to himself; why should she?
Drawing his knees into his chest, Grayson curled into the fetal position and thought of Avery, unconscious, wounded, surrounded by stark white and low voices, heart monitor beeping softly as it tracked the rushing of blood that told everyone yes, she lived. She was broken and bleeding inside and they worried she'd never be the same, but Avery lived.
For now. Internal bleeding, especially in the head, in the chest, was not something to be trifled with. She would stay in her medically induced sleep until the doctors saw improvement.
For perhaps the sixth or seventh time today, Grayson slipped his hand underneath his shawl, ice-cold fingers—he hadn't turned up the heat in his room—rubbing against the even colder metal of his little silver cross.
Please, he begged. Don't take her. You can take my heart, even my life if You must. But not her. Never her.
He wasn't sure if God would heed his request—for when had Grayson made demands of Him that were any less than impossible? He'd prayed for his secret, that it would never come to light. He'd prayed for Emily and for Eve and for Avery, that each one might somehow find it in her heart to love him, but he had never been destined to know such love.
Grayson let go of the cross and sighed. His head hurt. He couldn't remember when he'd last taken medication; time had blurred together into one long day.
What time it was, he didn't know, but his eyelids were starting to droop. Time to drag himself out of bed and go downstairs to make another pot of coffee.
The marble stairs, cleared of the fragments of plaster and crystal, were freezing under Grayson's bare feet as he traipsed down them. Ian and Jameson had cleaned the house up well—there was virtually no evidence, except for the scorch marks and the missing chunks of ceiling, that there had been an explosion here.
It was raining, huge splashing droplets pounding against the glass of the back door. Grayson stood in the kitchen's entryway for a moment, watching the downpour with a kind of dull satisfaction, then turned into the room and stopped dead in his tracks.
Spray-painted across the white wall, stark night against their matte background, were the words NO NEWS IS BAD NEWS.
He stumbled, bracing his shoulder against the wall for support, and knocked one of the coffee mugs off the counter. It hit the tile and shattered into thousands of small black fragments, dark stars in an inverted sky just like the words on the wall.
Grayson brought a hand to his forehead, trying to calm the spinning. Now? Now, when everything had been flipped and twisted and cracked to the point where he couldn't even recognize time anymore? When Avery was hurt and alone in the hospital with no guarantee of survival?
"Not now," he ground out through gritted teeth. "Not now, Gamemaker. She isn't ready."
He wasn't sure why he had spoken out loud, but somehow he believed that the gamemaker, the one who had ruined Grayson's already broken life, could hear him. Perhaps they were nearby. Did they know what they had done to him? To Avery? To the Hawthornes as a whole?
"You might think you've won," he whispered. "Well, I have news for you. I will not play your twisted little game anymore. I'm done."
In his pocket, his phone vibrated against his leg, and Grayson pulled it out, squinting through bloodshot, burning eyes at the too-bright screen.
I understand, Gray.
I never meant for this to happen. I'm so sorry.
We've gone too far, you and I. But we can't just tell everyone the truth. They will find it when they can.
Their texting style was different. Now it was more formal, more pleading. This was the digital voice of someone who truly meant what they were saying.
Who are you? Grayson texted. Why have you done this? How do you know what happened that night?
Guesswork, said the gamemaker. Guesswork and love.
Wasn't that a Hawthorne's whole life? Guesswork and love?
Grayson slowly tapped out a response, an immeasurable sense of guilt and sorrow washing over him.
Me too.