Page 65 of The Inheritance Games

Jameson’s glass came down. His chair was pushed roughly back from the table. Farther down, Grayson’s fingers tightened around the stem of his own glass, his knuckles going white.

“Theadora,”Constantine hissed.

Thea took a drink and adopted the world’s most innocent expression. “What?”

Everything in me wanted to follow Jameson, but I waited a few minutes before excusing myself. Like that would keep any of them from knowing exactly where I was going.

In the foyer, I pressed my hand flat against the wall panels, hitting the sequence designed to reveal the coat closet door. I needed my coat if I was going to venture off into the Black Wood. I was sure that was where Jameson had gone.

As my hand hooked around the hanger, a voice spoke from behind me. “I’m not going to ask you what Jameson is up to. What you’re up to.”

I turned to face Grayson. “You’re not going to ask me,” I repeated, taking in the set of his jaw and those canny silver eyes, “because you already know.”

“I was there last night. At the bridge.” There were edges in Grayson’s tone—not rough, but sharp. “This morning, I went to see the Red Will.”

“I still have the decoder,” I pointed out, trying not to read anything into the fact that he’d seen his brother and me at the bridge—and didn’t sound happy about it.

Grayson shrugged, his shoulders pulling against the confines of his suit. “Red acetate is easy enough to come by.”

If he’d seen the Red Will, he knew that their middle names were clues. I wondered if his mind had gone immediately to their fathers. I wondered if that hurt him, the way it hurt Jameson.

“You were there last night,” I said, echoing back what he’d told me. “At the bridge.” How much had he seen? How much did he know?

What had he thought when Jameson and I had touched?

“Westbrook. Davenport. Winchester. Blackwood.” Grayson took a step toward me. “They’re last names—but they are also locations. I found the clue on the bridge after you and my brother had gone.”

He’d followed us there. He’d found what we’d found.

“What do you want, Grayson?”

“If you were smart,” he warned softly, “you’d stay away from Jameson. From the game.” He looked down. “From me.” Emotion slashed across his features, but he masked it before I could tell what, exactly, he was feeling. “Thea’s right,” he said sharply, turning away from me—walkingaway from me. “This family—we destroy everything we touch.”

CHAPTER 52

Iknew from the map roughly where the Black Wood was. I found Jameson on the outskirts, standing eerily still, like hecouldn’tmove. Without warning, he broke that stillness, punching furiously at a nearby tree, hard and fast, the bark tearing at his hands.

Thea brought up Emily. This is what even the mention of her name does to him.

“Jameson!” I was almost to him now. He jerked his head toward me, and I stopped, overwhelmed with the feeling that I shouldn’t have been there, that I had no right to witness any of the Hawthorne boys hurting that much.

The only thing I could think to do was try to make what I’d just seen matter less. “Broken any fingers lately?” I asked lightly.The Pretending It Doesn’t Matter Game.

Jameson was ready and willing to play. He held his hands up, grunting as he bent them at the knuckles. “Still intact.”

I dragged my eyes from him and took in our surroundings. The perimeter was so densely wooded that if the trees hadn’t already shed their leaves, no light would have been able to make it to the forest floor.

“What are we looking for?” I asked. Maybe he didn’t consider me a real partner in this hunt. Maybe there was no realwe—but he answered.

“Your guess is as good as mine, Heiress.”

All around us, bare branches stretched up overhead, skeletal and crooked.

“You skipped school today to dosomething,” I pointed out. “You have a guess.”

Jameson smiled like he couldn’t feel the blood welling up on his hands. “Four middle names. Four locations. Four clues—carvings, most likely. Symbols, if the clue on the bridge was infinity; numbers, if it was an eight.”

I wondered what, if anything, he’d done to clear his mind between last night and entering the Black Wood.Climbing. Racing. Jumping.