Inheritance Games

Jameson Winchester Hawthorne knew one thing for certain: The game wasn't over yet. Of course it wasn't. The old man's plans were always multilayered beasts. Why kill two birds with one stone, he'd say, when you could kill twelve?

Jameson took a step toward Avery. "Tell me everything, Heiress." 

As it turned out, everything wasn't much, but every word out of Avery's mouth captivated him.

Why her? That had been the question from the moment Jameson first saw Avery Kylie Grambs. Once the will had been read, once he'd realized what the old man had done, it had been the only question that mattered.

Until they'd solved it.

And now, there was another mystery with Avery at the center, and Jameson couldn't shake the feeling that she was more than she appeared, that there were layers to this puzzle, layers to this Mystery Girl. Jameson's gaze settled on her lips as she spoke. He tried to absorb everything she was saying about his "dead" uncle, tried to see Avery Kylie Grambs through his grandfather's eyes.

Why kill two birds with one stone when you could kill twelve?

>--------------------<

Hours later, Jameson's mind was still racing, still roaring as he rounded a corner-and ran smack into his brother.

Grayson steadied himself. His eyes narrowed slightly, and Jameson prepared himself to spar - verbally, physically. But all Grayson said, as he dusted a hand over the lapels of his suit jacket, was "Are you okay?"

Now it was Jameson's turn to narrow his eyes. "Never better."

Grayson locked eyes with him. "I meant what I asked, Jamie." Gray's voice was softer and lower now. "Are you okay?"

It had been a long time since Gray had asked him a question like that - and even longer since Jameson had wanted to answer.

"It helps." Jameson felt his throat closing around those words. "That you know." He didn't say Emily's name.

He wouldn't.

"I know," Grayson confirmed. "And I don't blame you, Jamie."

Jameson didn't want anyone's absolution. With a theatrical roll of his eyes, he scoffed. "You wouldn't, Suit Boy."

"What precisely is that supposed to mean?"

"I'm certainly not mocking you," Jameson replied seriously. "I wouldn't dare."

"You are a child," Grayson said.

In other circumstances, Jameson would have insulted him back, but this time, what came out of his mouth wasn't an insult. "I'm what the old man made me," he replied quietly, "same as you."

Grayson bowed his head slightly, then brought his eyes back up to Jameson's. "What do you think the old man would say if he could see us now?"

>--------------------<

Jameson closed the door behind him, then flipped the lock. "What would the old man say," he murmured under his breath, "if he could see us now?"

Without even realizing where he was going, Jameson walked toward his desk. He opened the main drawer and released a hidden compartment in the back. From inside the compartment, he removed a knife. The handle was as long as the width of his hand. Curling his fingers around the grip, Jameson stared at the knife's blade until the thoughts in his head quieted, and he was caught up in a memory.

>--------------------<

A fishing hook. A price tag. A glass ballerina. A knife.

One by one, Tobias Hawthorne laid the objects out on the table in front of him. Jameson eyed the knife. Beside him, he could feel Grayson doing the same.

"How old are you boys now?" the old man asked - a rhetorical question that Tobias Hawthorne answered himself as he looked at each of his grandsons in turn, starting with Xander. "Twelve." His gaze slid to Jameson. "Fourteen." Grayson. "Fifteen." Nash barely even blinked as the old man's gaze settled on him. "Twenty-one."

Jameson's hand crept toward the knife. Grayson caught his brother's arm by the wrist. "Not so fast, Jamie."

"If my goal had been fast," Jameson shot back, "I'd already be holding that knife."

"If your goal was stealth," Xander interjected cheerfully, "you suck."

"Jameson doesn't suck," Nash said, trying and failing to sound stern. "Pretty sure that was a prime example of blowing it."

"Enough," Tobias Hawthorne declared, but he was smiling, too.

"Grayson, unhand your brother. Jameson, hands by your side. You all know the rules. Until you have deduced an object's purpose - hands off."

"Can we get on with it, then?" Nash asked, earning himself a narrow-eyed stare from their grandfather. Games proceeded on the old man's timetable. No one else's.

"Remember," Tobias Hawthorne announced, "sometimes, to see the big picture, you have to take three steps back."

Jameson searched that statement for a double meaning. Everything was something in their grandfather's puzzles. Everything.

"Your challenge this morning," the old man continued, "is this: Tell me what's real."

Jameson waited. They all did. But the old man had nothing more to say. He removed an envelope from his back pocket, dropped it to the floor, and walked out the door.

Jameson dove for the envelope-and so did all three of his brothers. A brief scuffle ensued, before Nash pulled Jameson off Xander and shot a warning look at Gray.

"Go on, Xan," Nash drawled. "Read it."

With a triumphant grin, Xander scrambled to his feet and took a single page out of the envelope. Jameson pushed in beside him for a better look and saw the words TAKE NOTE scrawled at the top center of the page in all capital letters.

"'Go be afraid,'" Xander read aloud, making his way through the message written underneath, "'cause Friday's coming.'"

>--------------------<

"Go be afraid, 'cause Friday's coming." Jameson had repeated those words to himself at least a dozen times. Nash had already made himself scarce. Xander was holding the message up to a light bulb to see if heat revealed any extra clues. Grayson was staring intently out the window.

"Go be afraid, 'cause Friday's coming," Jameson repeated.

"Must you think out loud?" Grayson asked, annoyance playing across his features.

Jameson smirked. "I must." But he kept his next thought quiet. There has to be a reason the old man used an abbreviation of the word because. Hawthornes were taught to enunciate. They were expected to speak "properly" - and only Nash took a special kind of joy in subverting that expectation.

"Go be afraid,'cause Friday's coming." Jameson closed his eyes. There were easily a dozen differences between the word 'cause and the longer because. They had different numbers of letters, different numbers of syllables, of phonemes. They started with different letters.

And that was the moment Jameson saw it: the first letter of each of those words. G, B, A, C, F, C. He began walking toward the door of the study before he'd even finished solving it. G, B, A, C, F, C.

And the title at the top was TAKE NOTE.

>--------------------<

Jameson twisted his way through the secret passages - better to make sure no one was following him. When he made it to the music room, he skidded to a halt.

Nash was already at the piano.

Too slow, Jameson berated himself. I shouldn't have taken the scenic route. A moment later, Grayson appeared next to Jameson. He must have solved the first clue, too, which meant that taking the passageways really had been a miscalculation.

"Move," Grayson told Jameson.

"Not on your life." Jameson stayed where he was, and together, he and Grayson watched as Nash played a sequence of six notes. G, B, A, C, F, C.

A compartment on the piano released. Nash attempted to reach down into it, but it quickly became apparent that his fingers were too large.

Jameson turned to Grayson. "The fishing hook," he said under his breath. "I'll get it. You distract him."

And just like that, the bargain was struck.

Nash was older. He'd been playing their grandfather's games for longer. But now it was two against one.

>--------------------<

When Jameson got back to the music room, the fishing hook in his palm, his brothers were nowhere to be seen. Jameson knew instinctively that Grayson would have waited until Nash was a good distance away before running interference. It was what Jameson would have done, if he'd been the one blocking Nash for Grayson.

Walking over to the piano, Jameson realized the hidden compartment had been closed. Jameson played the sequence of notes, released the compartment, then used the hook to fish out what appeared to be two silver charms, each one a letter.

"Q." Jameson stared at them one by one. "And R."

Right on cue, he received a text from Grayson. Nash is on his way back. Rendezvous you-know-where. If you double-cross me, you'll regret it.

Jameson grinned. It wasn't time for the double cross. Not yet. And Grayson knew it.

>--------------------<

"The letters could stand for something," Grayson said, turning the charms over in his hands. The two of them had met at their usual rendezvous spot - on the roof. There was a flat five-by-five-foot area, obscured from view on all sides by the sloping angles of Hawthorne House. Only Grayson, Jameson, and Xander ever came here.

Nash didn't even know it existed.

"Q," Jameson said aloud, determined to make sense of the clue. "And R. R and Q. Red Queen?"

Grayson shook his head. "He's used that one already." The old man never used the same clue twice. "R is the eighteenth letter of the alphabet," Grayson continued. "Q is number seventeen. They're only one position apart."

Jameson chewed on that and thought back to the puzzle as it had been laid out for them. "Tell me what's real," he said, echoing their grandfather's instructions.

Grayson had a habit of standing still as a statue when he was caught up in thought, but Jameson paced, even when there wasn't much room for pacing.

"What did he tell us to remember?" Jameson knew the answer to that question, but Grayson provided it anyway.

"Sometimes, to see the big picture, you have to take three steps back."

Jameson tried it, literally taking three steps backward. He tripped over something - or rather, someone who had just popped out of the trapdoor.

"Scone?" Xander offered, holding up a platter.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jameson saw Grayson quickly close his fingers into a fist, obscuring the charms.

"How can you think about your stomach at a time like this?" Jameson asked Xander.

"I don't have to think about my stomach to eat scones," Xander said. "I'm practically a scone-eating prodigy. Can I see what's in your hand, Gray?"

Grayson caught Jameson's gaze, and after a moment, Jameson nodded. Xander almost never won the Saturday challenges. Jameson wasn't even convinced he tried. But their youngest brother was also probably the one whose sheer level of brain power came closest to the old man's.

"R." Xander examined one charm, then the other. "Q." He grinned. "Clever."

Jameson narrowed his eyes, and the moment Xander registered that, his grin grew about ten times wider. "Wait, you guys haven't figured it out yet? Seriously?"

"Seriously," Grayson replied without a hint of humor. "Now hand me a scone and talk."

Xander tossed a scone Grayson's way, then punched a fist up into the air in victory. "Look at us!" he said. "Just three brothers, hanging on the roof, eating scones, and basking in my awesomeness."

"Talk," Jameson told him.

Xander obliged. "QR," he said again, wiggling his eyebrows. "l'll give you a hint: Think about the price tag."

Without waiting for a response, Xander dropped the scones and disappeared back down the trapdoor - and Jameson and Grayson took off after him.

>--------------------<

They caught up to Xander outside their grandfather's study. Inside, the youngest Hawthorne went directly to the table and the three objects that remained.

A price tag. A glass ballerina. A knife.

"QR," Xander said happily. "As in a QR code. Go ahead. Worship me, lesser mortals."

"QR code?" Jameson glanced toward Grayson, who shrugged.

"It was originally short for quick response," Xander rattled off, his words gaining speed as he spoke. "It's a type of matrix barcode-"

"A barcode." Jameson came to stand behind Xander. "Like the kind on a price tag?"

"Not all price tags. But this price tag?" Xander grinned again. "Gray, we're going to need a scanner."

One app download later, Xander triumphantly scanned the QR code, which took them to a website, one that was obviously of their grandfather's making. Numbers covered the page. The site scrolled through them automatically - on and on and on.

Xander blinked. "I think we're going to need a bigger screen."

>--------------------<

Once they'd made their way to Xander's room and pulled the site up on the laptop Xander had built from scratch the summer before, all the three Hawthorne brothers had to do was take three steps back.

When you stopped looking at the numbers as numbers, when you saw the big picture, an image emerged. A knife.

As the page scrolled downward, the image changed - the handle on the knife flipped open.

>--------------------<

It was every man for himself now. Jameson wasn't the fastest Hawthorne - but he was the least above playing dirty. As he ran back to the study, he tripped Grayson and shoved Xander, sending them sprawling into each other. Someone grabbed for his ankle, but Jameson jumped over the hand and made it back to their grandfather's study first.

He snatched the knife off the table. Running his fingers over the hilt, he found the release, and when he hit it, the top half of the hilt popped up. Curled inside was a small piece of paper, the kind you might find inside a fortune cookie.

"Hand it over," Grayson ordered, his voice like steel. He knew as well as Jameson did: The end was drawing near. They weren't a team anymore.

Double-crossing each other was part of the game.

Jameson dropped the knife back onto the table. Fending off both Grayson and Xander with one hand, he made an attempt at unraveling the paper with the other. Xander snatched it from him, then Grayson took it from Xander, then Jameson ended up with it again, and this time, he managed to read it.

There were only two words, written in all capital letters. The message read SHATTER ME.

Jameson didn't hesitate. They'd used three of this puzzle's four tools: the fishing hook, the price tag, the knife. All that was left was the glass ballerina. Jameson grabbed it. It was small enough to fit in his hand. Delicate. Beautiful. And he threw it with all his might against the wall.

It shattered.

Glass went everywhere. Time seemed to slow down, and Jameson thought back to the beginning of the game. Tell me what's real.

There, on the floor, amid the shards of glass, was what looked to be a diamond. Jameson dropped to the ground. He grabbed at it, barely noticing as the surrounding glass cut into his hand.

Beside him, Grayson knelt more carefully and pulled a second diamond from what remained of the glass ballerina. Xander found a third. They sifted carefully through the debris, looking for a fourth, but that was it.

"Three diamonds," Jameson said out loud. He looked at each of his brothers in turn. "Which one's real?"

>--------------------<

Jameson and Grayson spent the afternoon poring over websites, trying to determine what supplies were needed - and what they needed to do-in order to tell a real diamond from a fake. Xander got distracted. And hungry. He had always preferred the thrill of the chase to locking down the win.

So when the old man called them all back to the study near sunset, Jameson had two of the three diamonds in his possession. Both, he had ascertained, were fake.

"Well," Tobias Hawthorne said, a glint in his eyes, "tell me what's real, boys."

Jameson pushed down the urge to glare at Grayson. He hated losing - and by what amounted to luck of the draw. "Both of these are fake," he told his grandfather, laying the faux diamonds on the table. Then he waited for Grayson to gloat.

Instead, Gray laid his diamond down on the table, too. "Also fake."

The old man's eyes twinkled. "So tell me, you two: What's real?"

For once, Jameson didn't have an answer. He was silent. So was Grayson. Xander appeared to be dismantling a nearby clock.

And then Nash threw a leather bag onto the table. "That," he said, drawing out the words, "is a real bag of glass."

Jameson stared at it, then looked to the corner of the room where he'd broken the glass ballerina.

None of the shards remained.

"By that token," Grayson said finally, "my jewel was real, too - it just wasn't a real diamond."

The old man snorted. "Too little, too late," he told Grayson. "And that goes double for you." He swung his gaze to Jameson, who hated disappointing the old man even more than he hated to lose.

"In this life," the old man intoned, his eyes still on Jameson, "to be what I am, to do what I have done, to have all that we have... " Tobias Hawthorne closed his eyes. "Sacrifices have to be made. Things get broken."

"What kinds of things?" Xander asked, proving that he wasn't as distracted as he seemed.

"All kinds," the old man said quietly. His eyes opened once more. "Well done, Nash. As for the rest of you, listen well: Never forget the broken things, the ones you leave behind. Clean up the shards, because when you don't ... " A muscle in their grandfather's neck tightened. "People get hurt."

>--------------------<

Back in the present, Jameson flipped open the hidden compartment on the knife. He didn't know why he'd kept it after that game. He didn't know what he'd expected to find inside. The compartment was as empty as it had been for years.

Sitting down at the desk, Jameson took a piece of paper from the drawer. He thought about his grandfather's will. About Avery Kylie Grambs. About Toby Hawthorne, supposedly killed in a fire at the age of nineteen.

Holding the pen in his left hand, Jameson wrote down the words that his grandfather had spoken. Never forget the broken things, the ones you leave behind.

"Clean up the shards," he murmured. His mind raced, his brain churning through everything that Avery had told him.

Game on.

This scene takes place while Jameson and Grayson are waiting for Sheffield Grayson to meet them at their hotel. This was another one that I really hated to cut! In the final draft, Avery hears the boys mention Drink or Dare, but we don't get to see them actually playing.

>--------------------<

Doing this was a mistake. Jameson had watched as Grayson left a business card with the guard at the entrance in the gated community where Sheffield Grayson lived. Grayson had scrawled the name of their hotel on the back. He'd been discreet.

And then they'd returned to the hotel and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Jameson was just about done waiting.

"Whatever you're thinking," Grayson told him. "Don't."

"Don't worry, big brother," Jameson said, ambling over to the hotel minibar and perusing its offerings. "I'm on my best behavior." He ran his fingertips over the top of several small bottles of alcohol, then settled for pulling a root beer, some orange juice, and a smoothie with kale from the fridge.

"What are you doing?" Grayson asked suspiciously.

Jameson didn't answer as he went to retrieve a glass - the biggest one he could find. In went the root beer, the orange juice, a dash of kale smoothie. He added some sparkling water for good measure, then give it a swirl.

"It's time for that old Hawthorne standby," he told his brother. "Drink or Dare."

It had been years since they played, and this concoction was only a fraction as nasty as the ones they'd managed growing up, but it would suffice.

"I dare you to grow up." Grayson's light eyes narrowed, but Jameson knew that as much as Gray might bitch and moan about it, he wouldn't turn down the challenge in the end.

He was a Hawthorne.

"Nuh-uh-uh." Jameson wagged a finger at him. "Beauty before age - and that means that I go first."

"The phrase is age before beauty," Grayson muttered.

"Whatever you say, big brother." Jameson lifted the glass and held it up, like he was making a toast. "I dare you to... " He searched his mind for something innocuous, something to loosen the stick up Gray's ass, to distract him - but the first thought that rose from the depths of Jameson's mind to the surface wasn't innocuous in the least. "Admit that you want her."

"Excuse me?" Grayson's tone took on an edge. Powerful. Deadly. And utterly useless between brothers.

"I dare you," Jameson repeated, "to admit that you want Avery. I saw the way you were looking at her, back in the maze. And sword fighting?" Jameson wiggled his eyebrows. "A bit dirty, metaphorically speaking, don't you think?"

"Jameson," Grayson gritted out.

"You taught her to hold your sword." Jameson was an expert at the art of making things not matter. If he could turn this into a joke, what did it matter if Grayson did have feelings for Avery?

What did she matter at all?

"You don't know what you saw," Grayson ground out, his voice tensing against his vocal cords, like an animal caged.

"So tell me," Jameson replied, like the answer didn't matter. Like his own feelings were nothing more than a game. "Or drink."

"You're a bastard, you know that?" Grayson said evenly. Then he grabbed the glass, sloshing liquid over the side, and drank.

"Your turn," Jameson told his brother.

Gray smiled - and it was more than a little sinister. "I dare you to take a lap."

"Around the hallway?" Jameson snorted. "You've lost your touch."

Grayson smiled. "Naked."

There it was. "Planning to lock the door while I'm in the hall?"

Grayson shrugged. "Drink or dare, Jamie."

Jameson stood and pulled his shirt off. He let Grayson think he was going to do it, then settled back down. "As much as I pride myself as being a person who doesn't turn down dares, no one sees this... " He gestured to his bare chest-and then down further. " ... without their consent."

He took the glass back and downed a gulp. "Damn, that's foul."

Grayson smiled-and then he caught himself smiling. "What are you doing, Jamie? What are we doing?"

They didn't spend time together anymore - not like this. They didn't tell each other secrets. They didn't play. But Jameson would be damned, assuming he wasn't already, before he left Grayson to his own devices as they sat around and waited for Gray's father.

This was an armistice. An honorary Vegas-and what happened in this hotel room stayed in this hotel room.

"We're playing a game," Jameson replied simply. Then he stood, strolling back over to the minibar. This time, he didn't shy away from the alcohol. Tequila. Whiskey. Champagne. "Now," he said, once he'd finished spicing up the abomination in the cup, "where were we?"

In the first draft, Xander, Thea, and Rebecca spend a lot of time together, just the three of them, as Xander taps them to help solve the puzzle his grandfather left him in the letter he received at the end of book one. I was sad to cut a lot of funny bickering between Thea and Xander, and I had to rework the Thea/Rebecca arc to appear in scenes where Avery was present. The other thing that I lost when I cut Xander's point of view were scenes that really showed Xander and Rebecca's friendship and the way that both of them were overlooked and defined in relation to their older siblings.

This scene takes place right after Rebecca discovered that Toby is her mother's child. She calls Xander, and he goes to her house.

>--------------------<

In all the years they'd known each other, Xander had never actually been to Rebecca's house. He'd tried to see her after Emily died, but he'd only made it as far as the driveway before she'd texted to tell him to go away. Their friendship had always existed almost exclusively within the Hawthorne gates.

Stepping across the threshold into Rebecca's house felt momentous.

"I'm not going to ask if you're okay," Xander told her as she shut the front door behind him. Her dark red hair was wild, flyaway wisps making her look windblown. Her face was pale.

"It's my mom," Rebecca said. He'd known on the phone that something was wrong, but all she'd said was that she needed to talk to him in person. Now she walked past him to what appeared to be the living room, and he followed. The floor was cluttered with things that probably should have been thrown out: news-papers and printouts and liquor bottles.

A lot of bottles.

"She used to be such a neat freak," Rebecca said. "She used to have so many rules."

Her gaze landed on a nearby shelf full of snow globes and covered in dust. Rebecca walked over and picked up one of the globes. "My mom tried so hard to control everything, to keep Emily in a glass bubble just like this one." Rebecca held the globe up, so it was even with her own eyes. "I thought I knew why."

So far, everything she'd said had made sense. It wasn't something they talked about much, but Xander knew what it had been like for Rebecca growing up. He'd seen it. He'd been there for her through it.

Across from him, Rebecca turned the snow globe upside down. She let the flurries work themselves into a fury, and then she dropped the globe. It hit the ground and shattered, and Rebecca didn't even blink. "I thought I knew why my mom was the way she was with Emily. Before she died-and after. I thought I knew, but I didn't."

Xander stepped toward her, careful of the broken glass. "What didn't you know, Bex?"

"Why she hates your family-and exactly what she meant every time she's said that all her babies die."

This small scene takes place in the moment when the bomb explodes, injuring Avery. Grayson freezes; he's not able to run toward Avery - and this is why.

>--------------------<

Grayson flew back. He landed hard. Pain surging, he tried to sit up. He couldn't breathe, and Avery-

Avery. He staggered to his feet. He didn't see her, not at first, but then he saw Oren, standing over something.

Someone.

He had to move. He had to get to her. He couldn't just keep standing there. If only he could get to her, then-

What? a voice whispered deep inside him. What do you think you can do, Grayson Davenport Hawthorne?

It was a girl's voice. A familiar one.

You can't save her, Emily whispered. Just like you couldn't save me.

In the first draft of the book, Lyra's feelings toward Grayson developed at a very different pace-there was no masquerade ball, no chandelier scene, no moment when she writes that poem and he sees it, no admission from him that he has to practice making mistakes. As I revised, I paid special attention to the Lyra-Grayson arc, and by the time we reached the moment where they were obtaining their hint on the last puzzle, the scene I'd written for that moment no longer worked. But I was sad to lose it, because I do love Grayson Hawthorne playing the violin.

>--------------------<

Grayson removed the box from the drawer. As Lyra watched, he ran his hand over the surface of what appeared to be solid wood. Every inch of it.

"Here," Grayson murmured. He pressed sharply on a specific section of the wood and twisted his hand clockwise. A circular panel fell off the box.

Beneath the panel, there was the face of a clock.

"What-" Lyra started to say, but Grayson cut her off.

"Puzzle box," he responded. "Give me five minutes, ten at most."

Nine minutes later, the box was open. Inside, there was yet another collection of objects, but this time, one in particular hit Lyra hard.

A pair of toe shoes.

Grayson removed them from the box and reached for another pair of objects: a violin and a bow.

Only two items remained in the box: a sketchbook and a mechanical pencil.

"Use them." The sound of Nash's voice reminded Lyra that the oldest Hawthorne brother had promised that after the box was open, they would talk. "Those objects were chosen to be personal. Use them, and you'll get your hint."

"And one more thing... " Jameson Hawthorne sounded like he was enjoying this. A narrow door swung open to reveal a closet full of formal wear. "You all have to dress the part."

>--------------------<

It had been years since Lyra had slipped her feet into toe shoes and wrapped ribbons around her ankles to hold them in place. These shoes weren't new. They'd been broken in, and they fit her feet better than they should have, since she wasn't the one who'd broken them in.

Tying the ribbons, Lyra stood, her dress flowing as she did. She'd chosen the only ball gown in the closet with a skirt made of tulle. The bodice was strapless, which wasn't ideal for moving, but the dress fit her like the toe shoes did: perfectly. The bodice was fitted and a dark navy blue; the tulle skirt started at the slimmest part of Lyra's waist in the same dark-blue color, but the fabric lightened, inch by inch, to a brilliant blue that gave way to a light, frothy one, that melded into the lightest pastel. The bottom of the skirt was completely white. The color didn't change evenly across the skirt; it changed in waves.

Lyra felt like she was wearing a waterfall.

"We'll need to go back to the mosaic room." Grayson's voice was curt. "There isn't room for you to dance in here."

He stalked past her, and Lyra didn't let herself linger on the way that Grayson Hawthorne looked in a vintage tuxedo.

He'd chosen one of the black ones.

He held the violin in one hand and the bow in the other, and stalked back to the mosaic room like he wasn't holding either. Lyra followed, Odette on her heels, the sketch pad and pencil in the old woman's hands. Odette had chosen to dress the part in a long, tight, shimmering dress the color of red wine. Her silvery-gray hair was loose around her shoulders, the black tips popping even against the deep burgundy fabric of the gown.

In the mosaic room, Grayson paused, his back to the wall of windows that showed it was still dark outside.

But not for long. They were on the clock.

"Will you be able to dance safely on the tiles?" Grayson asked. Lyra tested the ground beneath her feet. It felt smoother than it should have, the space between the individual tiles miniscule.

She nodded. If I'm able to dance at all.

Avery and Grayson's brothers had chosen their challenge well. Lyra would have preferred answering a thousand questions about herself to this.

She'd been good once. She'd loved dancing - once. I'm not that Lyra anymore.

"Let's get this over with," Grayson said in that same curt tone. "I'll play, you dance... " He barely skimmed his gaze over Lyra before focusing in on Odette. "And you'll draw." He paused. "I would assume that you're supposed to sketch our dancer."

A musician. An artist. A dancer.

For the longest moment, their entire team just stood there, and then Grayson lifted the violin to his chin, and then he raised the bow, and then he began to play.

Lyra didn't recognize the song-but oh. It was... not just beautiful. Complicated. Powerful. She ached with unfamiliar emotions just listening to it, and without warning, her body lost itself to Grayson's music. Lyra didn't plan out the moves, didn't count a single step in her head - but oh.

Oh

She'd missed this. Legs extending, body turning, on pointe, in the air. She danced the way that Grayson Hawthorne's music was meant to be danced to. It hurt. Dancing hurt. More than running, more than pushing herself, more than the dreams.

It hurt in the best possible way, the music ripping her heart out. Lyra couldn't have held back if she'd tried, and when it was over - when Grayson lowered his bow and the spell was broken - all she could do was look at him like she might never look away.

You're okay.

"There," Grayson said, his voice oddly hoarse. "It's done."

Nothing happened. Slowly, Lyra looked from Grayson to Odette.

The old woman shook her head, and the pencil dropped from her hand. Grayson knelt to pick it up, and Odette shook her head again. "I can't," she said. "You do it." She whipped her eyes from his to Lyra's and back again. "You draw her."

Grayson went stiff. "That wasn't the deal."

"One of us has to," Odette said. "Let it be you."

"Will that even work?" Lyra refused to look at Grayson, who apparently found the idea of drawing her somehow unbearable. "The objects were chosen to be personal to each of us. The sketch-book was yours."

"Believe me," Odette said quietly, "this is personal to him, too."

Lyra had no idea what to make of that. Grayson must have decided that there was no time to argue, because he snatched the sketchbook from Odette, set his mouth into an unforgiving, unwavering line, and began to draw.

Lyra swallowed. Suddenly, she didn't know where to look or what to do. She'd never been drawn before.

"Stand still," Grayson ordered roughly.

Lyra stood still, trying not to feel his gaze like a physical thing, trying not to wonder what she looked like through his eyes or remember the beautiful, painful, everything music he'd played.

"Done." Grayson let the sketch pad fall from his hands to the ground. "Satisfied?"

Lyra didn't mean to walk forward, to kneel, to pick up the drawing. But she did. A breath caught in her throat. There was no way-absolutely no way - that she looked like that. The dress, the expression on her face, the curves of her body. Not hidden. Not downplayed. The almost ethereal - but also intense - look in her eyes. Her hair, falling out of the makeshift bun she'd hastily put in.

Grayson Hawthorne had made her beautiful.

"Nicely done, Gray, but Odette has to draw." Nash did gentle very well, like it came more naturally to him than any of his brothers. "Those are the rules."

"You couldn't have told us that before?" Grayson looked like he was considering murder.

Lyra darted her gaze to Odette.

"I wanted to be an artist," the woman said quietly. "When I was very young."

How young? Lyra wondered. But she didn't say it. All she said out loud was: "Please. We're so close, Odette."

Odette took the pencil from Grayson but still couldn't seem to put it to a page.

"My parents are selling their house," Lyra blurted out. "Whatever financial trouble they're in, it must be bad if they're even considering selling. My dad - my real dad, who raised me - he grew up in that house." Lyra didn't want to be saying any of this, especially in front of Grayson, but she didn't see any other choice. "They can't afford college for me or for my brothers. I'm fine with dropping out, but I want options for them. Please, Odette."

With shaking hands, the old woman put the pencil to the page, and she drew, and when she stopped, when Lyra came to stand beside her and look down at the page, the image that Odette had drawn stole the breath from Lyra's chest.

A calla lily.

I really love writing Hawthorne brother hijinks. "One Hawthorne Night" and "What Happens in the Tree House" gave me my first taste of what it's like when the Hawthorne brothers "bond" in their own special way, and I initially envisioned having a third story in the anthology that really complements those two. The proposed title was "A Suit-Napping Most Foul," and the premise was basically that someone kidnaps all of Grayson's suits. The story was going to be set either between The Hawthorne Legacy and The Final Gambit or between The Final Gambit and The Brothers Hawthorne... on April Fools' Day.

The initial description I turned in to my editor literally just said: "It's April first, and Grayson's suits have been kidnapped."

Honestly, just looking at that sentence, I totally want to write it. Maybe someday I will! But for now, I can show you the tiny snippet I did write, which was meant to be the opening page of the story.

Enjoy!

>--------------------<

On the evening of March thirty-first, Grayson Hawthorne slept lightly - but apparently, not lightly enough. On the morning of April first at precisely 6:43 AM, he woke to find that he had been robbed. The thief or thieves had hit both of his walk-in closets.

Every single suit was gone.

No jackets. No slacks. No dress shirts. In fact, the only items in either closet were a rather disturbing array of Hawaiian shirts - dozens of them, in the most garish colors imaginable.

Shirts but no pants. Jaw hardening, Grayson looked up. Plastered to the ceiling, held in place by who knows what, was a single pair of leather pants.

Grayson did not know which of his brothers was - or in the case of multiple perpetrators, were - responsible, but that didn't stop him from beginning to systematically plot out his response.

One did not merely fool a Hawthorne on April Fools' Day. One declared war.

Grayson was already considering several avenues for revenge when the first of the notes arrived. The bearer was canine. Tiramisu Panini Hawthorne dropped a clear plastic tube at his feet. Grayson wasn't a monster, so he didn't hold the delivery against the pup, scratching her behind the ears.

If you want to play, he told the suit-nappers silently, removing the ransom note from the tube, I will play.

>--------------------<

That's as far as I got. What, beside the ransom note, was in the tube? What sort of ridiculous ransom was the perpetrators going to demand of Grayson if he wanted his suits back? What form would Grayson's revenge have taken?

I'm smiling just thinking about it. I'm almost positive I'll have to finish this story someday. But for now, I present to you...

* Start with the scene where Nash saves her from that frat boys.

- Maybe begin with her tucked into his shirt, culdled up against his chest, listening to his heartbeat.

- How would she think of Nash? In her puppy mind, what's his name? "Warm Safe Wrestle Man

- Smells like grass and wind and... Libby.

* Get a Libby/Nash moment from the puppy's poit-of-view.

* Xanden naming her.

* Maybe the night with Leather Pants Grayson? I feel like her name for Gray would have the phrase "Good Pats" in it.

* Xanden training her to do very Xandery tricks. Like a Rube Goldbey machine... but with a puppy.

* A scene or scenes with some of the characters we haven't seen as much of? Maybe Oren and/or Zara.

* Probably an Alisa scene because, Alisa is starting to feel the ache of wanting something real and warm and hers (set up secret arc!)

* Nan and puppy would be hilarious!

* Maybe end with pup snuggling Libby's belly?