Page 93 of The Hawthorne Legacy
My heart skipped a beat, then made up for it. “Answer it,” I told Grayson, pulling my hand back from his.
Grayson did as I’d asked. “We’re on our way back to the plane,” he told Jameson.
He’ll want to know what I found. I knew that, knew Jameson. I held up the small metal disk that Jackson Currie had given me. “This is what Toby left with Jackson.” Grayson stared at it, then switched Jameson over to a video chat, so he could see it, too.
“What do you think this is?” I asked. The disk was gold and maybe an inch in diameter. It looked like some kind of a coin, but not any I’d seen before, its surface engraved with nine concentric circles on one side and smooth on the other.
“It doesn’t look like it’s worth much,” Jameson commented. “But in this family, that means nothing.” The sound of his voice did something to me—something it shouldn’t have done. Something it wouldn’t have done before I’d read my mother’s postcards.
Close your eyes, I could hear Max telling me. Who’s there?
“We’re incoming,” Oren announced curtly—to whom, I wasn’t sure. “Sweep the plane.”
When we arrived at the airstrip, he opened my door, and I got three escorts to the plane. Behind me, Grayson had switched the phone off video, but he was still on the line with Jameson.
My mind was full with images of them both—and with the words my mother had written to Toby.
The night air was cold and getting colder. As I walked toward the jet, a brutal wind picked up, then gave way to sudden and utter stillness. I heard a single, high-pitched beep, and the world exploded. Into fire. Into nothing.
CHAPTER 76
Everything hurt. I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t see. When blurred images finally began to form, all I saw was fire. Fire and Grayson, standing a hundred feet away from me.
I waited for him to come running.
I waited.
I waited.
He didn’t.
And then, there was nothing.
The world around me was dark, and then there was a voice. “Let’s play a game.”
I couldn’t tell if I was standing up or lying down. I couldn’t feel my body.
“I have a secret.”
If I had eyes, I opened them. Or maybe they were already open? Either way, I did something, and the world was flooded with light.
“I’m tired of playing,” I told my mom.
“I know, baby.”
“I’m so tired,” I said.
“I know. But I have a secret, Avery, and you have to play—just one more time, just for me. Okay, baby? You can’t let go.”
I heard a long and distant beep. Lightning tore through my body. “Clear!” a voice yelled.
“Come on, Avery,” my mom whispered. “I have a secret.…”
Another round of lightning tore through me. “Clear!”
I wanted to stop breathing. I wanted to go where the lightning and the fire and the pain couldn’t touch me.
“You have to fight,” my mom said. “You have to hang on.”
