He was on a roof; how does he always find a roof to sit on the edge of every single time he needs to think. "You know I think this is trespassing."
He turned to me, "Don't worry we can run before the police come."
I rolled my eyes and sat next to him; my voice turned serious. "Jamie, I think you forget I know you very well. Something is troubling you, now you can either tell me or we can sit her in silence until you eventually do something stupid or need help."
"I never need help." he said looking offended. After a minute he took a deep breath and said the last possible thing I thought he would ever say. "I met my father today."
"You what?" My mind was a mixture of shock, curiosity, worry, and annoyance that he didn't tell me until now.
"Ian Johnstone-Jameson." I observed the way it rolled off his tongue, he didn't want it to matter. "Professional poker player. Black sheep of what appears to be an extremely wealthy family."
"Appears to be?" I repeated the words sinking in. "You haven't searched his name yet."
He caught my gaze, "I don't want you to, either, Cal."
It was silent, I knew what he was thinking. Nothing matters unless you let it. "So...." I didn't know what to say. I should say something to comfort him but that's not the option I chose. "Your name could have been Johnstone?"
He narrowed his eyes at me, "Don't you dare."
"At least Skye did one thing good for you." I smiled.
He smiled at the comment, "After meeting Gray's asshole father I promised myself that I would never want to meet mine."
I grabbed his hand and squeezed it, "How was it?"
Jameson looked up, before looking at me with half of a grin, "well he hasn't kidnapped or killed anyone yet so that's a plus." Grayson's gather set the bar pretty low. "He wants something from me."
At that my smile dropped any happiness I felt was replaced with anger. "Screw him, he doesn't get to ask you for anything."
"Exactly."
I gave him a look, I knew him. "But. . ."
"What makes you think there's a but?" Jameson retorted.
"This." My fingers brushed against his ace. "I know you Jameson."
"Jameson swallowed, "I don't owe him anything. And I don't care what he thinks of me. But. . ." She was right. Of course she was. "I can't stop thinking about what he said,"
Jameson stepped back from the edge; I followed him not wanting to let him stand by himself too long. He bent down and murmured in my ear. "There's an establishment in London whose name is never spoken." This piqued my interest; he grabbed my arm and pulled me down the stairs and into our shared room. He told me everything and the more he said the more I could feel the adrenaline radiating off of him.
He liked to play. He likes to win. "You want to say yes."
"I said no."
"You didn't mean it."
He sighed, "The Devil's Mercy." There was a thrill that came from the name. A centuries-old secret. An underground gambling house. Money and power and games with stakes.
"When are you talking to him again?" I asked.
"We?" he said raising his eyebrow amused.
"No way I would let you do this on your own."
This time, Jameson was the one who set the place for the meeting. Beside him, Catalina took in the location he'd chosen: a medieval crypt the size of a ballroom, an eerie, elegant underground chamber hidden away from the world.
"You rented it for Nash's bachelor party?" she guessed - correctly. Before Jameson could reply, lan stepped through the doorway and made a show of raking his gaze across the cavernous space: dark stone columns stretching up into an arcing stone ceiling, stained glass letting in the only hints of natural light from the world above.
"Interesting meeting place." Jameson gave a little shrug. "I've always been just a little bit much."
"Hmmm." lan made a noncommittal sound, then allowed his gaze to land on Catalina. "And I see you brought company."
Catalina fixed lan with a look. "Don't worry I'm up to date on everything."
"Are you now?" lan's lips curved.
Jameson mirrored that smile. "Two minds are better than one Tell us about Vantage."
"What would you like to know? It's not a castle, exactly." The word exactly did the heavy lifting in that sentence. "It sits high on an isthmus in Scotland overlooking the water. It's been in my mother's family a very long time." In America, a very long time could mean forty years. But on this side of the pond? They were probably talking centuries, plural. "We spent summers there when I was child," lan continued. "Far more than my father's properties, Vantage is home."
"Who's we?" Catalina pressed, although she probably had an idea of the answer. I wouldn't be surprised if she did look him up despite my warning.
"I have two brothers," lan said. "Both older, both horribly irrelevant to this story."
"What story?" Jameson retorted.
"The one," lan replied, "that you and I are writing right now." There was intensity buried in those words. "And Catalina, of course," the man added.
I never introduced her by name. Jameson didn't like that he knew her by name. "Returning to our story," Jameson said, "you bet your mother's not-a-castle-exactly on a hand of cards?"
"In my defense, I was very drunk, and it was a very good hand." There was a flash of something dark in lan's eyes. "The deed to Vantage is, as we speak, in the hands of the Proprietor."
"The man who runs the Devil's Mercy," Jameson inferred. this Proprietor have a name?" Anticipation began building inside him. This was something.
"Does "Several, I'm sure," lan replied. "None that he has given me. Control of the Mercy passes every fifty or so years, once the Proprietor has chosen an heir. When that heir ascends to Proprietor himself, he leaves everything else behind, including the name he was born with. The Proprietor of the Devil's Mercy may never marry, may never have children, may not maintain familial ties of any kind."
Jameson let that information work its way through his mind. "The Proprietor is the one we'll need to approach for membership?"
lan let out a bone-dry laugh. "That would be impossible. You must get one of the Proprietor's many emissaries to approach you."
"And how do we do that?" Catalina beat Jameson to the question.
"I have some ideas." lan turned to look at one of the stained-glass windows. "But first, ask me what you will need to do after you're invited into the hallowed halls of the Mercy."
"Ask you about step two," Jameson replied skeptically, "before we've figured out step one?"
lan flashed him a grin. "Once you've obtained membership and won access to the Mercy, you will need to get the Proprietor's attention. Not his employees. Not his right-hand man's. His. Once a year, there is a special game of highest stakes, played by invitation only." Ian's tone took on the same energy and depth with which he'd first spoken to Jameson about the Mercy. "The Game may take any form. Some years it's a race. Sometimes it's a physical challenge, sometimes a mental one. There are years when it has been a hunt." Something about the way that lan said the word hunt was unsettling. "If the Mercy is exclusive," lan continued, his voice low and as rich as chocolate, "the Game... well, it's really something else, and clearly, I won't be getting an invitation this year." Because whatever you did when you lost Vantage got you banned from the club.
"You won't be getting that coveted invitation," Jameson replied, "but you expect me to?" He was nineteen, an outsider. Seems like a damn tall order to me.
"An existing member would be the more obvious choice," Jameson noted. "But that would require a chip you could call in -- or a friend to ask." Sometime, needling a person made them show their hand. "Short on friends, Ian?"
"I'm asking you." Ian came to stand toe-to-toe with him, making it impossible for Jameson to look away. "Impress the Proprietor. Tempt him. Make yourself impossible to refuse."
For a split second, Jameson felt like he was back in Tobias Hawtorne's study. "And if I gain entrance to this game," he said, "if I play and win it..."
"The winner may claim any prize won by the house in the prior year." Ian's mouth settled into a grim line. "I doubt that you will be the only one after Vantage."
Jameson rolled that around in his mind. "So, by my count, all I need to do is get invited to join the world's most exclusive secret gambling club...." He lifted one finger with those words, then a second as he continued. "Then somehow persuade its leader to invite me to an even more exclusive private game, which"—a third finger—"I'll then need to win."
"Give the boy a prize," lan said.
Jameson's eyes narrowed. "That leads us back to the start. How exactly am I supposed to get invited to join the Devil's Mercy?"
"Do they even let Americans in?" Catalina asked skeptical. "Or teenagers?"
"Historically," lan said, "no. Membership is only extended to those in the highest echelons of British society, based on a combination of power, status, and wealth."
"So why," Jameson said shrewdly, "would the Devil's Mercy be interested in me?" He was an American teenager who used to be rich, but the power, the connections, the knowledge, the influence, the institutional backing—those had never been his. Unlike Grayson, he hadn't been raised to assume they ever would be. Maybe that was what let Jameson answer his own question. "They wouldn't."
lan had said that Jameson was more useful to him as his son than as a Hawthorne, but Jameson saw now that wasn't the whole truth. He knows who Catalina is. Maybe it hadn't mattered that Jameson was a Hawthorne, but the fact that he was in a relationship with someone important? He suspected that mattered very much. "You wanted me to bring her in on this," Jameson accused "She's the one you were after." He refused to let that hurt. He decided to focus on instead on why he was interested in her.
"You're my player, Jameson," lan replied. "But she's your way in. Draw the Proprietor's attention. Make yourself a package deal."
"No." Jameson's muscles turned to stone. He could feel the explosion coming.
"Jameson." Catalina laid a hand on his shoulder. "I'm not using you Callie"
"You said it yourself on the roof: You're not doing this. We are." She looked past him to lan. "If we start asking around about the Mercy, will that draw the Proprietor's attention?"
"One way or another," lan replied. Jameson didn't like the sound of that. "Think about it, Hawthorne." She stepped closer toward him. "For some reason you need me and Jameson, so seems we have the power here."
"Powerful," Jameson said, looking at her and only her. "And although disinherited still rich and very connected. And you and I—we can make a lot of noise."
"Which," lan added, "the Devil's Mercy does not want."
Jameson turned back toward lan and channeled the formidable Tobias Hawthorne at his most terrifying. "You played me. It won't happen again."
Ian placed a fatherly hand on Jameson's shoulder. "I'd be disappointed if it did."