After a long, torturous moment, Savannah reached back to unclasp the necklace. She handed it to Helena. The moment the old woman closed her fingers around the fleur-de-lis, she closed her eyes. For a split second, that aged face, that face that had been beautiful once, threatened to crumble.
But Helena Thorp was made of sterner stuff than that.
“Whatbegins again?” Savannah asked a second time.
Gigi thought about Nora, about the way she’d saidit’s not going to be you, about the way that someone had sent her to find Gigi. “When is a warning not a warning?” Gigi pushed. “When is it a prelude to… something else?”
Something bigger.
Violet eyes opened. “At a certain point in the cycle, a calla is not a warning forthe recipient. It is a way of asserting a claim and warning the others off—a mark, if you will.”
“A mark of what?” Gigi asked.
“Potential.” Helena Thorp let that word hang in the air. “As metal is forged, so potential must be tested. And thus, Candidates are chosen.”
It’s not going to be you.
Run away, little girl.
You’d never survive.
“Tested how?” Gigi said. “Chosen for what?”
Helena rose from the table. “‘Spin, spin,’ said the spider to its web,” she murmured.
Gigi was on her own feet in a flash. “I don’t understand.”
“Perhaps you will,” Helena said. “Soon.” She rang a bell, and the butler reappeared immediately with their cell phones on a silver tray.
No, Gigi thought desperately.I’m not leaving.She looked to the necklace, Calla’s necklace, which the Thorp family matriarch still had in her left hand.
“That necklace,” Gigi said, refusing to give up, “that fleur-de-lis—it’s not just a fleur-de-lis, is it?” The butler returned her phone and Savannah’s, but Gigi just kept right on talking. “You put that symbol on the Musée, the library, the town hall—but it isn’t really theThorpfleur-de-lis, is it?”
There was the faintest flicker of emotion in Helena’s eyes.Whatemotion, Gigi wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter. She was onto something.
“That symbol,” Gigi said, borrowing Nora’s words, “has no place in this town.”
“Get out.” Helena’s voice shook.
“No,” Gigi said.
Helena’s violet eyes got a faraway look in them as she walked over to the glass door to the garden. As the old woman turned the key in the lock, the garden path outside lit up.
“You two may see yourselves out through the garden,” Helena said, the oddest tone in her voice. “I can promise that you will not much care for what happens to you if you do not.”
Chapter 33
GIGI
In the garden, Gigi let Savannah take the lead. Old habits died hard, and Gigi’s mind was spinning with what they had managed to glean, with talk of Candidates and potential, spiders and webs.
The two of them passed under one ivy-covered arch and onto the next, down the twisting path. Savannah didn’t so much as look at Gigi.
“Are you mad at me?” Gigi asked. The garden had looked manicured from the parlor, but the deeper they went, the wilder it grew.
“The most frustrating thing about being your sister is that it is nearlyimpossibleto be mad at you,” Savannah replied, and then she came to a sudden halt.
Something’s wrong.Gigi’s hand went automatically to Slate’s knife at her back, then she saw what Savannah had seen on the path: a kitten. To Gigi’s shock, her twin bent to pick it up.