The Last of August

  And then there was Holmes, who was acting like she’d had a near-death experience and come back to tell me all about the light. She was relieved, I realized. Bone-crushingly relieved. When, in our last case, she’d realized August wasn’t to blame, she’d acted the same way. Talked nonstop. Ate everything.

  Ate . . . everything.

  “Have you had stollen?” she asked me, pulling me over to a booth staffed by a jolly old man right out of a Hallmark special. “Was kostet das?” she asked, pointing to the both of us. The man answered, and she pulled a handful of euro coins out of her pocket.

  “What am I eating?” I asked her as she handed me a slice of jewel-dotted bread.

  “Stollen,” she repeated impatiently. “Sort of like fruitcake, only it isn’t wretched. Milo usually ships it home for the holidays. That, and a fir candle to light up next to the artificial tree.”

  Gingerly, I tried it. It wasn’t bad at all.

  Cookies next, then mulled wine that smelled like cinnamon and cloves. We wandered through the stalls, eating from brown paper bags, getting our gloves covered in crumbs. We’d stopped on the way so that Holmes could retrieve her jacket from Piquant, the restaurant we’d eaten at with Phillipa, and now she flipped the collar up to keep the snow off the back of her neck. Then, with a self-conscious laugh, she reached over to do the same to mine.

  “Otherwise it’ll go down the back of your shirt,” she said, her fingers brushing against my hair. “Don’t want that.”

  I shivered.

  This side of the market was playing Handel over its speakers, but as we wound over to the giant, light-up Ferris wheel, the music changed to American Top 40. The tail end of a song about sneakers, and then—

  “Oh my God,” I said to her. “They’re playing L.A.D.”

  “I think I just heard the twelve-year-old girl behind me say the same thing.”

  “Shut up,” I said, “or I won’t take you on the Ferris wheel.”

  “You’re assuming that I want to go.”

  “Of course you do.” I paused. “Do you?”

  She smiled crookedly at me, her mug of mulled wine clasped between her hands. A little bit of powdered sugar was on the tip of her nose.

  “Yes,” she said. “I want to.”

  We stomped our feet next to each other in the line; she was doing this thing where she’d lean against my arm for a second, but if I looked down at her, she’d pull herself away like a housecat caught on its back.

  “I want car number three,” she said, when we neared the front.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Haven’t you been paying attention? It’s the one that’s the swingiest.”

  “Swingiest isn’t a word.”

  She smiled at me, that one particular smile I hardly ever saw, the one that could open padlocks, Yale locks, bank vaults, the one that was a trapdoor down into everything. I reached out and touched the tip of her nose. My finger came away white with sugar.

  “It is now,” she said quietly.

  The ride operator was appropriately toothless, and the boys above us kept throwing popcorn down at our heads, and when our car stopped, it didn’t stop at the top to give us a view of the city—instead, we jerked down to the stop before we disembarked, the perfect place to stare up at everyone else’s feet.

  “It only goes for two minutes? For five euros each?” She dug through her brown paper bag. “I wish I had something to throw myself.”

  “You’ve never been to a carnival before?”

  “I rode the London Eye with my Aunt Araminta. She believed in taking my brother and me on ‘excursions.’” Holmes made a face. “She gave us clothes for Christmas, a size too large, ‘to grow into.’ She’s the sort of person air quotes were invented for.”

  “Leander said that the Moriartys killed her cats,” I told her, and then blanched. I hadn’t meant to bring that up. Not just when we were on the other side of this case (But are we on the other side of this case? a voice in my head asked), but when we were getting along so well.

  But Holmes just nodded. “Totally did her in. She sells honey, now, from her apiary, and doesn’t talk much to anyone. I haven’t seen her in two or three years.” Our spangled metal car tipped forward, then back. “Are they ever going to let us off this thing?”

  “I thought you liked the swinginess.”

  “It’s making me nauseous.”

  “Just close your eyes and enjoy the L.A.D. It’s ‘Girl I See U Dancin.’”

  “You knew the name.”

  “Girl I see u dancin / something something ransom—oh, come on. You love it.”

  “I love it? I think that’s your job.”

  I wrinkled my nose at her. “I know your deepest, darkest secrets, Charlotte Holmes. Don’t you give me that.”

  The smile on her face went frozen and forced, all at once, like a gust of cold wind from the north, and as I opened my mouth to ask why, the ride lurched forward again.

  eight

  WE MADE IT BACK TO HOLMES’S ROOM AROUND MIDNIGHT to find August Moriarty waiting at the door, hat literally in hand.

  “Where’s Nathaniel?” she asked him, an edge already in her voice.

  “I let him go,” he said.

  She started, like she was keeping herself from lunging at him. “You ask for my trust, for all of our trust, and then you go and drag away the man I want to question and you announce yourself and everything you know to Hadrian Moriarty and—”

  “We didn’t see Hadrian. My brother’s gone to ground, Holmes,” August said. “I don’t know where he is. Nathaniel doesn’t know where he is. And neither does Milo, though his being on a red-eye flight does limit his resources somewhat.”

  “So why did that compel you to let Nathaniel go?” I asked him. “We have a stack of invoices here, for forgeries Nathaniel’s students made that he sold to your older brother. We have a business card for David Langenberg, Leander’s alias that we found in Nathaniel’s apartment. And you let him rabbit? Just like that?”

  “Because he doesn’t know where Leander is,” August said, “and this has never been about the Langenberg paintings. I don’t care what you found.”

  “You’re sure he doesn’t know.” Holmes took a step toward him. “You’re sure.”

  August shook his head, as if trying to clear out noise. “I’m sure.”

  “How?” I asked. “How are you being so cavalier about this?”

  “I pulled up pictures of Nathaniel’s elderly parents. They’re in a home, north of the city. I had its name within seconds. Its address. I threatened to kill them, tonight, if I even imagined he was lying.” His voice broke. “Do you remember what my last name is? Or do you need an explanation for why he believed me?”

  “There’s a link,” I said to Holmes. Anything, anything to defuse this situation. “We have the link. We know your uncle was posing as a Langenberg—”

  “We don’t know that,” she said. “We don’t know anything.”

  “But—”

  “Go to bed, August,” Holmes said, opening her door. She shut it behind us so emphatically it was like she was sealing off a tomb.

  “That was loud,” I said.

  “There isn’t anything left for us to do tonight. We have to wait until tomorrow.”

  “Are you sure?” To my embarrassment, I stifled a yawn.

  To my surprise, she turned to look at me. Really look at me, like she was straining to see some faraway sign.

  “Watson, you look like hell. Haven’t you been sleeping?”

  “Not since October.” I leaned against the wall. It felt good to put my weight against a solid surface. “Is this you saying you’re worried about me, or are you really feeling the hard truths thing tonight?”

  Holmes started to snap back a reply, then stopped herself. Very deliberately, she reached up to put her fingers against my face. “I’m worried about you,” she admitted. It didn’t sound practiced, that admission, as it did when August was trying to be nice. Really, I didn’
t think either he or Charlotte Holmes were nice, at their core. At their best, they were kind. It was that kindness that prompted Holmes to lead me over to the ladder to her lofted bed. “It’s more comfortable than the cot. But you know that, you’ve been sleeping there.”

  “What are you going to do?” I climbed up and got under the covers.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Plan B. Whatever plan B is.”

  “Don’t stay up too late.”

  “I won’t.” She stared up at me, one hand on the ladder. She’d undone the top three buttons of her shirt, and I could see the white line of her collarbone. “I might be—tired later.”

  “Okay,” I told her, as cautiously as I could. “I might still be here.”

  Did I want her to climb into bed with me? Did she want to? Would knowing the answer to either question change what we were going to do?

  Across the room, she rummaged through her suitcase for her pajamas, then called out that she was changing. I turned my back, trying not to listen to the rustle and slip of fabric, trying to remind myself how tired I was. I was tired, I realized with some wonder. I’d been exhausted and unable to sleep for so long.

  Honestly, I’d never forgotten what Lucien had said to us in Bryony Downs’s apartment. It’s good to know what matters to you, he’d told Holmes. So very little does. My brother didn’t. Your own family doesn’t. But this boy . . . Meaning me. The pressure point. The weak point. A thought I tortured myself with on the nights that I stuffed my head under the pillow and tried not to feel the dot of a sniper’s rifle on my back.

  The door open and shut softly. Holmes had slipped out, and my eyes were already closing. Before I passed out, I took out my phone. We’re closing in, I texted my father, though I didn’t think it was true. Will you please reconsider sending Leander’s emails? I won’t read them. I’ll have Milo skim them for what we need.

  Pretense, all of it. He knew I’d read every word, just as Milo knew that Lucien was targeting his parents, and I knew, for a certainty, that neither Holmes or I knew what we wanted at all.

  When I woke, it was hours later; I could tell even in that windowless room. My stomach was growling, and someone was speaking. A male voice. I sat up, too quickly.

  “Lottie, I’m fine. I’ll see you soon.” The voice again, tinnier this time, and then broken into pieces. “Lottie, I’m fine. Lottie, I— Lottie, I’m fine.”

  Holmes sat in a small oasis of light. She was cross-legged on the camp bed with a laptop, a lamp beside her, and her hair hung in her face as she hammered on the keys. “Dammit,” I heard her say. “Goddammit.”

  “How’s it going?” I asked, and she jumped.

  “Watson,” she said. “One of the techs showed me how to peel apart a recording into layers, to isolate background noise. I’ve been working with Leander’s phone message. What time is it?”

  “I have no idea.” I checked my phone; it was ten in the morning. “Did you find anything?”

  “There’s something. An echo . . . the kind that—” She went to play it again, and then, without warning, she slammed her laptop shut. “Shit,” she gasped, exhaling through a hand. “Shit.”

  “Come up here.” I didn’t know if the thought would be at all comforting, clambering up into bed with me. From the look she leveled me with, she was skeptical, too. “Not like that. Just—come here.”

  She climbed up the ladder and sat next to me, our backs against the wall, surveying her little kingdom.

  “Lena’s been texting me,” she said.

  “Any news?”

  “Why are we in Germany, Germany is lame,” she said, in her quoting voice, “and also Tom has started wearing that Nuclear Winter body spray, which has Lena simultaneously turned on and disgusted.”

  “Sounds about right,” I said. She smiled. We both knew that she adored her roommate, and that we would never mention that fact out loud.

  “Every room you settle into looks like this,” I said instead. “The clutter. The weird textbooks. Where do you even get those textbooks? And the lab table. Always with the lab table and the blowing things up. It’s like all of it stays in some little box inside you that . . . bursts open when you take a moment to settle down.”

  “That’s precious, Watson.”

  I grinned. “It’s true. You know it is. You’re like a turtle with your world on your back.”

  “There’s not a lot you can control, you know. Where you’re born. Who your family is. What people want from you, and what you are, underneath it all. When you have so little say in it all, I think it’s important to exercise a measure of control when given the opportunity.” She smiled, ducking her head. “So I blow things up.”

  “Did you hear that? You almost said something profound. You came so close.”

  She pushed her sock feet against the edge of the bed. “Leander liked to talk about the importance of control. No one would ever guess it. He’s famously lazy, you know, he lives like an absolute sloth. Goes from one house he owns to another, violin in tow, picking up the odd crime when it suits him. Living off his trust fund, eating out in restaurants. Going to parties.” She said the word with such disdain that I choked on a laugh.

  “Parties! You know what they say—first, the parties. And before you know it, they’re on to the murdering.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Watson. Some people don’t like to read. Or they don’t like sport. They don’t like the routine of it, or the slow pace, or the fast pace, or the noise. Whether it seems too intellectual or too base. But I’m an anomaly if I don’t like parties or restaurants? It’s wrong if I don’t like the idea that there are a demanded set of responses and that I’ll be judged on how well I can provide them?” Putting on a little-girl voice, she said, “‘Yes, please, I’d like the salmon, it looks lovely! Could I bother you for another soda? Ta!’ I hate the idea of performing a role when I haven’t written the script myself. I need more of a purpose than I want to get a chocolate pudding without the waitress calling the police on me.”

  I made a mental note to dig up the rest of that story later.

  “Leander excels at that kind of thing,” she said, “because he has some genetic aberration that makes him good with people. They like him. They trust him almost immediately, and because he can pass as a normal sort of man, he can be invisible. Left alone. He says the right things, and people approve of him and move on.” She looked at me. “I’ve always wanted to be invisible, and because I want to be, it’s impossible.”

  “What kind of life do you want for yourself?” I asked her. “After all this? After school, after Lucien?”

  She thought about it for a long minute. I had no idea what she’d say. Holmes had always had such a tenuous connection to her surroundings, like she was more real than anything around her. At school, she walked around with a backpack full of books, but they were like props in a stage play. I knew, of course, that she had to go shopping for shoes and shampoo, but I couldn’t imagine a world where she did so, and last week I’d watched her trimming her hair in the sink and wondered if she’d taught herself to do it from a YouTube video, because I couldn’t imagine either of her parents showing her how. But I couldn’t imagine her looking at YouTube, either.

  Maybe it was just me. Maybe she was so endlessly fascinating because the world hadn’t ever scratched up against me the way it did her, leaving her raw and unhappy and wanting to disappear. She used grocery-store-brand shampoo, I knew, because I’d used her shower back in Sussex, and I’d stood there smelling it, the water beating down on my face, because it was impossible that a girl like that shopped at the same stores I did, because, despite my best efforts not to, I’d romanticized her beyond all sense, because even if I wasn’t in love with her, I couldn’t see myself loving anyone else.

  “I want an agency,” she was saying. “A detective agency, a small one. In London, because it’s the only proper place to live. We’ll take back over Baker Street. It’s a museum, now—none of my family wants to live there, it’s too g
auche for them—but it would make you happy, I think, and anyway it has all the original furnishings, so we wouldn’t have to shop for them. Furniture stores are horrid, aren’t they? And we’ll take cases. You can deal with the clients, comfort them, take notes. We’ll solve them together, and I’ll handle the finances, since you’re so terrible at maths.” She paused. “It sounds childish, when I put it that way. I imagine in practice it’ll feel rather adult.”

  “Is that it, then?” I asked her. It came out quiet, though my thoughts were loud and cluttered. I’d never imagined that she’d daydreamed like this, not the way I had. “Is that what you want? I’m in those plans, when you imagine them?”

  “If we both make it that long.” She tipped her head back against the wall to look at me. “You’re determined to take on all this responsibility for mistakes that I’ve made. I’m beginning to think you like having a target on your back. So if you insist on staying, I might as well make a place for you. I—”

  I kissed her then.

  I kissed her slowly. Patiently. It was always too desperate between us, the clock nearing zero, the last secret about to slip out, or too cautious, or too clinical, an experiment gone wild and wrong. It was a huge, impossible thing, kissing your best friend, and each time we’d tried, we’d managed to fuck it up so badly that the next felt even more impossible.

  I wanted to give her an out. I always did, especially after Dobson. But God, it was hard. When she leaned into me, her fingers tracing the hollow of my throat, I had to clench my hands not to touch her back. Then she slipped a hand underneath my shirt, and I forced myself to pull away.

  Her breathing was coming fast. “What if we weren’t doing this? If we were just friends? You’d still come along. You’d be there, with me, in London. Say you would.”

  “I don’t—we’ve never been just friends, though, have we?”