Happy Christmas. Roast some chestnuts for me.
That was it. The last one.
It was so hard to wrench myself back to the present. I made an effort to remember, to put words to the cold twist of panic in my stomach. Holmes is here. We’re looking for her. You have no idea how you’re going to find her.
And Hadrian Moriarty—was he Nathaniel Ziegler? I’d thought myself a genius when I’d picked him out of the crowd. When he invited me back to his loft. Nathaniel feigned panic when I mentioned Leander’s name, and I thought, Yes, a sign that I’ve found the man I’ve been looking for, and had no idea how right I was. Was Hadrian masquerading as Nathaniel? All the time, or only for these meetings? Was he teaching college classes, or was he just meeting Leander in that empty, echoing faculty housing at night?
It was a half-formed hunch, in Leander’s email. He didn’t think he was right.
But God, what if he was. Reason through it, Watson. Because August Moriarty had seen Nathaniel last night and let him go. What if he had been conspiring with his family all along? What if he and Nathaniel hadn’t gone to see Hadrian because Nathaniel was Hadrian?
What if all of this was a ploy to get us where Lucien Moriarty wanted us?
Frantically, I scrolled up through the previous emails. Looked through them faster now, all pretense gone. We were still standing in that same damn atelier, and when I glanced up at August, his attention was fixed raptly on the artist’s face as he spoke. His own voice had grown quieter.
I took a look around me. This artist was interested in painting more traditionally than the others we’d seen—at least, his canvases weren’t flashing neon lights or cut up into tiny strips. They were portraits. Each had a dark head, looking to the side, the expression obscured. All charcoals and grays, with flashes of eggshell white. What the paintings depicted was different from the false Langenbergs we’d seen, but they all had a definite similarity to The Last of August.
The artist didn’t look like Nathaniel Ziegler. He didn’t look like Hadrian Moriarty, either, and maybe they were one and the same. This guy was all of eighteen.
When he saw my expression, August held a finger up to the artist. “More vodka?” he asked. “Then we’ll come back.”
I had to keep a lid on my suspicions for now. We had to find Holmes.
August Moriarty kidnapped you, a voice in my head whispered, and you still thought he was on your side. How could you be so stupid?
“August,” I hissed outside the studio’s entrance, but he shook his head tightly. Later, he mouthed. As we wound our way back to the table of drinks, I wondered if Holmes was even here. Maybe she’d stolen herself away to a coffee shop somewhere to think. Maybe she was still in Greystone HQ, playing scales on her violin, having shaken off our fight right after it happened. Maybe she’d done the sane thing, for once, and called someone to talk it over—though who, I didn’t know.
No. I needed to focus on the now. I felt like she was here somewhere, and from the look on his face, he felt it, too. “Bathroom,” he said, and pointed to a door far across the cut-up room. “Since you asked.”
I nodded. We’d split up, then. Trust him for now, I reminded myself. You’ll have to deal with this later. I crept slowly toward the restroom, looking up from my phone to throw quick glances down the aisles. There were voices, everywhere voices, but I didn’t hear Holmes’s. Which could mean nothing. I remembered the time she’d dragged herself under my father’s porch and taken the rest of her stash all at once, sitting in the cold dirt like a blank-faced doll. It’d been like pulling teeth to get her to talk, until she opened herself up to spill out everything. One long black flood of confession.
The ateliers were fewer here, and the suspended walls held dark little dens instead. Couches, and a television playing Netflix. A more elaborate bar, with rack after rack of liquor bottles reaching up to the false ceiling, the wall behind it chalkboard-painted and covered in strange little sunbursts. A few that were empty of everything but people laughing, people dressed like artists and people wearing suits, and I wondered about those strange little open spaces, who “owned” them, if anyone, who decided who came in or went out.
And still I didn’t see her anywhere, until I did.
She was the golden-haired girl in a sea of men. My gaze had skipped right over her, and then I’d seen those eyes of hers, colorless and cold and strange.
Quickly, I backtracked and grabbed another cup, sloshing cranberry juice into it with shaking hands. She seemed fine, I told myself, she’s talking, she’s happy, it’s fine, and I tried to summon up the confidence I’d need to wander into a room full of strangers and pull her out. Where was August? I couldn’t see him. I didn’t know what her cover was, or what she was doing—or God, even if she would come with me if she saw me.
I approached again, slowly. I didn’t want to scare her off. At the edge of the crowd, I dodged the waving arms of a bearded guy ranting about Banksy, and put myself into Holmes’s line of sight.
She didn’t seem to see me. As I watched, she plucked an offered cigarette from its pack. “Anyone got a light?” she asked in her low, hoarse voice. These artists spoke English, then, or at least recognized the gesture, because three different men fumbled out their lighters. Holmes leaned forward into someone’s gold-plated Zippo, and for the barest second, she locked eyes with me. Mouthed not yet, jerked her head.
August must have read the signals, too. “I didn’t think this was your kind of scene,” he said loudly, emerging from behind me to take the cup from my hand. “Thanks for getting me a drink.”
“I lost you in the crowd.” One of the men ran a finger over Holmes’s bare shoulder, and she giggled. “Is this your kind of scene?”
“No,” he said, low in his throat, and it wasn’t in response to my question. “I know that man. Michael!” August called with a wave.
The closest man to Holmes, the one with the most muscles and the least gray hair, saw August and gave him a cursory wave back. He clearly wasn’t interested in anything August had to say; instead, he bent to whisper in Holmes’s ear. She beamed up at him. “Ooh, where?” I heard her ask.
“That’s Hadrian’s bodyguard,” August murmured. “His personal bodyguard. He doesn’t work for Milo. I didn’t know he’d be here tonight.”
“Is that how you know this place? You’ve been here with your brother? Hadrian?”
August nodded, the barest movement.
“Is your brother here?”
A hesitation, and August shook his head no.
He had been. He had been talking to his criminal cretin of an older brother all this time, under our noses, and I could feel my hands seizing at my sides, wanting to strangle him. If we weren’t in public—
“Michael,” he said to me, loud enough to broadcast, “come on, let’s go get a drink.”
The giant man held up his cup in response as he walked away. Holmes was already tripping after him, her fingers tangled with his.
“Call your brother, you jackass,” I told August. “Tell him to get his bodyguard home. I’ll follow her.”
I felt torn in a way I couldn’t remember feeling before. In the past, I’d always respected her boundaries, especially when she was in disguise, trawling for information. Either I followed her lead or stayed out of it entirely. My stakes in this situation were lower; my stakes were always lower. My father may have asked us to ask after Leander, but he wasn’t my uncle. I might have been in Holmes’s house when it happened, but it wasn’t my mother that Lucien was poisoning.
I had tried to convince myself that it was our mission. I was wrong.
But it was my best friend who was raped, my best friend who did coke and oxy and anything else that wasn’t bolted down. She was also the one who could always take care of herself, but here she was, following the giant German bodyguard into what looked like a small square room repurposed into coat closet (In an graffiti-covered art squat? a tiny part of my brain asked, A coat closet—is it art?), and dammit, d
ammit—
Because it was December, or because it was an art installation (who knew?), this closet was filled with coats. I hid myself behind a floor-length fur, and though I couldn’t see anything, I heard the two of them talking just fine.
“I’ve watched you since you come in,” he was rumbling. “You bright up the room.”
“It’s hard to miss you, too, you know. God, you must work out—look at your arms! You’re so much stronger than my bodyguard. And better looking.” She giggled. “Do you want a job?”
I couldn’t make a diagnosis. I’d never seen Holmes on coke; I didn’t know what it did to her. What it did to anyone, actually. What happened, in the movies? Didn’t it make you talk quickly, feel more confident? Was that heroin?
“I have many years’ contract with my employer. He is . . . angry man.”
“Oh, I’m just teasing! He isn’t here, is he? I don’t want you to get in trouble.”
Sometimes it made my head spin, thinking how much of Holmes’s spywork had to do with telling stupid men what they wanted to hear.
“Tonight, no. He send me to check on a man who paints for him, but he is not here either. He is stupid. Does not return his calls, and he owes him work. This will get the man into trouble. I will go to East Side Gallery after, since sometimes he is there.” A rustling sound, like he was backing her into a rack of coats. “You come with? After, we party.”
“This is a party. We could party now,” she murmured. My head washed with static. She can handle this, I told myself. She always handles it.
A wet sound, like kissing. The rustling grew louder.
“Wait—” And she sounded so unsure, so scared, that I had to shove my fists into my pockets. “My old boyfriend is here sometimes. I don’t want him to hurt you.”
“Hurt me?” This was apparently a new concept.
“No—not that he could, but I don’t want there to be a scene.” A sly note in her voice. “I broke his heart. Have you seen him? He’s really tall, and handsome. Older. He has slicked-back black hair.” Leander.
“Him? You date him?”
“It was a mistake,” she babbled, a girl backtracking. “I’m sorry, a mistake, I’m just worried about you—”
“No. You don’t worry about him. My employer has taken care of it, yes? Now—”
That wet sound again. No, a different wet sound, and a man’s tortured wheeze, a whimper, and before I fully knew what I was doing, I had shoved myself out from my hiding place, fists up.
In time to watch Holmes slam her elbow into his throat a second time. He slid down to the floor, dragging an avalanche of coats down with him.
“He tried to reach up my dress.” With a shaky hand, she straightened her wig. “Let’s go. Now.”
We made a break for the stairs. Even now, even with her mouth tight and trembling, she was playing the part she’d assigned herself—what looked like some blond version of Marie-Helene, down to the clothing. Was that how she crafted a persona? Ran her scanner eyes over some girl she’d just met and then re-created her, hours later, with a wig and a set of painted-on freckles?
Behind us, a buzz kicked up. When I turned to look, I saw a man come tearing out of the coat closet only to be grabbed and hauled away by—August?
“Faster,” Holmes said, and we pounded down the brightly painted stairs, past the burned-out chandelier and the door with its painted eyes. In moments, we were outside and tearing down the hill. But I hadn’t paid attention when we’d first arrived, and there was nothing around us—just the lumbering shapes of factories and trucks stretching out to the skyline.
“Where are we?” I asked her, but she grabbed me by the elbow and hauled me along. At the end of the block she skidded to a stop and pulled me around the corner of a warehouse. I searched my pockets for my phone. “I have something to tell you about August.” No response. “He’s in touch with his brother. He’s been talking to Hadrian, I think all this time.” Nothing, still. “Holmes?”
She’d knelt on the curb, her hands braced against the concrete. Once, twice, she threw up into the street. I got down beside her to hold back her hair, the long strands of the wig cold and stiff in my fingers. A cold wind snapped down the street. She didn’t shiver, but any minute now, it was going to snow.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine.” She coughed, then pulled off her wig and threw it to the ground. The wig cap. The false eyelashes. Without them, she was almost herself again, a girl in cast-off black clothes with desperate eyes. “Can you call a car?”
“I don’t have any reception,” I told her. “Yours?”
“I’ll ask Milo.”
“Isn’t he in Thailand?”
But she didn’t say anything else for a long minute. Instead, she looked out across the road stretching out and up to the art squat. The wind kicked up again, scattering her hair across her face.
Wheels on gravel. As we both watched, a black town car came around the corner. It didn’t have plates.
“I wonder who he bugged this time,” I muttered, opening the door, “you or me.”
The driver was another of Milo’s silent, dark-dressed men. After we settled in the backseat, Holmes waved at him. “Home.”
We were quiet for a long minute. Absently, she asked the driver for a plastic bag; he handed her one as though he had a supply on hand. I wasn’t sure what to say after the way we’d left things back at Greystone. I turned it over in my head—an apology? An interrogation? How to tell her about what I’d learned from Leander’s letters? She met with him, the last one said. They talked about how things would change at her house. Should I start there?
At first it seemed like we wouldn’t talk about it at all. She took out her phone and began tapping away—to who, I didn’t know—and only when she’d finished did she speak, in a hoarse, cruel voice that I’d only heard once before.
“You want to talk about this.”
I sighed. “I need to tell you something about August.”
She drew a breath. “Watson. If you’re telling me you’re concerned about his loyalties, I’m uninterested. He might be in touch with his family. He might be unwilling to babysit me. I don’t care what reason you’ve dug up, but at the moment, I’d rather rely on him than you. This brings us to my second point. One moment.”
Very neatly, she threw up again into the plastic bag.
“Two,” she said. “When you told me to get out, I did. This is me getting myself out. I want out. I don’t want this horrifying iteration of you that no longer has any faith in my ability to keep a handle on myself because I am having boy problems.” She said those last words with a snarl. “Am I made of glass now? You come to find me, and you don’t tell me straight off that you’ve gotten new information about my uncle?”
“How did you know that?”
Holmes stared at me like I was a moron. “You’re honestly asking me that question.”
“Holmes. August is talking to his brother again, and I don’t care if he thinks he’s doing us—me—a favor, it’s incredibly stupid. What did he do, wander into his consulting rooms dressed like a bookseller? Surprise, I’m not dead, and oh look! We’re re-creating history—”
“Shut up, Watson. Just get out. Look, we’re at a red light—I’m sure you could find your way home. Do you have reception to call a cab?” She glanced again into the rearview mirror. The driver didn’t look back. “Do you need me to come with and hold your hand?”
I set my jaw. She was coming at me like a bulldog, in the back of a town car that smelled like puke and was taking us to God knows where, but there was no way I’d let her get a rise out of me.
Holmes glanced again out the back, then at the driver.
“Why do you keep looking out the window?”
“We’re passing the Berlin Wall. Are you completely helpless with geography, or do you really not know where we are?”
“I—”
“Look it up. We’re not far from Greystone HQ.”
She was flus
tered now. Scattered. The car was going faster. I waited a second before I asked, “Are you feeling all right? Do you need—”
“I am clearly not physically ill over something that you have done to me. You might be dense, but right now you’re being extraordinarily stupid.”
I knew her well enough to know when she was pissing me off on purpose, but this had a different feel than usual. Usually, when she went after me with teeth and nails, it was because something else had frustrated her and I happened to be in the same room. She liked to have something concrete to fight with. It wasn’t my favorite thing about her, but it wasn’t the worst, either, and she normally ran through her rages in a minute or two.
And yes, we’d had a heart-wrenching fight earlier, and yes, it might’ve been something we couldn’t come back from, but when Holmes was truly angry with me, she didn’t throw out petty insults or tell me to look up the Berlin Wall on my phone.
The last time she went after me with this kind of viciousness, it was to chase me out of her lab before we were both killed by an explosion.
It couldn’t be true. I turned to stare out the back window of the car. It was dark, and I didn’t know the city, but I also didn’t think I remembered the giant industrial buildings we were passing now. We were going deeper into whatever neighborhood we’d been in. We definitely weren’t on our way back to Greystone.
Holmes was staring at me. Look at your phone, she’d said. So I did.
It was back in service. She’d been texting me this whole time.
THIS ISN’T A GREYSTONE CAR
GET OUT
I SENT AN SOS TO AUGUST AND MILO THEY’LL COME FOR ME
GO
GO NOW
Before I could begin to form a plan, or say, No, I’m not leaving you, we’ll get ourselves out of this, the car came to a crashing halt. Even though I was buckled in, I slammed forward into the divider.
“Get out,” Holmes said hoarsely, not bothering to whisper. “They’re not interested in you.”
What is happening? I wanted to ask, and Why is this happening now? The driver climbed out and slowly rounded the back of the car.