The Last of August

  My throat was going dry. I still wasn’t feeling like myself—to be honest, with every hour, I discovered a new part of me that hurt—and I pulled Holmes away so that I could regroup. “Are you enjoying yourself?” I asked her.

  “Immensely.”

  “Do you see Peterson and his squad?”

  “He was in line behind us outside. You didn’t recognize the old man? The one who’d heard of Elmira? Or did you think I’d built a fabulous art world reputation in the last ninety minutes?”

  I snorted. “That was Peterson?”

  “The rest of his squad is coming. And Tom and Lena have seats in the front row. Look for the girl in fur.”

  “Tell me it isn’t, like, actual fur.”

  Holmes adjusted her poncho. “Lena isn’t above killing for what she wants.”

  We surveyed the room, shoulder to shoulder. I spotted August across the room, leaning indolently against the stage, and yanked my gaze away. I didn’t want to call attention to him. “Honestly, I’m feeling pretty good about this. I’d be feeling even better if I didn’t look like the Elephant Man.”

  “It was either that, or we covered your bruises in white stage makeup and brought you along as my mime.”

  I reached under my rubber mask to touch my neck. One of my “abrasions,” as the nurse called them, had started to bleed again. Not that anyone would be able to tell. Only my eyes and mouth were showing. The rest of my face, and my neck down to the collarbone, was covered in a series of exaggerated pixilations, the kind of scrambling they did to naked photos when they showed them on cable TV. I was a walking censor bar. Cameras wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails of me—or that was the idea that I’d explain to anyone who asked.

  “Your partner in mime?”

  “Very high concept,” Holmes said, mimicking Kincaid’s Frankenstein’s-monster delivery. “Very cutting edge.”

  A group of old women tottered by to claim their paddles from the auctioneer. All were dressed to the nines; one fiddled with the jeweled reindeer pin on her hat. I hadn’t seen Hadrian at all yet—I was dreading that—but Phillipa was standing next to the auctioneer, smiling like a wind-up doll.

  “Who are all these people? This is a last-minute thing on Christmas Eve. Shouldn’t they be home with their families?”

  Holmes gave me a pointed look. “Marketing, Watson. A small auction of select rare works from their collection? A string quartet playing Handel? Snacks? The architecturally lauded modern art museum rented out for the evening? Of course they’ve all come out. It smacks of exclusivity. Privilege.”

  “I’m still stuck on the part where you used the word ‘snacks’ in your argument.”

  “Clearly,” she said, “they’re hors d’oeuvres. I just didn’t know if you were familiar with the term. You don’t speak French, do you?”

  Since last night, something between us had eased. It was more like we’d both been pulling desperately at opposite ends of the same rope, and now we’d walked to the middle to fold it up together. Last night had been . . . honestly, I wasn’t even sure if it had really happened. In the middle of the night, in a city like Prague, the girl that I loved slipped into my bed. I couldn’t find a way to describe it without using simple, stupid terms. It had been difficult. She was beautiful. We’d both been frustrated. She’d said my name. I never wanted to make her cry again. All I knew was that I didn’t want us to fight anymore. I didn’t want to try to kiss her, either. Not until I understood it—us—better. I wanted to exist in this stasis as long as we could, this place where we were tentatively getting along.

  The thing was, since it was the two of us, our not-fighting looked a lot like . . . fighting.

  “I took French,” I reminded her. “I’ve taken French for years. You met me outside of French class almost every day this fall.”

  “I did not. Surely I’d remember that.”

  “You did. You know you did, too. You’re just being difficult.”

  “I have an impeccable memory, Watson. Say something to me in French.”

  “No.”

  “You can’t say anything to me in French. A phrase? A word?”

  “I can, but I won’t.”

  “See? My point. You can’t say a word—”

  “Hors d’oeuvres,” I said, and snagged a pair of blintzes from a passing waiter’s tray. “Do you want one?”

  Beneath the wig, beneath the Coke-bottle glasses, despite every fight we’d had in the past few weeks and the ridiculous plastic mask I wore, Charlotte Holmes was looking at me like I was her violin.

  It was a look she hadn’t given me at all last night, and I didn’t know what that meant.

  “‘Give my love to Watson,’” I said softly.

  Her eyes didn’t change. “August told you that?”

  He had, as he’d muscled me through the roof access door and down to Milo’s personal infirmary. I’d been laid out on an uncomfortable hospital bed—why did it always end with me in a hospital bed?—and was asked if I remembered the past few hours, where I’d been. I did. I told her to run, I told August, who put a hand on my shoulder.

  She’s in the helicopter. She said to give you her love. When he said it, he looked sad, and not for himself.

  It took me a second to process it. The first part doesn’t make sense, I said, but the second is just crazy.

  He’s fine, August advised the nurses. Get him some acetaminophen and an ice pack.

  “He did tell me,” I said. “Is that okay?”

  She brushed her hand against mine. “It’s okay,” she said as the hum of voices around us quieted down. “They’re taking their places. I need to go talk to the auctioneer. Find August, will you? And Tom and—oh.”

  Never let it be said that Lena couldn’t make an entrance.

  She strolled in without even looking up from her crystal-encrusted iPhone. The clerk scurried to hold the door open for her, like she was a queen. Around her shoulders, she wore a fur coat like a cape, and underneath, a top that barely covered her chest. It tied around itself, leaving a good five inches of skin bare above her painted-on leather pants. Her black hair had been dip-dyed blue and gold, and when she finally glanced up at the room, she rolled her eyes and reached out a hand for her bag.

  Which was when I noticed the three bodyguards behind her. Greystone mercs in disguise. They hustled her up to her seat in the front of the room, leaving a space beside her for Tom, who, with his suit, sweaty face, and handful of auction paddles, looked exactly like a pop star’s put-upon assistant.

  This afternoon, Milo’s techs had created a constellation of websites and Snapchats and false news references and lyric videos for YouTube for Serena, the rising EDM star. And here she was, in the flesh, looking to build the art collection in her Laurel Canyon home. She’d requested an invitation before dinner, one that the Moriartys quickly granted. Phillipa may have known Holmes and I would be here in disguise, but we wanted her to think that Serena was the real deal.

  Phillipa rushed over to say hello to the pop star, Hadrian at her side. It had to be Hadrian; he was blond and tall, but moved with the hunched-over jerkiness of a crab. I watched him for a moment—Hadrian in his natural form. I looked for signs of Nathaniel. Hadrian’s nose was longer. His eyebrows thinner and higher up on his forehead. All Nathaniel’s warmth and openness wasn’t there.

  Since the Moriartys were distracted, Holmes seized the opportunity to talk to the auctioneer, slipping something small into his pocket. She took her seat again before they saw her.

  A hush fell over the room. We were about to begin. A pair of armed guards took their position to either side of the stage—Moriarty men, there to stop any trouble before it began.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Hadrian cried, rushing up the stairs to the stage. His voice had the same timbre as Nathaniel’s, though it sounded less . . . educated, somehow. Rougher. “Thank you so much for spending your Christmas Eve with us. We love seeing you all at our private auctions—your loyalty means ever so much. We
extend these invitations selectively, and we appreciate your discretion. That said, since ours is a family affair, we understand yours is as well. This will be a far briefer showing than usual, so we can get you all back to your homes for mince pies and fruitcake.”

  Fruitcake? No wonder the Moriartys were all so miserable, if that was their idea of Christmas.

  “Let’s begin,” he said, and when he stepped off the stage, he was immediately pulled aside by August Moriarty.

  Things were in motion.

  The auctioneer began the proceedings with a painting by Hans Langenberg. It was a clear challenge. A way to feel out our motivations. As it was announced, Phillipa craned her neck to stare at Holmes, who shrugged back at her with a smile.

  “A work from the same era as The Last of August,” the auctioneer said. A screen behind the painting listed “facts” about the piece. “Notice the brushwork. The use of ecru, here in the corners. The faces of the two boys are turned from the viewer’s eyes, but we can tell, even at this angle, that the artist has chosen not to detail their features. But the girl between them has those striking brows and red mouth. See the wild expression on her face, that the painter has suggested with only a few lines? The map in her hand? This is an exquisite work. We’ll open bidding at one hundred thousand.”

  There was a small flurry of discussion, and paddles began going up in the air: numbers 103, 282, 78. In the front row, Tom leaned in to whisper a question in Lena’s ear. She nodded without looking up from her phone. Eagerly, he stuck their paddle, 505, in the air. The price went up. 505 went up, too, every time, and soon the other numbers, one by one, began to drop out of the running.

  I should have been paying attention to the auction, not to August and Hadrian off to the side, their heads together, arguing in fierce whispers. Twice, Hadrian turned to look at me over his shoulder and was wrenched back by his brother. We’d never spoken, not while he wasn’t in disguise, and so the intense hatred in his eyes startled me. It looked so personal.

  I’d been having fun until that moment—a tense sort of fun, but fun all the same. It was shocking to me, that this was fun at all, that this was even happening to me—that I was about to take down some elite art auction in the Czech Republic on Christmas Eve. What jerked me back down was the realization that Hadrian clearly wanted to dismember me. I didn’t want to imagine how he felt about Charlotte Holmes.

  Right then, glaring at me, he didn’t look a thing like Nathaniel. For the millionth time, I wondered if Leander was wrong.

  I wondered if Leander was still alive.

  Slowly, I moved closer until I could hear the edges of their conversation.

  August was trying to refocus his brother’s attention. “Look at me,” he hissed. “If you’re claiming all this madness is about me, about my ‘death,’ then you’ll bloody well look at me when we’re talking.”

  “Nine hundred thousand,” the auctioneer was calling. Lena tapped Tom’s shoulder, and he raised paddle 505 again. On the stage, Phillipa’s greedy smile grew. “Sold,” he crowed, “to 505! Our next work is also by Hans Langenberg. . . .”

  The Moriartys were mocking us. One by one, they hauled up their faked Langenberg paintings, and auctioned them off for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Even Hadrian, still in the throes of his conversation with August, kept turning to grin at his sister. The guards standing with semiautomatics to the sides of the stage would keep Holmes and me from making any obvious move on their life. If we tried, we’d forfeit our own.

  Three paintings. Five paintings. Six. The auctions went up, and Lena, in her disguise, won them. Every single time. The Moriartys would have confirmed her banking information ahead of time when they’d accepted her request to join. They felt certain about these sales. About that money.

  Underneath my mask, I was starting to sweat. I knew we were nearing the end.

  “And The Thought of a Pocketwatch goes to number 505,” the auctioneer said as the painting was hauled off the stage. The crowd began to grumble amongst themselves. I couldn’t blame them. They were, for the most part, older, conservative art aficionados who came out on Christmas Eve in pursuit of new work, only to be outbid by a teenage pop star who wouldn’t stop cracking her gum.

  “That’s the last one,” I heard Hadrian say to August. He put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “I’ll wish them all goodnight, and then we can finish our conversation.”

  August smiled thinly. “Yes,” he said. “Do.”

  Before Hadrian could take more than a step, the auctioneer cleared his throat. “We have a final piece to present, one that isn’t in your catalogs.”

  The room fell silent. Phillipa started toward the auctioneer, her smile frozen on her face.

  Holmes beat both of them to the punch. “Ah, yes!” she said, standing from her seating in the back of the room, stretching her arms out to her sides. “Yes, I am very excited for this!”

  “It’s Elmira Davenport,” Peterson said in a loud whisper. “I wonder if it’s one of her early pieces!”

  The man next to him nodded sagely. “Davenport really is the future of video art.”

  “I’ve always said so,” said his wife.

  She must’ve sensed that she was losing control of the situation, because Phillipa reached out and grabbed the auctioneer by the arm, hard. “Miss Davenport,” she said, in a carrying voice. “Surely we can fit your work into our next showing—”

  “Let her show it now!” called Peterson.

  “Yes!” another voice called. “None of us are taking home anything! Give us a chance!”

  Tom turned to Lena and said loudly, “You’re not interested in video art, are you?”

  “I hate it,” she said in a dull voice.

  “She hates it!” someone repeated, and then the room began to buzz. The museum’s high walls of the room gathered their voices and looped it on itself; it sounded almost like a swarm of bees was descending from the ceiling. On the stage, Phillipa bit her lip so hard it turned white. August held Hadrian in place with a firm hand, and while the armed guards looked across the room at each other—I was watching—they made no movement toward their weapons.

  Into that anticipation, Holmes and I climbed up onto the stage.

  The auctioneer backed away from the podium, letting Holmes step up in his place. “Hello, all! Yes, this is Elmira Davenport. That is my name. That said, I feel that you should call me whatever it is that you want to call me. Identity is so stifling! It is a construct!”

  “A pernicious construct,” I intoned.

  “Identity is slippery. We go by many names! Our many selves have different wants! Today, I am in Prague, away from my family on a day meant to be with family—and am I family without them?”

  “She is not.”

  “I am not!”

  “She is not family without family,” I intoned.

  “Today I am here by chance. I heard about this auction and decided, yes, I will show you a piece to illustrate who I am. Who you are. Who we all are, underneath our wrappings. Kincaid beside me, he hides from the cameras! He hides his face from your faces! What is a face?”

  She paused there, looking distantly over the audience’s heads. They stared up at her, enraptured, or pretending to be.

  “Ah,” she said with the solemnity of a sage. “No one knows what a face is. I have my theories. A face produces voice. A voice carries sound. In that sound, we find ourselves prisoners. Now I show you a piece that says, faces. Family. Identity. Prisoners! All these things.”

  I nodded. “This is a piece about all these things.”

  The screen behind the easel went dark. Moments later, the whole echoing room followed. There was a shuffling. Some gasps. On the stage, a small scuffle, and the moments stretched into each other until the black-and-white video finally began to play.

  It was surveillance footage. The outside of a warehouse, as seen from above. A giant man wiped off his hands on his pants. He straightened, stared into the distance. Then he bent and, with a
visible heaved breath, hoisted the limp body lying at his feet up and over his shoulder.

  It was my body, but the audience didn’t need to know that. My identity wasn’t important to this story.

  Static crackled from invisible speakers, set somewhere behind the stage. From them, a girl’s voice threaded out, broken sounding, desperate. “What exactly do you hope to accomplish here?” she asked. “You can’t hope to hold us for more than a few hours.”

  The man dipped his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Where should I put the boy?”

  “Be careful with him,” the girl said, stepping into frame. I wondered what the audience made of her—she was slight, swaying in her boots, in her tiny dress. “Please. He’s my— Be careful.”

  At that, the giant said something inaudible, and carried the body away.

  It was just the girl in the frame now. She wrapped her arms around herself. “I suppose you’ll want our phones,” she said.

  A pause, where a response should be. The girl was speaking to someone who wasn’t in the picture.

  “I’m just trying to help you to be thorough,” she said, and pulled hers out of her bra, dangling it from her fingers. “Here, you can have it.”

  (In the audience, a young man’s reedy voice: “Don’t you love the composition of this shot?” Holmes shifted her weight next to me.)

  “No. I won’t bring it to you,” the girl said. “What makes you think I’ll be a party to my own destruction?”

  “Past events have suggested it,” the voice responded, barely audible. A woman’s voice, but the speaker was still off-screen. “I’m happy to help you in any way I can. You’re welcome to try to run, if you want. See how far you can get. Go on, we can time you.”

  “You must be waiting for more guards,” the girl said. “You have a pistol in your pocket, but you’re too chickenshit to try to threaten me with it, even though I’m unarmed.”