The Last of August

by Brittany Cavallaro

  “I did not,” she said. “I climbed in through that window.”

  The chair was, in fact, still under the doorknob. “Why? Can you even tell me why you came in here last night?”

  “I wanted to see you. I didn’t want to talk to you. So I waited until you were sleeping.” She said it like I was a moron. “How is that hard to understand?”

  “Come on, weirdo,” I said, but my voice came out strained. Despite her blithe words, her eyes were full of something that looked too much like pain, and I hated that I had caused it. I was causing it now, just standing here. “Let’s go find your uncle. He’s probably sweet-talking the gardener, or teaching the neighborhood squirrels to sing.”

  He wasn’t in the garden. He wasn’t in the kitchen, or the parlor, or the room with the pool table that everyone, horribly, referred to as the “billiards room.” The marble floors were cold under my feet, and so I walked quickly after Holmes, who had wrapped herself in a long, trailing robe the color of dust.

  “He might’ve gone to run errands in Eastbourne,” I said as we approached the front hall.

  With a sigh, she gestured to the window overlooking the grounds. “Of course he hasn’t. It rained last night, and there aren’t any fresh tire tracks in the drive. We might as well ask my father. There’s more than one way to leave the house, and Leander might’ve been in a hurry. We don’t know everything he’s found out while he’s been here.” She took off again, this time up the stairs to her father’s study.

  “Everything? You’ve been listening in?” I asked, hurrying to catch up.

  “Of course I’ve been listening. What else is there to do in this miserable house?”

  “You weren’t avoiding me? You were eavesdropping?”

  She thought about that one. “I might have been doing both.”

  “Whatever. Keep going.”

  “From what I can tell, Leander’s been gathering information to bolster the persona he’s adopted in Germany. Which cartels have which connections, which low-rent artists are known to forge on the side, who has connections to other cities and which ones. He’s tracking two forgers in particular, a Gretchen, and someone named Nathaniel.” She frowned. “Though maybe that’s his current boyfriend. Or both? That would be fascinating.”

  “Holmes. Leander? Disappearing?”

  “Right. Well, I kept hearing that name through the vent, but not with enough context to figure out exactly who he was to my uncle.”

  “The vent?”

  Holmes swept around a corner. “The vent that leads from my closet up to my father’s study.” It made me remember her eerie, omnipresent violin, the way the sound had come from nowhere. It must have been snaking up through the air ducts as Holmes played in her closet. I imagined her in a nest of clothes on the floor, her head tipped back against the wall, playing a sonata with her eyes shut. “Still, none of this tells us anything we need to know at the moment. Ergo, my father.”

  “Holmes,” I said. I did not want to deal with her parents if I didn’t have to. “Wait. Did he leave you a note? Have you checked your phone? He could already have explained it all.”

  Frowning, she dug her phone out of the pocket of her robe. “I have a new message,” she said. “Five minutes ago. An unknown number.”

  We stopped in the hallway, and she played it on speaker. “Lottie, I’m fine,” Leander said, all bluff cheerfulness. “I’ll see you soon.”

  She stared down at it, unbelieving. She played it again.

  “Lottie,” it said. “I’m fine. I’ll see you soon.”

  “That isn’t from his number,” I said, peering at her screen. “Whose number is that?”

  Holmes immediately hit the Call Back button.

  The number you have dialed is disconnected. She tried again. Again. Then she flicked back to the message—“Lottie, I”—and before he could say the rest of it, she put the phone away. I could hear the tinny voice playing out of her pocket.

  “That isn’t what he calls me,” she said. “He never— I need to see my father.”

  In the hall that led to the study, the long line of paintings glowered down at us. I was just about to ask Holmes if she’d overheard anything else when the door at the end of the hall opened.

  “Lottie,” Alistair said, blocking the doorway. “What are you doing up here?”

  “Have you seen Uncle Leander?” she asked him, twisting her hands. “He was supposed to take Jamie and me to town for the day.”

  I wondered how, exactly, one lied to a Holmes; I’d never successfully done it myself. Could you actually pull it off if you were one, too?

  From the withering look Alistair gave his daughter, I decided you couldn’t.

  “He left last night. One of his contacts in Germany was growing suspicious of his continued absence.” He waved an errant hand. “Of course, he said he loves you, wishes you well, et cetera.”

  There was a rustle, and Holmes’s father flung an arm across the door. “Mum?” Holmes asked, trying to step around him. “Is she in there? I thought she’d be in her room.”

  “Don’t,” he said. “She’s having a very bad day.”

  “But I—” And she ducked under his outstretched arm and into his study.

  The hospital bed was nowhere to be found. I hadn’t seen Emma Holmes in days and had assumed she’d been in her room, but here she was, flung out on the sofa like she’d fallen there. Her ash-blond hair hung limply around her face, and she was wearing a robe not unlike her daughter’s, thrown over a set of pajamas that looked wrinkled and sour. As I opened my mouth, she held up a hand. I glanced over at Holmes, who stiffened.

  This house was nothing like my family’s flat, where you tripped over each other on your way to the bathroom. Here, you could go weeks and see only pale marble floors, floating staircases, invisible plastic chairs. You could start to believe you were the only person in the world.

  “What are your plans for Christmas?” her mother asked abruptly. Her voice came out in a harsh whisper.

  “I—”

  “I’m speaking to my daughter.” But she was looking at Alistair, and with anger. It must have been terrible to be this way, prone and weak, when you were used to commanding the room.

  Alistair cleared his throat. “Lottie, your brother has just expressed an interest in you staying in Berlin for the holiday.”

  “Oh,” Holmes said, stuffing her hands in her pockets. I could hear the machinery in her brain grinding to life. “Has he.”

  “Don’t exhaust your mother,” he said. “We can have a rational conversation about this.”

  “She has to go.” Emma struggled up to her elbows, like a scuttling crab. Her breathing was labored.

  “She doesn’t,” Alistair murmured. He made no motion to help her. “I’d rather have Lottie here. We never see her.”

  Holmes looked horrified, but her voice was calm. “Milo hasn’t spoken to you in weeks,” she said. “You haven’t had that twitch you get, on the side of your mouth, after you talk to him.”

  “I’ve been ill,” her mother said, as if it wasn’t obvious. “That’s enough to change anyone’s tells.”

  “Yes,” her daughter said, plowing ahead. “But the doctor you brought in—Dr. Michaels, from Highgate Hospital—doesn’t specialize in fibromyalgia. She specializes in—”

  “Poisons,” her mother said.

  At that, Alistair turned on his heel and retreated into the hall, snapping the door shut behind him.

  Poisons?

  “She also specializes in nanotechnology,” Holmes was murmuring, but it was clear her brain had run ahead of her emotions. Then: “Oh, God, Mum. Poison? But I hadn’t noticed any signs, I should have—I never wanted—”

  Her mother’s eyes burned. “You might have thought of that before you interfered with Lucien Moriarty.”

  Dizzily, I leaned against the wall. I still dreamt about it, what had happened to me that fall. The poison spring. The fever. The hallucinations. It hadn’t been a poisoning so much
as a purposeful infection, but Bryony Downs had still made me into a pale, helpless wreck. I couldn’t imagine what Emma Holmes was feeling.

  “Where is Leander?” Holmes asked, squaring her shoulders. “Why on earth would he go without telling me good-bye?”

  I braced myself for the reaction. But the fire had already gone out in her mother’s eyes, and her face was gray again. You could see the veins in her forehead. I remembered the photograph I’d seen of her, all turned out in a black suit, her lips a dark, dark red, power crackling off her like a cut wire. I couldn’t square it with the exhausted woman in front of me. Poisoned, I thought. My God. She must’ve taken a leave of absence from work. What had Holmes said she’d done again? Wasn’t she a scientist?

  “That isn’t the issue at hand,” Emma Holmes said. She shut her eyes to concentrate on the words.

  “You’re telling me that Leander has snuck out like a fugitive, apparently days after you’ve been poisoned, and there’s nothing to worry about?” She turned to the study door. “That this was all part of the plan? What on earth is happening?”

  “We’ve tracked the poisoning back to the day you arrived; it was an isolated event, and we’re taking precautions. We’re controlling what we eat, what we breathe. We’re culling the staff. We’ll figure it out soon enough. But for now . . . Lottie, for your safety, there is no way you and Jamie can continue to stay here. I’ve transferred funds into your account for the trip. Go see your brother. Get out of this house.” With that, she lifted a hand as if to touch her daughter, but Holmes ignored it. Her back had gone straight and still. Her eyes narrowed.

  “You need to believe it’s for your own good,” her mother said.

  “For my own good,” Holmes said. “For your own good, maybe, but not mine. Never mine. You’re a chemist; you’ll have this under control by tomorrow. If I’m going—”

  “You’re going.”

  “Then I’m going to find my uncle, because if I’m correct, he’s in extreme danger.”

  Emma looked at me. “You’ll go with her,” she said with despairing eyes. It wasn’t a command so much as an entreaty. A peace offering to her daughter.

  Everyone in this house seemed to exist in opposition to themselves, anger and love and loyalty and fear all layered over each other into an incomprehensible blur. I opened my mouth to tell her no, that my mother would kill me, that I wasn’t her daughter’s valet or bodyguard. That out of everyone I knew, Charlotte Holmes could take care of herself, and if she couldn’t, I was the last person she’d let help her.

  Blindly, Holmes reached out to clasp my hand in hers.

  “I will,” I heard myself say. “Of course I will.”

  four

  I DECIDED THAT I HAD PRETTY GOOD LEVERAGE TO USE TO strike a deal with my father. Because if I didn’t, my mother would hunt me down and kill me for running off to Europe without parental supervision.

  “Leander left,” I told my father, shifting the phone into my other hand. “Holmes’s dad said he took off in the middle of the night. One of his contacts was getting antsy, I guess.”

  As I spoke, I kept an eye on Holmes next to me in the backseat. She was wearing head-to-toe black: collared shirt, trim pants, a pair of black wingtip boots that I sort of wanted for myself. Between her knees, she balanced her small black suitcase with its giant silver clasps. Her straight hair was tucked behind her ears, and I watched her tapping furiously away at her phone, lips pursed. She looked dangerous, delicate. She looked like a whisper made real.

  She looked like she had a new case to solve. I didn’t know how I felt about that.

  The phone line crackled. “So you’re going to Berlin. To look for him.” There was a plea in my father’s voice. I couldn’t think of the last time that so many adults had asked me favors all in a row, like I was someone to be bargained with and not just ordered around. It had been, to put it mildly, a strange week.

  A strange year.

  “I’m going to Berlin,” I said, “because Emma Holmes has been poisoned by Lucien Moriarty. Apparently.”

  Holmes lifted an eyebrow at that, but said nothing. On her phone, I watched a text pop up from Milo. I ran that number. Leander was calling you from a burner. It makes sense, you know. He was undercover.

  Find out where it came from. Where was it bought, and by whom?

  I was having to stretch my neck fairly far at this point. With an exasperated sigh, she put the phone between us so I could read.

  You’re more interested in this than your parents’ situation? Poisoning? Honestly, why on earth have they told you about this and not me?

  Because I’m the smart, well-adjusted child, she wrote back. Less likely to seek revenge.

  Are you, now.

  Tell me, have you already hauled Lucien out of Thailand and begun pulling out his teeth?

  Not yet. For now, I’m assigning a security force to the Sussex house.

  Yes, good, but within reason.

  Naturally. You’re not upset about Mother, are you? Milo asked.

  Holmes hesitated before typing a response. No. Of course not. The situation is under control.

  “Apparently she’s been poisoned,” my father was saying. “Jesus, Jamie. Way to bury the lede. It’s not that I haven’t seen this sort of thing before with them—but listen, the Holmeses have always taken care of themselves. Still, while you’re out there, do you mind casting out some feelers for Leander? Milo surely knows something. His spies have spies. I’d do it myself, but I have no idea how to contact him directly.”

  “Of course,” I said, and prepared to strike my deal. “I’ll do that if you agree to tell Mom why I won’t be in London for Christmas. And if you make sure she doesn’t come out here looking for me.”

  He let out a long breath. “Is that what you’d like for your present? Me, roasting on a spit?”

  “You could always fly to Germany and look for Leander yourself,” I told him, which was unfair, because I was sure that’s exactly what he wanted to do. My half brothers were both still tiny, though, and there was no way that my father would leave them over Christmas, not even to search for his missing best friend.

  I heard my father snort. “You are a piece of work,” he said. “Yes, fine, I will tell your mother if you’ll follow up with Milo. I’m sure he can spare a few bodies to look for his uncle.”

  I can tell you that Leander isn’t in the city, the text on Holmes’s screen read. At least not as himself.

  He wouldn’t be, Holmes wrote back. I need whatever contacts you have in Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain. Isn’t there some mangy art school out there?

  Hold on.

  “I have no idea what you’re on about,” I hissed at her. “I thought we were going to Berlin. Where’s Kreuzberg?”

  “In Berlin,” Holmes said, as though it were obvious.

  “Jamie?” my father asked.

  “Can you send along those emails? I’m sure they’ll be useful.”

  He hesitated. “I’d rather not,” he said finally, “but if you need any particular information, I can pass it along.”

  “Why won’t you just send them?”

  “If Charlotte had written you every day for months, Jamie, can you honestly tell me you’d forward them all to your father without a second thought?”

  “Of course I would.” Of course I wouldn’t. But there wasn’t time to argue; the airport was looming in the distance. “Look, I have to go.”

  “You need to promise me that you won’t look for Leander yourself. He’s created a complicated scenario, and I don’t want you mucking it up. Promise me.”

  Not, it isn’t safe. Not, I don’t want you in danger. He just didn’t want me blowing Leander’s cover. It was nice to know that, as usual, he had his priorities straight.

  “I promise we won’t go chasing after him,” I said, not meaning a word. “How about that?”

  “We’re at the airport, miss,” the driver called, and beside me, Holmes burst out into horrified laughter at her phone.r />
  I found you a guide, the screen read. But I’m afraid neither of you will approve.

  “No.” Because I was now remembering exactly who worked for Milo Holmes. “No. Absolutely not.” Then I spat out a few other things that I’d heard on a dark Brixton street from the mouth of a man being curb-stomped.

  “Jamie?” my father asked. “What on earth is going on?”

  I hung up. I couldn’t stop staring at Holmes’s goddamn screen, which now read: Tell Watson to watch his language, will you? He’s blistering my poor wiretapper’s ears.

  DESPITE BEING SHUTTLED BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN ENGLAND and America for most of my remembered life—or maybe because of it—I’d never traveled all that much otherwise. Our family vacations had always been underwhelming. Growing up in Connecticut meant that I’d made the one mandatory trip down to New York City with my family, but in our case, we ate in chain restaurants and saw a Broadway show about rollerblading tigers. (For that, as for most things, I blame my father.) After I moved to London, I went on vacation exactly once: my mother rented a camper van and took me and my sister to Abbey Wood. It was in the south of the city, barely a mile from our house. It rained all four days we were there. My sister and I had to share a fold-out bed, and I woke up on that last morning with her elbow physically inside of my mouth.

  It was, in short, nothing like going to Berlin with Charlotte Holmes.

  Greystone was headquartered in Mitte, a neighborhood in the northeast of the city. Milo had begun it as a tech company specializing in surveillance; he expanded his operations when it became clear that there were certain things humans couldn’t do. All I knew was that his employees—his soldiers and spies—were the main independent force on the ground in Iraq, and that once, Milo had ordered his personal bodyguards to frisk everyone at Holmes’s eighth grade graduation.

  Holmes ran me through this, and more, in the cab from the airport, though I knew the bulk of it already. I wasn’t sure if she’d assumed I had a bad memory or if she was chattering on because she was nervous. She had good reason to be. In the next ten minutes, we’d be face-to-face with someone whose brother spent this past fall exploring fun and creative ways to have us killed, someone who’d faked his own death to escape that family (and prison), someone Charlotte Holmes had loved so much, she’d tried to have imprisoned because he didn’t love her back. August Moriarty had a PhD in pure maths, a Prince Charming smile, and a brother named Hadrian who’d probably taught him everything he knew about wheeling and dealing stolen paintings. Who else would Milo possibly tap to guide us through the city?