The Last of August

by Brittany Cavallaro

  “What are you even talking about? That isn’t even what I saw—”

  “Idiot boy. The cameras aren’t omniscient. I sedated the ‘doctor’ he sent, Gretchen Michaels, dressed her like my wife and put her in Emma’s bed. I locked up Leander, like he demanded, but I had Emma tend to him. He’s fine. Wholly fine. This is—”

  “Jamie,” August hissed. “Come on.”

  But I was so close to understanding. Alistair was drawing closer to me, his eyes wild, and I said, “It’s crazy. What this is is crazy. Why did Mrs. Holmes help Leander escape? How long were you going to keep this up?”

  “Hadrian and Phillipa are here, aren’t they.” There was steel in his voice. “Aren’t they, child.”

  “What are you planning—”

  Alistair Holmes lunged for me.

  “Now,” August said, and I grabbed for his hands. As he pulled me out of the window, Alistair Holmes grabbed at my leg.

  I kicked him in the face, and he staggered backward.

  There was no time to process what I’d just done. There wasn’t any up or down anymore, any right path to take. August replaced the window, and Holmes was there with a piece of wood from the pile and a hammer. I held the board while she hammered it into place.

  I gripped her shoulders. “Your father—”

  “Not important,” she said, shaking off my hands. “The car’s out front. Help her—I don’t know about the Greystone guards, if they’re still on our side—”

  Holmes’s mother was conferring with Leander. “I’m about to give you something that will make you very sick. In actuality. You understand that.”

  His mouth twisted. “I understand.”

  “Remember,” she said. “There isn’t any antidote. This will get worse before it gets better. You’ll speak to the police. You’ll have them run tests at the hospital. You’ll implicate Hadrian and Phillipa. And then you’ll recover, and disappear. My suggestion is you go to America. Go see James.” She lifted an eyebrow in my direction.

  “Of course,” I told him. “My father can help. And there’s nothing—nothing you can give him to help? Was he poisoned, as you were?”

  “There’s nothing he can take,” she said. “I’m a chemist, Jamie. I mixed this myself. I tested it on myself until it became too dangerous to continue. There’s a Dr. Gretchen Michaels comatose in my bedroom. Hadrian sent her here to oversee this whole operation, and she stayed long enough that I had to put Leander under for a night—but the next day, I slipped her enough of this compound to put her into a coma. She looks enough like me to fool Milo’s cameras, to fool anyone watching his feeds. I didn’t need him to worry. I didn’t need anyone else to know.”

  “Listen,” Holmes said. “I know you’re tired, but—”

  “Don’t you dare patronize me, Charlotte,” Leander said. “Not now.”

  “I know what you’ve been through,” she said, taking his arm. It was almost as though she were pleading with herself. “I couldn’t come before now. I needed to know how to pin it on Hadrian and Phillipa—I brought them here, even, but I couldn’t have it be my father’s fault—”

  Emma stared at her daughter. “Your father’s fault?”

  “You’re sick,” Holmes said quietly. “You’re not working. We’d lose the house. I heard the fights you were having, about money. Through the vents. I heard you shouting at each other. I assumed—” She ducked her head. “I assumed Father was keeping him somewhere until he agreed to give us the money to ensure we’d be okay. There wasn’t a digital record of Leander leaving, not one I could believe. There was a faint echo to his message—that sound you only get in a room with concrete walls. I know every inch of this house. I was made to explore it, blindfolded, so many times, and I . . . he hadn’t left. I knew that he was there. When you eliminate all other options—”

  “Don’t you dare quote Sherlock Holmes. You—you’ve been trying to frame them,” I said in a rush. “Hadrian and Phillipa. All this time—you were trying to draw them in close enough to frame them for something you thought your father did.”

  Holmes turned to her mother. “He wasn’t—I wasn’t—”

  “Lottie,” her mother said. “It wasn’t your father. It wasn’t about money. It was about you. It’s always been because of you. Do you understand? There isn’t time for this. Here.”

  She pulled a vial from her pocket and gave it to Leander. After a long, bowstrung moment, he bit off the cap and drank its contents down. Emma turned from us, her phone to her ear. “Yes? Yes, I’m requesting police assistance—” She walked toward the house, out of earshot.

  No one moved. Above our heads, the moon hung heavy in the sky. Clouds raced across it, hastened by the wind. Was it shouting that I heard from inside the house? Was it just the ocean against the cliffs?

  “Alistair just chased me out of the basement,” I told them. “I had to—I kicked at him, to get out. He was coming for me—”

  Beside me, August threw a hand up over his mouth. He was laughing. Silently, horribly, his eyes squeezed shut. “You’re all such monsters,” he said. “Monsters, all of you! Trying to pin this on my family, trying to make us out to be worse than we are, and look at this horror you’ve built with your own hands.”

  “No,” Leander said, wrapping his jacket more tightly around himself. “Don’t pretend you don’t know how this started. Not when Lucien Moriarty can say two words to his brother on the phone, and Alistair Holmes is given the option to either turn both Charlotte and all of his ill-gotten holdings, his paintings, his offshore bank accounts, everything over to the police—Lucien has the information, it would be a matter of minutes to bring it to the authorities—or to keep me in his basement until his brother and sister wrap up their Langenberg operation, safely, without my putting them away. Lucien wants this to go nuclear. He wants to bring all of us down. When he spoke to Hadrian and found out that August was still alive—when he heard word from his spies that August was working for Milo—”

  “Oh God,” I said.

  “Well,” Leander said. “It’s all the same. Everyone has another face. Hadrian and Phillipa are in custody?”

  Holmes nodded, her expression unreadable.

  “And I’ll be the evidence to hang them with. I’ll be the poisoned, wronged party. Poison—all it took was a single dose in Emma’s tea, administered by the man who takes out the trash, and the whole world goes to hell. Well, I know my place in it. I’ll be used, and then it’ll be over.” Leander turned and spat onto the snowy ground. “And after this, I’m done with it.”

  I took a step forward before I’d really processed what he’d said. “Done with it?”

  Leander swept out an arm. “All this—what is any of it for? Did you hear the Moriarty boy? Monsters. It takes the son of professional sadists to call us what we are. And you follow along in her thrall. I thought—I thought, somehow, that Charlotte would find a way to transcend it. But even now she’s putting blood before justice. Her and her mother both. I find myself wanting to thank you, Emma, for tending to me instead of just throwing me into a cage . . . but is that Stockholm syndrome?” He swept a shaking hand over his hair. “God only knows. I want out.”

  “Wait—” August stepped between us, his back to me. From this angle, he looked exactly like his brother. The close-cropped blond hair. The dark clothes. The slight hunch of the shoulders, like a man always looking up at the guillotine. “I’m sorry—I’m sorry for what I said. It doesn’t have to be the truth. This doesn’t have to be the end of all of us. I’d had the same plan, you know, to run—but what if we both stayed? Built a bridge between our families? It was my plan to begin with, and it failed, but we could find a way to make it work. There are sane men on both sides. There has to be a way for us all to work this—” He reached a hand out to Leander, touched his chest.

  The smallest sound. Like a can being opened, or the click of a door shutting behind you. Like your mother shutting off the light when you were ready to go to sleep. I couldn’t place it.
Couldn’t tell where it came from. I didn’t connect it with the way that August dropped, suddenly, to his knees, and then fell in a slow dive face-first onto the ground.

  While Leander and I were staring dumbly down at August in the snow—even now, a dark halo was gathering around his hair—Holmes was tracking the shooter. “There,” she snarled, pointing at a cluster of trees across the field, and took off unerringly, an arrow loosed from a bow.

  I followed her. I didn’t know what else to do. Had I just seen August shot down? Had Hadrian or Phillipa escaped to do it, or was it someone else—was it Alistair? He’d gone sprawling when I kicked him, but he’d had enough time to recover. Had he decided to cut his losses and start killing any Moriarty he could get within his crosshairs? Money, I thought, and keeping up this old monolith of a house, and all the things you’re willing to give up to keep it—

  August. Holmes’s biggest mistake. Our saving grace with a knife to his neck. Hamlet, prince of goddamn Denmark. Shot dead on the Holmeses’ back lawn.

  The copse of trees was right before us. “I see you,” Holmes said, her coat flapping behind her as she skidded to a stop. “Come down. Come down.” Her voice broke on the edge of the last word. “Come down and face me.”

  With a rustle of branches, a man dropped down to the snow. He held a rifle in one hand, a scope affixed to the top. His collar was turned up against the cold. “Lottie,” Milo said shakily. “Is Hadrian still alive?”

  “You—what did you do?”

  “I put Hadrian down,” he said, his eyes wild. “I came here as quickly as I could, Lottie, I have something to tell you—something—”

  “Milo, what have you done?”

  Her brother shook his head, as if to clear it. “My team told me he’d escaped from his holding cell on the plane. I saw him threatening our uncle. I put him down. Lottie, you need to know something about Lucien—”

  As gently as my hammering heart would let me, I said, “You’ve made a mistake.”

  He frowned, as though that’d never been said to him before. “What mistake? Is Leander all right? I admit I took a risky shot, but I’m fairly sure that I saw—”

  Charlotte Holmes put her hands to her face. She was crying. “Milo,” she said. “Milo. Milo, no. No, you didn’t.”

  In the distance, a car started up. There was yelling, someone crying out, Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, and then wheels on loose gravel. When I turned to look, a lone figure, a man, was standing in front of the Holmeses’ dark estate. Like someone locked out of their home, or a drifter looking for a place to spend the night.

  Emma was gone. Hadrian and Phillipa—where were they?

  “I—” Milo was shaking. He held the gun out in front of him. “Is August—and Hadrian—God, Lottie, I can’t do this anymore. Lucien disappeared. He disappeared. There’s no footage, no intel, no . . . I can’t keep doing this. How could I, and succeed?”

  The master of the universe, asking us this question.

  Holmes wrenched the rifle from his hands. Without looking down, she stripped the gun of its clip and dropped it all on the ground.

  “Leander’s done,” she said. “August is dead. Is this it for you, too? Are you leaving the two of us here to pick up this mess?”

  “It’s your mess,” Milo said. “Isn’t it time you did?”

  I was only half-hearing it, what they were saying. In the distance, the ocean raged louder. The cold bit at my hands. August Moriarty was spread-eagled, and it wasn’t a dream, I could see the outline of his coat in the snow. I couldn’t look at them, either of them, Holmes or Holmes, two faces of the same terrible god staring out in opposite directions. Passing their judgments. Firing their guns. And the figure in front of the house—he was gone, the field empty now, and the ocean was deafening.

  But it wasn’t the ocean. It was sirens, a cacophony of sirens, and by the time the red and blue lights reached the top of the drive, Charlotte Holmes and I were alone.

  Epilogue

  FROM: Felix M < fm.18.96@dmail.com >

  TO: James Watson Jr. < j.watson2@dmail.com >

  SUBJECT LINE: Sorry to spoil your holiday

  Dear Jamie,

  Well, here we go. Trying this out. One of those time-delay email tools. This should arrive around the New Year, after you’re safely home. I don’t want a fight. I don’t want to talk about this in person. So I’m taking the coward’s way out.

  Most likely, we won’t see each other again. That isn’t any judgment on you; please don’t take it that way. (I know you’re taking it that way. Stop.) But I’m realizing that mine isn’t any kind of life, not even for a man that’s dead. Sitting in this cell of a room in Prague isn’t helping matters, I’m sure, but it’s more than that. I need out. The auction tonight will happen, and whatever awful thing Charlotte’s been brewing will happen, and you’ll be the collateral damage, one way or another.

  How could you look at a girl like that and trust her with anything other than your life?

  That isn’t me being flippant, understand. I imagine she’d do anything to keep you alive. But giving her your heart is like handing a glass figurine to a child. She’ll flip it over, peer through it like a lens. Shake it to see if it makes a sound. In the end, it will slip her hands and shatter. In the end, it’s your fault. You were the one who gave it to her.

  I imagine you’re thinking, August and his terrible metaphors. I do know you’re better with words than I am. I see you scribbling in that journal, trying to put down a version of you and her that makes some sense. A story you can tell with confidence. I know what it’s like, trying to make a myth out of your life while you’re living it. But this isn’t a story. It isn’t a history. It isn’t anything other than a horrible gamble, and Jamie, I know my older brother, and you tangling yourself up in someone else’s business won’t get you anything but dead.

  And if you find yourself reading this and thinking, Moriarty is being horribly condescending, you’re not my dad, etc., then think of this as a letter I should’ve written myself, years ago. Think of yourself as another version of me. And if that makes you angry, too . . . then just think of yourself, full stop.

  If you can’t do that, run.

  Happy New Year, Jamie,

  August

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU TO MY INCREDIBLE editor, Alex Arnold, in whose hands Jamie and Charlotte are always made better. Thanks too to Katherine Tegen and everyone at Katherine Tegen Books, especially Rosanne Romanello and Alana Whitman. You are all wonderful beyond my wildest dreams—deerstalker parties, boundless support and encouragement, and matching release-day lipstick? Yes, sign me up, forever.

  Endless thanks to Lana Popovic, my agent and friend, who is always there for me, always, with wit and humor and help. Thanks too to Terra Chalberg and everyone else at Chalberg and Sussman for their work on Charlotte Holmes here and abroad.

  Thank you to Kit Williamson for all the time and effort and love he’s put into this project, from the book trailer to the late-night phone calls to every detailed, smart reading. I love you, oldest friend.

  Thank you to Emily Temple, for Berlin and Prague and the world’s fastest read and critique of one hundred pages ever. Sister mine: let’s go find an ATM and then get some naan pizza.

  Thank you to Emily Henry and Kathy MacMillan, my amazing readers and friends, without whom this mystery would be a giant tangle of string. Thanks to Rebecca Dunham, my mentor. Love and emojis to Chloe Benjamin, Becky Hazelton, Corey Van Landingham, and, again, Emily Temple. One day we will have a girl gang name, but for now, just call us Group Text.

  Love to my family, especially my parents. I hope you know how wonderful you are. Thank you for your excitement.

  Thanks, and apologies, to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

  And thank you to my husband, Chase. May we have many more years of love and ridiculous banter. Elmira Davenport, of course, is for you.

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo by Kit Williamson

  BRITTANY CAVALLARO is a poet, fiction writer, and old-school Sherlockian. She is the author of the poetry collection Girl-King and is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. She earned her BA in literature from Middlebury College and her MFA in poetry from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Currently, she’s a PhD candidate in English literature at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. She lives in California with her husband, cat, and collection of deerstalker caps. Find her at her website, www.brittanycavallaro.com, or on Twitter @skippingstones.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  BOOKS BY BRITTANY CAVALLARO

  A Study in Charlotte

  The Last of August

  CREDITS

  Cover art © 2017 by Dan Funderburgh

  Cover design by Katie Fitch

  COPYRIGHT

  Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

  THE LAST OF AUGUST. Copyright © 2017 by Brittany Cavallaro. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.