Final Fall

by Heather W. Petty

  “Where are the others?” I asked.

  “Others? Who else would come to a dump like this but me?”

  I stepped toward my father as I spoke. “Those pathetic little rats who scurry after you wherever you go and flash their bloodstained badges as they run your errands.”

  He started a smile that turned to a sneer when he backhanded me. Sherlock lurched forward, but I held up a hand to stop him and smiled at both of them as I thumbed blood from the corner of my mouth and watched it seep into the white lace of my glove.

  “That was just starting to heal—”

  My father spoke over me. “You watch how you speak to me, girl!”

  “Do you expect me to believe you’d come here by yourself?”

  He narrowed his eyes and started to respond. “I don’t need help dealing with a filthy cow like—”

  Sherlock interrupted. “You didn’t ask how he found you.” He paused like he was waiting for an answer, but not long enough to actually hear one from me. “You didn’t ask how he got here. Because you knew.  You told him how to find us?”

  My father seemed overly pleased by this development and pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. He tossed it to the ground, but it flipped before it hit so that instead of the address, the paper only showed the rather ornate M I’d drawn on the back. The liquid in a nearby puddle started to absorb into the paper, drawing out the ink. “Tried to make it look like an accident, she did. But I wasn’t fooled.”

  “You weren’t meant to be fooled,” I said.

  “But I was?” Lock had all my father’s attention then, but I couldn’t look at him. I had other things to think about, and he was playing his part well enough. I sidestepped to keep my father between us.

  “He’s seeing it all, Mori, just the kind of person you are. And now that he knows. . .well, what did I tell you?”

  “That he could never love me,” I said, feeding him the line to keep him talking. If I could just keep his eyes trained on Sherlock, this would all be over quickly.

  He turned his gaze to me. “That no one ever will,” he corrected. He paused just long enough to take in the fake sadness in my expression, then swung back to watch Lock. It was all a part of his mental games, I knew. He had to prove to me that he wasn’t the least bit afraid of me. That I didn’t matter enough to even warrant his attention. He had to show me I was nothing.

  And that provided the perfect opportunity.

  I reached just under the hem of my dress to unsnap the holds on the sheath tied around my thigh. I felt the weight of the dagger in my hand and heard it slide free.

  But he didn’t. He was too busy blathering on about how Lock should stay far away from me if he were smart. I approached my father from behind, my knife ready, my mind clear. And then, when I was close enough to see over his shoulder, I saw the sword in his hand, pointed directly at Lock’s chest.

  I must have made some kind of startled noise, because he said, “That’s right. Put your weapon down, girl. You didn’t think I’d come here without some protection for myself.” When I didn’t obey him immediately, he added, “Unless you think you are faster than me,” and with a flick of his wrist the sword tip was at Lock’s throat.

  In the space of a breath, I let the contingencies of the situation play out in my mind. I had only two options. I could drop my dagger, and my father would either kill Sherlock directly just to spite me, or use his sword to corral me to Lock’s side, where he would try to kill us both or run. Either way, I’d be weaponless and at his mercy. I could refuse, and he could kill Sherlock, but before he recovered, my dagger would be in his heart. Or I might beat him. If I were fast enough and pulled him back against me, I might be able to kill him before he could do anything to Lock.

  Either way Lock might die, or he might not, but my father wouldn’t die if I dropped the knife. So obviously I had to keep it.

  “No,” I said, and I pressed the point of my dagger into the small of his back before he could move an inch.

  “I said I’ll kill him.” My father’s stance projected confidence, but his voice was strained, his laughter forced. “She doesn’t seem to care much for you, boy.”

  Lock’s expression was calm, but his eyes were bright in that way they always were when he was learning something new.

  “You’ll kill him?” I asked my father. “Then what?”

  “Then he’ll be dead, you cow. Is that what you want?”

  “That would change things. Probably not in a way you’d like.” I shifted my own stance so I could place a hand on my father’s shoulder. “I was going to kill you quickly, but you’re forcing me to make certain adjustments.” Was it the gentle tone of my voice that made Lock’s fascination give way to fear? His eyes had lost their light.

  “Detective Moriarty,” I said, “let me explain to you what happens next. The moment I see a drop of that boy’s blood, this knife goes into your spine. At this angle, I’ll probably injure you at T7, maybe T8.”

  My father took a shallow breath but said nothing. Lock was studying me in that way that made me think he could see into my mind, so I grinned at him and winked, sending his scrutiny into overdrive. Perhaps the blood dripping down my chin ruined the effect.

  “Do you know what that kind of injury will do to you?” I asked quietly into my father’s ear.

  He flinched, which only widened my smile. I could taste blood on my teeth.

  “You’ll lose control of your bowels and bladder, lose control of your legs.” I slid my hand down to reach under his arm and around his chest to pull him tight to my body, then dug the tip of my knife into his back.

  His arm moved up in sync with my movements, pushing his sword tip into Sherlock’s skin. “Let me go, or I’ll kill him.”

  I raised a brow at Lock. “What do you think?”

  Lock’s gaze pierced into my eyes, making it near impossible to hold my amusement. But I did my best, even when he said, “Don’t do this.”

  My father started to chuckle roughly, most likely thinking Lock was pleading with him, but I knew better. I also knew no amount of pleading would change the results of what happened next. I hoped the two of us would eventually walk out of the school, but my father never would. That I was sure of.

  My expression must have given me away, because Sherlock’s became much more frantic. “Mori.”

  “Then kill him,” I said to my father, though I pulled him back to release the tension of the blade at Lock’s neck. “Kill him, and instead of killing you in return, maybe I leave you here with a severed spine. Lock you in this building for a few days with only the rats and the puddles to sustain you, dragging your useless legs around and shouting for help. And if no one can hear you?” I quieted my voice further. “If you’re still here when I get back, I promise you, I’ll have devised a most painful way for you to die.”

  I heard the clang of his sword falling to the ground, and watched his hands slide into the air. I couldn’t help myself; I started to laugh. And the sound of it brought relief to Lock’s face, and even made my father join in, though his laughter was nervous and short-lived.

  “I dropped my weapon,” he practically whined. But I didn’t remove my knife from his back.

  “You are such a coward,” I said. “Though we knew that, didn’t we?”

  My father started going on again, with his self-indulgent whining. Perhaps he was even attempting to be clever and find a way out. I didn’t really hear all that he was saying, but I did hear his last word. As I pulled the weapon from his back to sweep across his neck, I heard him say one final word, and then nothing ever again.

  “Mori—”

  He said my name. There was something delicious about that. And kind of hilarious, really. So as his blood sprayed out to pepper Lock’s shirt and tie in red, as his disgusting dirty body fell to its knees and then forward right into a puddle on the cement, I kept laughing. It was a breathy, stuttered laugh, full of shock and bewilderment, but still a laugh.

  “Mori,” I whis
pered, cutting the i sound short, then laughed a little more. “I couldn’t have planned for that.”

  I reached down to clean my blade using the back of my father’s shirt, but then decided not to waste too much time on it. The dagger would be melted to molten metal soon enough. I was trying to decide whether to re-sheath it or not when a blood-speckled hand grabbed my wrist just above the lace glove that was now almost completely red.

  “Why?” Lock asked. And the look he gave me shook me free from all my posturing. I couldn’t even hold my smile. Not anymore. How could he undo me like that? With nothing but a mere look?

  “Don’t,” I said, pleading. Because I’d been prepared for his anger at my betrayal. I was ready for him to hate me, for his features to twist in wretched disgust once he saw me for who I really was. But I couldn’t move for what I saw in his eyes just then.

  He glanced up from our hands and forced me to see it again—his fear. Not blank like all those times he feared for himself. Not fear of the moment, like the expression he wore when we were about to embark on an adventure. He was afraid for me—concern, pain, grief, and loss. I tried to break free of him, but he clung to me like he was afraid I’d run away. And then his hands came up to circle my face and he asked, “Where were you all those months you were gone?”

  I breathed out a laugh. “You’re asking me now? I was ready to tell you all about it yesterday. Where were your questions then?”

  Sherlock looked at his hands and released me suddenly. He tried to brush the blood away but only managed to smear it. “What has happened to you?”

  “This has always been me, Sherlock.” I watched him shake his head, his eyes jetting around like he was looking for some proof that I was lying. Was I lying? “Did you really think you could tell everything about me from those silly deductions of yours?”

  “You killed him like it was nothing.”

  “It was nothing. He was nothing.” I sidestepped until he was forced to meet my eyes again. “Did you really think I could leave? Did you not know I’d come back for this?” I gestured at the body on the floor. “This right here was always my destiny.”

  “I—I don’t believe in destiny.”

  I might have smiled if I weren’t so lost in the emptiness I felt. “Neither do I. But I suppose that doesn’t really matter now.” I did smile then—felt the flicker of something pulling at me, luring me away from that place and the man who could no longer hurt us. “I don’t suppose anything really does.”

  I took a step back and watched Lock’s reaction. He was still confused, like his mind was trying to rationalize how he could have been so wrong about something. I’d done that. I’d broken him in so many ways. I took another couple of steps back and then stopped in front of one of the larger puddles on the ground. There was a slightly sweet smell to it—to the whole place really. It was a wonder Lock hadn’t noticed on his way inside.

  I glanced up just in time to watch his transformation from bumbling shock to devastation.

  He took a step toward me. “I have to bring you in, tell the police what you’ve done.” I wasn’t sure which broke him more, those words or everything that had come before. But he was a pane of shattered glass that even the slightest breeze might scatter to the floor. And I was the big bad wolf come to blow down his house.

  I briefly wondered if he’d ever truly know how deeply all those shards would cut me—how I already felt all of them.

  “I have to call the police,” he said.

  “You won’t.”

  “I have to. I have to stop you.”

  I forced my smile back into place despite the shimmering pain inside me. “Okay, then. Stop me. But you’ll have to prove I’m guilty first.”

  I flicked open a lighter with the hand still gloved in white and tossed it on the pile of rubble I’d arranged. I stayed only long enough to add my gloves to the pile and watch the fire catch, and to see Sherlock realize that the puddles that had separated us in this room weren’t made of water. Then I left.

  He might have died in that old nursery school. Or not. I couldn’t be sure, but then, I didn’t figure that was how the brilliant Sherlock Holmes would die. Today was about the death of a monster. . . and perhaps the birth of another. I was the phoenix, climbing from the ashes of my father. Only I was a new creature altogether. And as much as Sherlock tried, he would never be able to stop me.

  Chapter 14

  It wasn’t enough. I’d thought killing the man at the center of all our problems would be the end of it. I’d planned for everything—avoiding the CCTV as I left Harrow, dropping the knife I’d used into a vat of molten metal at a local artisan’s forge, burning my bloody clothes and shoes in an old basement furnace at a hotel in Chelsea. My crime was clean. Untraceable. I’d thought I could make my way into obscurity, sell off my house, and then leave for the States. But it seemed my father had found a way to torture me, even from the grave.

  The first M came with the post.

  I wasn’t even meant to be there, in my house—the one my father had polluted with his belongings and bottles in the months I was gone. Not that I’d seen any of that right away. Later, I would find piles of empty bottles in my brothers’ rooms. I’d find that he’d brought all the stuff in the attic down to make his room look like a hoarder’s paradise, full of memories of his life with my mum. Later, I’d see the way he’d shredded my mattress and the clothes I’d left behind with the shards of broken bottles. He’d used my brothers’ rooms to mourn and mine to live out his violent fantasies. Our house had become the living metaphor of his breakdown.

  But I saw none of it at first, and that was his fault as well. Because it smelled like him the moment I walked in the door—not cologne, just alcohol and sweat and his deodorant and him. He’d smelled of it when I’d pulled him close to slash his neck, and then he’d smelled only of blood.

  Blood that speckled Lock’s hands for standing too close.

  Blood that Lock couldn’t wipe away.

  The clank of the post-slot door jolted me from my memory, and I might have just ignored the bills and advertisements falling on top of the pile of untouched mail my father had left behind, but then the slot clanked again, this time dropping only one piece of mail. A postcard, with a large, ornate M drawn across the front. It wasn’t the exact art that I’d used on my father’s invitation to his demise, but it was a clear, though rather sloppy, imitation. I stared at it for a few seconds too long, so that by the time I lifted the card from the floor, it was too late to run out the door and see who had left it for me.

  I saw what you did. You can buy my silence.

  The message on the back didn’t surprise me much, though the address he’d scrawled underneath it did. My blackmailer wanted me to return to the scene of the crime. And he wanted me there that night.

  It was a slightly clever plan. The site would be near swarming with London civil service. The fire brigade would have called in police as soon as they found what remained of my father’s body. If my blackmailer were part of the police force, as I could only suspect he was, my returning to the scene would make me a prime suspect, even if I paid him off, which would put me under his thumb for the rest of our lives. If I refused to show, I was sure he would manufacture some kind of evidence that would prove the ashes and bones belonged to my father and then the fingers would all point at me. Either way I had to be in Harrow that night, but somehow Mori couldn’t be there.

  That was easy enough.

  I texted Lily. I need you to let me into the school theater. Side door, where no one can see.

  And then I grabbed my bag and left.

  • • •

  I managed to get to the school just before the last bell rang for lunch, which left me almost an hour to get what I needed.

  Lily was at the door as promised. “What happened? Did it go wrong?”

  The scent of my father came back to me there at the theater side door, as did the memory of him falling forward, of Sherlock’s speckled hands. I shook my head
and blinked it away. “No.” I met Lily’s gaze. “It’s done.”

  I watched the relief break through her longing and wondered briefly when I’d get to feel that for myself.

  Lily looked around her and pulled me inside, and then she snuck me down to the basement stairs. I nodded in thanks, but she put out a hand to stop me from going. So we stood there in this awkward space for a few seconds, and just when I started to say that I was in a rush, she interrupted me.

  “I’m starting it up again, Sorte Juntos. Just as Alice planned, only here in London.” She waited for my reaction, and when I didn’t give one, she added, “You should join me.”

  “I can’t. I’ll be in America soon.”

  “You should put that off a few months and join me. For your mother.”

  I felt my body shift toward her at the mention of my mum, and my expression must have given away my sudden rise of anger, because Lily’s hand instinctively grabbed for the banister.

  “Going to America is what I am doing for my mum. And I’m doing it with the money she earned running that little club of thieves.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “Don’t do it.”

  Lily’s gaze snapped up to meet mine. “I’m doing this for my own reasons. And I can do it with or without you.”

  “What do you need? Money? I’ll give you money. Is it because you believed Alice after all? Don’t. She was a deluded con artist. None of her plans would ever have worked. She never had my mum’s skills, no matter how much she wished otherwise.”