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.