I leaned forward, despite myself. Alistair Holmes was like a relic from a long-ago time—his formal language and determined stare. It was hypnotic, almost, and I didn’t resist the spell he cast. “Then what do you think Charlotte and Leander’s goals are?”
“To assert themselves on the world, or so I’ve always thought.” He shrugged. “They aren’t content to act behind the scenes. They always manage to be caught up in the play itself. In that way, I suppose they’re both more like Sherlock than any of the rest of us. He was always the would-be magician of the family. Do you know, I toiled away at the Ministry of Defense for years—I was the architect of some small international conflicts—and yet I rarely stepped out from behind my desk. I was content to move theoretical armies in a theoretical battleground, and let others make those ideas real. My son Milo does similar work. In many ways, for good or ill, he’s made himself from that mold.”
“But is that the best way?” I heard myself ask. I hadn’t meant to challenge him; it’d just slipped out. “Don’t you think it’s better to see the consequences of your actions firsthand, so that you can learn from them and make smarter decisions in the future?”
“You’re a thoughtful boy,” he said, though I wasn’t sure if he meant it. “Do you think I should have insisted that Charlotte stay and watch the fallout from her actions, after that debacle with August Moriarty, instead of sending her away for a fresh start?”
“I—”
“There are many ways of taking responsibility. We don’t always have to pay for our sins with our blood, or by sacrificing our futures. But I hear Charlotte down the hall, so we should change the subject.” He squinted at me. “You know, you aren’t what I imagined.”
“What did you expect?” I asked, feeling self-conscious all of a sudden. I wasn’t built for these sorts of deep-sea conversations, all murky ocean floor.
“Something rather less than you are.” He stood and walked to the window, looking over the dark hills that rolled down to the water. “It’s a shame.”
“What is?” I asked, but Holmes was rapping sharply on the study door.
“Mother is going to kill me,” she said when I opened it. “We should all be downstairs five minutes ago. Hello, Dad.”
“Lottie,” he said, without turning around. “I’ll be there soon. Why don’t you show Jamie down to the dining room?”
“Of course.” She tucked her hand into my arm in a matter-of-fact way. Were we still fighting? Had we been fighting in the first place? I was exhausted by this train of thought, and anyway, it didn’t matter, not in her family’s sprawling house in the dead of winter. I was getting the sense that, without Holmes as my translator, I wasn’t going to make it through this week alive.
“You look very nice,” I told her, because she did—floor-length dress, dark lips, her hair tied up in a knot.
“I know,” she sighed. “Isn’t it awful? Let’s get this over with.”
EMMA HOLMES WASN’T SPEAKING TO ME. SHE WASN’T really speaking to anyone. Her left hand glittered with rings, and she was using it to rub the back of her neck. The other was busy with her wineglass. This wouldn’t be a problem except that if their dining room was a continent (it was the size of one), I was sitting somewhere in Siberia.
I’d been placed between Holmes’s mother and the silent, sullen daughter of the Czech ambassador, a girl named Eliska who gave me a once-over and sent a pleading look up into the ceiling. Either she could sniff out my lack of a trust fund, or she’d been hoping for a taller, buffer Jamie Watson, one who looked a little more like a volunteer fireman and less like a volunteer librarian. Either way, I’d been left to make small talk with Holmes’s mother while Eliska sighed over her food.
Holmes—my Holmes, if she was that—wasn’t any help. She’d cut up all the food on her plate and was now busily rearranging it, but I could tell from the distant look in her eyes that she was preoccupied with the conversation at the other end of the table. The only conversation, actually, something about the going prices for Picasso sketches. Alistair Holmes was correcting the weaselly-looking museum curator. Of course he knew more about art than someone who worked at the Louvre. I couldn’t muster the energy to be surprised.
In fact, I couldn’t muster much energy at all. I kept waiting for the threat in this place to be made real, something I could see or hear, something I could counter. I’d expected a colder welcome. Holmeses falling over themselves to put me in my intellectual place. Maybe an actual flaming hoop. What I’d gotten instead was some very nice food and one cryptic conversation with Holmes’s father. I thought back to the warning she’d given me before we’d arrived, and I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
“Sherringford? What a horrid school,” Alistair was saying. “Yes, it’s been something of a disappointment, but we had no doubt that Charlotte acquitted herself well, despite the circumstances.”
Charlotte’s smile was small and cold.
“I’m sorry to be so quiet, James,” her mother said to me in a low voice. “I’ve been having a rough go of it recently. In and out of hospital. I hope you’re enjoying your dinner.”
“It’s great, thanks. I’m sorry you’re not feeling well.”
At that, Holmes’s attention snapped back to me. “Mother,” she said, scraping her fork against her plate. “You really could ask Jamie some of the standard questions. It’s not a difficult script to remember. How does he like school. Does he have any sisters. Et cetera.”
Her mother flushed. “Of course. Did you have a nice stay in London? Lottie loves it there.”
“We had a lot of fun,” I told her, giving her daughter a dirty look. Her mother seemed to be doing her best. I felt bad for her, all dressed up in this ridiculous room when she clearly wished she was back in bed. “Walked along the Thames. Saw a lot of bookshops. Nothing too demanding.”
“I always think it’s nice to take a break after a difficult semester. From what I’ve heard, yours was especially so.”
I laughed. “An understatement, actually.”
Her mother nodded, eyes half-focused. “And remind me. Why was it, again, that you and my daughter were immediately suspected for that boy’s murder? I understand that he attacked her. But why on earth were you involved?”
“I didn’t volunteer to be a suspect, if that’s what you’re asking.” I tried to keep my tone light.
“Well, the reason I’d been given was that you’d been nursing some ridiculous crush on my daughter, but I still don’t understand how that demanded your involvement.”
It was as if I’d been hit across the face. “What? I—”
Charlotte continued rearranging her food. Her expression hadn’t changed.
“It’s a simple question,” her mother said in that quiet voice. “A more complicated one would be, why are you still shadowing her if those circumstances have resolved themselves? I don’t see why she has any use of you now.”
“I’m fairly sure she likes me.” I enunciated my words. Not out of spite—I was terrified that I would stutter. “We’re friends, spending time together over the winter holiday. It’s not a new concept.”
“Ah.” There was a wealth of meaning in that syllable: doubt, derision, a healthy dose of scorn. “And yet she doesn’t have friends. It hardly hurts that you’re handsome, or that you’re from reduced circumstances. I imagine you’d follow her anywhere. That combination must be catnip for a girl like our Lottie. A ready-made acolyte. But what could possibly be in it for you?”
Had we been anywhere else, with anyone else, Holmes would have barreled into this conversation like an armored tank. I knew how to defend myself, but I was so used to her quick, fearless wit that, in its absence, I found myself speechless.
And it was absent. Holmes herself was absent. Her eyes had gone dark and faraway, her fork still tracing patterns on her plate. How long had this been broiling under Emma Holmes’s skin? Or was it something concocted on the spot, a punishment for Charlotte mouthing off to her mother?