He moved closer so slowly, I thought my heart would stop altogether. We shared one breath and then another, before finally his lips found mine. He kissed me softly but long, holding me close with his fingers twined in my hair. He stopped only to study my eyes, as if he couldn’t believe I was still there. The next time he kissed me, I smiled against his lips and kissed him back.
We traded kisses and awkward glances until a giant crash onstage broke our spell. But Sherlock held my hand for the rest of class and all the way home. The very minute he let go and I closed our front door behind me, a hundred protests crashed through my mind, the word “temporary” flashing in red to mark each one. But I didn’t care anymore. Maybe I was being selfish or stupid or whatever else. But I wanted him, my Lock. And for now he wanted me back.
? ? ?
Alice handed me another envelope after dinner that night—one without a postmark that faintly smelled of model glue. I should have opened it right away but instead placed it on my bed and stepped back to think a moment. Then I called Lock.
Before he could say hello, I said, “I got another envelope.”
“I’ll be right over.”
“No. Don’t come. I just . . .” I didn’t know why I’d called him exactly, but I could hear him moving around, as if he was coming over anyway. So I opened the envelope and was surprised to find THANK YOU embossed in silver across the card inside. The glue smell had made me sure it would be another threat. “I think it’s a drawing.”
I didn’t really know what I was waiting for, and it was uncharacteristic of me to pause at all. But I felt like maybe I didn’t want to see what would be drawn there. Not this time.
I heard Mycroft call, “Sherlock!” and then the sound on Lock’s end muffled, as if he was pressing his mobile against his shirt. I used the pause in our conversation to study the way the pencil lead smudged around the edges of the card, and then Lock said, “Call you right back?”
“Yeah.”
And I was left alone with the card once more.
I opened it finally, to keep my self-derision at bay, and immediately wished I hadn’t. Similar to the first drawing, this one had a main story in the background with an ornate, framed foreground and a male figure peeking in—no whispering princess, however. It had the same level of detail and it filled the entire white space of the card. In fact, the only style difference was that the main characters of the background story weren’t wearing medieval gowns. Perhaps, if they were, I might have answered when Lock called back.
My phone blasted out that bloody barcarolle, and instead of answering, I stared at an almost perfect rendering of Sadie Mae in her school uniform. She was being pushed up against a willow tree by a large white man. Her perfect spiral curls, the look of abject terror on her face, his white fingers clamped around her throat. She was even missing a shoe, my Sadie Mae.
The card started to shake, and I realized I was gripping the card stock too tightly when I heard it start to crinkle in my fist. I dropped the thing, and still I couldn’t look away. Which is also when I saw the hidden message in the leaves that formed the frame of the image. I thought maybe I was seeing things at first, but looking at it from far away and at the angle it had fallen, the words were definitely there: SECOND SIN.
“?‘Second sin,’?” I said aloud. In the next second I was shuffling through my schoolwork and the other useless papers and books on my desk. And when I’d knocked near half of them to the floor in my rush, I found it. The first drawing. I could see that there were words as plain as anything, now that I knew what to look for. I dropped it next to its sibling on the floor and adjusted it until it was at the same angle. “?‘First sin.’ Oh God.”
I grabbed the lamp from my desk and pulled it to where the drawings rested, straining the electric cord to the farthest it would reach. Then I got down on my knees, studying every inch of the drawings. I found two anomalies. First, someone had doctored the drawings. While the original lines were drawn using a true black-colored pencil, the shading that created the “sins” messages looked slightly lighter, as if whoever had doctored them had used a normal lead pencil instead of an art pencil.
The second was more disturbing. That same lead pencil had been used again on the second drawing. The right hand of the man peeking around the frame had been messily erased, and, over the top, the person doctoring the drawing had replaced the hand with a stump and had drawn blood dripping down his upper arm in dark gray rivulets.