The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes #2)(22)

“Who says I’m not?”

“I am. I’m watching you do nothing.”

“You wouldn’t know how to look.”

She took a step toward him. “You monstrous pig, I knew how to read people before you knew your alphabet—”

“Oh? Because I’ve been holding my tongue about the fact that you and your ‘colleague’ there have obviously begun doing the nasty, and that—pity—it’s not going very well—”

At that, Holmes lunged, and he dodged her, letting out a triumphant laugh.

“Guys. Guys. Where is he?”

“Who, Watson?” she asked.

“August Moriarty. The reason you two are fighting? I could be wrong about that. It’s just an assumption.” I looked Milo over, head to toe, the way I’d seen him do to me. “As is the assumption that no one’s done the nasty to you in years. Three? Four?”

Milo adjusted his glasses. Then he pulled them off and began polishing them with a sleeve.

“Two, actually,” a soft voice said behind me. “He never really did get over that comtesse, and I haven’t seen any girls around here since.”

Charlotte Holmes went completely still.

“Though it’s been longer for me,” the voice said. “So I shouldn’t really be making fun. Speaking of, I hear I have you three to thank for breaking off my engagement. And I do mean that. Thank you.”

Milo sighed. “August. It’s good you’re here. Lottie, I’ve given him access to my contacts. He’ll show you around. I—well, frankly, I have more important things to do.” He stopped at the end of the hall. “By the way, Lottie, Phillipa Moriarty called to confirm your lunch. I’ve left her number in your room.”

With that bombshell, he left. I didn’t have any time to process it. I’d been left with Holmes and Moriarty. And because I was—am—a coward, I waited until the last possible second to turn around.

August Moriarty was dressed like a starving artist. He had on ripped black jeans and a black T-shirt and steel-toe boots—black, of course—and his hair was cut into a blond fauxhawk. But while he was dressed like a poet, he had the polish of a rich kid, and his eyes were burning with an intensity that reminded me of—

Well, it reminded me of Charlotte Holmes. All of him did. In the picture of him I’d seen on his math department’s website, he was smiling in a tweed blazer, and now he was standing here like her looking-glass twin. Before they’d even exchanged a word, it was clear that they had done something to each other, broken each other, maybe, or distilled each other like liquor, until all that was left was hard and strong and spare. They had a history that had nothing to do with me.

Maybe I was reading too much into it. Into him. Things between me and Holmes were tenuous enough already, though, and here was a gust of wind that could take the rest of it down.

A very polite gust of wind.

“Milo’s said some nice things about you,” he was saying as he shook my hand. He had a tattoo on his forearm, something dark and patterned. “Which is interesting, since Milo usually doesn’t notice people that aren’t holograms.”

“I didn’t know the two of you were close,” I said. I had to say something. We were still shaking hands.

He had a strong grip. I pressed harder.

He laughed, a friendly sound. “We’re both ghosts. Where else would you work if you legally don’t exist? I’m fairly sure that Milo’s scrubbed his digital footprint so clean that he wasn’t even technically born. We have that much in common.”

“That makes sense,” I said, because he was still shaking my hand.

“I should probably also apologize for my brother. Do know that I never told him to kill you.”

My fingers were starting to go numb. “I’m pretty sure I’m just the collateral damage there.”

“Right, of course. Of course.” A strange look passed over his face, and then vanished. “Sorry.”

“So. Phillipa?” I asked. “Are you two . . . close? Do you know why she’d want to see us?”

“Not really,” he said. “We haven’t spoken since I died.”

I risked looking over at Holmes. She hadn’t moved, except for her hands, which were pressed against her sides. She didn’t look nervous or scared. She didn’t even seem like she was cataloguing him, the way I’d expected her to, taking in whatever changes the last two years had worked on him. What her betrayal had done. Whether he hated her for it.

She was just looking at him.

“I got your birthday card,” she said quietly. “Thank you.”

“I hope you didn’t mind that it was in Latin. I didn’t mean it to seem pretentious. I just wanted to—”

“I know. It reminded me of that summer.” Her eyes brightened. “That’s what you intended, right?”

August Moriarty was still shaking my hand. More accurately, he was holding it, because neither of us was moving anymore. He was staring at her like she was a penny at the bottom of a well, and I—well, I was staring at the space between them.

“I need this back,” I said, and pulled my hand away.

August didn’t appear to notice. “You must be exhausted from your trip. Both of you. You’re here for the week, yes? I’ll have Milo’s body man show you to your room so you can settle in. You had lunch on the plane? Excellent. And tonight—well, there’s a bar we should go to. Some things I’d like your opinion on, there.”