The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes #2)(24)

After a minute, I pulled it back out.

When you were working with Leander, did you ever feel like you were his baggage? Like he’d insist on taking you along on a case, and then he’d run off and solve it without you?

Of course. But there’s a way to stop feeling like that, you know.

How? I asked.

I don’t know when my father became someone I trusted to go to for advice. It was an uncomfortable feeling.

My phone pinged. I’ve put a hundred dollars in your bank account. Now run off and solve it without her.

THE OLD METROPOLITAN WAS BUSIER THAN ANY BAR I’D been to in Britain. Not that I’d been to too many bars—but I’d seen enough. In Britain, you could have a beer with your dinner at sixteen if your parent bought it for you; at eighteen, you could order whatever you wanted for yourself. Germany’s laws weren’t all that different. One of the great ironies of my life is that I got shipped off to America for high school, a country that didn’t let people drink until they’d nearly graduated college.

The Old Metropolitan was full of students. It was only a few streets away from the Kunstschule Sieben’s campus, something I learned while wandering the neighborhood. When I’d left Greystone HQ, it was still late afternoon, so I decided to spend the time before nightfall cultivating a disguise. I’d watched Holmes remake herself in front of me, how putting a slight spin on her usual presentation turned her into an entirely different person. I’d asked her, once, what she thought of me going undercover. She’d laughed in my face.

Not this time. I bought a hat and a pair of shit-kickers at a thrift store. Then I found a barbershop and asked them for a haircut I kept seeing on the street, shaved on the sides and long on top. My hair was wavy, but whatever he styled it with made it lay slick and straight. When he finished, I put on my glasses and looked in the mirror.

I’d always had something that made grandmothers want to talk to me in waiting rooms. I looked friendly, I guess. I’d never been able to see it myself, but I saw its absence now. Grinning, I stuck the fedora on the back of my head, tipped the barber, and went out to find some dinner.

Simon, I thought. I’m going to call myself Simon.

I walked to Old Metropolitan with a gyro that I’d gotten from a sketchy-looking food truck up the street. Whenever I was in a new place by myself, I was always aware of how I was walking, what I was looking at, worried that I’d seem like a tourist and be slighted somehow for it. Tonight, I was wandering along like a local, licking the tzatziki sauce off my fingers, looking at the street art with disinterested eyes. Simon didn’t care about the giant neon dragon painted over the Old Metropolitan’s doorway, teeth bared like a warning. Simon had seen it a million times before. His uncle lived just down the block.

Simon was used to the crush of people inside, too, and so I kept my face bored as I pushed my way up to the bar. But I almost lost my composure when I looked over the crowd. Despite my new clothes and haircut, I was the least avant-garde person in sight. The girl next to me had pink hair that faded out to electric gold. She was gesturing with a giant glass of something, and it sloshed at me while she spoke to her friends in German. The only word I recognized was “Heidegger,” who was a philosopher. Who I thought was a philosopher. Did I know that from The Simpsons? I tried to avoid eye contact.

Instead, I ended up staring down the bartender. “What’ll it be?” he asked, clearly pegging me for English. I reminded myself that that was fine. Simon was English.

Jamie was panicking.

“A Pimm’s cup,” I said, with fancy posh-boy vowels, because I’d decided that Simon was rich, and because people drank Pimm’s cups at the races I’d seen on television, and yes, it was becoming abundantly clear that Holmes was right, I was an awful spy, because if tonight was any indication, my entire knowledge of the world came from Thursday-night TV.

But the bartender didn’t shrug, or raise an eyebrow. He just turned his back to make the drink. I made myself relax, one muscle at a time, and willed my brain to stop racing. I put my hat more firmly on the back of my head.

My plan had been to nurse my drink and eavesdrop until I heard the Kunstschule Sieben come up in conversation. Then I’d sidle over and introduce myself as a prospective student visiting my uncle over the holiday. Maybe you’d know him—tall, slicked-back hair, English like me? Can I buy you a drink? Do you know a girl named Gretchen? I met her here last week—et cetera, ad nauseam, until someone mentioned the last place they’d seen either of them, or Leander’s mysterious professor, and I’d be off on a new lead before Holmes showed up on her blond Gaston’s arm.

It had seemed fairly foolproof when I’d thought it up. Like all foolproof plans, it turned out to be ridiculous. First off, it was loud in the Old Metropolitan. I could barely make out what languages were being spoken around me, much less the actual words. Second, I hadn’t counted on the intimidation factor. I’d never had problems in the past striking up a conversation with strangers, and I couldn’t pin down why it was proving so difficult now.

Maybe because I’d spent the last three months talking exclusively to someone whose idea of small talk involved blood spatter.

She’s ruined me, I thought, and sank down a little over my drink. The last bits of Simon scattered. What did I think I was playing at, anyway? I wasn’t any good at this. I didn’t even want to be here, in this bar, wincing against the Krautwerk turned up to eleven while the dude next to me played with his labret piercing. I leaned out to ask the bartender for my bill, but I couldn’t get his attention.