The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes #2)(28)

“This seems pointlessly complicated,” I said.

“What does?”

“This party. This situation. This pool table.” I kicked its leg. “Who got bored enough to make this thing?”

August was already racking the balls. “Are you any good at pool?”

I’d played some in the afternoons in a pub near my school. Which of course meant nothing, because I’d spent most of that time staring at Rose Milton, girl of my freshman daydreams. “Eh,” I said.

“Well, it’s all geometry and hand-eye coordination.” He tossed me a cue stick and lined up his shot.

“Terrific. So the idea was to drag me into the corner and ritualistically beat me, and then explain why you and Holmes ditched me in Milo’s Military Funhouse earlier?”

With a resounding crack, he broke the balls across the table. Two solids went in the far right pocket.

“Tell me,” he said, leaning against the wall. “Do you ever get sick of playing the victim?”

It was so far removed from anything he’d said before that I thought I must’ve imagined it. “Excuse me?”

“Jamie, I’ve known you for less than a day, and you already flinch every time I talk to you.”

“I’m not—”

“I haven’t been anything but nice. What, exactly, is the problem?”

“You seem—either you’re completely na?ve, or you’re a fake. The way you talk to me is ridiculous. The way you look at her—” Deep breaths, I told myself. If I beat him into the floor, Holmes would kill me. “I guess I’m stripes.”

“You are, but it’s still my turn.” His eyes were on the table. The solid-colored balls had all wandered into improbable corners. I was sure he was working out some mathematical solution. “Are you really that insecure? Or is it something else?”

“Do you know what you are to her?” I snapped. “Because I do.”

“No, you don’t. Not from what I can tell. And I wasn’t asking you about Charlotte.”

I glared at him. His ugly tattoo, his posh accent, his twenty-three-year-old bullshit confidence. “Then spell it out for me, genius.”

“Maybe you need me to,” he said, and with an elegant motion, he knocked another ball into a pocket. “Maybe I need to say to you, out loud, that I didn’t diddle any children.” Another shot. Another ball. “Or that I didn’t feed her drugs. Or tell my brother to ruin her life and raze an American boarding school.”

“Or almost have me killed,” I said. “You didn’t tell him to do that either. Is there some reason you’re suddenly so mad at me?”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

August’s cue stilled in his hands. “I faked my death to escape my family. Jail time, too, but mostly them. My parents agreed to let me go; my siblings think I’m dead. I’m not the enemy. I’m not the bad guy. I thought I’d made that clear.” His face was mercilessly blank, like he’d wiped off all emotion with a cloth. But his words sounded genuine.

“I—well. ‘Enemy’ is kind of a strong word.”

“Jamie.”

“Just—take your shot.”

He looked back down at the table and, very deliberately, scratched.

I picked the cue ball off the floor. “You didn’t do anything to me, so you don’t need to feel bad. I don’t need a pity win.”

“No,” he said. “I think you need a chance to play.”

“That sounded like you’d been rehearsing it for a while.”

He scowled. “I’m trying to be nice to you.”

“Stop trying. You’re not nice. Or if you are, you’re out of practice.” I paused. “I’m not very nice either. God knows Holmes isn’t.”

That pried a smile from him, a real one, if sad. “I am nice, Jamie. I just . . . I haven’t talked to anyone in a while.”

We traded shots after that. August began playing with an ease that he hadn’t before, pointing out angles, lining up a shot for me when I couldn’t figure out how to get my blue two into the side pocket.

“Are you in love with her?” I asked him as he sank another ball.

His face went blank again. Was it his tell? Is this what he looked like when he was upset? “Are you?”

“It’s complicated.” I watched him, but his expression didn’t change. “If you aren’t, then why did you look at her the way you did? When we first arrived?”

August sighed. “I’ve been in Berlin for a few years now. I do data entry. Milo gives me a pile of spreadsheets—numbers, usually, about which air base has x number of metal gaskets—and I put it into a computer. They came from a computer in the first place, so it’s totally unnecessary. It’s fake-work. Make-work. There are actual things I could be doing for Greystone, but—”

“But you’re a Moriarty.” The waitress came by with her tray. I took a glass and offered it to August.

With a half smile, he accepted it. “Because of who my brother is, and who my aunt and uncle are, and so on, and so forth, I can’t be trusted with sensitive information. Or an interesting job, apparently.”

“Milo hates you that much?”