The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes #2)(58)

Would it mark me as weak if I told you that sometimes, in my cups, I pretend that she’s my daughter, and not Alistair’s?

There’s more to sort out here—finances, Charlotte’s schooling. Emma’s in . . . a situation, and they’ve called in a doctor. There’s more to it than that, but that’s all I should say. Privacy, you know. I’ll be back to Berlin as soon as I’m able.

Happy Christmas. Roast some chestnuts for me.

That was it. The last one.

It was so hard to wrench myself back to the present. I made an effort to remember, to put words to the cold twist of panic in my stomach. Holmes is here. We’re looking for her. You have no idea how you’re going to find her.

And Hadrian Moriarty—was he Nathaniel Ziegler? I’d thought myself a genius when I’d picked him out of the crowd. When he invited me back to his loft. Nathaniel feigned panic when I mentioned Leander’s name, and I thought, Yes, a sign that I’ve found the man I’ve been looking for, and had no idea how right I was. Was Hadrian masquerading as Nathaniel? All the time, or only for these meetings? Was he teaching college classes, or was he just meeting Leander in that empty, echoing faculty housing at night?

It was a half-formed hunch, in Leander’s email. He didn’t think he was right.

But God, what if he was. Reason through it, Watson. Because August Moriarty had seen Nathaniel last night and let him go. What if he had been conspiring with his family all along? What if he and Nathaniel hadn’t gone to see Hadrian because Nathaniel was Hadrian?

What if all of this was a ploy to get us where Lucien Moriarty wanted us?

Frantically, I scrolled up through the previous emails. Looked through them faster now, all pretense gone. We were still standing in that same damn atelier, and when I glanced up at August, his attention was fixed raptly on the artist’s face as he spoke. His own voice had grown quieter.

I took a look around me. This artist was interested in painting more traditionally than the others we’d seen—at least, his canvases weren’t flashing neon lights or cut up into tiny strips. They were portraits. Each had a dark head, looking to the side, the expression obscured. All charcoals and grays, with flashes of eggshell white. What the paintings depicted was different from the false Langenbergs we’d seen, but they all had a definite similarity to The Last of August.

The artist didn’t look like Nathaniel Ziegler. He didn’t look like Hadrian Moriarty, either, and maybe they were one and the same. This guy was all of eighteen.

When he saw my expression, August held a finger up to the artist. “More vodka?” he asked. “Then we’ll come back.”

I had to keep a lid on my suspicions for now. We had to find Holmes.

August Moriarty kidnapped you, a voice in my head whispered, and you still thought he was on your side. How could you be so stupid?

“August,” I hissed outside the studio’s entrance, but he shook his head tightly. Later, he mouthed. As we wound our way back to the table of drinks, I wondered if Holmes was even here. Maybe she’d stolen herself away to a coffee shop somewhere to think. Maybe she was still in Greystone HQ, playing scales on her violin, having shaken off our fight right after it happened. Maybe she’d done the sane thing, for once, and called someone to talk it over—though who, I didn’t know.

No. I needed to focus on the now. I felt like she was here somewhere, and from the look on his face, he felt it, too. “Bathroom,” he said, and pointed to a door far across the cut-up room. “Since you asked.”

I nodded. We’d split up, then. Trust him for now, I reminded myself. You’ll have to deal with this later. I crept slowly toward the restroom, looking up from my phone to throw quick glances down the aisles. There were voices, everywhere voices, but I didn’t hear Holmes’s. Which could mean nothing. I remembered the time she’d dragged herself under my father’s porch and taken the rest of her stash all at once, sitting in the cold dirt like a blank-faced doll. It’d been like pulling teeth to get her to talk, until she opened herself up to spill out everything. One long black flood of confession.

The ateliers were fewer here, and the suspended walls held dark little dens instead. Couches, and a television playing Netflix. A more elaborate bar, with rack after rack of liquor bottles reaching up to the false ceiling, the wall behind it chalkboard-painted and covered in strange little sunbursts. A few that were empty of everything but people laughing, people dressed like artists and people wearing suits, and I wondered about those strange little open spaces, who “owned” them, if anyone, who decided who came in or went out.

And still I didn’t see her anywhere, until I did.

She was the golden-haired girl in a sea of men. My gaze had skipped right over her, and then I’d seen those eyes of hers, colorless and cold and strange.

Quickly, I backtracked and grabbed another cup, sloshing cranberry juice into it with shaking hands. She seemed fine, I told myself, she’s talking, she’s happy, it’s fine, and I tried to summon up the confidence I’d need to wander into a room full of strangers and pull her out. Where was August? I couldn’t see him. I didn’t know what her cover was, or what she was doing—or God, even if she would come with me if she saw me.

I approached again, slowly. I didn’t want to scare her off. At the edge of the crowd, I dodged the waving arms of a bearded guy ranting about Banksy, and put myself into Holmes’s line of sight.