The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes #2)(78)

“So what now, for you?” I asked August.

He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think—I think maybe I’ve been lying to myself, a little bit.”

“Really, now,” Holmes said.

“No sarcasm from you.” He said it with a half smile. “I disappeared because my parents wanted me to. Really, I took that job working in your house in the first place because they wanted me to—and I took that job from your brother at Greystone because I was so determined to try to bring an end to this war. A lot of good that did. But tonight’s shown that I don’t have to do it anymore.”

“Greystone?” I asked.

“Any of it,” he said. “Make peace. Offer up my life. Now, I might . . . go back to my academic work, in maths. Take on a persona. A new one, you know, build it up from the ground. I could forge some records, or maybe I could even do my DPhil again—it might be nice to take my time, this time—and get a teaching job somewhere. I hear Hong Kong has a nice expat scene. Maybe I’ll go there.”

I snorted. “It’s not a big deal to do your doctorate again?”

“What would you rather do, Jamie? Data entry for the rest of your natural life?” He grinned. “Even if that’s your calling, you’ll be safe. My brother Lucien won’t touch you. Not if he knows he’d be ending my life, too.”

“I don’t know if we can count on that.”

August shrugged. “Forgive me if I don’t feel the need to reassure you of your safety. It’s not like you think it’s important. I kidnapped you and told you to go home, warned you about the dangers of your situation, and all you did was double down.”

I stared at him. Even after hearing him tell Hadrian, after hearing him say it now, I still couldn’t quite believe him. “That, instead of telling me, Hey, maybe you’re in danger, Jamie. Which would’ve been too easy. Or un-psychopathic.”

To my surprise, August looked over at Holmes. “I was raised to solve problems in a particular way.” His voice was clipped and rough, a simulation of hers. “Generally, I ignore my education. There, it seemed apt. I keep my promises, Charlotte.”

Holmes scoffed. “You were serious. You were serious about killing yourself to save us.”

“I was serious about that.”

“Hong Kong,” I echoed. I tried to imagine it. The August from the photos, from the research I’d done. With a professorial beard and a briefcase and a whole bunch of papers to grade. Somewhere out of reach, somewhere far away from all of this.

I couldn’t hold on to the image. It didn’t seem possible, that you could walk away from this burning wreck with a brand-new name and no scars but the scratch on your neck.

“Well, good luck with that,” Holmes said, leaning back into my coat.

“Stop being a child, Charlotte,” he said.

“I’m not being a child. I’m being realistic. How can you believe that your brother isn’t a complete monomaniac? That he has compunctions? You think he won’t hunt you down for sport?” She barked a laugh. “You’d use the name Felix. You’d teach at an English-speaking university. I could find you within ten minutes. Lucien? Within seconds.”

“This isn’t about me,” he said formally. “It’s about you. You’re hurt that I said those things. I understand, you know. It can be difficult.”

“Difficult?”

“Actions have consequences—”

“Don’t you trot out that patronizing bullshit with me, August, I can’t stand it—”

He threw up his hands.

“—I thought of you as the last good one. Of all of us. I thought you’d forgiven me.”

“How could I? How could I possibly, when—” August cleared his throat. “You know where Leander is.” It wasn’t a question.

“Why do you think we’re going back to Sussex?”

“How? How long have you known?”

“No.” She peered at him over my arm. “First show your work.”

That expression crept across August’s face again, the one I’d seen him smother so many times before. This time, he didn’t try to mask it. Bit by bit, it played out, the look of a man who’s torched his own house only to fall in love with the flames. He hated himself, anyone could tell that—the bandage around his neck was still stained red—but I don’t think he hated Charlotte Holmes as much as he claimed. I think it was something else completely.

Did he want to be her? Did he want to be with her? It didn’t matter now. This was the tail end, the epilogue. After what he’d said to us in Prague, I couldn’t imagine our paths would run together much longer.

August leaned forward in his seat, his hands steepled before him. “You haven’t had any urgency on this matter since we’ve arrived. All the tools in the world to track down your uncle, and instead, you play back the same voicemail, again and again, not picking it apart for analysis but listening to it like you’re mourning for him? My brother and sister were at your disposal. At your mercy. You held them at gunpoint, and then at an auction that you demanded they hold, and instead of extracting information from them, by force, about your uncle’s whereabouts—don’t give me that look, I know precisely how bloodthirsty you are—you show a cute little surveillance video that implicates them in his disappearance and then you buy up all the Langenberg paintings, one two three? There’s no hard evidence there. It’s bad detective work, plain and simple. You’re solving this sloppily, Charlotte, with money and borrowed power, and you’re going to use Milo—who, unlike you, has a moral code underneath all that expediency—to put them in whatever black box you put Bryony in. It’s like you’re trying to race to some end before the howling wolves catch you, and that would make sense if you feared for Leander’s life, but you don’t. And now you’re saying he’s been in England the whole time? I don’t know what you’re doing, but why are you dragging me along?”