The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes #2)(82)

Holmes turned to her mother. “He wasn’t—I wasn’t—”

“Lottie,” her mother said. “It wasn’t your father. It wasn’t about money. It was about you. It’s always been because of you. Do you understand? There isn’t time for this. Here.”

She pulled a vial from her pocket and gave it to Leander. After a long, bowstrung moment, he bit off the cap and drank its contents down. Emma turned from us, her phone to her ear. “Yes? Yes, I’m requesting police assistance—” She walked toward the house, out of earshot.

No one moved. Above our heads, the moon hung heavy in the sky. Clouds raced across it, hastened by the wind. Was it shouting that I heard from inside the house? Was it just the ocean against the cliffs?

“Alistair just chased me out of the basement,” I told them. “I had to—I kicked at him, to get out. He was coming for me—”

Beside me, August threw a hand up over his mouth. He was laughing. Silently, horribly, his eyes squeezed shut. “You’re all such monsters,” he said. “Monsters, all of you! Trying to pin this on my family, trying to make us out to be worse than we are, and look at this horror you’ve built with your own hands.”

“No,” Leander said, wrapping his jacket more tightly around himself. “Don’t pretend you don’t know how this started. Not when Lucien Moriarty can say two words to his brother on the phone, and Alistair Holmes is given the option to either turn both Charlotte and all of his ill-gotten holdings, his paintings, his offshore bank accounts, everything over to the police—Lucien has the information, it would be a matter of minutes to bring it to the authorities—or to keep me in his basement until his brother and sister wrap up their Langenberg operation, safely, without my putting them away. Lucien wants this to go nuclear. He wants to bring all of us down. When he spoke to Hadrian and found out that August was still alive—when he heard word from his spies that August was working for Milo—”

“Oh God,” I said.

“Well,” Leander said. “It’s all the same. Everyone has another face. Hadrian and Phillipa are in custody?”

Holmes nodded, her expression unreadable.

“And I’ll be the evidence to hang them with. I’ll be the poisoned, wronged party. Poison—all it took was a single dose in Emma’s tea, administered by the man who takes out the trash, and the whole world goes to hell. Well, I know my place in it. I’ll be used, and then it’ll be over.” Leander turned and spat onto the snowy ground. “And after this, I’m done with it.”

I took a step forward before I’d really processed what he’d said. “Done with it?”

Leander swept out an arm. “All this—what is any of it for? Did you hear the Moriarty boy? Monsters. It takes the son of professional sadists to call us what we are. And you follow along in her thrall. I thought—I thought, somehow, that Charlotte would find a way to transcend it. But even now she’s putting blood before justice. Her and her mother both. I find myself wanting to thank you, Emma, for tending to me instead of just throwing me into a cage . . . but is that Stockholm syndrome?” He swept a shaking hand over his hair. “God only knows. I want out.”

“Wait—” August stepped between us, his back to me. From this angle, he looked exactly like his brother. The close-cropped blond hair. The dark clothes. The slight hunch of the shoulders, like a man always looking up at the guillotine. “I’m sorry—I’m sorry for what I said. It doesn’t have to be the truth. This doesn’t have to be the end of all of us. I’d had the same plan, you know, to run—but what if we both stayed? Built a bridge between our families? It was my plan to begin with, and it failed, but we could find a way to make it work. There are sane men on both sides. There has to be a way for us all to work this—” He reached a hand out to Leander, touched his chest.

The smallest sound. Like a can being opened, or the click of a door shutting behind you. Like your mother shutting off the light when you were ready to go to sleep. I couldn’t place it. Couldn’t tell where it came from. I didn’t connect it with the way that August dropped, suddenly, to his knees, and then fell in a slow dive face-first onto the ground.

While Leander and I were staring dumbly down at August in the snow—even now, a dark halo was gathering around his hair—Holmes was tracking the shooter. “There,” she snarled, pointing at a cluster of trees across the field, and took off unerringly, an arrow loosed from a bow.

I followed her. I didn’t know what else to do. Had I just seen August shot down? Had Hadrian or Phillipa escaped to do it, or was it someone else—was it Alistair? He’d gone sprawling when I kicked him, but he’d had enough time to recover. Had he decided to cut his losses and start killing any Moriarty he could get within his crosshairs? Money, I thought, and keeping up this old monolith of a house, and all the things you’re willing to give up to keep it—

August. Holmes’s biggest mistake. Our saving grace with a knife to his neck. Hamlet, prince of goddamn Denmark. Shot dead on the Holmeses’ back lawn.

The copse of trees was right before us. “I see you,” Holmes said, her coat flapping behind her as she skidded to a stop. “Come down. Come down.” Her voice broke on the edge of the last word. “Come down and face me.”