The Case for Jamie (Charlotte Holmes #3)(70)

“Jesus.” It was only eight o’clock. I was shocked a whole week hadn’t passed since I left campus this afternoon.

“Well.” Holmes wasn’t quite meeting my eyes. In the background, Milo dumped out a file folder on the table, and papers scattered like a rush of leaves.

“We haven’t had a chance to— I haven’t told you about Shelby,” I said, remembering in a horrible rush. How could I have forgotten? Lucien-stroke-Ted, and our mad dash across town, and Milo appearing like the Ghost of Hangovers Past—all of it had pushed my sister to the back of my mind. “She started her new school today, here, in America, but I think it’s another con of Lucien’s. My mother’s claiming that she’s just homesick, but I trust my sister’s judgment, and Holmes—Shel was scared, when she called. Hiding in a closet scared. That isn’t homesickness.”

Holmes’s eyes refocused on me. “Where is it?”

“Somewhere close to Sherringford, I think? I don’t know—”

“Get her out of there,” she said, immediately. “Now. Now, Jamie. How long has she been there?”

“Only a few hours,” I said. “Hopefully not long enough for anything terrible to happen to her.”

“There are a lot of terrible things,” Holmes said, “that can happen to a girl in a few hours.”

“Can we get a car? How do we get out of the city? Is there—”

“Do you require my assistance?” Milo called.

“No,” Holmes and I said together, and she dragged me away from him and Morgan-Vilk, out into the darkened hallway.

There, she paced, dragging her hands through her hair. “No. No, we can’t be everywhere. We can’t try to be. We have resources—yes. My uncle.”

“My dad,” I said, pulling out my phone. “I’ll text him.”

Dad, I wrote. Shelby’s in trouble. Her new school—I think it’s a front for something.

Holmes was watching my fingers. “Lucien consults for a school in Connecticut. A wilderness rehabilitation school. I’ve been to places like that, and they’re awful, but generally safe. I don’t know how true that will hold if Lucien is involved.”

“She’s just a girl,” I said, almost desperately.

“I know,” Holmes said. “I wish that made a difference.”

Get Leander and get her out of there. Please, I wrote, and I powered down my phone, but even still I couldn’t keep myself from staring at the screen, like some reassurance would appear there by magic.

“Wash your hands of it for now,” she said, watching me. “Trust them. Your father. Leander. They’ve handled worse. And I know your sister. She’s strong.”

“Okay,” I said, because it was awful and it was true.

“Okay,” she said, and then, “Jamie. Can we talk?”

“Yeah,” I said, “of course,” because we hadn’t yet, not really.

She fidgeted a little, flexing her hands. “There’s a bedroom upstairs,” she said, finally. “If you want some privacy.”

“Oh.” The back of my neck went hot, then freezing cold. “Oh. Okay.”

“Not ‘oh,’” she said, the rebuttal automatic, and then, “I mean. Not necessarily ‘oh.’ Not ‘oh’ unless—dammit, Jamie, I am trying very hard here, can we please just go upstairs.”

There was more house here than I’d realized. The room we’d been given was at the end of a long corridor, the floorboards chalky and warped, the walls paneled too in dusty white. All the other rooms were shut up, unused, and there was a musty smell in the air, like no one had opened a window all winter.

Our bedroom had the same haunted feeling. The bed was piled high with white down and linen, and there were chairs and a dresser, but they were covered in dust sheets. I wanted to snap them off and shake them out, see if there was anything below them worth salvaging. I didn’t, though. They were beautiful as they were.

Holmes didn’t care about that. Not that kind of beauty. “Someone might have bugged the room,” she muttered, and immediately started dismantling it piece by piece, beginning with the bed. Once she’d finished feeling up the mattress, I flopped myself down on it and watched her work.

It was the first moment I’d had alone with her in over a year.

I found myself looking for signs of change, ones I could see. Her hair was the same length, give or take, dark and straight down to her shoulders, her eyes still the same unfathomable gray. She was taking apart the dresser, now, removing each drawer to examine them, and she moved with the furious intensity she always had when we were on a case.

Like a missile, made of pylons and metal and rocket fuel, deadly and unstoppable, fired off to hit a tiny target thousands of miles away. That precise. That incredible.

I stopped myself there. A year of beating my head against a wall, alone, cursing her, mourning August, awash in guilt and shame. An hour together in Manhattan, and I caught myself admiring her?

Really?

I felt myself begin to shut down.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, flicking the sheet off the last chair. It kicked up a storm’s worth of dust.

“Nothing,” I said, coughing. “Do you need help?”

“I’m almost done.” She dug her hands underneath the cushion. “Wait—no. Hold on.” Frowning, she examined the thing in her palms. “I think that’s an actual bug.”