A Study in Charlotte (Charlotte Holmes, #1)(14)

“Come by for dinner next Sunday,” he said instead. “Bring Charlotte. You still like steak pie, I’m sure.” There wasn’t a question there to say no to, and before I could find a way to protest anyway, he said, “It’ll just be the three of us.” No stepfamily, he meant. I found myself nodding.

Detective Shepard came out into the hall, ushering along an ashen Holmes. Her composure was eggshell-thin but intact. I admired her self-possession, and still, I wanted to be a million miles away.

“Next Sunday, then,” my father said, and fixed the detective with a look that said the interview was absolutely over.

Shepard stood there for an awkward moment. “Neither of you leave town without telling me. We’ll talk again soon.” He followed my father down the stairs.

Holmes and I stared at each other.

“You’ve been crying,” she said, more hoarse than usual. She lifted a tentative hand to touch my face. “Why?”

I wanted to shout at her. I couldn’t turn my feelings off like I was a machine, and as much as she pretended to be one—her spotless appearance, the precise way she spoke—I knew she couldn’t either. Her emotions had to be roiling somewhere, deep below the surface, and I wanted to demand that she pull them out for my inspection. As if it were my right.

But instead, I covered her cold hand with mine. “I won’t make you talk about it,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, withdrawing. “Don’t.”

“Okay.” I took a deep breath to steady myself. “Did you give him whatever it was that you slipped into your pocket? That vial?”

“I did.”

It was like pulling teeth. “Are you going to tell me what it was?”

She considered it for a moment. Considered me. “Watson,” she said, “it looks like we’re being framed.”

MRS. DUNHAM WOULDN’T LET US LEAVE WITHOUT A PROMISE to go first to the infirmary. My knuckles were bleeding after I’d punched that wall, my fingers bruised and swollen. Holmes promised her we would, and she sat patiently as the nurse examined me. “You’re becoming quite a regular,” she said, tsking, and gave me bandages and an ice pack.

Holmes ducked into the dining hall to make us sandwiches while I waited by the door. I was surprised that she would remember to eat, as I’d been too upset to realize that I was starving. We were both, I think, too overwhelmed by our internal weather to pay much attention to what was happening outside. This time the stares and whispers as we crossed the quad didn’t bother me. How could they? I had so much more to worry about. Up at Sciences 442, Holmes produced a ring of keys, and let us in.

“How did you con them into giving you a lab?” I asked, thankful for a neutral subject to discuss.

“My parents made it a stipulation of my acceptance,” she said. Around us, the lab was as strange and dark as we’d left it. “Sherringford was quite eager to have me, and so they agreed. On my transcript, the work I do here is listed as an independent study.”

I smirked. “In what? Murder?” She wrinkled her nose at me.

For those few minutes, I’d forgotten about Dobson, but the sight of the battered love seat brought it crashing back. I watched her watch me remember, and with a gust of energy, she slammed the door shut.

“It didn’t happen here,” she said matter-of-factly. “It happened in Stevenson. Yes, I generally do oxy here, when I do downers, so that was an exception. Yes, it was immensely upsetting; yes, I do get upset. No, I’d rather not tell you the details. I don’t want you to know the details. I didn’t kill him, and I didn’t hire anyone to kill him. I had nothing to do with his death. As I’ve told you before, I can fight for myself. So stop looking at me like I’m an object for your pity.”

“I don’t pity you,” I said, stunned. She turned to the wall, but I could still see her close her eyes, count backward silently from ten.

“No,” she said, without turning around. “You just choose to feel all the things that I can’t, or don’t. It’s overwhelming. We’ve been friends for less than a day.” She paused. “Though I suppose we’re neither of us very normal.”

No one had considered me anything but normal, before this. Though I was sure that hadn’t been the case for her.

After a long minute, I sat down on her disgusting couch. “Here is your lunch,” I said, picking up the sandwiches from where she’d dropped them on the floor. “Normal people eat lunch, and so, for these five minutes, we are going to be normal. After that, you’re free to tell me who’s framing us for murder.”

She flopped down beside me. “I don’t have the who yet,” she said. “Not enough data.”

“Normal,” I warned her. “At least try.”

I wolfed my sandwich down, even though it was pastrami and lettuce on white bread, full stop. No condiments. It was the kind of sandwich only a posh girl with a personal chef and the appetite of a hummingbird would have made, and so maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. For her part, she ate a listless bite or two, eyes fixed on the middle distance.

“What do normal people talk about?” she asked me.

“Football?” I hazarded. She rolled her eyes. “Okay. Did you see that new cop movie?”

“Fiction is a waste of time,” she said, pulling a shred of lettuce out of her sandwich and nibbling on its end. A snail. She ate like a snail. “I’m far more interested in real events.”