“Shut up,” I said, “or I won’t take you on the Ferris wheel.”
“You’re assuming that I want to go.”
“Of course you do.” I paused. “Do you?”
She smiled crookedly at me, her mug of mulled wine clasped between her hands. A little bit of powdered sugar was on the tip of her nose.
“Yes,” she said. “I want to.”
We stomped our feet next to each other in the line; she was doing this thing where she’d lean against my arm for a second, but if I looked down at her, she’d pull herself away like a housecat caught on its back.
“I want car number three,” she said, when we neared the front.
“Why?” I asked.
“Haven’t you been paying attention? It’s the one that’s the swingiest.”
“Swingiest isn’t a word.”
She smiled at me, that one particular smile I hardly ever saw, the one that could open padlocks, Yale locks, bank vaults, the one that was a trapdoor down into everything. I reached out and touched the tip of her nose. My finger came away white with sugar.
“It is now,” she said quietly.
The ride operator was appropriately toothless, and the boys above us kept throwing popcorn down at our heads, and when our car stopped, it didn’t stop at the top to give us a view of the city—instead, we jerked down to the stop before we disembarked, the perfect place to stare up at everyone else’s feet.
“It only goes for two minutes? For five euros each?” She dug through her brown paper bag. “I wish I had something to throw myself.”
“You’ve never been to a carnival before?”
“I rode the London Eye with my Aunt Araminta. She believed in taking my brother and me on ‘excursions.’” Holmes made a face. “She gave us clothes for Christmas, a size too large, ‘to grow into.’ She’s the sort of person air quotes were invented for.”
“Leander said that the Moriartys killed her cats,” I told her, and then blanched. I hadn’t meant to bring that up. Not just when we were on the other side of this case (But are we on the other side of this case? a voice in my head asked), but when we were getting along so well.
But Holmes just nodded. “Totally did her in. She sells honey, now, from her apiary, and doesn’t talk much to anyone. I haven’t seen her in two or three years.” Our spangled metal car tipped forward, then back. “Are they ever going to let us off this thing?”
“I thought you liked the swinginess.”
“It’s making me nauseous.”
“Just close your eyes and enjoy the L.A.D. It’s ‘Girl I See U Dancin.’”
“You knew the name.”
“Girl I see u dancin / something something ransom—oh, come on. You love it.”
“I love it? I think that’s your job.”
I wrinkled my nose at her. “I know your deepest, darkest secrets, Charlotte Holmes. Don’t you give me that.”
The smile on her face went frozen and forced, all at once, like a gust of cold wind from the north, and as I opened my mouth to ask why, the ride lurched forward again.
eight
WE MADE IT BACK TO HOLMES’S ROOM AROUND MIDNIGHT to find August Moriarty waiting at the door, hat literally in hand.
“Where’s Nathaniel?” she asked him, an edge already in her voice.
“I let him go,” he said.
She started, like she was keeping herself from lunging at him. “You ask for my trust, for all of our trust, and then you go and drag away the man I want to question and you announce yourself and everything you know to Hadrian Moriarty and—”
“We didn’t see Hadrian. My brother’s gone to ground, Holmes,” August said. “I don’t know where he is. Nathaniel doesn’t know where he is. And neither does Milo, though his being on a red-eye flight does limit his resources somewhat.”
“So why did that compel you to let Nathaniel go?” I asked him. “We have a stack of invoices here, for forgeries Nathaniel’s students made that he sold to your older brother. We have a business card for David Langenberg, Leander’s alias that we found in Nathaniel’s apartment. And you let him rabbit? Just like that?”
“Because he doesn’t know where Leander is,” August said, “and this has never been about the Langenberg paintings. I don’t care what you found.”
“You’re sure he doesn’t know.” Holmes took a step toward him. “You’re sure.”
August shook his head, as if trying to clear out noise. “I’m sure.”
“How?” I asked. “How are you being so cavalier about this?”
“I pulled up pictures of Nathaniel’s elderly parents. They’re in a home, north of the city. I had its name within seconds. Its address. I threatened to kill them, tonight, if I even imagined he was lying.” His voice broke. “Do you remember what my last name is? Or do you need an explanation for why he believed me?”
“There’s a link,” I said to Holmes. Anything, anything to defuse this situation. “We have the link. We know your uncle was posing as a Langenberg—”
“We don’t know that,” she said. “We don’t know anything.”
“But—”
“Go to bed, August,” Holmes said, opening her door. She shut it behind us so emphatically it was like she was sealing off a tomb.