The Last of August

It was her show, after all.

In the video, Phillipa took a staggering step forward, and when she turned her head, her face was clearly visible. “You should ask yourself where your uncle is,” she said, like some leering villain, and the audience began to stir. Someone stood and said, “Is this fake? Was this staged?” The rustle of chairs pushed back, paddles dropped to the floor.

The video kept rolling. “Do you think you’re such a genius?” Phillipa said. “What if I told you he was right under your nose the whole time?”

“Oh God,” past-Holmes said, with a gasp loud enough to be picked up by the bug in her coat. That was how she’d gotten the audio, she’d told me; the Moriartys had hacked into the bug in her shoe, the one that Milo had put there to track her movements. She’d had one of the Greystone techs break into the Moriarty servers to look for audio she could use for her “installation.” The security footage was their own, she’d said. We found it when we broke in to get the recording. They’ll kick themselves over that one. “How could you? How—”

“Finally,” Phillipa said, as guards swarmed in to grab the girl and frog-march her out of the frame. “Took you long enough.”

The sound of a door slamming, then the video cut off. A low-pitched static snuffle.

Silence.

When the lights came back up, three things happened in quick succession.

One: The audience of grandmothers and grandfathers and genteel sons and daughters rioted. There wasn’t any other word for it. A man picked up his chair and threw it at the stage, and then the woman beside him followed, and then another, another, like children throwing bricks at a glass window to see it shatter. The elderly women I’d seen walk by earlier, the ones with the jeweled reindeer pins and fancy Christmas hats, turned like synchronized dancers to run for the door. The clerk held it open. I had to give him credit—he wore the same impassive expression he did when the night began.

Two: The Greystone guard who had been holding Phillipa Moriarty to the side of the stage, one hand over her mouth, was sent staggering backward when she threw an elbow into his face. I ran to help the guard up, who waved me off—Phillipa was running, arms pumping, toward the winding marble stairs to the museum proper. The sign above her head said SCULPTURE WING. I pulled off my plastic mask and made to follow her. Tom and Lena and the rest of the Greystone guards followed suit. I made it off the stage and three more feet when I skidded to a stop, but they sprinted on ahead, tearing up the stairs, shouting her name.

Three: Hadrian Moriarty ripped off Charlotte Holmes’s wig and glasses and put a gun to her head.

“Go help my sister,” he told his own guards, and they took off up the stairs. “As for you, girl,” he said, “you wanted to see your uncle? I’ll send you there, then,” and he pushed the mouth of the gun hard into her temple. Holmes’s face went white. She didn’t flinch, didn’t make a sound. Only her colorless eyes moved, darting back and forth like she was reading lines from a book I couldn’t see.

“You know as well as I do that Leander is alive,” August said, stalking out from the shadows. A knife glittered in one fist. “So please, stop making canned threats and be a person, Hadrian.”

“He’s alive?” I asked August, not taking my eyes from Hadrian. “You’re sure of it.”

“I’m sure of it. Factually sure.”

“Which means you have to be involved,” I said. Hadrian’s gun still had the safety on. His other hand was wrapped around her throat. “How?”

“I’m dead, Jamie—”

“Will you stop acting like you’re the goddamn star of a goddamn tragedy, and answer my question.”

August took a slow step toward his brother. “This summer, Hadrian saw me at a punk show here in Berlin. I was in deep cover. It was the first time I’d gone out alone since—since everything happened.” He jerked his head. “Word got back to my brother, but I only found out that night. I met up with Nathaniel. Or I guess I should say, with Hadrian.”

“You’re posing as a teacher,” I said to Hadrian. It came out as a sneer. “You’re disgusting.”

At that, he ground the gun into Holmes’s head. I clenched my fists. “You don’t know a single blessed thing about me, Simon.”

“So August helped you.”

While Hadrian was preoccupied with me, his brother had moved even closer. “No. Of course not. I found out that Nathaniel had been letting my brother pose as him for his meetings with Leander. For those nights at the underground pool, where Hadrian trolls for new art. Nathaniel Ziegler is a real person. He teaches during the day, has friends, an apartment in a crappy part of the city. But he’s been letting my brother moonlight as him. Apparently Milo’s intelligence made that possible. That, and my brother’s money.”

“And I’m sure that made it easier to convince Nathaniel to recruit his students to forge paintings for him to sell.”

“All but the Langenbergs. Those Hadrian did himself.”

“I’m sure you’re so proud,” I spat.

“Yes, well.” He gripped his knife. “As usual, I’m thrilled to be part of my family.”

“And you knew Leander was alive. Do you know where he is?”

August hesitated. “No,” he said.

“This is all beautiful, really,” Hadrian said calmly, “but I’d like to get on with it.” At that, Holmes shut her eyes. Her mouth moved, almost like she was counting. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">