She’d almost died. We both had. I still wasn’t sure why we were alive, where her brother was, why we were headed back to Sussex at all. Her mother was still in a coma. Leander was still lost. We’d pulled off a feat back in Prague, to be sure, but had things veered off one inch to the left or the right, the three of us would all be in refrigerated drawers. I was still processing it there in the museum lobby, my mask in my hands, when Holmes looked down at a handcuffed Hadrian Moriarty and said grimly, “I suppose there’s no delaying it further. We need to go home.”
“Go, then,” August had said.
“No,” she’d told him. “You’re coming with.”
She’d refused to answer further questions. I was done trying to ask them.
The Moriartys were brought in, and then brought to the back. The plane took off. We looked at each other.
“So what now, for you?” I asked August.
He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think—I think maybe I’ve been lying to myself, a little bit.”
“Really, now,” Holmes said.
“No sarcasm from you.” He said it with a half smile. “I disappeared because my parents wanted me to. Really, I took that job working in your house in the first place because they wanted me to—and I took that job from your brother at Greystone because I was so determined to try to bring an end to this war. A lot of good that did. But tonight’s shown that I don’t have to do it anymore.”
“Greystone?” I asked.
“Any of it,” he said. “Make peace. Offer up my life. Now, I might . . . go back to my academic work, in maths. Take on a persona. A new one, you know, build it up from the ground. I could forge some records, or maybe I could even do my DPhil again—it might be nice to take my time, this time—and get a teaching job somewhere. I hear Hong Kong has a nice expat scene. Maybe I’ll go there.”
I snorted. “It’s not a big deal to do your doctorate again?”
“What would you rather do, Jamie? Data entry for the rest of your natural life?” He grinned. “Even if that’s your calling, you’ll be safe. My brother Lucien won’t touch you. Not if he knows he’d be ending my life, too.”
“I don’t know if we can count on that.”
August shrugged. “Forgive me if I don’t feel the need to reassure you of your safety. It’s not like you think it’s important. I kidnapped you and told you to go home, warned you about the dangers of your situation, and all you did was double down.”
I stared at him. Even after hearing him tell Hadrian, after hearing him say it now, I still couldn’t quite believe him. “That, instead of telling me, Hey, maybe you’re in danger, Jamie. Which would’ve been too easy. Or un-psychopathic.”
To my surprise, August looked over at Holmes. “I was raised to solve problems in a particular way.” His voice was clipped and rough, a simulation of hers. “Generally, I ignore my education. There, it seemed apt. I keep my promises, Charlotte.”
Holmes scoffed. “You were serious. You were serious about killing yourself to save us.”
“I was serious about that.”
“Hong Kong,” I echoed. I tried to imagine it. The August from the photos, from the research I’d done. With a professorial beard and a briefcase and a whole bunch of papers to grade. Somewhere out of reach, somewhere far away from all of this.
I couldn’t hold on to the image. It didn’t seem possible, that you could walk away from this burning wreck with a brand-new name and no scars but the scratch on your neck.
“Well, good luck with that,” Holmes said, leaning back into my coat.
“Stop being a child, Charlotte,” he said.
“I’m not being a child. I’m being realistic. How can you believe that your brother isn’t a complete monomaniac? That he has compunctions? You think he won’t hunt you down for sport?” She barked a laugh. “You’d use the name Felix. You’d teach at an English-speaking university. I could find you within ten minutes. Lucien? Within seconds.”
“This isn’t about me,” he said formally. “It’s about you. You’re hurt that I said those things. I understand, you know. It can be difficult.”
“Difficult?”
“Actions have consequences—”
“Don’t you trot out that patronizing bullshit with me, August, I can’t stand it—”
He threw up his hands.
“—I thought of you as the last good one. Of all of us. I thought you’d forgiven me.”
“How could I? How could I possibly, when—” August cleared his throat. “You know where Leander is.” It wasn’t a question.
“Why do you think we’re going back to Sussex?”
“How? How long have you known?”
“No.” She peered at him over my arm. “First show your work.”
That expression crept across August’s face again, the one I’d seen him smother so many times before. This time, he didn’t try to mask it. Bit by bit, it played out, the look of a man who’s torched his own house only to fall in love with the flames. He hated himself, anyone could tell that—the bandage around his neck was still stained red—but I don’t think he hated Charlotte Holmes as much as he claimed. I think it was something else completely.
Did he want to be her? Did he want to be with her? It didn’t matter now. This was the tail end, the epilogue. After what he’d said to us in Prague, I couldn’t imagine our paths would run together much longer.