The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2)

by Brittany Cavallaro

British winter nights were different. They came on in October with a shotgun and held you hostage for the next six months.

I tended to spend too much time with my favorite things, loved them too hard until I wore them down. After a while, they became more like a shorthand for who I was and less like things I actually enjoyed.

Watsons, I thought, generations of masochists, and pushed open the door.

Maybe this is what happened when you built a friendship on a foundation of mutual disaster. It collapsed the second things righted themselves, left you desperate for the next earthquake.

#28: If you’re upset, Holmes is the last person you should ask to make you feel better, unless you want to be chided for having feelings. #29: If Holmes is upset, hide all firearms and install a new lock on your door.

I eased myself back in under the covers, careful to leave a few inches between the two of us. Leave room for the Holy Spirit, I thought semihysterically. I hadn’t been to church since I was a kid, but maybe the nuns had gotten it right. “Are you measuring the space between us?” “No, I—” “It’s not funny,”

“You’ve done worse things, and anyway, it’s fairly clear you aren’t actually having sex. This may be indelicate, but those sheets aren’t hardly wrinkled enough. So I’m not quite sure what I should be lecturing you on.”

That was it. I was going to pass a law against people making deductions before lunch.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she snapped, tossing it off. “I forgot that if we don’t talk about your feelings every few hours, you devolve into a hipster lumberjack. Never mind how I’m feeling.”

“Back to what, exactly? How have you spent your afternoon?” “Picking apart that screen.” “I didn’t realize you’d started up an AV club in my absence.”

“What about my ideas?” “They have value,” she admitted. “Of course they do. Of course you do. What do you take me for? Some kind of machine? If I wanted a yes-man, don’t you think I’d find one that wanted to ‘yes’ me more often?” I bit back a smile. “That’s fair.”

“There’s not a lot you can control, you know. Where you’re born. Who your family is. What people want from you, and what you are, underneath it all. When you have so little say in it all, I think it’s important to exercise a measure of control when given the opportunity.” She smiled, ducking her head. “So I blow things up.”

As very recent events have proved, Watson will throw himself into a physical altercation he knows he will lose in an attempt to buy me time to run away. Clearly he needs caretaking, if not a thorough head examination.

If I am broken, at least my hazard lights are appealing to a boy like him.

He’s largely muscle, which makes him quite heavy, and while this was something I had of course noticed (and yes, appreciated, I am in fact a heterosexual human girl),

Because I’m holding a gun, you cow, and I am perfectly capable of making your death look like a suicide.”

Things ran more smoothly when I was their benevolent dictator.

It’s strange to grieve for your former self, and still I think it’s something that any girl understands. I’ve shed so many skins, I hardly know what I am now—muscle, maybe, or just memory. Perhaps just the will to keep going.

I swear to you that if you ever give up sensitive information again—if you ever betray Watson again—I will find a way to wear you as a hat.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. We’re in Prague. And you rented us a studio apartment without windows?” I frowned. “I think it was originally a maintenance closet.”

“Wouldn’t there be blades if it’d been a lawn-mowing accident?” he asked in the elevator. “Wouldn’t I be, like, sliced open?” “It could have been a riding mower. You could have fallen off it.”