Some days require bloodred lipstick. Perhaps it would have been smarter if I’d tried to make sure I wore nothing that would stand out. No jewelry, no name brands, only bland colors, and makeup designed to help obscure my facial features. But I wasn’t so interested in taking the smarter path on that day. I wore lavish makeup and a bright white sundress that I’d seen in a shop window near my hotel. It looked just like one my mum had worn when I was small. I even pulled out my mum’s rubies from the tiny metal trinkets box I’d found among her things. I’d spent months thinking through what was about to happen, and I was going to enjoy it fully, with no restrictions or hesitation.
I clasped the ruby pendant at my neck, put on the matching dangle earrings, and tucked my hair behind one ear to show them off. I wanted my father to see them. To see me in her clothes, wearing her things. Because if my mum had been half the woman I was, she would have taken care of this chore long ago.
But when I wandered past the mirror, I caught myself scowling, which really wouldn’t do. I corrected my expression immediately as I pulled on white lace gloves. No anger or irritation allowed. I forced a smile that made my lower lip shine red and full in the mirror. That was exactly how I wanted to see myself when I faced him—how I wanted him to see me.
Gloriously happy.
My happiness would be the last thing he ever saw.
• • •
My smile was more natural as I entered the nursery school for the second time that morning. I set down my bag and overcoat on an old dusty counter by the front door and looked around. It was perfect. All the work was done. Today would change everything.
I felt light. Almost cheery. And seeing that Sherlock was already there, standing in the very center of the main room, made my smile widen. “I wasn’t sure I’d actually see you today.”
“I said I’d be here.” His eyes lit up as he took in my outfit, but there was a hint of confusion in his expression as well. “It appears I’m underdressed.” He straightened the tie of his school uniform.
“Your clothes don’t matter.” I started to say something else, but a familiar voice called out from the back room.
“Do mine?”
I managed to keep my smile, despite my father’s confident strides into the room. He looked older than he should—as if the five months of my absence had accelerated his aging. His eyes were more sunken, or perhaps the skin around them was darker. His hair was lighter with gray. He was even dressed like an old man: his trousers just a bit too baggy and pooling at his ankles, a wrinkled dress shirt peeking out from a cardigan sweater that was so tight, the buttons stretched their holes at his gut, which was much more pronounced than I’d noticed through the window. But his steps were light as he positioned himself between Lock and me, then started to laugh.
“Hello, Moriarty,” he said. I was surprised at how little his presence affected the dank room where we stood. He was just another scurrying pest, really. Something to be stomped out or scared away. I knew I was ready to face him when the heat in my core stripped away all the lightness I’d felt in seeing Lock, until I was this dark, angry thing—exactly what I needed to be to face him. I was running on rage. This was the man who’d held my mum captive, who’d beaten my brothers bloody. This was the man who had terrified Michael so much that he ran out into the street to his ruin, who’d strangled me and taken away my only friend. And this man was about to pay for what he’d done.
“Where are the others?” I asked.
“Others? Who else would come to a dump like this but me?”
I stepped toward my father as I spoke. “Those pathetic little rats who scurry after you wherever you go and flash their bloodstained badges as they run your errands.”
He started a smile that turned to a sneer when he backhanded me. Sherlock lurched forward, but I held up a hand to stop him and smiled at both of them as I thumbed blood from the corner of my mouth and watched it seep into the white lace of my glove.
“That was just starting to heal—”
My father spoke over me. “You watch how you speak to me, girl!”
“Do you expect me to believe you’d come here by yourself?”
He narrowed his eyes and started to respond. “I don’t need help dealing with a filthy cow like—”
Sherlock interrupted. “You didn’t ask how he found you.” He paused like he was waiting for an answer, but not long enough to actually hear one from me. “You didn’t ask how he got here. Because you knew. You told him how to find us?”
My father seemed overly pleased by this development and pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. He tossed it to the ground, but it flipped before it hit so that instead of the address, the paper only showed the rather ornate M I’d drawn on the back. The liquid in a nearby puddle started to absorb into the paper, drawing out the ink. “Tried to make it look like an accident, she did. But I wasn’t fooled.”
“You weren’t meant to be fooled,” I said.
“But I was?” Lock had all my father’s attention then, but I couldn’t look at him. I had other things to think about, and he was playing his part well enough. I sidestepped to keep my father between us.
“He’s seeing it all, Mori, just the kind of person you are. And now that he knows. . .well, what did I tell you?”
“That he could never love me,” I said, feeding him the line to keep him talking. If I could just keep his eyes trained on Sherlock, this would all be over quickly.
He turned his gaze to me. “That no one ever will,” he corrected. He paused just long enough to take in the fake sadness in my expression, then swung back to watch Lock. It was all a part of his mental games, I knew. He had to prove to me that he wasn’t the least bit afraid of me. That I didn’t matter enough to even warrant his attention. He had to show me I was nothing.
And that provided the perfect opportunity.
I reached just under the hem of my dress to unsnap the holds on the sheath tied around my thigh. I felt the weight of the dagger in my hand and heard it slide free.
But he didn’t. He was too busy blathering on about how Lock should stay far away from me if he were smart. I approached my father from behind, my knife ready, my mind clear. And then, when I was close enough to see over his shoulder, I saw the sword in his hand, pointed directly at Lock’s chest.
I must have made some kind of startled noise, because he said, “That’s right. Put your weapon down, girl. You didn’t think I’d come here without some protection for myself.” When I didn’t obey him immediately, he added, “Unless you think you are faster than me,” and with a flick of his wrist the sword tip was at Lock’s throat.
In the space of a breath, I let the contingencies of the situation play out in my mind. I had only two options. I could drop my dagger, and my father would either kill Sherlock directly just to spite me, or use his sword to corral me to Lock’s side, where he would try to kill us both or run. Either way, I’d be weaponless and at his mercy. I could refuse, and he could kill Sherlock, but before he recovered, my dagger would be in his heart. Or I might beat him. If I were fast enough and pulled him back against me, I might be able to kill him before he could do anything to Lock.
Either way Lock might die, or he might not, but my father wouldn’t die if I dropped the knife. So obviously I had to keep it.
“No,” I said, and I pressed the point of my dagger into the small of his back before he could move an inch.
“I said I’ll kill him.” My father’s stance projected confidence, but his voice was strained, his laughter forced. “She doesn’t seem to care much for you, boy.”
Lock’s expression was calm, but his eyes were bright in that way they always were when he was learning something new.
“You’ll kill him?” I asked my father. “Then what?”
“Then he’ll be dead, you cow. Is that what you want?”
“That would change things. Probably not in a way you’d like.” I shifted my own stance so I could place a hand on my father’s shoulder. “I was going to kill you quickly, but you’re forcing me to make certain adjustments.” Was it the gentle tone of my voice that made Lock’s fascination give way to fear? His eyes had lost their light.
“Detective Moriarty,” I said, “let me explain to you what happens next. The moment I see a drop of that boy’s blood, this knife goes into your spine. At this angle, I’ll probably injure you at T7, maybe T8.”
My father took a shallow breath but said nothing. Lock was studying me in that way that made me think he could see into my mind, so I grinned at him and winked, sending his scrutiny into overdrive. Perhaps the blood dripping down my chin ruined the effect.
“Do you know what that kind of injury will do to you?” I asked quietly into my father’s ear.
He flinched, which only widened my smile. I could taste blood on my teeth.
“You’ll lose control of your bowels and bladder, lose control of your legs.” I slid my hand down to reach under his arm and around his chest to pull him tight to my body, then dug the tip of my knife into his back.
His arm moved up in sync with my movements, pushing his sword tip into Sherlock’s skin. “Let me go, or I’ll kill him.”
I raised a brow at Lock. “What do you think?”
Lock’s gaze pierced into my eyes, making it near impossible to hold my amusement. But I did my best, even when he said, “Don’t do this.”
My father started to chuckle roughly, most likely thinking Lock was pleading with him, but I knew better. I also knew no amount of pleading would change the results of what happened next. I hoped the two of us would eventually walk out of the school, but my father never would. That I was sure of.
My expression must have given me away, because Sherlock’s became much more frantic. “Mori.”
“Then kill him,” I said to my father, though I pulled him back to release the tension of the blade at Lock’s neck. “Kill him, and instead of killing you in return, maybe I leave you here with a severed spine. Lock you in this building for a few days with only the rats and the puddles to sustain you, dragging your useless legs around and shouting for help. And if no one can hear you?” I quieted my voice further. “If you’re still here when I get back, I promise you, I’ll have devised a most painful way for you to die.”
I heard the clang of his sword falling to the ground, and watched his hands slide into the air. I couldn’t help myself; I started to laugh. And the sound of it brought relief to Lock’s face, and even made my father join in, though his laughter was nervous and short-lived.
“I dropped my weapon,” he practically whined. But I didn’t remove my knife from his back.
“You are such a coward,” I said. “Though we knew that, didn’t we?”
My father started going on again, with his self-indulgent whining. Perhaps he was even attempting to be clever and find a way out. I didn’t really hear all that he was saying, but I did hear his last word. As I pulled the weapon from his back to sweep across his neck, I heard him say one final word, and then nothing ever again.
“Mori—”
He said my name. There was something delicious about that. And kind of hilarious, really. So as his blood sprayed out to pepper Lock’s shirt and tie in red, as his disgusting dirty body fell to its knees and then forward right into a puddle on the cement, I kept laughing. It was a breathy, stuttered laugh, full of shock and bewilderment, but still a laugh.
“Mori,” I whispered, cutting the i sound short, then laughed a little more. “I couldn’t have planned for that.”
I reached down to clean my blade using the back of my father’s shirt, but then decided not to waste too much time on it. The dagger would be melted to molten metal soon enough. I was trying to decide whether to re-sheath it or not when a blood-speckled hand grabbed my wrist just above the lace glove that was now almost completely red.
“Why?” Lock asked. And the look he gave me shook me free from all my posturing. I couldn’t even hold my smile. Not anymore. How could he undo me like that? With nothing but a mere look?
“Don’t,” I said, pleading. Because I’d been prepared for his anger at my betrayal. I was ready for him to hate me, for his features to twist in wretched disgust once he saw me for who I really was. But I couldn’t move for what I saw in his eyes just then.
He glanced up from our hands and forced me to see it again—his fear. Not blank like all those times he feared for himself. Not fear of the moment, like the expression he wore when we were about to embark on an adventure. He was afraid for me—concern, pain, grief, and loss. I tried to break free of him, but he clung to me like he was afraid I’d run away. And then his hands came up to circle my face and he asked, “Where were you all those months you were gone?”
I breathed out a laugh. “You’re asking me now? I was ready to tell you all about it yesterday. Where were your questions then?”
Sherlock looked at his hands and released me suddenly. He tried to brush the blood away but only managed to smear it. “What has happened to you?”
“This has always been me, Sherlock.” I watched him shake his head, his eyes jetting around like he was looking for some proof that I was lying. Was I lying? “Did you really think you could tell everything about me from those silly deductions of yours?”
“You killed him like it was nothing.”
“It was nothing. He was nothing.” I sidestepped until he was forced to meet my eyes again. “Did you really think I could leave? Did you not know I’d come back for this?” I gestured at the body on the floor. “This right here was always my destiny.”
“I—I don’t believe in destiny.”
I might have smiled if I weren’t so lost in the emptiness I felt. “Neither do I. But I suppose that doesn’t really matter now.” I did smile then—felt the flicker of something pulling at me, luring me away from that place and the man who could no longer hurt us. “I don’t suppose anything really does.”
I took a step back and watched Lock’s reaction. He was still confused, like his mind was trying to rationalize how he could have been so wrong about something. I’d done that. I’d broken him in so many ways. I took another couple of steps back and then stopped in front of one of the larger puddles on the ground. There was a slightly sweet smell to it—to the whole place really. It was a wonder Lock hadn’t noticed on his way inside.
I glanced up just in time to watch his transformation from bumbling shock to devastation.
He took a step toward me. “I have to bring you in, tell the police what you’ve done.” I wasn’t sure which broke him more, those words or everything that had come before. But he was a pane of shattered glass that even the slightest breeze might scatter to the floor. And I was the big bad wolf come to blow down his house.
I briefly wondered if he’d ever truly know how deeply all those shards would cut me—how I already felt all of them.
“I have to call the police,” he said.
“You won’t.”
“I have to. I have to stop you.”
I forced my smile back into place despite the shimmering pain inside me. “Okay, then. Stop me. But you’ll have to prove I’m guilty first.”
I flicked open a lighter with the hand still gloved in white and tossed it on the pile of rubble I’d arranged. I stayed only long enough to add my gloves to the pile and watch the fire catch, and to see Sherlock realize that the puddles that had separated us in this room weren’t made of water. Then I left.
He might have died in that old nursery school. Or not. I couldn’t be sure, but then, I didn’t figure that was how the brilliant Sherlock Holmes would die. Today was about the death of a monster. . . and perhaps the birth of another. I was the phoenix, climbing from the ashes of my father. Only I was a new creature altogether. And as much as Sherlock tried, he would never be able to stop me.