Sherlock Holmes.
TheSherlock Holmes.
Hysterical laughter escaped again. My whole body trembled as I clutched my stomach and gasped between giggles. “This is a joke. You’re not… you can’t be…”
Morrie wasn’t laughing. “I assure you, that’s him.”
Morrie’s body remained rigid. He’d regained some of his composure, but he stared at the cop – atSherlock– like a bug he desperately wanted to squash but was afraid he’d end up with smelly guts all over his favorite brogues. “I never forget the face of a betrayer.”
“Except that my disguise had you completely fooled.” Sherlock tapped his peaked hat and flashed Morrie a smug fucking smile that was painfully familiar to me. “Too much time in this world has made you soft,Moriarty.”
“I knew it was you from the moment I got into the car,” Morrie shot back. “I was going along with it to see what you had planned.”
I choked on my hysterics. That was so clearly a lie, but it sounded suspiciously like Morrie trying to save face in front of Sherlock, which was so ridiculous I couldn’t deal.
“You’re lying,” Sherlock said. “I can always tell because your left earlobe twitches. You’re so predictable.”
“You’rethe liar.” Morrie’s hand flew to his ear. “You said you were popping out for milk and instead you tried to throw me over a waterfall—”
“That’s in the past.” Sherlock waved a hand. “To answer your question, Mina, what’s going on is that I’ve just pulled off a daring rescue in order to secure Moriarty’s liberty, in the hopes I will be able to clear his name, if indeed that feat is theoretically possible.”
My head spun. I glared at the gun sitting on the table. “So you’re not going to kill us.”
“I shan't think so. Unless you plan on becoming a nuisance.”
“Then can you unlock Morrie’s handcuffs and put the gun away?”
“Morrie?” Sherlock’s lips curled back in an expression of disgust. “My, but the twenty-first-century penchant for nicknames has not been kind to you, lover.”
Lover.The word echoed in my head.Morrie’s old lover is here, right now, in our world.
Sherlock patted his pockets until he located a key. He stood – his lanky body unfolding like an accordion, his head almost touching the low beams of the cabin ceiling – and crossed to us in two long strides. Sherlock wrapped his fingers around Morrie’s wrist, yanking his arm out so Morrie’s chest pressed against his. They stood nose to nose, eyes blazing with unspoken words, while tension crackled between them like lightning. I longed to reach out and slap Sherlock away, but the ferocity in Morrie’s eyes kept me frozen. I’d never seen him affected like this except…
except byme.
And Heathcliff, after their kiss.
Sherlock’s fingers lingered on Morrie’s wrist as he turned the key and slid off the cuffs. As his fingers grazed Morrie’s skin, my boyfriend’s lips parted and a tiny sigh escaped.
Well, fuck.
I stared from one to the other as a conversation from a few months ago played over in my head. Morrie and I stood on the balcony of Baddesley Hall Manor during the Jane Austen Experience, and he told me how he’d been in love once before, how that lover had betrayed him, tried to kill him. How that betrayal made it difficult for Morrie to admit his feelings, how it made him afraid of being in love again, of losing himself to another person only to be betrayed.
It was the first time I’d ever seen Morrie vulnerable.
Now, he stood before the same lover who’d affected him so. Morrie appeared in total control of the situation, yet I knew my criminal mastermind well enough to see how shaken he was by Sherlock’s sudden appearance.
I wanted to ask how many times Sherlock had removed handcuffs from Morrie’s wrists, but I suspected the answer would make me violently ill.
Sherlock Holmes was in the real world. Our world.
Sherlock Holmes had come formyboyfriend.
But why? And what does it have to do with this Kate Danvers person?
Weariness crept through my body. I wanted nothing more than to be back at Nevermore Bookshop with Morrie and Heathcliff bickering and Quoth thrashing Nine Inch Nails while he painted something dark and gloomy. I yanked back a tattered armchair and slumped down, glaring at Sherlock. “Step away from Morrie. I don’t trust you near him. I want to know everything, and I want to knownow.Why are you here, and why this elaborate scheme to get us to this remote cabin?”
“I only intended to remove Moriarty to safety. You insisted on coming along for the ride.” Sherlock chuckled to himself. “I arrived here the same way Moriarty and Heathcliff Earnshaw and all the others did – through the Classics section in your bookshop. The exact mechanics of it still remain a mystery – I fell asleep in a hansom cab beside my dear friend Watson on the way to investigate a most invigorating stabbing in Dartmoor, and I woke up on the floor of that dusty bookshop.”
