A Study in Seduction

by Eva Chase

  John roared through an intersection just before the light turned red and whipped us around a corner. He found a parking spot down the street from the building that was hosting Richter’s exhibition. The gallery took up the whole other half of the block.

  I studied the buildings as we walked over, noting the sleekness of the gallery’s black marble-plated face and the narrow alley between it and the neighboring shoe shop. The edge of a fire escape leading to the apartment over the shop protruded from its rear.

  “Those are our people,” Garrett said with a subtle tilt of his head toward a tan sedan parked at the opposite corner. “Well, my people. The gallery put in a request to the department that we monitor the building the entire time the special exhibit is on—so obviously that order came via Richter.”

  The bigwig was stepping up his game from Munich. I prepared myself as we came up to the door.

  Just like in Munich, Richter had demanded the highest level of security inside the gallery for his precious relics. I stood so the security camera just inside the door only caught the back of my head while the guard by the ticket booth pawed through my purse. More cameras were perched near the ceiling farther inside. I trod carefully between their lines of sight.

  Reaching the two rooms that housed Richter’s collection required a journey through the main gallery space, up a flight of stairs, and past a thick door with a keypad that clearly required a code for entry outside of visiting hours. Fixtures for motion detectors clung to the beige walls. From the warning lines laid on the floor around the display cases, I assumed pressure pads would set off an alarm if anyone stepped closer than Richter found comfortable.

  Oh, he’d thought of just about everything. But I would have gotten the better of him in Munich if I’d had a little more time, if that pathetic excuse for an alarm hacker hadn’t turned rat. Now Richter was up against not just me but Sherlock Holmes and company. We’d see how he enjoyed that challenge.

  I meandered through the room, drawing a diagram of it in my head, letting my gaze skim over the displays on the wall as if I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. I’d caught the gleam of gold from a case in the middle of the room. My heart thumped as I wandered closer to it.

  I already knew what I was looking at. What I really needed was for the trio to see and to realize the significance, but the impact wouldn’t land the same way unless they came on it themselves. I’d only nudge them if I had to.

  Sherlock was examining the contents of each case with brisk efficiency, referencing the manifest he’d gotten his hands on by means he hadn’t bothered to tell the rest of us. He indicated a bronze shield, a Grecian vase, and a statue lifted from this or that ancient temple, with John nodding along beside him. Then he turned toward the case I’d been working my way over to.

  “It appears he organized his shipping containers to match the display layout,” he murmured. “All four of these items were in that crate. Any of these are small enough that he could have carried them in a decent sized pocket.”

  “Sherlock.” John came to an abrupt stop by the opposite end of the case. My pulse skipped a beat. Yes. He was staring through the glass.

  “What is it?” the detective asked, his attention snapping to his friend. I moved to join them as if curious.

  John pointed at a jade Buddha figurine about the height and width of his hand, carved up from a thick rectangular base. His arm trembled for a second, but he looked more giddy than anxious.

  “The pattern along the base,” he said. “Those ridges… I’d need to have it in my hands and to examine the victim’s body in person to be sure, but I’d swear they match the head wound perfectly.”

  “From my memory, you’re exactly right.” Sherlock clapped the doctor on the back. “Well done, John.”

  Garrett hustled over, picking up on the momentous vibe. “What’s going on?”

  “John has found us the murder weapon,” Sherlock said, still speaking under his breath. He must be thinking that the security cameras might be picking up sound as well as video.

  I focused on the jade figure, schooling my gaze away from the strip of gold gleaming a foot away from it. “Would we be able to prove it? There might be other jade figures with the same construction, right? We don’t have any proof that it was this one.”

  “We might, though,” John said, excitement rippling through his voice even as he kept it low. “All we need is to find one bit of the victim’s DNA on that statue. Obviously he took care to wash it off, but after the way he bashed that man’s skull in, with ridges that deep—maybe a few years ago he’d have managed to destroy every usable shred, but now there’d have to be traces that the current techniques could lift, just like your golf shoes.”

  Thank you, Dr. Tanaka, for priming that epiphany.

  “How can we get access to the figurine to lift evidence from it?” I asked. “Will your judgment based on sight be enough to get a warrant?”

  Sherlock turned to Garrett. “I believe this is where you can be of great assistance. What can you work out with Scotland Yard? We’d want to move fast—have the warrant here with enough authority to confiscate the piece before Richter catches wind of the problem. He’s slipped the police too many times before for us to risk giving him any leeway.”

  Garrett tore his gaze away from the figurine. “I’ll talk to the chief and see what I can get in motion.”

  John passed him the car keys. “So you can have a private conversation. Just don’t go driving off with her.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” Garrett muttered, but he hurried out of the room with a spring in his step. Bringing down a man like Richter could make his career.

  John frowned as he circled the case. “I wish I could get a better look at the entire bottom. The wound would have been from the edge, but the base made a large part of the mark. If I could see it, I’d be completely sure.” A glint I recognized lit in his eyes. “This is a long shot, but… move back.”

  “John,” I said with a nervous twist of my stomach as I eased away. Why did he have to pick right now to indulge his thrill addiction? I had to get him under control. “We don’t want to do anything that’ll draw attention. Like Sherlock said, if Richter gets any hint we’re on to him—”

  I’d meant to appeal to his loyalty to his friends and the case. Instead, my effort might have backfired by playing up the danger. John’s mouth curved in a little grin. “This has nothing to do with any official business. Just a clumsy cripple whose walking stick slipped.”

  He turned and lifted his head as if catching sight of something that excited him. Sherlock opened his mouth to speak, but John was already moving. He lurched forward and let his walking stick fly out, sending him stumbling into the display case.

  His shoulder hit the platform with a thump. It was so sturdily built the contents didn’t so much as tremble.

  As John groped for his fallen stick, two security guards barged into the room. I pretended to be fascinated by the vase Sherlock had been looking at earlier.

  “Sorry!” John said. “So sorry! I’m still getting used to the stick—it gets away from me sometimes.”

  “Maybe you should steer clear of art galleries with precious artifacts on display, then, sir,” one of the guards said gruffly. I swallowed a smile. That was a valid point, if not exactly presented with the most sensitivity. It sounded as if he’d bought John’s lie.

  Sherlock drifted past me. “Go out to the car first,” he murmured from the side of his mouth. “We’ll follow separately after. Better not to make it obvious we’re together now that they’ll be watching him.”

  I gazed at the vase for a few seconds longer and then ambled back the way we’d come. It wouldn’t do to appear to be in a hurry, either. My slow pace also gave me the opportunity to scope out what looked like a maintenance door on the first floor toward the back, with a sign that said Employees Only. I added that to my mental blueprint of the building.

  The guards by the front door didn’t look twice at m
e. I strode by them, digging in my purse as an excuse to keep my head low as I passed the camera. On the street, I picked up my pace. My heartbeat sped up too.

  I’d set all the pieces of this puzzle on a collision course to snap together, but there was always a small chance one gambit or another wouldn’t work, that somewhere wires would be crossed…

  Garrett was still on the phone when I opened the door to the backseat. He gave me a pained grimace that took the edge off my nerves. I made a face of sympathy and raised my eyebrows, but he held up his hand to hold off any questions.

  “Yes, sir,” he said into the phone. “I understand that. But I think considering the circumstances, it’s worth taking that risk.”

  He paused while his chief said something on the other end. I settled into my seat, keeping an expression of concern on my face while the rest of me relaxed. One step closer.

  Sherlock appeared a minute later as Garrett wrapped up the conversation. Garrett jammed the phone in his pocket, and Sherlock twisted around in his seat. “Are we set?”

  Garrett’s boyish face had turned stormy. “Let’s wait until John gets here.”

  Our Dr. Watson walked into view a couple minutes later. He looked pleased with himself until he dropped into the driver’s seat and caught sight of Garrett. “What happened?” he asked.

  “The chief won’t lift a finger,” Garrett spat out. “He said to forget it, just drop it. Not our murder, not our problem. Bloody arsehole.”

  I widened my eyes. “Why? Shouldn’t he be jumping at the chance to take down a menace like Richter?”

  Garrett made an angry gesture with his hand. “Politics polluting real police work. It can be such a mess down there… He feels it would be too embarrassing for the force if we break apart the exhibit we’ve already agreed to protect and it turns out we’re wrong, and he mentioned the way Richter sued that other police department. I told him both Sherlock and John were sure he was the perpetrator and that statue was the murder weapon, but even that didn’t budge him.”

  My shoulders slumped. “Then Richter is going to get away with this crime too—and this time it’s murder.”

  “No,” Sherlock said firmly. “We’ll come up with another way. Let me think on it.”

  Yes, think on it plenty. This was the trickiest leap right here. It was more important than ever that they felt they’d come to the idea themselves. They’d never do it if they realized I was trying to push them into it.

  I’d left my trail of bread crumbs. They’d followed it right up to the edge of the trap. All I needed was for them to take that final, crucial step inside.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jemma

  I knew something was off before I’d even finished opening the door to my hotel room. A cool draft, a hint of a scent in the air—something my senses picked up on a level below consciousness, honed by fourteen years of living in close proximity to the shrouded folk. I eased inside, my body tensed.

  There was no sign of Bog itself—no filmy figure floating around, no flashy lighting effects. My gaze swept the room and snagged on the items I’d laid out on top of the dresser. Two of the bottles had fallen over, breaking my Fibonacci sequence.

  It could have been the cleaning staff. I eased up to the dresser and peered at the objects strewn there. Something about the clouded sides of the body wash and lotion bottles looked off. I picked up the body wash, and the contents made a soft hissing sound.

  My skin prickled. I popped open the cap and tipped the bottle to squeeze a little of the gel out onto my fingers.

  Before I could apply any pressure, a stream of fine gritty powder with the body wash’s faint floral scent poured from the bottle’s opening over my hand. I jerked the bottle upright, but not before a streak of the stuff had spilled onto the carpet.

  My fingers curled with the urge to fling the substance off me, but I needed to examine it first. I rubbed a little between my thumb and forefinger.

  Bog had turned the gel to dust, scouring all the moisture from it. The same way the shrouded one was looking forward to scouring all the life out of me? A shiver ran through me, and I stiffened my shoulders.

  How had Bog even—I wouldn’t have thought it was possible—

  The doubts slid through my mind, and the powder on my hand quivered before my eyes. The particles melded back together into a pearly blue gel that dribbled across my skin in cool globs.

  I exhaled through gritted teeth. Of course. The shrouded folk were limited in their abilities to affect our physical world unless people of this world gave them access. That was why they bothered with people like my parents in the first place. The pain the cultists drew from themselves and others in their rituals, the bodies offered up to the monsters’ maws—it all opened a doorway.

  Maybe long ago I’d been marked for the slaughter, but the bargain I’d made with Bog had freed me from that, and I wasn’t giving it anything until I had to. Without a doorway, the shrouded folk’s powers were restricted to illusions. Nothing solid, nothing permanent, no matter how real it felt in the moment.

  Which didn’t change the fact that now I had body wash all over my hand. Thanks for that, Bog.

  With a sigh, I marched into the bathroom to rinse the stuff off—and stopped dead in my tracks.

  The shrouded one hadn’t been messing only with my Fibonacci sequence. My brush lay on the bathroom counter next to the sink, tendrils of wavy hair woven through the dark bristles. Normally the strands of red showed starkly against the black base of the brush. They still showed starkly right now, but because they’d been bleached pure white.

  Fuck the shrouded folk and their misty heads. I strode to the sink, rinsed off my hand, and dried it on the towel. When I glanced at the brush again, my hairs there still gleamed pure white. I scowled at them, willing the illusion to fall away.

  Maybe this one wasn’t an illusion. The time limit on my contract with Bog was almost up. That might give it enough leeway to work a little magic on this fragment of me.

  I touched one of the hairs that curled from the side of the brush, and it disintegrated in an instant. Not just bleached, but drained as dry as I’d thought the body wash had been.

  My throat tightened. I snatched up the brush, and the rest of the hairs fragmented into dust as well.

  With a jerk of my arm, I hurled the brush against the wall. It thumped there and clattered onto the tiled floor bristles first. A pattern of white dust flecked the turquoise glaze like ash. No matter how many times I blinked, it didn’t fade.

  All right. One point to Bog after all.

  I walked back into the main room and sat on my bed, but my heart kept thumping at an uneasy rhythm. My trio of investigative geniuses had muttered some more about the police department’s cowardice on the way back to the hotel, but no one had settled on any alternate course of action. Garrett had set off to Scotland Yard to speak to someone there in person, which I gathered had been a hopeless errand considering I hadn’t gotten any word from him since. John had spent a while frowning at my crime scene photos and becoming even more convinced we’d identified the murder weapon, but scheming wasn’t his area of expertise.

  No, that talent was Sherlock’s, and Mr. Sherlock Holmes had turned depressive and distant by lunchtime. He’d retreated to his room, and I hadn’t seen him since.

  I’d known it would take time. Making a decision to go this far over the line of legality couldn’t be easy for any of them. But all I could feel right now was my time and my chance at escape slipping away from me.

  I stood up again and paced the room in an attempt to wear down my nerves. The sugar cube I popped into my mouth seemed to turn sour on my tongue. I went through a series of punches and kicks, thinking over every piece I’d put in play to reach this moment to remind myself that they were all lined up perfectly.

  The edgy sensation faded but didn’t completely disappear. I stopped by the desk for a minute, torn by indecision, and then decided to hell with it. I’d feel better if I saw where Sherlock
was at. I might be able to give him another nudge tonight. There wouldn’t be anything odd about dropping in on him to talk after the day we’d had.

  His room was two over from John’s, right at the end of the hall. The Do Not Disturb sign was dangling from the handle. That was for hotel staff, not me. I knocked on the door lightly but insistently. “Sherlock? It’s Jemma.”

  He took his time, but after several seconds, the door opened. Sherlock peered down at me from his great height, his piercing blue eyes shadowed and his whole demeanor rather sullen. You’d have thought it was his life riding on this “case” and not mine.

  “You don’t have news,” he said, deducing that somehow or other from the once-over he gave me. He crossed his arms over the mouse-brown housecoat he’d put on over his dress shirt and slacks—apparently the hotel-issue bathrobe wasn’t good enough for him. “What is it?”

  From what John had said, he normally left Sherlock to stew in his thoughts when he got into these moods. That didn’t mean I had to take the same tactic. It was ridiculous, really—a grown man older than I was all but sulking in his room because a problem had temporarily eluded his brilliant mind.

  He should be better than that.

  I motioned him away from the door to let me in. “I figured you’ve had enough time mulling things over on your own. Let’s talk, and maybe we’ll get somewhere.”

  Sherlock’s mouth twisted, but he stepped aside and closed the door behind me.

  He’d gotten himself a fancier suite than the standard rooms. The floor space was about a third larger than mine, making room for a sort of living room with a couple of armchairs around a sleek coffee table facing a gas fireplace. The fireplace was dark, reflecting his mood. An instrument case lay off to the side. I considered the size and shape.