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August Moriarty was still shakingit, because neither of us wasat her like she was a penny at the botto at the space between them

"I need this back," I said, and pulled ust didn’t appear to notice "You must be exhausted from your trip Both of you You’re here for the week, yes? I’ll have Milo’s body man show you to your room so you can settle in You had lunch on the plane? Excellent And tonight--well, there’s a bar we should go to So to talk about this Phillipa thing?" I put every bit of veno into her name

"Is the bar the Old Metropolitan?" she asked hiht, so it’s where Leander would be"

"We’ll go tonight I can’t ier than that"

"The Old Metropolitan," August said, and there was a surprising thread of bitterness in his voice "You just knew that, didn’t you? How did you guess?"

"I never guess"

I cleared etting daily updates from Leander since October I’m sure he has a list of places for us to look And can we talk about Phillipa? What does she ith you?"

Neither of theh it How you kneas the Old Metropolitan," August said, drawing her over to a bench between the elevators He sounded intrigued, and so darker "Step by step, and slowly Charlotte, it had to be a guess"

"It’s Saturday night," she repeated "And I never--"

"No, you don’t," I said, but I was saying it to no one

I DECIDED TO FIND MY WAY TO MY ROOM ON MY OWN WITHOUT waiting for Milo’s "body man," whatever that was I couldn’t stand between Holust for another second

But it wasn’t difficult to orient myself Most of the doors on the hall were keycode-locked--honestly, I didn’t want to knoas behind them--until I tried the one at the end of the hall

I opened it I took a breath

It was like being back at Sciences 442 Like being back in Hol back inside Charlotte Holford, this one had a , but it was tinted so dark that no natural light crept in A series of la Some half-finished chemical experiment was laid out on a table, with a set of burners and white powder measured out into piles No shelves, but books everywhere, piled up beside an overstuffed armchair, behind the sofa, on either side of a white plaster fireplace, and inside its grate, too, like kindling I picked one up from the pile beside the door It was in German, with a bisected cross on its cover I set it down<ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>