It was a good drawing. I hated that it was of me.

I forced myself back into my Simon-shaped cage. “I’m more handsome than that, aren’t I?” he asked her.

“Yes.” She toyed with her drink, looking up at me. “You are.”

I didn’t know what to do next, because usually, in this situation, I’d lean in to kiss her. Correction: what I used to do next was lean in, but that was at parties in people’s basements, not bars—would that even work here? It was what Simon would probably do. I wanted to, I did, and still I didn’t want to at all. Should I change the subject? Ask about Gretchen, the art forger Leander had made contact with? About her professors? Should I just kiss her and pretend it didn’t make me nauseous?

The moment passed. She took a sip, then brightened. “Hey!” she said, waving a hand to someone over my head. “Over here!”

In an instant, we were surrounded by chattering girls. One was wearing a paint-splattered backpack, so I figured they were her friends from school. “Everyone,” she said, “everyone, this is Simon, he’s British,” and in the flurry of introductions that followed, I thought I heard the name Gretchen. My pulse quickened.

“I was thinking about going to the Kunstschule Sieben next year,” I yelled over the music. It was disco now, and louder. “I do video installations! Do any of you do video installations!”

“Yes!” the girl next to me yelled back.

“Can I ask you more about it!”

“Friday mornings!”

I wasn’t sure if she’d heard my question, or if her English wasn’t that good, but the crowd of girls was moving now, and Marie-Helene grabbed my hand in hers. An invitation to follow. I threw some money down on the bar, feeling thoroughly triumphant. We’d go to a party. There’d be other students there. Surely someone would know something about Leander, and I could go back to Holmes with information, something that she and August wouldn’t have—

Or would. Because like a nightmare, she and August were standing between us and the door.

five

I HADN’T SEEN THEM COME IN. I’D SAY IT WAS A TESTAMENT to how good their disguises were, but they weren’t dressed to fit in with this crowd. They’d taken the opposite tack from me. August was done up in full douchebag tourist mode, from his gelled hair down to his white sneakers and calf-high socks. Holmes stood beside him, fishing something out of her fanny pack. Her wig, mouse-brown, hung lankly around her face.

She glanced up. Her eyes traveled down to my hand, clasped with Marie-Helene’s, and I thought I saw her blanch.

Either way, she recovered quickly.

“There you are,” Holmes cried. I thought she was about to blow my cover when she turned to August and said, “I told you he couldn’t ditch us for long.”

Marie-Helene gave me a questioning look.

“They’re my cousins, visiting from London,” I told her, trying to reclaim the narrative. “And I didn’t ditch them. They said they wanted a night to do touristy things by themselves.”

“Well, tell them to come along.” Her friends were already on the street. She disentangled her hand from mine and pushed the door open into the night air.

August and Holmes were on my heels. “What’s your name?” she hissed.

“Simon. Yours?”

“Tabitha and Michael.”

“Are you supposed to be siblings?” I asked August. The both of them were wearing brown color contacts.

“We are, but it’s not believable. I’m much prettier than she is.”

I grinned, then reminded myself that I hated him. “She drag you into this?”

“I am standing right here,” Holmes said, stamping her feet a little in the cold. “Where are we headed, Watson? What have you found out?”

Nothing yet, but I didn’t want to tell her that. I was still smarting about her and August ignoring me before. We were having lunch with Phillipa tomorrow? We weren’t at all dealing with the fact that her mother had been poisoned? “I found out that French girls like Simon a lot,” I said instead, and trotted to catch up with Marie-Helene and her friends.

The air had gotten colder since earlier this evening. I reclaimed Marie-Helene’s hand under the pretense of warming it up. Was I aware that Holmes was behind me, watching? Obviously. Was I above doing things to make her jealous? Well . . . no.

It wasn’t hard to like Marie-Helene and her friends, though. They chatted about the new Damien Hirst show going up the next week, and when, tired of maintaining my know-it-all pose, I confessed I didn’t know who that was, they were kind about filling me in. Apparently he put cows in formaldehyde. This was art? Yes, they told me, it was. In a world where information was currency, I was usually bankrupt. It was nice, for once, not to be mocked for it.

“Where are we going, exactly?” I asked the girl with the paint-splattered backpack.

“Some of our friends rent from this super-rich art dealer. He has a house up ahead.” With her chin, she pointed to a tall brick building on the corner. “The only catch to living there is that he can use it to throw parties on the weekends, when he’s in town. You’ll see why, it’s a pretty cool space. We all usually go.”

“But?” I asked, because her tone was darker than her words.

“But he’s a creep,” she said, shrugging. “He’s like fifty, and his new girlfriend is always some baby Sieben student. A lot of these girls have dated him. It’s like making a deal with the devil for a little while. You meet some people, you get bought some nice things, you sleep with a gross old man, and by the time he ditches you you’ve gained something from it. You’ll be fine, though. He doesn’t like boys.”