Chapter 31 #2
August was bloodied, he noticed now, speckled with it and also a black, greasy residue. Bits of burnt fabric, Raberding’s tie, his vest. Other things.
“All right,” he croaked. His pupils were deep black, pulled wide and round beneath half-shut lids, and his pulse beat fast at his throat as he swallowed, over and over.
Absolutely sober—excepting adrenalin and shock. And perhaps not totally all right.
“What the hell happened?” Laurie asked.
“I shot him,” August said, and stirred back to life. “Not Chary,” he said fiercely. “He did nothing. I did it. Understood, reporter?”
Laurie huffed. “Not that kind of journalist, thanks.”
“Raberding forced him to take a hypodermic,” Chary said. “Morphine. But he didn’t. He faked it. Again.” And shot him. “It was as though he came back from the dead.”
Laurie laughed, pure shock. “Fooled him twice? Right in front of his face?”
“Yes,” August said. “Had to. Otherwise, I’d be… The German stuff is… If not dead, I’d’ve been”—he grimaced—“…unrecoverable. He wasn’t ever going to shoot me.”
But he’d still wanted August dead. Chary shared a look with Laurie, who nodded. He thought so too.
Abruptly, August stood. “The counterpane’s ruined, I think, wet from it—don’t touch it. It doesn’t go through the skin, but don’t touch it. I’ll do it. Burn it. Right now.” He started forward, but reaching Raberding’s well-shined maroon shoes, he paused, stricken.
Chary clutched at his hand. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll—I’ll do it later, or—Brasher will know what to do. With… it. Surely.”
“Let’s get outta here,” Laurie agreed.
They went out of the room, down the stairs. The house was deadly silent. Laurie was right; the shots had gone clear through. Raberding, the rug, the floor, the sitting-room ceiling. Finally, they’d fallen spent onto the sitting-room rug. Onto the couch cushions. An end table.
What on earth was he to tell Mrs. Leonard?
“Hang on.” Laurie went out to the foyer, head cocked in his usual hunt of intrigue. “Be right back,” he called.
“Well,” Chary exhaled as the room blurred, “the sitting room wanted renovation, anyway.”
August began to laugh. He walked over to the fireplace mantel and, shaking, fixed himself a cigarette. The bright sulfur of strike matches bloomed, then smoky tobacco. Chary wondered if he’d remember the smells forever alongside irony blood and greasy powder.
He sank onto one of the unscathed armchairs, fell back, and stared up at the small round holes made in the plaster ceiling.
Seconds ticked by on the mantelpiece clock.
Minutes. Stub after cigarette stub was laid on the mantel, leaving burn stripes on the wood before they fell to the hearth. August seemed to be forgetting them.
Chary wondered there was no blood seeping down. The rug must’ve siphoned all of it into itself.
“Tjo’s dead,” August whispered. “How can that be?” He looked to Chary, eyes still dark and all pupil. “Chary? What did I do?”
Chary remembered what Laurie had said to him immediately after. He said, “You survived.”
August’s breath was audible, thick and halting. He hung his head.
“And saved my life besides,” Chary said quickly. “He’d already tried to have me killed once. You think he’d have held back once I’d given him what he wanted?”
“Stop,” August snapped, his voice warping.
“Stop trying to—do what you always do, Chary. Excuse it away for me, take responsibility— I didn’t know he would do that.
I didn’t think it then. I don’t know it now, whether he would’ve really hurt you or not.
I wasn’t thinking of you, all right? There was no higher motivation there.
” There were, at last, tears in August’s eyes.
“None at all. Nothing selfless. I wanted him dead, I had thought for nothing else, it burned through me, and then…”
Chary watched August chain-smoke his cigarettes and tremble, his clenched fist alone holding him upright.
Take responsibility.
Perhaps for the first time, Chary felt like he might understand his brother. If August had killed for him—explicitly, purposefully—what kind of awful feeling of responsibility would that have generated between them? To feel as though he’d made his brother kill for him?
What kind of responsibility had August felt across three years? To have felt as though he’d killed Chary’s “normal” life?
“If I hadn’t... If we’d never met…” August trailed off.
“You survived,” Chary said firmly. “You lived. And I’m so glad.
I’m so very glad you did, every single time.
As a child, in Paris, in London, in New York, as an adult.
Today. Because I know you might not need me, or my rescue, but I do.
I do need you, and I did need to do it. Not only for your sake but for mine.
Not just penance. To assuage my own guilty feelings.
To let me breathe freely. It was for me, too. ”
August’s shoulders slumped. He put a hand over his face.
Chary said, tearily, “Did you think I was selfless? A saint?”
August shook his head; Chary went on anyway. “Well, I’m not. I’ve killed too.”
August jerked his head up, eyes wide; Chary nodded.
“I have. That man who attacked me, at 2nd Street? I stabbed him, made him bleed out on the matelassé. Absolutely zero ‘higher purpose’ except that he’d hurt me and I didn’t want to die.
So… I do know some of what you’re feeling.
And I’m so sorry for it. I wish it hadn’t had to happen. ”
“Oh, God.” August’s whole body bowed in agony toward the mantel. “I was scared too, Chary. Not just burning. I was so scared.”
Chary stood and walked over. He put a hand on the curve of August’s quaking shoulder. “I know. I know. I’m here for you, all right? No matter what, brother.”
August’s weeping was wrought from him in near-silent shudders.
“Couple of selfish bastards, wanting to live.”
Hiram Sumner, appearing from nowhere. Chary was indignant—until he saw August’s eyes open, saw relief cross his face.
A second hand touched August’s shoulder, lightly, then sliding unerringly, through blood speckle and tears, to August’s neck, beneath his hair.
August shuddered; Chary stepped back. Looked away. It was too intimate to look upon.
Raised voices in the house’s echoes made him straighten up, wipe his face.
“She’s a reporter! A civilian! A coerced one!” Laurie snarled. He led the way through the doorway, incandescent with anger. Brasher came more slowly: beside him he dragged a writhing, kicking, spitting-mad Sarah.
Chary said, “Oh, no.”
August looked equally taken aback, but then Sumner began murmuring; August’s head bent, engrossed by the smaller man.
“—accomplice to attempted murder,” Brasher was saying. “Conspirator to blackmail—” He seemed to be listing the woman’s crimes. Threatening her with them. Then he saw the bullet holes, the crumpled bullets themselves, and stilled.
Sarah saw them too. She stopped fighting and stood there, gulping, her arm limp in Brasher’s huge grasp. “No,” she gasped. “He said— He said he wouldn’t shoot anybody. Nobody would get hurt; he just wanted the plans. I didn’t know— I have a small nephew…”
Laurie grimaced. “Nobody’s going to hurt you, Sarah. Promise. Can you leave off, you behemoth, and prove it to her?” he said to Brasher. “She’s a victim just as much as Wright. A witness to August’s self-defense. Right?”
Sarah nodded hastily. “Self-defense. I’d swear to it. I’d swear.”
“Sidney.” Sumner; Brasher let go at once.
“Here, sit down.” Laurie guided her to a chair, then faced her. He put his hands in pockets, tilted his head: charm switched on. “You said you’re a woman stunt reporter?”
Sarah’s chin rose for the first time, though she still trembled: pride. Bravery. “An investigative journalist, just like you, Mr. Tulley. Sarah Stone.”
Laurie acknowledged with a nod. “You write for Pulitzer? Hearst?”
“The Cosmopolitan. Freelance.”
Laurie hummed. “Undercover work’s hard, and you’re good. I didn’t suspect you of a thing.”
“You wouldn’t, Mr. Tulley, begging your pardon. Past the bloom of youth, women are invisible to men. You yourself are standing on the shoulders of two decades of women stunt reporters who’ve come before you.”