Prologue
I snapped close my cracked, old steamer trunk with a satisfied sigh.
"Are you sure you're up to this, Irene?" Mr. Watson asked from the foyer, nervousness in his voice. Mr. Watson had been a friend of father's for as long as I could remember, and I think he still thinks of me as a five-year-old girl with her hair still in braids.
"Watson, I'm sure. I'm fifteen. I can handle my own case. I have told you this before." I sighed at the old man, he meant well, but he was far too overprotective.
"John, she'll be fine. She's too much like her father to get hurt on a case." Watson's wife, Mary, assured Watson, and he frowned deeper.
"That's exactly why I'm worried about her – she's too much like her father."
My father.
I've been told he was great, an extraordinary man, a genius, but I didn't have a chance to find out these things for myself, since the great Sherlock Holmes died when I was four, leaving me to live with his closest companion, Watson, as my mother had abandoned me with my father when I was born.
Despite how Watson acted sometimes, I knew he held my father in high regard, and meant it as a compliment when he claimed I was way too much like him.
"It's not like it's a murder, Watson. It's a horse-napping. It's entirely dull. I'm sure I'll solve it almost immediately." I reminded him, still quite bored with the details of the case.
"Are you sure you wouldn't rather I accompany you?" Watson fretted, wringing his hands.
"We can handle it, father." Sherlock assured him, his blonde hair falling into his stormy eyes.
I looked over at him.
Sherlock Watson is a skinny boy with his father's blonde hair. He was named after my father, and is only a year and a half older than me, so we've had a bond since I was born, and he's going to be the only one accompanying me on this case.
He had a messenger bag slung over his shoulder carelessly, and I looked down at my steamer trunk with a bit of a blush in my cheeks. Compared to Sherlock, I really didn't travel lightly. In my defense, we would probably be there for a while.
"I can carry that for you, Rene." Sherlock offered, picking up my trunk easily, with one hand. Despite his skinny frame, he was more than capable of carrying my heavy trunk like that.
"Send me a telegram if an- or, scratch that, return on the nearest train and come knocking if anything at all goes wrong." Watson said, still fretting over us.
"I promise I'll get Irene back safely. Unless she's too annoying on the train." Sherlock said, his eyes darting over to mine for a second as he said this, giving me enough time to stick my tongue out at him and him to raise his eyebrows.
"Sherlock, I'm trusting you to take care of you both. Irene can be... headstrong. Even so, I'm trusting you to persuade her out of her bad ideas." Watson told Sherlock as he dropped us off at the train station.
"I know, father. I promised I would bring her back." Sherlock replied, and I could tell he was having trouble containing a sigh at his father's behavior. Sherlock was a mischievous, independent boy, and to have a father like Watson upset him greatly.
Watson began to say something else, but then excused himself to dab at his eyes with his hankercheif, so we used that opportunity to get onto the train.
Once we were seated, Sherlock looked at me with sparks of excitement in his eyes.
"I brought a draughts board." He whispered, pulling it out of his bag.
Of course Sherlock packed a draughts board.
As the train began to puff smoke into the smoggy London sky, I met his eyes with mine, and grinned as we set up the board and I said,
"The game is on, Watson"