THE WITCH'S HEART

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Part 7.

Many of them wouldn't look at him. But then there was Karla, who looked increasingly displeased. She glanced up at him.

Irritation… maybe even anger.

Lips twitching. She longs to say something.

Sherlock did his piece solo. It sounded… weird to him. Beautiful; fragile; and sort of crazed, and he kept waiting for them to come meet him, all those people behind him. He wondered how they had felt while playing their part without him. When he glanced at them he could see their eyes following his every move as if they'd had no time to witness them before. He finished and exhaled discordantly, his entire body listing right and feeling askew. His chest now throbbed. Badly.

Karla stood up. "Eliza, you massive bitch, you cause this problem sitting there with your mug full of poison every time he moves. You're toxic. You're polluting the strings so we're this load of daggers behind him-"

Eliza got up and bellowed back, "Who asked you, you bloody bungalow. What do you even know about it?"

"I'm third bloody violin and I can admit he plays beautifully! He's a bloody genius! And he deserves it. Now, will you get over yourself and just play, or isn't that what you meant to do, being here?" Karla's voice struck a relentless polyphonic screech.

Sherlock, wide-eyed, began to hastily pack up his violin. He'd rather face the police than get in the middle of that. "Oh my God," he muttered to himself. Where had he put the rosin? Oh, still in the case. Good-good. He started to fold it shut.

Then Maestro barked, "Enough!" And silence fell. Even the mumbling audience fell silent. Maestro tapped his lectern with the white baton. "Noch einmal, bitte. Again, please."

Sherlock reversed all the actions he'd just taken and pulled his violin up with a gasp of pain, his efforts roundly snubbed by a few inches of abused flesh in his chest. Feebleness put him in mind of what Sebastian had said – that this was impossible for someone like him. He wouldn't let that be true.

"Sherlock," Maestro said unresponsively, still looking for signs of weakness, signs Sherlock couldn't carry on.

"Good," Sherlock settled the violin. "I'm good." He could only just keep his arm from trembling.

"Beginnen!"

Honestly, what came of this cathartic outburst was imperfect, but it was improvement. Sherlock listened for the orchestra. He tried to weave through them like a needle, to thread them together. They appeared to be paying close attention to him as well. At the end, everyone seemed aware this was as coherent as they'd managed to be. But it was clear they were all doing this for Maestro's, or the music's sake. Sherlock knew he was.

When he looked up, Emma Brighton stood in the aisle on his left, and behind her… Alexa Danas, and a pair of Constabulary officers. He didn't want to be seen with the police. When Sherlock left the stage, he caught hold of Emma's hand and pulled her up along the aisle with him. They passed through the small knot of police and hurried to the doors.

"What is it?" He asked her as they exited into the dark.

"They're following me everywhere. Won't you please help me get away from them?" Emma wiped her glittering eyes.

"Follow me." He tore off through the paths with her close behind. Quick on her long legs, and quite able to run in heels it seemed.

"Sherlock." Danas shouted from behind him. "Sherlock!" but her voice was falling back.

They ran until they reached the Museum of Classical Archeology.

"It closes at 5PM, Sherlock," Emma said breathlessly. But Sherlock led her along to a side entrance and hammered the door. It opened a crack only a few minutes later and a tall, round man peeked out and scanned the night beyond the watery light above the door.

"Gus, let me in." Sherlock added a distinct. "Please."

"Wif her?" the man frowned.

"Yes."

"Sure Sherlock." He stepped aside and let the young man pass. "I'd have had a hard time keepin' this job if not for your help, I know, but, just so's you understand… this isn't the place to come for a snog, or anyfing."

"Of course not," Sherlock scoffed.

"Not being chased or anyfing?"

"No," Sherlock exhaled and ruffled his hair. "Can we just sit down somewhere quiet and out of sight, Gus? And… and you never saw us?"

"Oh, but you're not being chased." Gus paused in pushing a door open for them.

Sherlock just looked up at the man. "Gus… please."

He stopped questioning them, and, after being admonished not to wander around, Sherlock led Emma through to a quiet, if bright orange, conversational area where he dropped onto a couch.

"He knows you," she said as she took off her coat and sat down beside Sherlock. Her fingers reached out to the violin case. Sherlock eased it aside, out of reach.

"I did a favour for him, three months after I got here," Sherlock said. "I… used to spend a lot of time here, reading. He was going to be fired for inexactitude, you see. He wasn't being precise about the sign-in and -out sheets for cleaning crew and other maintenance."

"But he's still here?"

"Well, he wasn't the genius who thought of doctoring them. They were kept in paper at the time. There was a pattern in the writing when Gus allegedly 'fell asleep', or otherwise failed to secure sign-outs. The writer was always left-handed. Also, his letter 'O' always had hooks in it, loops going in and out of the letter. And the G looked something like a claw. It was the same guy, just disguising his writing. He wanted to get Gus fired."

"Why?" She blinked at him.

"Because Gus is a pagan. He's a druid, and witch," Sherlock shrugged. "Some people don't like them and try to ruin their lives. I… haven't figured out why yet."

She looked at him a moment and then smiled. "Ignorance."

"Hate." Sherlock tipped his head side-to-side to loosen muscle and tendon in his neck, which could cramp from the violin. Then he reached up to give a very slow pull on the back of his head, stretching the back of his neck some. He sighed. "Violin."

"Oh is this word-association?" she chortled, "Okay: Incredible."

He sat up and looked aside at her, wordlessly, for a moment. "You think?"

"Of course I do." She curled her legs up under her and faced his direction. "Who wouldn't?"

Maybe she'd missed the entire orchestra hating him? But that was difficult for him to imagine. Perhaps her family wasn't one where sundry people could listen stonily to his best work, mutter behind hands, and shake heads. Incredible? Sherlock leaned back and rubbed his hands on the thighs of his expensive trousers. "So why did you want to meet with me?"

"I still have a paper due, Sherlock." She reached into her pocket and took out a recorder she set on the table. "The way you run about, I figure this is my only hope."

He picked up the voice recorder and inspected it, then flipped it to record and said, "No way in hell are you recording me for Bulwick. Sorry."

She leaned in toward the recorder. "Sorry, Emma."

"What you like," he waggled the recorder dismissively.

But she persisted. "I like Emma." She unfolded her fingers to give him a prompt.

Which he took. "Then sorry, Emma." Sherlock shut the thing off and set it on the table. "What happened after I left with the Constabulary?"

"Merriweather legged-it out of there," Emma took off her gloves and reached for the violin case. He manoeuvred it away. She leaned back, intrigued by this behaviour. "Uh, and I went to my rooms because I was really shaken up…. I feel better now you're here though. Dunno why."

His upraised hand flicked open and closed in air. "Not important."

She inhaled and exhaled slowly. "It's still a relief, Sherlock, to know you're okay. Then I realized you had your phone on you – thus the text."

"It took you that long?" he blinked. "Seriously?"

"That long to… what?"

"To realize you could text me?"

"Oh come on now, Sherlock. Do you know how hard it is to get your number on this campus? I thought I didn't know anyone with it. Probably Merriweather has it, but, I doubt she very-much appreciates me kissing you, so, naturally, she's not giving it to me."

He sat mute. Why. Why had she done that? But he couldn't ask.

She shrugged at him. "I was in a bit of a panic and worried they had taken your phone from you. I've never had to deal with the police before, Sherlock."

He glanced down and away. He wished he could say the same. "Well," he told her, "They just wanted the basics. Typical police stuff – stop the world; tell me everything; wait, I don't understand. Right now, they're probably trying to connect me to Daniel Farrar somehow. But I didn't even know who he was. It's less sweat for police if they don't have to figure out who actually killed Daniel."

"I thought the same thing." She said softly. Brighton reached for her jacket and fished out a folded paper. She looked up at him. "Why can't I touch the violin?"

Sherlock felt his eyelids flicker as he looked aside at the case. "I, uh, it's…" nothing came to mind. While his head was turned, she'd crept over, and now reached across his lap to lay a hand on the case, gently. It put her very close to him. His body sank back in the couch cushions

"Not going to hurt you." She told him quietly. She stroked the case and her hand came to rest on the point of his hip. "Can I kiss you though?"

He said the first thing in his mind. "Why?"

"Sherlock, good Lord, don't overthink it. It's a yes-no question." Her lips smelled like peppermint schnapps, a touch intoxicating, without his having to drink. "It's not a yes-no-why question."

In spite of fairly sensing his pupils' dilation, Sherlock nipped his bottom lip against the tension, and led with his strengths. "What have you got there? That paper what is it?"

Emma bowed her head and then sank back on her heels to carefully consider him. "Sherlock… you might've just told me No." She opened her hands and was disappointed.

Well so was he.

Sherlock's eyes were averted to the coffee table before him. He might have told her No. If he'd meant No. But it had been something else. Like Don't, or I can't. It sounded the same. The problem was he wanted two things, vehemently. He suffered nothing to bridge his fortifications, but he was sacked and on fire with curiosity.

It had been silent for a bit too long if he'd become aware of it.

"Is it Merriweather?"

She hardly had the sentence out before he said, "No. It's neither of you."

"But you're not with her then?" Emma dipped her fingers into his hair. Their progress through his thick curls pulled his head back and to one side. Merriweather didn't touch him this much. It felt… good… not overwhelming yet, but then, the flesh betrayed him more and more these days. Maybe wanting people was part of growing up. But it was a part he didn't like.

He wanted to stay himself.

Question…? "What was the question?" Sherlock might have been the one drowning. Stick with the murder. He had to solve the murder. He turned his head to take her in, "Actually, I-"

But Emma had also been leaning to him, and laid her hand on his chest. Sherlock buckled over his knees with an immoderate yelp of pain. For a span of several seconds, he couldn't bring himself to speak for fear he'd whimper. Then the pain began to grow less immediate.

Emma Brighton's soft voice bubbled in her chest with something close to panic. "Sherlock. Sherlock Holmes. Can you hear me? Sherlock?" She rubbed his back.

"Yes, I hear you," Sherlock said around low grunts of breath. "Just, will you stop?"

"What happened?" She smoothed back his hair as he sat up again. This time, his arm curled in to guard his injured chest. She looked at his shirt. He could see the idea forming in her head to look inside –his dignity would never survive it – so he constructed an explanation.

"I was careless while… investigating, I guess? That's what happened. Now, for God's sake, no more of those," his good hand – the one not connected to an injured pectoral muscle – flapped in air at her lips for emphasis. "I can't take any more of those tonight, and-"

"My lips?" she burbled. "What about yours? Bowed, and like pillows. What about yours?"

"Listen to me – I've got to think. Tell me, what do you have there? I saw you change. There's something to do with the investigation…."

It happened again. Her face fell. He'd dropped her back into harsh reality.

She sat back. In the course of their visit, she'd moved until she now sat on her heels with her knees against the back of the couch. Emma faced him from under low lighting that made her beauty look slightly sinister. Her hand found the paper she had taken from her coat pocket. She immediately offered it to Sherlock.

Newsprint.

Smells of ink.

Not yellow, so recent.

As he unfolded the paper, she said, "I had a loan of a notebook of his. His: Daniel's. I mean, he lent it to me to help me with French."

"Oh, I could do that," Sherlock said distractedly. He missed her smile.

"I think he must have forgotten about this." She finished.

Sherlock stared down at his own cold, cagy image. This was a newspaper article with photos from when he'd done the recordings. Marked across the bottom of the larger photo was Sherlock's mobile phone number, something he would have sworn no one but Merriweather had. More alarmingly, the writing in the marginalia had a few phrases in French:

'I need to try this guy.'

'I have your number, kid….'

"What… does that mean… exactly?" Sherlock cocked his head and frowned.

"Do you know enough French?" her fingers ran through his hair again.

He waved her off. "It's knowing enough that makes me… ask."

Emma's lips – plumper than sharp Merriweather's were – compressed into a soft pink line, "But it proves he was thinking about you… there was some link there. The police, you know, they'll be looking for some kind of connection, and I didn't want them to see this, right? There's no way you could do something like that to Daniel. I know you've been in fights, but that's because you're a guy, I mean, you uphold your honour." She reached out and stroked his cheek with a deft hand.

He eased back from her. It was quite possible, given the evidence, that he'd murdered Daniel. The fact she didn't acknowledge that… lessened her, somehow. He wasn't sure what it was. He expected Merriweather to know something like that. He couldn't part that girl out of his business with a prisebar, and her covert drug stock gave her a social network she could leverage to watch him with the eyes of others. She knew his habits nearly as well as her own. Conversely, Emma had just met him.

But she knew how I take tea.

I've got your number, kid…. "Oh," Sherlock sat up suddenly, nearly putting Emma off balance. "Oh, I'm a git. Of course!" He turned Emma's way. "Gotta go."

"What?"

"I've got to go." He touched his coat almost as if activating some kind of ward in a video game, one that could transport him outside. It was silly, but had been reflex. Sherlock swept up the violin. "Numbers."

"Num- well, walk me to Trinity, though." She pointed at the nearby windows. "It's dark."

"No. Not going to Trinity. Gus can call someone for you, whatnot." He felt in his pockets to make sure nothing had fallen out. The couch was bare, apart from the newspaper clipping. He snapped that up. Emma came up with it.

"Just walk me over, this one time?" she caught his sleeve.

"Going to be running and not to Trinity," he folded the paper and told her in exasperation. "Aren't you with Aaron Bryford? Call him." Sherlock turned to look down the hall.

"Sherlock, I broke up with him." She said this like it should have been obvious. "I've kissed you? Did you notice? Do you suppose I'd do that if I were still with Aaron?"

"Mores. Not my strong point." He said shortly. "Don't act as if it's a physical impossibility for you to be with one person and kiss another."

She scoffed. "Oh dear Lord, they're right about one thing: you are so lost."

"Also, why? It's stupid." His hands fluttered in air as he forged his way down the hall. "The pair of you looked… archetypical. Happy, I suppose. Isn't Bryford a big man on the Row Team or-"

"Oh. It was you." She nodded. "I broke up with Aaron because I started to think of you."

Sherlock felt a blast of chill, such was the shock. Then he stopped and felt himself slowly turn to take her in. But he could think of nothing to say. She stood earnestly looking at him.

"Actually, I couldn't stop thinking about you." She wrung her hands a little in air before her, her French tips flashing in the overhead lighting. She seemed equally as at a loss for what to say for a moment. Then her words stumbled over one another, not the smooth, chic girl he knew. "Since the first time I heard your violin, I… couldn't. It just…. Sherlock, I've listened to you play more often than you know. It just became too much. I would sneak to the Concert Hall in these hoodies, so people wouldn't just know me on sight, and sit out of the way. I'd try to be alone with you, in my own way – you, me, and the violin. And it finally got to the point where… where you'd play and I'd swear I was about to light on fire, I'd get so hot. I thought 'What would he think if I went up there and wrapped my arms around him'. So stupid. You didn't know I was alive, and here I was reading about your family, trying to figure out what it would have been like to be a Holmes."

Sherlock's jaw clacked shut. Audibly. Inside of his head, her words unleashed a surge of feeling. He couldn't control this any more than he could control violent weather. So Sherlock turned on his heel in the low overhead lighting and the orange walls, his lips apart and seeming to struggle for breath as he walked away from her.

"Sherlock," her arms slid around him from behind. He could feel her head bow so that her forehead touched down at the base of his neck. "Don't run off." Then she used those long, lovely hands to turn him around to face her. "Please don't. I'm not crazy. I just care about you. It's normal."

He looked down at her. "You made a mistake."

"No, I didn't. You shouldn't be with one guy and thinking, all the time, about another. That's a mistake." she told him dryly. Her hand stroked the curve of one of his high cheekbones.

"You have to stop this," he pushed her arm aside and walked backwards a few steps. He turned in place, and the world kept going. Because he was getting disoriented. "I'm not who you think I am, Emma. And there's a person dead, but I don't know why. I… I care more about that than I ever will about you. Gus will call someone to get you back to Trinity. You need to leave me alone." He walked away from her.

"It's not true, Sherlock." Her voice was more distantly behind him when she finally managed to get that out.

"Leave me alone." He said firmly. But he almost ran out of the building.

For a while, his meandering of Cambridge was uninspired. He ran or walked, as the mood hit him, pointless and inattentive. It was like she'd done something to him – to the inside of him. Why? His insides didn't like being touched. He didn't know how to put it into words any better than that, really.

He preserved, inside, this hyperaware creature whose every glimpse filled its head with the unadulterated truth. Letting it out was like lying on his back at the cold poles of the world, staring into the blast of space: raw. Sherlock protected this brittle, frozen thing inside himself from any further damage. And along came people like Emma who wanted to drag it out and make a doll out of it.

But, shortly, there was something else happening in his dazed brain.

Numbers.

It was cold where he stopped. He sort of snapped out of it and realized he was somewhere in Christ's Pieces. Then he swore, turned about, and faced the run back. Sweating was bad in the cold, as sweat would freeze and rob the body of heat. But he ran anyway. It was late enough that he was able to slip into Kings and up to his room without any police intervention, at least. Once there, he hung up his violin, had a hot shower and fixed some even hotter tea.

Sherlock's feet demanded slippers. Bloody hell, he'd been chilled out there. Idiot.

His voice mail had several messages from Emma. Nothing from Merriweather. He threw his mobile phone down on the couch when he saw this.

Okay.

He flicked off all the lights, but the green-shielded desk-lamp.

At his desk he sat down and took out a crisp white notepad.

Sherlock exhaled, and closed his eyes. He thought back to pulling Daniel up the riverbank, turning him over, and checking his pockets.

Phone numbers.

He really wasn't a police officer. He really wasn't exhaustive.

After a couple of minute's remembrance, he'd jotted down all the numbers. Under this he jotted What were you doing? Tell me. Sherlock pulled his own laptop over toward him and started looking up phone numbers online.

Soon he had a list of names.

One of the names was very familiar – Emma Brighton. The others were:

Nigel Howe.

David Hollingshead.

Peter Meade.

Raymond Whittle.

And he had my number.

Only one girl there. Emma stood out. Sherlock walked the floor of his rooms thinking what he could and should do about this. He was afraid that confronting these people directly would frighten them off, but he felt the need to meet up with them about their inclusion on this exclusive list. What was it about? And he, from appearances, had also been under consideration. It all had a colluded atmosphere, didn't it? Sherlock couldn't escape the feeling.

He stripped off his night clothes at some point and collapsed to bed. It wasn't his habit to sleep nude, but, sometimes, folds in the fabric of his softest nightclothes felt like nail files on his skin. Tonight was one of those nights. Likewise, he didn't get under the sheets, but rolled up in a blanket he kept for such occasions, which was made out of fluffy, shirred polyester – for his money, nearly as soft as beaver pelt.

He was asleep in the next breath.

Continued in Part 8.