Sirens. Scotland Yard had arrived at the scene of the emergency and hadn't turned their damn sirens off. Emili wished they would. She had dealt with enough at this point, and a headache was extremely unnecessary.
Pressure. Around her shoulders, particularly. A thick, orange blanket draped over her insistently by the paramedic, who checked out her bumped head and said she was okay. John said the same thing, but then he'd given her a hug, and the EMTs had physically pulled him away to give him an assessment of their own.
Shadows. Emili kept seeing the shadows, like her eyes were still being tricked by the glowing fires inside the recital hall. In lieu of the fires, they were the lights on top of the two on-scene ambulances and three police cars that remained. She could see plenty of people well enough to tell about their height, their age, their identity if she already knew them. It was dark, though, and now instead of feeling exposed, she felt safe. If she couldn't see them, they couldn't see her.
Smoky… She still thought she could smell smoke in her nose, the result of being held in a musty, unventilated building. Blood lingered in her mouth and made a metallic, cloying taste in her throat.
John, she thought she heard someone tell Sherlock, was getting his own scrapes patched up. Slowly, she turned her head to look up at her brother, who sat beside her in the back of the ambulance, focused down on his cell phone. Emili swallowed hard.
"I want to go home."
Her plaintive statement made her feel like a child, like maybe she really was as young as Mycroft sometimes treated her. Em… well, she didn't think she cared. She almost lost her life. She could have died. She had come very close to having an arrow fired right into her skull. She was allowed to want to go home. She didn't ever want to see this tramway again.
Ever since the ambulance had arrived, she had felt like she was in a hazy dream. Like when she'd been fourteen and broken her arm and then the nurse gave her a shot of morphine and everything seemed to hurt a lot less, but also everything seemed a lot less personal. Maybe, she realized, that was what shock felt like. She was waking up, albeit slowly, and she didn't like what was around her.
I want to go home. She used to think it to herself when she missed her family. She wanted her home, her bedroom, her comfortable twin-sized bed with the fish tank gurgling on top of her dresser, and her dad checking on her to make sure she wasn't reading past her bedtime. Sometimes she'd have to get up and complain that Liza was being too loud just one room over, and she couldn't sleep.
I want to go home. Now she wanted help up the stairs to her apartment, she wanted for John to tuck her in and tell her to give a call if she needed anything. She looked forward to waking up, somehow knowing there would be a well-meaning cup of earl grey on her bedside stand from John and that, quite possibly, she'd wake up during the night and Sherlock would be playing her favorite sonata on his violin. They weren't a traditional family, and she wasn't sure she'd call them her family out loud, but they were kind to her, and they took care of her, the way families were supposed to.
Sherlock moved his hands into his lap, his phone screen on and a certain number of inches between himself and the student. Emili looked slightly to her right, blinking, and saw Dimmock standing beside the back corner of the ambulance, looking concerned. She wondered how long he'd been there.
"We'll just slip off," Sherlock told him coolly. "No need to mention us in your report."
Emili yawned. As the real world came back to her focus, the crash from all the adrenaline caught up with her, too. "Um… he has to mention us on record for us to be paid," she reminded Sherlock. Her arms were partially covered by the shock blanket. She pulled her forearms across her chest, tightening the blanket around herself for comfort. It was chilly.
"Money." Sherlock scoffed dismissively. "Dull." He picked his hands up and tapped on his phone. "I don't work for that incentive, Em." He finished his text quickly, locked his screen, and pushed his phone into his inside coat pocket before standing up from the back of the vehicle.
"Maybe you don't," she replied mildly, blinking slowly. "But I would like to be reimbursed for the life-threatening footwork."
Dimmock gave her another nod and briefly assured her that he would make sure they got their consulting fees. Then he offered Emili a hand. Red lights from the multicolored flashes caught on his face and made his skin look a lot pinker than it actually was, and then the blue light from another car joined and his face looked odd, like one big bruise and sunburn at the same time.
"I'm sorry this happened," he told her earnestly, shaking her hand firmly whereas Emili's grip was loose and uncertain. "An' I wish you the best of luck healing, Miss Holmes." Emili nodded, mumbled a thank you, and used her other hand to balance while getting off of the ambulance's bumper to follow Sherlock. Dimmock hesitated for just a second, but then he said her brother's name before they could leave. "Mr. Holmes…"
He seemed unsure what to say. After all the chastening he'd gotten, the teenager wasn't surprised. Sherlock didn't need him to say anything, though (or more accurately, didn't want him to) and filled in before the inspector kept talking. "I have high hopes for you, Inspector," he said airily. "A glittering career."
Humbled, Dimmock nodded solemnly, promising wordlessly to live up to the expectation. "I go where you point me."
The corner of Sherlock's mouth quirked. "Exactly."
Sherlock walked noticeably slower than he usually did so that Emili didn't have to walk very fast to stay just behind him. She covered her arms up with the heavy orange blanket and used it as a protective shield against the wind. John, in the other ambulance, was finishing up and getting a butterfly bandage laid across the cut over his brow. Sherlock paused several yards away. EMTs wouldn't try to suck them back in, but John would be able to see them and rejoin once he was freed.
Emili yawned again, exhausted from the entire ordeal. She shivered underneath the blanket, and only then did she really think about it. "Wait," she said aloud. "I still have the blanket."
"Keep it," Sherlock said uncaringly.
"But it's not mine," she objected. Despite her words, she held it tighter. She was cold, and the pressure on her arms and shoulders actually felt good. She wished she'd had more layers on. Maybe she could've felt a little safer from the general.
Sherlock was unusually patient with her. Emili knew he would be back to normal if she said something about it, so she didn't thank him for his consideration, but she very much appreciated it. She knew her brain was running a little slower now that there wasn't the threat of death scaring the hell out of her. She couldn't wait to go get home and curl up under her sheets.
John shook hands with the paramedic and said one more thing. Sherlock put his hand up on Emili's shoulder and pulled out a fold in the blanket so the hem tumbled almost down to her elbow. "Did they explicitly say to give it back?" He questioned her dubiously.
She shook her head slowly, then stopped because it was tedious. "It's kind of implied…"
"It's a blanket," Sherlock stated, arching his eyebrows at her to tell her she was being less than brilliant. "They can get more where that came from."
In truth, although Emili didn't want to be a thief, she felt convinced enough to keep the blanket. It hadn't taken much persuading, thanks to how comfortable it was and how little she wanted to risk getting delayed further by questioning policemen who wanted to hear more of the story's complex details. Now that there was proof everything was true, they couldn't wait to eat up the entire case. Emili told one irately to wait and read John's blog.
"If you say so," she said. She was supposed to be skeptical, but didn't really care. Em squeezed the slightly coarse outer lining in her hands and looked back to the ambulance they'd been in. "My blanket now."
"Yes, indeed," her brother indulgently agreed.
The next morning, Em slept in until after lunchtime, took a long, hot shower, and ate two packs of ramen before she even thought about putting actual clothes on and leaving her apartment. When she knocked on the door to 221B a little before four in the afternoon, she didn't wait long before her favorite army doctor pulled the door open.
Immediately, he pulled her in for a hug. Emili sat her chin down on his shoulder and hugged him tightly. Her hair was still damp from her shower, but John gave her head a pet anyway and then rubbed her back comfortingly before he let go. Emili was reluctant to lean back. His arms felt strong and he smelled like a comforting, familiar blend of tea and some faintly-scented men's hair product. She hadn't felt so relaxed or at home since the case had started.
"Morning, Em." He said, cupping her chin and holding her head still for a second while he checked on the cut across her temple. "Are you feeling any better?" Deeming it alright, he released her face. She glanced up to his forehead and saw he was still wearing a small bandage, too.
"Marginally," she replied with a wince. Really, she felt much better. She had a headache and her wrists were a little sore from being bound, but she could think clearly, and she was better-rested than she had been all month long. "I think I'm going to call it a sick day." Self-care was important, and Jane Austen, she was finally ready to say, could just buzz off.
John canted his head. "Why don't you just send an email to your teachers?" He suggested helpfully. "Wouldn't they give you the time?"
Emili stared at him for a few seconds until it sank in that he was serious. "Dear British Literature Professor," she started to say, crossing her arms and making up the fake email as she went. "I need a few days off of school because my brother let me help him investigate a murder case that involved a group of Chinese smugglers, and their general tried to kill me last night." She uncrossed her arms. John looked a little sheepish as he realized how outlandish it sounded. If Emili sent that in, she'd probably sound like a student who just wanted to be more original than "dog ate my homework". "Yeah, I don't think they'd really believe me."
From somewhere inside the apartment that Emili couldn't see, Sherlock got annoyed with having the door open while they chatted. "Are you coming in or are you going to wait at the threshold all day like unwanted mail?" He called snappishly.
John pursed his lips to keep from making a more visceral response. "Tea?" He offered to Em politely.
At the same time, Emili turned her hopeful eyes on him and asked, "Coffee?"
They blinked at each other awkwardly right after asking.
John made himself tea as he'd suggested, but it turned out that he'd planned ahead and picked up Emili's favorite iced coffees thoughtfully while he was out checking on Sarah. Emili curled up on one section of the couch while John leaned back and rested in his favorite armchair. He even put the ottoman up to stretch out his legs, smiling slightly that he could.
"So, nine million…" John mused, looking over to Sherlock. Emili appreciated that they had waited for her to have this discussion. She really felt that it was important she was a part of it – it would give her the knowledge and the closure she would probably need to move on from her rattling near-death experience.
"Did you ever find the book?" Emili wondered. It hadn't even occurred to her the night before, after everything. She'd just wanted to go to her bed and sleep for days, and everything else took a back seat. "Shan said that she was looking for a pin…"
Sherlock, sitting on the other end of the couch with his legs crossed, plucked on the A string of his violin, then pressed a finger over the D string and plucked a low E. The discord of his finger-pulled notes seemed to relax him somewhat. He made another note on the strings and then recited the full translation in answer to the question.
"Nine million for jade pin. Dragon den, black tramway." Sherlock put his violin down flat in his lap and drummed his short fingernails on the fingerboard between the strings. "An instruction to all of their London operatives. A message of what they were trying to reclaim."
John snorted incredulously. "What, a hairpin? All that – that fuss, it was for a hairpin?"
"A hairpin worth nine million pounds," Sherlock corrected.
John frowned and put his still-steaming cup of fresh tea onto the coffee table. Then he leaned back again and crossed his arms, nestling his hands into the soft wool sweater. "Why so much?"
Emili almost felt her eyes light up. "Because it belonged to an Empress," she answered for him quickly, licking her lips and taking another sip of coffee. "General Shan called it the Empress' pin."
After finishing their drinks, John's sense of responsibility brought them back out into the real world. Emili wasn't too fond of leaving the comfort of their respective apartments, but they had been given a job, after all, by a very well-off businessman. It felt like their last trip to Tower 42 had been much longer ago than it actually was.
Emili still looked around in wonder at the inside of the building. She was glad that it still impressed her. She was happy to know that even though she felt a little subdued, a little shaken up, she hadn't had things like inquisitiveness and exploration taken away from her. She couldn't even blame Sebastian for setting them on the trail of the Black Lotus. If nothing else, them being put on the case led them to Soo Lin, and because of them, a woman's life had been saved.
The tower was just as gorgeous as it had been before. Shad Sanderson was still on the same floor that it had been on last time, way too far up for anyone except Sherlock to comfortably look out over a ledge, and they took a tall escalator up, looking over the glass sides to see the mezzanines of floors below. Emili peered out curiously, seeing some of the same things she had before, but also seeing new people, too, and viewing the London business hotspot with a new sense of scrutiny and consideration.
"So… what about this do we tell to Sebastian?" She asked, not looking up to Sherlock, who stood on the step above hers. Surely they couldn't give him the full story. Chinese smugglers operating in London for who knew how long? Scotland Yard would really be after them if they told the wrong person and it ended up in the press.
"Only what he needs to know." Sherlock smirked a little bit, she could hear it in his voice. After being treated so poorly, she could only imagine that this would be something he took some serious satisfaction in. "That one of his thoroughly-vetted bankers was engaging in international criminal behavior, and the cipher was a warning. Just tell him to stop opening his windows."
"Bet he'll love that," John remarked cynically, looking over the rail to see what Em was looking at. He wasn't as impressed by the views as she was, but he gave her a fond smile before stepping back. "Payin' us five figures to tell him to lock his windows at night."
Emili shrugged. Somehow, Sebastian's pleasure over what they had to report wasn't her biggest concern.
"You're better at talking. You can give him the news," Sherlock offered. It sounded less like an offer and more like a prediction of how it was going to be. "I have other reasons for coming."
"Other reasons?" John repeated indignantly, glowering at Sherlock's back and scolding, "Sherlock, the man hired you to do a job. You can't just swan off now that you're bored of it!"
Sherlock sighed noisily. John crossed his arms, and the detective turned around to look down on them while he cocked his head and re-summarized. "Two operatives, both based in London. They travel over to Dalian to smuggle those vases." John and Emili shared a look and nodded, both following along. "One of them helps himself to something – a little hairpin."
"Worth nine million pounds," John put in, objecting to the idea of something worth so much being a "little" anything.
"He was a carrier, just like a drug mule," Em compared, almost sympathetic. They should never have been working for the Tong, but they didn't deserve what happened to them, either. "I bet neither of them realized the significance or worth of the vases, much less a tiny little accessory."
Sherlock nodded, conferring that she was right about her assumption, and Emili smiled a little bit. "Eddie Van Coon was the thief," he announced. "He stole the treasure when he was in China."
John started to nod, but stopped himself. None of that explained what business Sherlock had in the bank any longer, much less anything that didn't involve Sebastian. "Hold on," the veteran objected, reaching out and giving Sherlock's coat a tug. "How'd you know it was Van Coon, not Lukis? Even the killer didn't know that."
He looked at Emili as if she was privy to this, too, but it was as much news to her as it was to him. The pink-haired student had been operating on the assumption that they'd probably never know. Maybe the pin would turn up while the Yard combed through the men's personal belongings, but they'd probably stashed it somewhere harder to find.
"Yeah, Sherlock, even I don't know that one." She looked back up to him and reluctantly gave him the pride boost he wanted to keep going. "What was it?"
Sherlock smiled. He knew he was being indulged, at least to an extent, but he liked to show off anyway so he was alright with that. "The soap."
John and Emili did end up taking care of Sebastian on their own. He let them into their office, offered them some drinks again, and made a cheap shot at Sherlock not showing up, assuming that they were just as stumped as he had been.
The two friends, at that point, shared a long look with each other and reached a serious agreement: they were done with Sebastian being an ass about their mutual friend. Sure, Sherlock was an ass who probably had it coming, but the only ones allowed to tease him were John, Emili, and sometimes Mycroft and/or Lestrade, depending on the context and their moods.
Emili took great joy in cheerfully explaining that they had, in fact, solved it. "Your trespasser was an aerialist who scaled up the side of the building and let himself in through the window." The look on Sebastian's face… she wished she'd thought to get her phone out and take a photograph.
Sebastian had to sit down grudgingly and actually write out the check for another twenty thousand pounds. Emili was delighted, mostly because he was getting a real smack to his pride. "He really climbed onto the balcony?" The banker asked, looking up at John as if he expected Emili to be more likely to pull his leg. He was hesitating before signing off on the huge number.
John nodded. "We saw him do it ourselves somewhere else," he half-lied. They'd seen him prove his abilities as an acrobat in the circus. He hadn't gone up the side of a building, but the grace and power he'd held led Emili to think it wouldn't be too big of a challenge for him. "Swear on it."
Sebastian shook his head, biting the inside of his cheek with a sour expression. He swirled his pen over the check to sign his name. Emili saw the number of zeros and grinned a little to herself. When they split that up between them, she was going to be receiving a nice, hefty sum in her savings account. Sure, she knew she didn't need to worry about college or living expenses while she was on good terms with her adoptive parents, but there was something immensely satisfying about earning her money instead of having it handed to her.
"He was trained for feats like that. Don't worry, it's not something your average guy can do." She looked over to the left side of the office, where a very similar balcony was just outside a two-panel sliding door. "But, just in case you want to be careful, find a way to secure the balconies."
John gave Sebastian a false smile, but it was polite, so Sebastian couldn't get back at him about it. The blogger suggested conversationally, "Nail a plank across the window and all your problems are over," as he leaned over the desk to take the check, just to drive in how simple and stupid the solution was.
"Or add locks," Emili also suggested, blinking at him and masking the impishness she felt. "Whichever."
Sebastian gave her a very tight, tense smile that appeared more like a grimace, very annoyed and chagrined that he had just paid twenty-five thousand, in total, for something that a five-year-old could have suggested. In a way, his situation reminded Emili of Occam's razor. Sebastian had gone far out of his way to hire someone to solve a problem with a very simple solution, because he was so comfortable with what he believed to be common sense that he completely dismissed the most obvious answers.
John checked the check to make sure that it was all filled out and ready to be deposited. "Thanks," he cheerily said.
"I'm gonna catch up with Sherlock," Emili told John, grinning at him happily. The last five minutes had made most of the last week all worth it. Probably not the parts where she had legitimately feared for her life, but the rest of it, for sure.
Sherlock wasn't hard to find. He had gone to the same floor as them, but instead of heading for the office of the manager, he had detoured towards the secretary's desk. The blonde woman who Emili had seen the first time they were there was sitting at her desk with a defensive posture, looking up at Sherlock. The detective was standing very close to the desk and looking down at her with a slight smile. He knew something she didn't. He enjoyed having that knowledge a little too much.
Emili joined them curiously. She wanted to learn what Sherlock knew, too, and she really hoped that he wasn't going to further unnerve the poor woman. The name plate on her desk called her Amanda; she wore a light blue blouse the color of the sky, had shining green eyes, and pinned her hair up in a big, loose bun with hair sticks stabbing through to hold the style. She had a pink ring on her right hand and bangles on her left.
"Hello," she said cheerily, taking up a spot at Sherlock's left side and smiling down at the secretary politely.
Amanda pursed her lips, flicking her eyes between the two Holmeses. "Someone's been gossiping," she accused, pointed a little bit more at Sherlock than it was at Em.
"Not quite," she corrected kindly. She smiled and hopefully promised, "You're gonna like this part." She wasn't sure what Sherlock was going to say, but she knew he would be saying something, otherwise he wouldn't be wasting his time by talking to Van Coon's assistant after the case had already been solved. She genuinely hoped that she would appreciate the message rather than being offended.
"Then…" she shook her head and made her pink earrings dangle and chime. "I don't understand. Why-?"
Sherlock interrupted. "Scented hand soap in his apartment," he explained, putting his eyes down meaningfully to a bottle of lotion beside the desktop computer. "Three hundred milliliters of it, the bottle almost finished." Emili narrowed her eyes but couldn't remember having looked in Van Coon's bathroom.
"Sorry?" Amanda was totally confused.
Sherlock gave a thin, forced smile. Socialization was not his strong point, but he made himself slow down and elaborate. Emili thought that it may not be a fantastic interaction, but she had seen him engage in far worse. "I don't think Eddie Van Coon was the type of chap to buy himself hand soap – not unless he had a lady coming over." Emili kind of made a face, wondering what kind of person didn't use hand soap. Cleanliness was important. Then again, maybe she was just bred to think that way because, like Sherlock implied, soaps and cleanliness are typically appealing to females. "And it's the same brand of hand cream there on your desk."
Amanda's face blanked for just a second. She looked like she was prepared to balk at what he was saying, but then she realized that, with Van Coon dead, there weren't really any conduct violations to cover up.
"Look," she said, lowering her voice and intentionally pushing the bottle of lotion further away from her. "It wasn't serious between us. It was over in a flash." She moved her eyes to Emili, nervous. "It couldn't last, he was my boss!"
"What happened?" Sherlock inquired softly. "Why did you end it?"
Emili wasn't too surprised that Amanda had done the breaking up, since Van Coon was always traveling at a moment's notice and that had to be hard to handle. Amanda didn't even question where Sherlock got that, anyway. "I thought he didn't appreciate me," she sighed, putting her chin in her hand. "Took me for granted, stood me up once too often… we'd plan to go away for the weekend and he'd just leave, flying off to China at a moment's notice." The bitterness in her voice suggested it was pretty recently, and Emili winced. The Tong probably didn't have much respect for the personal lives of their mules.
"And he brought you a present from abroad to say sorry," Sherlock added. He sent a meaningful look at Emili, who almost didn't catch it until she realized that the 'present' must've been something Van Coon found while he was there, during his operation. It could've been near the vase he took. "Can I just have a look at it?"
Emili thought the entire affair was kind of cute, but tragically sad. Although a little token present wasn't much, it did say something. Yet, for as long as he worked for the Black Lotus, Van Coon never could have settled down or been very honest with his girlfriend, and even more importantly, she would have always been in more danger than she necessarily had to be.
Amanda opened one of her drawers and took out something. She knew exactly where it was and didn't have to look for it at all. She bumped the drawer closed with her knee and put it up on the hutch in front of Sherlock. "He said he bought it in a street market," she said almost mournfully.
The present itself was a faded, jade-colored hairpin. Emili's eyes widened and she looked up quickly at Sherlock. The pin had a dragon carved out on the top. It was small but detailed, and had its mouth opened. It looked like the kind of dragon she'd seen in Chinese art before, like a large, odd mix between a bearded dragon and a snake, with small arms reminiscent of a tyrannosaur. The hairpin narrowed from left to right, and little parts of several of the prongs that caught onto hair had been chipped off.
Sherlock started to smile as he looked at it and only just managed not to seem like he'd just won a contest. "Oh, I don't think that's true. I think he pinched it."
Amanda huffed a sad laugh, shaking her head. She lifted her eyes up to the ceiling and wiped the tip of her finger under her eye. "Yeah, that's Eddie."
"He didn't know its value, just thought it would suit you." Sherlock was unusually gentle and he pushed the pin back towards Amanda now that his curiosity was satisfied. Emili's eyes lingered on the groove of the dragon's eye.
"Oh?" Amanda set her hands in her lap and looked up at him skeptically. "What's it worth, then?"
Sherlock smiled wider. He leaned in over the desk and said quietly, "Nine million pounds."
Amanda jumped up so quickly that her chair slid backwards and almost fell over. "Oh my God!" She shouted, her hands flying up to cover her mouth. Several people nearby slowed down or stopped what they were doing entirely to look over and see what the sudden commotion was. Sherlock chuckled while the secretary squealed. "Oh, my – nine million!"
She grabbed her hairpin before she took off running, picking her way across the carpet as quickly as she could in three-inch high heels, presumably to quit her job as a personal assistant-slash-secretary. Emili was impressed with her speed. As she kept going, totally forgetting their existence, the teen turned to look at her brother and started to smile.
"That was really nice of you," she told him admiringly. She didn't really like to encourage his ego, but his uncommon sociability and compassion deserved the reward.
Sherlock's smile had already started to fade, and he was reverting back to his normal temperament already. "I just told her what he died over," he stated dismissively, pulling his coat around himself warmly.
"Yeah," Em agreed, because it was technically true. "But you talked nicely, and used the compassionate tone, and you laughed." She fell into a quick gait to match his longer legs and nudged her elbow into his arm. "You were nice to her. Admit it."
"Never," Sherlock denied promptly, shaking his head adamantly. "I can't let the world start thinking I'm nice. I'm not nice. I'm a high-functioning sociopath, not nice." He grimaced like the positive words were leaving bad aftertastes in his mouth.
Emili wouldn't stop grinning. "Uh-huh," she said slyly, making sure he knew she wasn't buying it for a second.
Sherlock smiled at the floor. After a couple seconds without her saying anything, Sherlock offered his arm towards her while they walked. Em slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow and Sherlock slowed down just a little bit so that she didn't have to work as hard to keep up.
"Scrambled with bacon," Emili cheerily reported, prancing around her little kitchen with bare feet. "And toast with jam and peanut butter." The jars of both were already on the dining table, close to John but within reach of her own plate. She swiped her spatula under the eggs, cooked in a frying pan with chops of bacon bits, and split them onto two plates. "Last call, Sherlock," she sang.
"Last response," he answered in kind, slightly irritated and voice sharp. "No." Emili rolled her eyes and put two slices of toast on each plate for herself and John. "Digestion slows me down."
"Give it a while and I'm pretty sure starvation will, too," she muttered.
Sherlock huffed. "Dull."
"… Is what your brain will become if you never feed it."
Sherlock drew himself up indignantly, but Emili felt proud of herself for having gotten the last word. She sprinkled some cheese to melt on her still-hot eggs and carried both breakfasts over to the table. Sherlock wanted nothing to do with their food, yet he'd still come with John when she had invited them for breakfast. She'd gotten so caught up on sleep that her schedule was back on track, if a bit jumpy.
John rubbed his hands together. "This looks fantastic, Em." He picked up his fork and added a comment about how he was starving, looked pointedly at Sherlock, and then pretended not to have passively pushed the subject. He ate quickly – he was due in at the clinic for another shift in less than an hour.
Emili's apartment was sparsely decorated, but she liked how the windows on the back of the building let in so much light to her kitchen and living space when she left the curtains open. Between the sunlight and the warm glow of the overhead fixture, her apartment was bathed in a soft, welcoming light, creating a perfect atmosphere for a "family" breakfast. Sherlock in his dressing gown and Emili still in her fleece pajamas, John dressed for work, Sherlock reading the paper and the other two eating – they didn't look normal, but they were the closest Em had to family anymore, and the girl wouldn't say it out loud but she would never be able to fully express how much they meant to her, especially in moments like this when she would've depressed herself remembering Liza and her parents had she been left alone.
Scrambled eggs had always been one of Emili's favorite morning foods. She cleared hers off the plate first while they were still hot, with cheddar melted over top. Sherlock turned the page on his newspaper noisily and opened up another fold. The picture of Amanda on the front made Emili actually look at it closer, reading the headline of 'Who Wants to Be a Million-Hair.'
"Now that is just sad," she remarked, putting her fork down briefly to complain. They could have written almost anything, and they chose a bad pun. Even worse, the pun only made sense if the reader actually read the whole article and understood that it was a hairpin. "They should be ashamed."
John glanced up briefly, saw the article, and shook his head in disbelief. "I know," he commiserated, though it became evident they were appalled by different things. "Over a thousand years old and it's sitting on her bedside table every night."
"I believe she meant the pun, John." Sherlock's eyes kept moving while he read the pages facing him. The student wasn't entirely convinced he didn't just keep his eyes going to look impressive. "Van Coon didn't know why they were chasing him, he just thought it was a trinket."
The veteran snorted. "He should've just gotten her a lucky cat."
All three of them, as if on cue, looked up to Em's mantelpiece. The lucky cat that she'd bought in Chinatown had found its place on the righthand corner. Its little glass paw waved up and down steadily while the swirling colors inside looked like captured rivulets of wet paint. It made a noise, but it was such a quiet noise that Emili could only hear it if she held the cat to her ear.
Sherlock's eyes lingered on the collectible, but Emili got the feeling that his brain was actually somewhere much further away. She spread grape jam on her toast and nibbled distractedly. The Black Lotus were probably not going to come after them again. With Zhi Zhu dead and two of Shan's henchmen in custody, the Tong's inner circles were facing a serious blow. She hoped that the bad fortunes would discourage them from continuing their operations in London right away, and she couldn't really imagine Shan would look at the fallout and think trying again was a good plan.
Emili just wished she didn't have to worry about Shan at all – about the fact that the general knew her address, and had candid photographs of her somewhere. The leader had escaped, and although Dimmock put out feelers, nothing came up. The pink-haired girl didn't really expect anything to.
John sipped at his tea, looking across the table at his roommate thoughtfully. "You mind, don't you?"
"Hm?" Sherlock looked away from the cat and blinked once, almost like a cat. "What?"
"That Shan got away," Emili explicated for John, pretty sure they were both thinking the same thing. "You go off into your own little world every time you think about her." Sherlock got that concentrated expression and started ignoring the real world around him. It had happened several times in the last day alone. His sister had her fingers crossed that it would end soon.
"It's not enough that we just got her two henchmen?" John questioned, trying to helpfully remind his friend of the upside.
It was definitely a good thing that two of them had been apprehended, but the Tong was a large syndicate. Two was barely a dent. Emili just hoped that it was enough to send a message, and if General Shan was going to do anything useful, maybe it would be conveying that message. Though, as far as Emili knew, the two they'd caught were musclemen; replaceable.
Sherlock shook his head. Of course he wasn't satisfied with only catching two of them. They had cleared a major threat in London, but they had also exposed a much larger, broader issue that they didn't have the resources to tackle. "It must be a vast network, John, with thousands of operatives. We've barely scratched at the surface."
"You cracked the code, though," John optimistically reminded. He gave Emili a little encouraging gesture, seeing her realistically withdrawn expression. "Maybe Dimmock can track down all of them now that he knows it. What was the book, by the way?"
"London A to Z," Sherlock replied, reading the paper again. He set it out on the table and smoothed the creases with his hands. "A book is a gateway to other worlds, John, and there are millions of worlds they have to choose from."
"What does that even mean?" John exasperatedly asked of Emili.
"It means Shan can tell the others we know how they communicate," she told the doctor, sighing softly. "They've probably already got a new system, or a new book, at the very least. Do you think we can find the most recent graffiti and go through the same process? We got lucky this time as it was, after all that work with the books…"
Sherlock stiffly grumbled, "Luck had nothing to do with it."
Emili's appetite had waned considerably, but she knew it was more to do with the mood than with actual hunger and talked herself into finishing her second piece of toast. John had emptied his plate first and took it to the sink. He gave it a quick wash, loaded it into the dishwasher for her, and walked with his tea mug towards the nice windows, where he pulled back a curtain to watch.
Sherlock kept reading. Emili spared a look at her phone to make sure that John wasn't going to be late getting to work. After another minute or two, Emili finished her own breakfast and did the same as John in regards to her dishes.
"Em," the blond man said suddenly, sounding surprised. "Come look."
She turned her rinsed milk glass upside down and closed up the dishwasher, then went beside John at the window. The outside street was even brighter than she had expected it to be. A figure in baggy jeans and a black and red hoodie strutted up to a small electronic post on the street which issued parking permits. The swagger and confidence was almost disgusting.
Soon enough, Emili saw why it was important to John. The figure pushed back his hood and looked up and down the street before letting his messy, color-stained backpack roughly hit the pavement. It was Raz, Emili recognized in surprise, the graffiti artist who'd gotten them in trouble already. As they watched, he ripped open a compartment of his backpack and took out a spray can of paint. He gave it a good shake, looked over his shoulder right as a patrolling cop car passed by, and started to spray the nametag that had been on the piece John and Emili were arrested for.
He did it quickly without any art surrounding it, and he dropped his can and took off running with his backpack as soon as the police got what he was doing and turned on their flashing blue siren. Raz's signature didn't have any of his other trademarks of street art, but then, Emili suspected as he fled the police, making the art wasn't actually the point this time.
"Maybe you can wipe that ASBO," Emili suggested lightly as John let the curtains fall.
