We checked into the hotel room under the false names we used for the poker club and were shown up to our room. I opened the door.

"Wow."

It was gorgeous. It was…I had only seen these kinds of hotel rooms in brochures. The furniture was Victorian, self indulgent, and overbearing. For some reason Mycroft had decided we needed a suite for nothing more than an overnight stay-there was a kitchen, with granite countertops and a dishwasher. There was a chandelierin the sitting room. It matched the curtains. Everything matched the curtains, which somehow managed to look pretentious. They made me feel like I should have dressed nicer and probably shouldn't be dripping all over the rug. Even the complementary chocolate on the coffee table looked expensive.

Sherlock was unimpressed. He took a seat at the gleaming marble desk where they had already put his laptop. "Show off," he muttered, opening it.

I sat directly behind him on the couch, so I could see his expression in the mirror above the desk. He looked up, so he could see mine. Indirect eye contact. It worked out nicely.

"Don't mind me," he said sardonically as I gaped at my surroundings, "Feel free to bask in the glorious excess."

"He knows we're staying for only one night, right?"

"Obviously. Look at this." He tossed me an envelope that had been sitting on top of his laptop. Bloody hell, even the envelope looked exorbitant. I tore it open.

"'Try to contain your excitement and keep the room in one piece, please,'" I read, trying not to laugh. "He said my gun is in the safe, and your violin is under the table."

"I expect it is."

I put the envelope down and stared outside. Rain still lashed at the windows, giving the room an eerie blue glow, like a haunted mansion out of a horror movie.

"What do you think they're planning?" I asked tentatively.

"In all probability they're looking for us right now," he said, with a matter-of-fact air. "Getting closer by the minute."

"Right," I said quietly, looking down at my hands clasped in my lap. Completely steady. I glanced at his reflection in the mirror. If he hadn't been sitting down already I would say he was about to collapse-the dark circles under his eyes were more pronounced, his face gaunt, his pallor more evident than usual. It was a little alarming.

"Are you okay?

"Why shouldn't I be?" The weariness he said it with belied his words, not to mention that I knew he was lying anyway. Sherlock will cheerfully work himself to death if it means he solves the case; now, lives were at stake as well. He looked miserable.

"I'm ordering room service."

"Good for you."

"You have to eat something, Sherlock."

"I did eat. Six hours ago. I had a biscuit. It was stale."

"Something substantial." Then I had an idea.

"Table salt," I said.

His reflection looked up at the mirror and cocked an eyebrow. "What?"

"Table salt. What's the chemical formula for it?"

"…NaCl. Why, is my sodium intake too high, doctor?"

"How about glucose?"

He seemed to be relaxing slightly now. "You're insulting my intelligence. C6H12O6."

"Ethyl alcohol?"

We went back and forth like this until I ran out of chemical formulas. He seemed genuinely at ease by then.

"All right," he said, rubbing his hands together, as a flash of lightning ignited the room. "My turn. Moran and his associates are resorting to riskier and riskier methods. Now both of us have disappeared. They can only conclude that we've realized this and are going into hiding."

"Right. So they'll be on the watch for anything we try to pull."

"Yes, exactly. They will analyze anything we do to its furthest possible conclusion. We can use that."

There was a momentary pause in the conversation as we realized, somewhat awkwardly, that we had been talking for twenty minutes now without the faintest trace of hostility.

"Right," I said. "So…how, exactly?"

He leaned back in his chair. "I don't know, I haven't finished talking yet. What are they expecting?"

"I don't know."

"Yes you do. Think."

"Well…we couldn't try something at the flat, they'd be expecting that."

His eyebrows knitted together, then Sherlock's eyes lit up. "Yes. Good."

"What do you mean, 'good'?"

He didn't respond, being much too busy spinning in slow, hypnotic circles. Apparently he had just realized the swivel chair swiveled. "Sherlock? Are you listening to me?"

"Mmm…no, not really." He abruptly launched himself out of the chair and at the complimentary notepad. He didn't look up for ten minutes.

I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew the doorbell rang, prompting me to fall out of the sofa, flail around, and knock the lamp off the table and into the trash can, where I had put Mycroft's message.

"Room service," said a muffled voice.

"No one's home!" shouted Sherlock in the general direction of the door. I threw a pillow at him and answered it instead.

"Here," I said, handing him a steaming mug of tea and a forlorn little slice of cake on a plate. "Eat it or I take your notepad."

He ate it grudgingly-a small victory for me, but a victory nonetheless. "Any progress?"

"Data, data, data, can't make bricks without clay," he muttered. "Well, technically you can, but that's not really the point. The point-" He threw the notepad at the door in frustration-"is that Anderson hasn't emailed me yet with information and so far all I have is theories. That's not going to fix anything."

Not going to fix anything. He had meant that, hadn't he? He wasn't worried solely about solving the case anymore.

"Anderson's wife is going to die, isn't she," I said quietly. I knew I wasn't making anything better. It was my job to know the right thing to say in these situations. I couldn't help it, though-he had been right, in the taxi. I was scared, scared to death that someone was going to get hurt and it would be my fault.

He turned around in the chair, leaned forward, elbows perched on his knees. He looked sinister, the chair suddenly seeming several times too tall for his already gaunt figure.

"John. Listen. Everyone dies. You should know this already. Sometimes there is nothing anyone can do."

"Not this time!"

"You're being ridiculous," he said irritably. I didn't mind. He looked exhausted, even more so by the harsh light of his laptop.

"You look tired," he said, after a short interlude of busied clicking. "Lie down, go to sleep. I need you to be focused."

"For what?"

"I'm not sure yet. Just…give me a few hours. I can have something together by six."

He shut the Mac and took his violin out of his case. "I'm going to play a little. You mind?"

"No, not at all."

He started to play. I recognized it, surprisingly enough-most of what he usually played was either improvisation or classical music.

Who Wants to Live Forever. Queen. Appropriately…heartrending. It was melancholy and beautiful and, in light of the current situation, a little overwhelming.

I turned over on the sofa, trying to hide the fact that my eyes were filling up. The music paused.

"You alright?"

"Yeah," I lied, throat tightening, blinking hard. How could he tell? "Fine. Keep playing."

He resumed. Somewhere along the way I suppose I drifted off.

Who waits forever anyway…