ad novum ordinarium : the new ordinary

Chapter IV
Ad Novum Ordinarium

"You did text John, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"And he definitely received it."

Sherlock swivelled his head to regard her with piercing exasperation. He was reclined lengthways on the sofa, shoulders propped against up the arm, head resting on a cream and gold brocade cushion, previously staring up at the ceiling in a deep meditative thought. Scarlett was sitting atop the coffee table, legs crossed neatly and the heel of her hand underneath her chin- the pink suitcase rested next to her, split open like a cadaver on a mortuary slab, the silks and makeup and perfume contained within sifted through meticulously. Scarlett had found little more than what she had expected in the medley of items hastily cobbled together within: in the lingerie that was more air than ruby French lace, the inner pocket crammed with expensive cosmetics, the carefully selected change of clothes and well-worn romance novel, Scarlett had read Jennifer Wilson as thoroughly as though the woman herself were sat before her- a woman who was secretive, efficient, professional, had a healthy dose of pride in her appearance, and was just a little lonely.

Scarlett could tell with a single glance that Sherlock had noticed something more- something related more intimately to the woman's death than her life. However, whatever it was, he had said nothing aloud, and Scarlett was certain that the malleable, easily impressed ingénue version of herself she was still playing would have never noticed, so she mentioned nothing on the subject. Tedious and exhausting as the act was becoming, mask weakening and eroding, it was entirely too much of a challenge for Scarlett to refuse- she blamed John's influence when she was a child for making her so stubborn- and besides, she was not willing to reveal her hand to the consulting detective just yet.

She was still waiting a reply. Sherlock was gazing at her intently, his eagle-sharp frost-coloured eyes possessing more natural depth than most, staring into her with the same calculating interest that he had directed Jennifer Wilson's corpse. Perhaps he found Scarlett to be as much of a riddle as the series of suicides, she thought with amusement. Either way, Sherlock seemed to know the unsettling effect of meeting a person's eyes directly, in perfect, prolonged eye-contact- but Scarlett refused to look away, uncomfortable, the way that anyone else would have- the way that she probably should have.

Sherlock exhaled, and finally gave an indicative, languid flick of his fingers behind him. "Check, if you like. Phone's on the desk."

Scarlett hitched a single eyebrow.

"You're sure that's alright?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes emphatically, turning back towards the ceiling. "Yes. Now let me think."

Scarlett tapped a finger against the edge of the coffee table, hesitating. After a moment, she stood, stepping over to the desk, her stiff muscles protesting slightly. The onyx device was sat atop a file, next to the completed miniature Rubik's cube, trapping the card upon which Scarlet had copied down the victim's personal details neatly. Trying not to be intimidated by the QWERTY keypad- she was better with touch-screens, and in her opinion, a keyboard did not belong installed in a phone if you needed to such tiny buttons to achieve it- Scarlett reignited the screen and skimmed through the inbox, ignoring everything besides the messages to John's number. There were three in total, each sent within ninety seconds of each other.

Baker Street.
Come at once
if convenient.
SH

If inconvenient,
come anyway.
SH

Could be dangerous.
SH

Scarlett smiled to herself, equal parts amused by and envious of how easily Sherlock had gauged John. The thought, however, left an unexpectedly bitter taste in her mouth, reminding her starkly of her own failures in that area.

"Received," Scarlett announced. "He saw it about twenty minutes ago."

"He'll here before long,," Sherlock dragged out in a low murmuring tone, half his attention already immersed somewhere far beyond her reach- wherever geniuses went to think, Scarlett supposed. "We'll wait. Need to think, anyway."

Scarlett, despite wanting to, made no reply, unbuttoning and slithering out of her jacket. The satin lining slipped from her like water, leaving her in her dark-wash jeans, ankle boots and the tailored white blouse underneath; the sleeves were three-quarter length, her collar deeply dipped, risking a flash of the black lace and silver silk of her bra when she moved. Scarlett caught a glimpse of herself in the large mirror above the fireplace and pinched the neckline together with two fingers, annoyed, lamenting that she had left her safety pins in her bag. Straightening the hem of her blouse with a sharp tug, she glared at her own refection, resigned. Flesh rarely failed to spark a reaction- but it wasn't exactly her preferred method of extracting information about someone's character.

Then again, she was constructing a diverse portfolio in a single encounter. Sherlock Holmes made for a complex appraisal, even by someone who was accustomed to taking a bite out of the heart of anyone and everyone that she met.

Scarlett set the BlackBerry down on the desk and glanced over her shoulder at Sherlock. He had stripped off his scarf and coat the moment they had spilled into the flat, his blazer removed, leaving him only in a dress shirt of palest blue; the crisp fabric pulled taut across the breadth of his chest, black slacks elongating his legs, his form languorous and utterly at ease- leaving him looking, if Scarlett were honest with herself, as though he had stepped out of one of the less PG districts of her mind. His eyes were a shade of verdigris in the shadow of warmer light, dark hair tinted with the colour of autumn, musician's fingers steepled before his mouth in a languidly erudite pose.

"Scarlett?"

She jolted slightly, adjusting her expression despite the fact that Sherlock still wasn't looking at her. "Mm-hm?"

"Nicotine patches. The desk. They help me think."

Scarlett considered the request for a moment, before deciding that it was in-character for her to oblige. "Oh… ah…"

She pivoted on the toe of her boot to scan the desk, sweeping her fringe out of her eyes, spying a slightly crushed box underneath a navy-bound hardback. "Aha! Found them." Sliding it out from under the book's weight, miraculously without toppling the glass paperweight resting on is cover onto the floor, she turned back towards the sofa. "So, why are you so certain that John will come?"

"Oh, he's bound to. You're here. John cares too much about you not to ensure your safety personally, even if you are an adult and your exit was somewhat abrupt." Sherlock said simply.

Which was not entirely my fault, Scarlett felt like saying defensively. Partly, yes, but not entirely.

"Besides," Sherlock continued. "I suggested that it could be dangerous."

"Ah." Scarlett hummed comprehendingly. She was under no delusions about herself, or John: excess ordinary killed them, slowly but surely, like paralytic venom. The signs had been present for years- John had chosen to become an army trauma doctor, one of the most demanding, adrenaline-fuelled occupations on the face of the earth, and Scarlett had been fascinated with the criminal justice system since she was eleven years old. They were neither of them built for normality- perhaps it was why they got along so well.

"I think that telling John that something could be dangerous might be as effective as baiting me with evidence," Scarlett said meaningfully, stood at Sherlock's shoulder.

"Well, I assumed you wanted to see your first forensic investigation through to its end," Sherlock said coolly.

Scarlett let herself laugh. "About that. If I get arrested for tampering with police evidence," she warned him, holding the box just out of his reach for emphasis, "I will blame you until my dying breath."

Sherlock's eyes glinted like topaz as Scarlett dropped the box in his palm, unfazed, extracting a paper chain and tearing off a strip, tossing the box aside carelessly on the coffee table. Scarlett looked down at the suitcase. Her eyes snagged on the paperback cover of the romance novel once again.

"An unhappy marriage, a string of lovers, yet still she held tight to the thought of a passionate idealistic love." Scarlett said to herself softly, feeling a pang of sympathy. "That's… a little sad."

"Hm?"

"Non importa," she covered seamlessly, leaning forwards and closing the suitcase, fastening it shut with a rasp of tiny metal teeth. "Shall I put this aside?"

Sherlock made an incoherent sound of consent at the back of his throat. Dragging the suitcase from the table with a dull whirr of rubber-coated wheels, Scarlett slipped into the adjoining kitchen and deposited it on the closest chair, raking her fingers through her hair and vaguely debating pinning it up again. It was surprisingly warm in the flat, a wave of heat radiating from the fireplace, tongues of orange flame flickering in the hearth. Scarlett soundlessly moved the mantelpiece where her phone resting, black screen illuminated by the icon of a battery filling incessantly with blocks of solid green light, the cord of a borrowed charger trailing from it. Her battery had been drained alarmingly quickly by her flashlight app, leaving her with nothing but a brick of dead hardware at the exact moment she had tried to text John.

Scarlett stepped around the stylish black leather armchair and, stepping over the twisted wire, she switched on her phone to check her messages.

A thought struck her suddenly.

"Holmes." Scarlett set her phone back down on the mantel, swivelling with a slow pivot to face him. "Remind me. The victim's phone wasn't found at the crime scene, right?"

Sherlock unbuttoned his left sleeve cuff with a dextrous flick of his fingers, tugging it open. "No," he said. "Why do you ask?"

"It just seems off, I suppose," she mused, her footfalls softened by the rust-red carpet underfoot as she wandered around the living room, fingertips grazing each surface she passed absently. "We live in a digital age- most people have one device at least. Jennifer Wilson had a high-ranking job in media, not to mention the multiple lovers. A woman like that has a smartphone, and she does not forget to take it with her wherever she goes- picking it up before she walked out of the door would almost muscle memory. But it wasn't at the crime scene, and it wasn't in her suitcase- and she must have had a phone with her, because she didn't have a laptop or a tablet as an alternate. So, then? What happened to it?" Sherlock was watching her progress assiduously, saying nothing. "She died in that house, we can tell by her 'note', so that was the primary crime scene- she wasn't dumped there. Did she lose it beforehand? That would be the simplest explanation, but considering that she was murdered we probably shouldn't take anything for granted. It could have been stolen for a reason- maybe the murderer took-"

She halted abruptly, staring down at Sherlock. He gazed back at her, a gulf of space between them.

"What?" He said innocently.

"You already knew," Scarlett said tonelessly.

"Well, yes," he replied, as though it had been painfully obvious.

"You could have said you already figured it out!" She said, feigning dismay, pleased with the way the words emerged convincingly. Scarlett was aware that Sherlock was incomprehensibly intelligent; she was honestly no more surprised by the fact that he was several steps ahead of her than if John had identified the symptoms of influenza before her.

"I wanted to see if you would find your way to the answer yourself," Sherlock said simply. "And you did. See, I told you that you wouldn't be any worse than those morons down at Scotland Yard."

Scarlett folded her arms over her chest and glared out of the window. "So I'm guessing that the possibility that the killer has the phone has already crossed your mind," she said.

"It's a possibility. But then again, so is the phone simply being lost." He exhaled sharply. "How do feel about Italian?"

Scarlett was temporarily rendered speechless by the complete non-sequitur. "I assume you're referring to food."

"Mm. Hungry?"

Once again, Sherlock's tone was entirely too innocent for Scarlett's taste. She narrowed her eyes, injecting the traces of a smile into the look as an afterthought. "You're planning something," she said accusingly.

Sherlock smirked.

Finally, Scarlett gave a deliberately indifferent shrug. "Sure. Though I'm not really dressed for dinner," she added, glancing herself over and hooking her thumbs into her shallow jeans pockets. Her nail brushed something in her right hand pocket. Perplexed, she reached her index finger into the tight space, and extracted a flesh-warmed tube of brushed glass, black cap inscribed with gold lettering in delicate angular script: her favourite lip lacquer, a shade of red appropriately dubbed Reckless that was so valued in her arsenal of makeup- just because she didn't like wearing it regularly didn't mean that she did not appreciate its many advantages- that she kept it strictly for emergency use only. "Oh, wait. This will do. Give me a minute."

Scarlett moved in front on the cold hearth and leaned into the mirror, unscrewing the cap and drawing out the wand. Her hand precise and well-practiced, she slicked an immaculate layer of the blood-coloured lacquer onto the supple flesh of her mouth, tracing out the naturally-drawn edges of her lips, watching the vermillion colour stain, deepen and turn matte within thirty seconds.

Behind her reflection in the glass, she saw Sherlock's reflection as he gripped the crook of his arm with a slow, groaning exhalation, relaxing, hand flexing and clenching, three patches applied to his forearm.

Her eyes narrowed.

The sound of footsteps strumming on the staircase outside interrupted her thoughts. Scarlett turned, smoothing out her expression- John was stood in the open doorway, looking oddly collected, as though time had unravelled several years and reversed the damage done to him by the bullet extracted from his shoulder.

"Why didn't you text?" John demanded the moment he caught sight of Scarlett.

Scarlett closed her lip lacquer with a snap, and lifted her phone with her newly freed hand for him to see. "Phone died. Holmes let me borrow a charger." Chill, she nearly added defensively.

John softened, and gave a slight nod, moving into the flat. "Oh. Good, that's- I was just worried."

"I know," Scarlett said gently. Knowing that she was all he had, and he was all she had in return, she never wanted to worry him more than necessary. John stepped forwards, slipping the strap of her messenger bag off his right shoulder and offering it to her. "Oh-! Thank you," she took it with a grateful smile, setting it behind her by the armchair. "You're alright too, aren't you?"

John nodded again, brusquely, but with more grace than if anyone else had asked the question, and he turned to look at Sherlock. "What are you doing?"

"Nicotine patches," Scarlett supplied.

Sherlock's eyes opened slowly, and he peeled back his sleeve. "Helps me think. Impossible to sustain a smoking habit in London these days," he said pensively. "Bad news for brainwork."

Scarlett internally noted his habit of snapping his consonants at the back of his tongue every so often. The sound was pleasant, sharp and curt, and she decided that she liked it.

"Good news for breathing," John pointed out flippantly.

"Oh, breathing," Sherlock said with contempt. "Breathing's boring."

John stopped closed, halting at the left end of the coffee table. "Is that- three patches?" He asked incredulously.

"It's a three-patch problem," Sherlock murmured in a matter of fact tone, steepling his fingers again underneath his chin.

John glanced at Scarlett questioningly. She simply looked vaguely entertained, smoothing over the edge of her freshly applied lip lacquer with the pad of her thumb. However, John knew better than to take Scarlett purely at face value- she was an actress with haunting talent, who played a different role on a daily basis simply because she could. Occasionally, it worried John- as though he could lose the real Scarlett to a hollow mask one day, leaving him with a hollow facsimile, a pale shade of the sharp young woman he knew and adored with every bone in his body. But then she made a playful yet cutting comment about her peers as she strode in the door of their shared flat, brought him tea before he even realised he wanted it, lay sprawled in the middle of the floor to soak up a sun-trap, her chemistry notes spread before her, and she was back, more vivid than ever.

John leaned forwards marginally to glance out of the window onto the street warily, before speaking again. "Well?" Sherlock was motionless, a statue of serenity. "You asked me to come, so I'm assuming it's important."

There was another split second of silence- then Sherlock's eyes snapped open with a start. "Oh, yeah, of course. Can I borrow your phone?"

Scarlett perched on the arm of the coral-red armchair behind her and placed two fingers at her temple.

John paused. "My phone?"

"Don't want to use mine," Sherlock elaborated. "Always a chance it will be recognised, it's on the website."

"Mrs Hudson's got a phone," John said, a little testily.

"Yeah, she's downstairs. I tried shouting but she didn't hear."

"And Scarlett? She has a phone-"

"It's still charging."

"You can still use- I was the other side of London!" John interrupted his own digression, emitting low metaphysical waves of irritation.

"There was no hurry," Sherlock said with a slight shrug. Scarlett watched the exchange with interest, rather like how most people would watch television. If John had been genuinely indignant, Scarlett knew he would have demanded that they both leave without preamble.

Instead, she watched with a flicker of satisfaction as he reached into the pocket of his black suede jacket, and held his mobile phone out.

"Here."

Sherlock, without moving any more than was strictly necessary, lifted his palm expectantly, eyes closed. With a slight scowl, John forcefully placed the phone directly in his hand.

Smoothly slipping the acquired device between his palms, Sherlock returned to his previous position without another word. John shook his head minutely in disbelief, and moved across the living room to where Scarlett was hovering delicately on the armchair, the sole of one boot grazing the carpet. He looked Scarlett over, instinctively searching for any trace of damage, and halted when he reached her mouth. "New lipstick?" John inquired.

Scarlett smiled. "Just one I barely use. I was feeling a little underdressed."

John, distracted enough not to notice the meaning embroidered into the words, glanced between her and Sherlock. "So what's this about- the case?"

"Her case…" Sherlock murmured softly.

"Her case?" John echoed.

"Yes, her suitcase, obviously." Sherlock reiterated impatiently. "The murderer took her suitcase, first big mistake…"

"Okay, he took her case," John said evenly; Scarlett could detect interest forming in the storm-blue of his eyes, watching it solidify like precipitate in a glass vial of chemical solution, "so?"

"It's no use, there's no other way, we'll have to risk it," Sherlock muttered. John's eyebrows contracted into a shallow frown. "On my desk- there's a number, I want you to send a text," Sherlock unfolded his hands, one arm resting across his waist as the other rose to proffer John's phone between his fingers.

John gave a tight smile, blinking rapidly, a hint of annoyance seeping the surface of his calm exterior. "You bought me here… to send a text?"

"Text, yes, the number, on my desk."

His jaw working furiously, John strode across the room and snapped his phone up once again. Seething, he paused and stepped over to the window, staring out of the cold panes of glass into the deepening darkness outside.

"Something wrong, John?" Scarlett asked conversationally. Sherlock looked up at the sound of her voice.

Still scanning the street below, John's reply was directed at the man still sprawled on the sofa. "Just met a friend of yours."

"A friend?" Sherlock asked with audible surprise.

"An enemy," John corrected.

"Oh," Sherlock said, his tone lightening amiably. "Which one?"

John merely stared at him blankly.

"You have more than one?" Scarlett inquired casually, crossing her legs neatly; she was balanced on the arm of the chair, her hands pressed either side of her hips, stabilising her centre of gravity on the curved edge of the arm.

"Over thirty at the last count, though I'm sure there's more out there," Sherlock said, equally blasé. Scarlett couldn't help but bite her lip with a brilliant smile, eyes closing briefly.

"Well, he's your archenemy, according to him- do people have archenemies?"

Sherlock's expression suddenly turned dark, voice quiet and head turning fully to observe the military doctor.

"Did he offer you money to spy on me?"

Scarlett tensed imperceptibly.

"Yes," John said carefully.

"Did you take it?"

"No."

"Pity, we could have split the fee. Think it through next time," Sherlock chided. John, rather than look annoyed this time, simply took it in his stride with a flat smile.

"Who is he?"

"The most dangerous man you've ever met, and not my problem right now," Sherlock breathed out in a single exhalation, before repeating firmly, "On my desk, the number."

John turned to the desk, driven by sheer curiosity, and picked up the card, sliding his phone open and creating a new message. "Jennifer Wilson- that was- hang on, wasn't that the dead woman's-?" John started.

"Yes, that's not important. Enter the number," Sherlock said, his tone severely bored. John's phone beeped into the ensuing quiet as he copied the number into the phone, throwing Scarlett a look that demanded answers; Scarlett returned it with a purposefully unconvincing look of confusion, in case Sherlock was watching. "Are you doing it?"

"Yes," John said shortly.

"Have you done it?"

"Ye- hang on!"

Scarlett trembled with silent laughter.

"These words exactly," Sherlock dictated slowly, eyes opening to pierce the ceiling above his head, suddenly seething with a newfound, contagious energy. "What happened at Lauriston Gardens? I must have blacked out. Twenty-two Northumberland Street. Please come," he concluded with the shadow of a satisfied smile softening his sculpted features.

"You blacked out?" John asked, tapping the message into the phone.

"What? No- no!" Sherlock vaulted off the sofa with one swift motion, taking the shortest route from his seat- one that happened to involve walking over the top of the coffee table with a single step, which Scarlett was beginning to suspect was regularly used as a seat, examination table, part of the carpet and essentially anything but an actual coffee table- to where Scarlett had left the suitcase. "Type and send it. Quickly."

Scarlett stood, unplugging her phone from the charger and snapping off the power at the mains. At forty-eight per cent capacity, she predicted that it should have enough battery life to last the rest of the night, so long as she was economic and didn't make use of the more energy-devouring applications installed. Sherlock strode back into the room, carrying the suitcase easily on one hand, and took a seat in the armchair in front of Scarlett, dragging the chair set at the desk with him and using it as an improvised table.

"Have you sent it?"

"What's the address?"

"Twenty-two Northumberland Street, hurry up!" Sherlock commanded imperiously.

Scarlett leaned against the sleek leather back of the armchair and hovered over Sherlock's shoulder, watching him unzip the case, threads of her hair slipping forwards to brush against the his high, angular cheekbone. Scarlett lingered to gage his reaction, but only for a moment before deciding that she was playing her hand a little unfairly, sweeping the strands behind the shell of her ear.

Little did she know that, at that precise moment, Sherlock was attempting to ignore the annoyingly enticing scent of her perfume, the sweetness of summer fruits with notes of honeysuckle and citrus an unexpectedly appealing blend.

John finished sending the text and his attention turned back to Sherlock- and the item in front of him. "That's… that's the pink lady's case, that's Jennifer Wilson's case."

"Of course," Scarlett affirmed. "Unless someone coincidentally tossed a fully-packed pink suitcase into a skip in London on the very same night that an identical case went missing from a murder scene. But I think that would be a bit convoluted even by my standards."

John surveyed the open miniature suitcase uncertainly. After a moment of tense silence, Sherlock rolled his eyes.

"Oh, perhaps I should mention, I didn't kill her."

"I never said you did," John pointed out mildly.

"Why not? Given the text I just had you send and the fact that I have her case, it's a perfectly logical assumption," Sherlock churned out rapidly, eyebrows raised.

"Do people assume that you're a murderer on a regular basis?" Scarlett asked with honest interest, gazing at the back of Sherlock's head, his dark chocolate curls still artfully mussed.

Sherlock twitched his head towards her, a faint echo of a playful grin at his mouth. "Now and again, yes," he said, bracing against the armrests. Scarlett stepped back as Sherlock relocated himself with a neat jump, sitting on the backrest, dress shoes pressing into the seat and his elbows resting on his parted knees, elegant marble fingers laced together against his mouth.

"Okay…" John said slowly, absorbing the comment before taking the empty seat opposite Sherlock, sinking into the well-worn depths. "How did you get this?"

"By looking," Sherlock said succinctly.

"Where?"

"The killer must have driven her to Lauriston Gardens- he could only keep her case by accident if it was in the car," Sherlock explained. "Nobody could be seen with this case without drawing attention to themselves, particularly a man, which is statistically more likely, Scarlett."

"I maintain that it is a reasonable assumption based on available data, not a certainty," Scarlett allowed herself to say smoothly, ignoring John's bemused look.

Sherlock almost smirked. "Well, either way, the killer obviously felt compelled to get rid of it the moment he noticed he still had it- wouldn't have taken him more than five minutes to realise his mistake. Scarlett and I checked every backstreet wide enough for a car five minutes from Lauriston Gardens, and anywhere you could dispose of a bulky object without being observed."

"It took us about three quarters of an hour," Scarlett said, "but we found it. Not long, I suppose, relatively speaking."

"Pink," John repeated. "You got all that because you realised that the case had to be pink?"

"Well, it had to be pink, obviously." Sherlock said.

"Why didn't I think of that?" John muttered sarcastically.

"Because you're an idiot," Sherlock stated offhandedly. John's head shot up, and Sherlock waved a hand glibly. "No, no, no, don't be like that, practically everyone is."

"Some would say your standards are skewed," Scarlett commented dryly. She met her cousin's gaze and John gave her a disbelieving look- but underneath it, Scarlett sensed the strong undercurrent of interest that was keeping John in the flat.

John was too much like her: too stubborn to refuse a challenge.

"Well, the two of you aren't doing too terribly by comparison," Sherlock conceded thoughtfully, before tilting his clasped hands forwards, pointing at the case with his index fingers, cocked like a gun. "Now look. Do you see what's missing?"

"From the case? How could I?" John said flatly.

Sherlock's eyes lit up, genuinely enjoying himself, as though he had finally found someone clever enough to play his favourite game with. "Her phone. Where's her mobile phone? There was no phone on the body, there was no phone in the case, we know that she had one- that's her number there you've just texted."

"Maybe she left it at home," John suggested.

"Unlikely, John," Scarlett demurred as Sherlock seated himself properly again. "Like most attached adulterers, she was probably careful enough not to get caught. She would keep her phone close out of sheer paranoia."

"Well, then-" John's eyebrows contracted. "Why did I just send that text?"

Scarlett expected Sherlock to explain his thinking in a storm of deductions. Instead, he paused deliberately. "Well, the question is, where is her phone now?"

"She could have lost it."

"Yes," Sherlock conceded, "or…"

The pieces snapping into place behind John's eyes were almost audible. "The murderer- you think the murderer has her phone?"

"Maybe she left it when she left her case," Sherlock continued, and Scarlett suddenly began to recognise the subtle coaxing, his tugging at John's intellect to think alongside him. "Maybe he took it from her for some reason. Either way- the balance of probability is the murderer has her phone-"

"Sorry," John half-interrupted, realisation dawning. "What are we doing- did I just text a murderer? What good will that do?"

The soft trill of a ringtone cut across him. John and Scarlett stared down at John's phone, lit up with a blank caller identification screen, the number withheld. Sherlock watched triumphantly.

"A few hours after his last victim, and now he receives a text that can only be from her," Sherlock said lowly, irises glinting, elated, from underneath his lashes. "If somebody had just found that phone, they would just ignore a text like that. But the murderer…"

John's phone fell ominously silent.

"Would panic," Sherlock concluded, snapping the case shut and rising to his feet abruptly, snatching his blazer up from the back of his desk chair and slipping it on.

John's surprise thawed after a moment. "Have you told the police?" He asked urgently, tucking his phone into his pocket.

"Four people are dead," Sherlock said briskly, buttoning his blazer and adjusting it over his shoulders with a raised eyebrow. "There isn't time to call the police."

"Then why are you talking to Scarlett and me?!" John asked incredulously.

Sherlock glanced mournfully at the void on the mantle. "Mrs Hudson took my skull."

"So we're filling in for you skull," Scarlett stated, unimpressed.

"Relax, you're both doing fine," he assured them, plucking his coat from the hook of the back of the front door and donning it with a single swoop of dark fabric. "Well?"

"Well what?" John said, exasperated.

"Well- you could stay here, watch telly," Sherlock said with tangible derision, straightening his collar, turned up against his throat.

"What, you want us to come with you?"

"I like company when I go out, and I think better when I talk aloud," Sherlock said conversationally, unravelling his cashmere scarf. "The skull just attracts attention."

Scarlett watch John smile inexorably at that.

"Problem?" Sherlock asked with a wry smirk.

"Yeah- Sergeant Donovan."

Sherlock's good mood dulled instantly. "What about her?"

"She said," John replied simply, testing something, "you get off on this. You enjoy this."

Sherlock laughed softly, the look he gave John telling him that they were both enjoying this just as much as he was. "And I said dangerous, and here you are." His eyes flashed in Scarlett's direction. "And as for Scarlett- I hardly need to say it, do I?"

It was a clever little taunt- the verbal insinuation of the gesture of an index finger, crooked in sly invitation, crafted magnetism and a sliver of seduction all wrapped up together like gleaming gift. Scarlett was by no means weak, but a part of her not only saw the pragmatic benefit in succumbing to the call, but wanted to. Come and play with me, she could practically hear his voice beckoning wickedly. I can promise that you'll never be bored again.

Sherlock turned and exited swiftly, and Scarlett was left feeling oddly lightheaded. You just had to bump into Mike Stamford in the park, John, she wanted to rail at him furiously. You just had to meet Sherlock Holmes and become fascinated with him to the point where you'd consider sharing living space with him and therefore make me need to meet him. And then he just had to turn out to be a genius, gorgeous, consulting detective with a complete lack of regard for social etiquette.

She rose sharply, resolved, and picked up her jacket, pulling it on and flicking her long blonde hair out from where it was trapped between her body and coat with a sweep of her arm.

"You're not going are you?" Her cousin inquired incredulously.

"Get up, John," Scarlett said plainly, slipping her phone into her pocket.

For a moment, John simply stared at her as though she had completely lost her mind, watching her button her jacket and comb her hair out with her fingers.

Then he was grappling with his cane, shoving himself to his feet with a scowl that didn't reach his eyes.

"Damn it."

Scarlett smiled at him brilliantly, and they walked out over the flat's threshold- a first, conscious, and irreversible step forwards.