A Study in Charlotte

All this is to say that, when I looked up into Tom’s mirror, I was at the precise angle to see that there was a gap between my own mirror and the wall. A small gap. A centimeter.

In that centimeter’s worth of dark, I could see the glimmer of a reflection.

Something was back there.

I walked over, got down on my knees, made blinkers with my hands to block the overhead light. Still I couldn’t make out what was behind it. After straightening a wire hanger from my closet, I rattled it in the gap in an attempt to dislodge whatever was back there. I hit on nothing, even when I ran it from top to bottom. When I looked again, I could still see the glimmer of light reflecting off something.

Was it a lens?

I took a deep breath and tried to gather my thoughts. On the bed, my phone buzzed, and I seized it, thinking it might be Holmes. It would be a relief. We’d both been horrible to each other, we’d both been keyed up, and defeated, and lost—I couldn’t imagine what being lost felt like for someone as whip-smart as Charlotte Holmes—and I refused to believe that she’d meant what she’d said. It had to be her. She’d come right over. Everything would be fine.

But the text was from my mother, asking if I’d forgotten our weekly call. She’d try again later tonight, she said, and signed it with kisses.

I looked back into the gap. The light was still shining.

Someone had been in here. Someone had put this thing in my room.

In a sudden, towering wave of rage, I jerked the desk away from the wall, scattering my textbooks in the process. Standing in the space I’d cleared, I braced both my hands against the mirror and pulled. It refused to give. I planted my feet, trying to remember what Coach Q had taught us about taking down a bigger opponent, and pulled, harder. Harder. There was a faint cracking sound—probably its bolts beginning to pull from the plaster—but it still refused to move. Panting, I stared at my reflection. My eyes were all pupil, my face sweaty and red. I looked how I did at the end of a rugby match. Like a Neanderthal.

Fine. I’d be a Neanderthal. With a grunt, I picked up my chemistry text from the desk and slammed it into the mirror.

It didn’t give on the first try, or the second. Around the tenth, I stopped counting and instead watched the webbed crack grow from the middle of the mirror to its edges. Outside, in the hall, someone yelled What the hell is going on, but I ignored them; it wasn’t hard to. The mirror may have been sturdily constructed, but like all things made of glass, it eventually gave. There was a great loud splintering crack as it broke, and I spun away, throwing the textbook up to shield my face. It hadn’t shattered out so much as down, but some pieces had flown out and stuck into the flesh of my hands. I was in such a fury that I couldn’t feel them there.

Because when I turned to look, I saw a small, circular lens, the size of my thumbnail, with a cord that ran into a wireless device. It’d been adhered to the wall with a bit of tape.

But how could the camera capture anything through the mirror? I bent and gingerly picked up one of its larger pieces—I’m not sure why I bothered; my hands were already bleeding—and turned it front to back. Both sides appeared to be glass. A two-way mirror.

What came next I can only describe as a fugue state. I’d understood what it was to lose myself in the past, when I’d been in a rage, but this time the feeling was coupled with crippling fear and violation. Someone had seen me get dressed. Someone had seen me sleep. And though I couldn’t find a microphone on the camera, I was sure that this someone had also recorded every word I’d said.

So there had to be an audio recording device, as well.

I tore the books off my shelf, dumped out my desk drawers, went through every pocket of every pair of trousers hanging in my closet. I took my Swiss Army knife and cut open my mattress, not caring about the fine I’d have to pay, and searched every inch of it with my bleeding fingers. I got on my hands and knees and pulled up the carpet in our room inch by inch, using the knife to help me along. I cut open the curtains, then looked down the hollow rod that held them up. And I adamantly ignored the noise in the hall that had now increased to a fever pitch—a fist was pounding on the door, and a voice that sounded like Mrs. Dunham’s shouted Jamie, Jamie, I know you’re in there, but I’d already shoved Tom’s desk chair under the doorknob and thrown the deadbolt. It was easy to turn the volume for the outside world all the way down, what with the screaming panic in my head.

When all was said and done, I’d come up with two electronic bugs, each the size and shape of my thumbnail. One had been affixed to the wall-facing side of my headboard. The other I found on the bottom of my desk chair. I held them in my cupped hands, striping them with blood. Their data must have been sent to the transmitter wirelessly, because they weren’t attached to anything with any cords that I could see. I set them down on my desk in a neat line, along with the camera, which I’d yanked the cord from. Then I threw them into a pillowcase. If they were still transmitting, the spy on the other end would be looking into a black screen.

I heard a buzzing sound. Was it from blood loss? Not unlikely. My room looked as if some howling, wounded beast had ripped it up with its claws. Everything I owned was on the floor, a good deal of it tracked red from my hands, and I hadn’t even searched through Tom’s things yet. I’d been able to control myself that much, to wait until he returned, but there was still the problem of the bugs. What to do with them? I thought, woozily, that I should call the detective. I should call Holmes. Come to think of it, there was still shouting in the hall. Was I imagining it?