Jay was in Year 11 the first time it happened.
A few weeks had passed since the trip to London, and there was a nervous energy in the air as he stepped through the school’s front doors. A low, subdued mutter filled the halls; everyone had their phones out, gathered into small knots of hushed conversation—all of them looking at the same thing.
Jay spotted Samira a little way down the corridor; she sat next to him in their Maths class, and they knew each other well enough for Jay to sidle up and ask, “What’s going on?”
“It’s Mr. Schofield,” Samira replied, showing him the article on her phone. “Some kind of gang thing.”
Jay nodded and hurried away, scanning faces among the students. He and Paige hadn’t really spoken since London, but when he spotted her down near the end of the hallway—head down, as if desperate to avoid notice—she looked right at him. Her eyes were wide, her face ashen.
She knew. And she was terrified of him.
Jay woke with a certainty that something was wrong.
It was the middle of the night; his bedroom was dark, curtains drawn, only a few slivers of light from the streets outside peeking through. Beneath the heavy patter of rain against the windows came the sound of someone moving around the flat.
Jay eased the covers back and rolled off the bed, moving as quietly as he could and wishing—not for the first time—that the loft had an actual bedroom door he could close. He couldn’t exactly call 999, what with the dubiously-legal equipment and stolen 18th-century painting in here. Moran had apparently hidden a few knives around the place, but he’d refused to tell Jay where they were; Moran was of the opinion that the best way to get stabbed was to fight with a knife you weren’t trained to use.
There was a low scraping noise from the far end of the flat as the intruder collided with something in the dark—probably the coffee table.
Jay snagged his phone off the nightstand. Moran had some networking event tonight, but by this hour he was probably back at his own flat—and Chelsea was twenty minutes’ drive away. Jay would have to hide or hold out for at least that long. Tapping frantically at the screen, he pulled up Moran’s number in his contacts and hit the call button.
At the other end of the loft, a phone began to ring.
Jay frowned down at his phone for a moment, then peered around the dividing wall between his bedroom and the rest of the flat. All he could see of the intruder was their silhouette in the dark, tall and intimidating and oddly unresponsive to the phone going off in their pocket. Jay stood and edged through the doorway, reaching for the light switch.
The lights snapped on and revealed Sebastian Moran, his suit drenched through to the skin, pale and shivering and staring at Jay in utter confusion.
Sebastian couldn’t remember what the reception was actually for; there had been so many since the election that they’d all started to blur together. The social circles of the new government broadly overlapped with the old, but an influx of new faces in key positions necessitated a flurry of networking as the country’s private agencies, contractors, and consultants scrambled to either maintain their established positions or make a grab for better prospects.
While he’d built up a decent client base over the past three years or so, word of mouth would only get Sebastian so far. Events like this were, unfortunately, a professional necessity. He’d decided against dragging Jay along; he’d get bored immediately, and a bored Jay was too destructive a force to set loose on the nation’s halls of power. Sebastian couldn’t help missing him anyway.
So far, the evening had yielded at least one result: Rory Franklin, CEO of a software firm which was being contracted to warehouse and manage several government databases. The contract required certain security standards to be met, which was where Sebastian could be of service.
Franklin seemed particularly enamoured with Sebastian’s military background, eagerly taking the card Sebastian handed him. Then someone was calling him away, and Sebastian took the opportunity to get another drink.
He’d just sidled up to the bar when he felt a light tap on his shoulder. He turned—
And was standing in a flat. Jay’s flat.
He shivered; his clothes were soaked through, clinging to his skin. Rain pattered against the windows, but it hadn’t been raining when he arrived at the party.
Jay stood in the doorway to his bedroom, dressed for bed and staring at Sebastian with an alarmed, perplexed look.
“Jay?” Sebastian’s voice was a low croak.
Jay blinked. “What are you doing here?”
“I—I don’t know.” Sebastian’s heart thumped hard against his ribs, panic rising up his throat. “Jay, I don’t know how I got here.” Another shiver wracked his frame, clacking his teeth together; his arms moved without volition to wrap around himself, struggling to warm himself.
Jay moved immediately, hurrying across the flat to where Sebastian stood. “Come on,” he said, and ushered Sebastian toward the bathroom.
Sebastian went where he was led, stumbling to a halt next to the bathtub. His clothes dripped onto the tile.
“Take that off,” Jay said, gesturing to Sebastian’s drenched suit.
The order made something uneasy twist in Sebastian’s guts, and that didn’t make any sense. He’d been naked in front of Jay before—many times. He quite enjoyed it, usually.
Sebastian did his best to shake off the feeling and shrugged awkwardly out of his jacket; the wet fabric clung to the shirt beneath, turning the simple gesture into a prolonged struggle until he finally managed to get the jacket off and drop it over the side of the tub. He tugged his tie off and tried to undo his collar, but his cold, numb fingers fumbled uselessly at the buttons.
“Here,” Jay murmured, stepping in close and pushing Sebastian’s hands aside to unbutton the collar himself. He moved swiftly along Sebastian’s shirt-front, popping the rest of the buttons open, then continued downward to undo Sebastian’s belt.
Sebastian’s heart leapt into his throat; there was a sick lurch in the pit of his stomach. His hands clamped tight around Jay’s wrists, holding them still.
Jay froze in Sebastian’s grip, eyes searching his face. “Okay,” he said gently, releasing his hold on Sebastian’s belt. “It’s okay.”
With a shaky breath, Sebastian pried his fingers off Jay’s wrists.
Jay stepped away and said, “I’ll be right back,” leaving Sebastian to finish undressing himself as he exited the bathroom.
Sebastian managed to strip the rest of his clothes off, leaving them along the edge of the tub as he scrubbed a towel over his damp skin and dripping hair. He wrapped the towel around his waist as Jay returned, carrying an old t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants that Sebastian had left here. Sebastian dressed quickly, relief washing over him at the feeling of worn, soft fabric against his skin.
“Go sit down.” Jay stepped out of the bathroom again, headed for the kitchen.
Sebastian staggered back out into the loft, sitting stiffly on Jay’s awful sofa. Jay put the kettle on to boil while he washed a few mugs; he’d been letting the dishes pile up. It was so reassuringly normal, and a smile tugged briefly at Sebastian’s lips.
Finally Jay made his way over to the sofa, a mug in each hand. He handed one to Sebastian and sat next to him.
Sebastian curled forward around the mug, breathing in the steam. He couldn’t stop shivering. Couldn’t seem to get warm.
Jay’s fingers tapped restlessly against his own mug. “What happened?”
“Don’t know,” Sebastian mumbled. “I was at the party, and then I was here.”
Jay’s eyes narrowed. “Were you drugged?”
Disoriented as Sebastian was, he didn’t feel drugged. There was no odd taste in his mouth, no grogginess … he checked his watch, which was a bit waterlogged but still seemed to be working. It was about 2:00 in the morning; nothing he could have been slipped would wear off that quickly. “I don’t think so.”
“All right,” Jay said, thinking, “have you ever lost time like this before?”
The moment the question left Jay’s mouth, Sebastian felt like an idiot. “Once,” he said. “At Eton.”
Jay didn’t look pleased to hear that. He already knew the broad strokes of what had happened to Sebastian at the boarding schools he’d attended as a child; Sebastian hadn’t gone into detail, and Jay hadn’t asked him. Now, though, Sebastian couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out—he’d never been able to hide anything from Jay, and he didn’t want to.
“There was this older boy,” he said. “Collier. His family was new money. Nobody wanted anything to do with him.” He swallowed around the lump in his throat. “At least, until he started picking on little fairy Moran.”
At first, it was nothing new. The purpose of public school was to make boys into men, and that meant catching any hint of emotion, sentiment, softness, and brutalising it away. And Sebastian was everything they hated. Being gay was one thing—boys got each other off all the time—but being a faggot was another.
Officially, corporal punishment had been abolished by the time Sebastian was sent away to school. Unofficially, those among the students who’d enjoyed certain privileges for centuries were slow to abandon tradition. Because that’s what it was: tradition. Ritual. Just the way things were.
Collier, though …
Sebastian remembered the laughter more than anything else. The more Collier hurt him, the more the rest of them egged him on. “It got worse, and worse, and—and one day he—we were in the changing rooms and he—”
He didn’t dare say it out loud. When he called it what it was, everyone always looked so disgusted with him. Like he’d polluted the air with the word “rape.” He couldn’t bear it if Jay looked at him like that; he kept his eyes on his mug.
“The masters must’ve known,” Sebastian went on, voice hollow. “Everyone knew. But they didn’t do anything, and he was … there, every day. I couldn’t get away from him. And then after a few days I … blacked out, or something. Wound up at the hospital a few miles away. No idea how I got there.”
That was where Sebastian’s mother had found him. The school hadn’t told her he was missing, at first—then they claimed he must have run away.
“Mum pulled me out. Collier was in upper sixth, he was finishing in a few months, so she just … kept me home, until he was gone. Brought in tutors so I wouldn’t fall behind.” Sebastian shrugged. “Never did figure out what she told my father, but I’m sure it wasn’t the truth.”
Jay was quiet for a moment, as if waiting for more, but Sebastian had run out of things to say.
“And you haven’t seen him since?”
Sebastian shook his head. “We went to different universities. Then I heard he’d moved to the States.”
Jay made a thoughtful noise and set his mug on the coffee table, reaching for his phone. Sebastian finally dared to look at him; he was digging up the phone number of a hotel.
It was the hotel where the reception had been held.
“This Collier,” Jay said. “What was his full name?”
“Jason,” Sebastian replied, after a moment’s thought. The name felt unfamiliar in his mouth; he’d known it, but nobody ever used given names at school. “Jason Collier.”
Jay shuffled back along the sofa until he was resting against one arm and hit the “call” button. “Hi,” he said after a few seconds, shifting abruptly into a bright, friendly phone voice. “I work in Jason Collier’s office, and I’ve been trying to get ahold of him—is he still at the party?”
Something dark flickered across Jay’s face, and Sebastian immediately knew what the answer had to be.
“No, no, it’s fine,” Jay said, the upbeat pitch of his voice a sharp contrast to his expression. “I’ll talk to him tomorrow. Thank you.” He jabbed the “end call” button with his thumb and tossed the phone back onto the coffee table.
“Someone tapped me on the shoulder,” Sebastian said. Everything past that point was still a blank, but if he’d turned around to see his face, up close …
“You blacked out again,” Jay surmised, still curled up at the other end of the sofa. “And you came here—probably walked, considering the state of you when you got here.”
Sebastian’s tea was going cold; he set it on the coffee table and stood. “I’m sorry,” he said, because it felt like the thing to say—he’d barged into Jay’s flat in the middle of the night, frightened him, told him things he couldn’t have wanted to hear … “I’ll go now, I shouldn’t have—”
Jay stared up at him from the sofa. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“I’ll get a cab.” Sebastian had felt the weight of his phone in his suit jacket when he took it off, although he was fairly certain his wallet was in his coat. Which was, he realised with a soft groan, still in the coat check at the hotel.
Jay rolled forward along the sofa and caught the fabric of Sebastian’s sweatpants, holding tight. “Stay. Please.”
He wasn’t just being polite; Jay had the manners of a stray cat at the best of times. There was worry in his eyes, and weary frustration, but no disgust at all.
Relief shuddered through Sebastian’s body. He nodded.
Jay stood as well; he was so close, and Sebastian swayed a little into the heat of him even as something inside shrank back at the thought of being touched. Jay seemed to notice, but said, simply, “Do you think you can sleep?”
Sebastian ached all over, pain pooling in his feet and ankles and the small of his back, exhausted down to the bone. He nodded again.
“Okay,” Jay said, leading the way to the bedroom. “Come on.”
Jay’s covers were a mess; he’d kicked them off in a hurry, probably when he’d heard Sebastian come in. The bed was still warm as Sebastian fell into it; he sank eagerly into that warmth, soaking it up. He wanted to tell Jay it was fine, that he could forget everything that had happened tonight, that nothing would have to change—but sleep dragged him down before he could.
Jay carefully eased into bed next to Sebastian and pulled the covers over them both. Sebastian stirred a little, but didn’t wake; even after everything he’d revealed tonight, he still trusted Jay enough to fall asleep in his bed.
With any luck, he was sleeping too deeply to dream. Jay didn’t want to imagine the sort of nightmares an experience like this might dredge up.
Jay had heard it said that people looked younger when they slept, but Sebastian didn’t look any younger. If anything, he looked older; the expressive charm that animated his face fell away, leaving only the lines around his eyes, the creases in his forehead, the scars, the few white hairs coming in around his temples.
The marks that just three and a half decades had left on him.
Jay would burn London to the ground if it meant nobody could hurt Sebastian ever again.
Jay woke up alone. Alarmed, he rolled quickly out of bed and hurried from the bedroom; Sebastian was nowhere to be seen, but the bathroom door was open and Jay could hear movement from inside.
Sebastian stood by the bathtub, holding up his suit jacket and taking stock of the damage with a resigned expression. A night crumpled over the edge of the tub had done it no favours; it was still damp, hopelessly wrinkled, and smelled slightly of mildew. Sebastian himself was wearing jeans and an old jumper he’d left at the loft; he glanced up, noting Jay’s presence, and said, “I suppose I’ll have to swing round the hotel to get my coat back.”
His smile was forced, strained—the smile of a man desperate to pretend everything was back to normal.
“I’ve got a bag you can use,” Jay said, wandering out to the kitchen. He had no shortage of reusable bags, largely because he kept forgetting them at home and had to buy new ones whenever he went shopping.
When he returned, Sebastian had folded the damp jacket, shirt, and trousers as neatly as he could. He took the bag with a grateful nod and tucked his probably-ruined clothes inside. “I should get going.”
Something in Jay rebelled at the idea, but he had no excuses left to keep Sebastian here. “All right,” he said instead.
Sebastian made for the door, and Jay followed; he reached out to catch Sebastian’s wrist before thinking better of it, aborting the motion. Unexpected touch probably wasn’t a good idea right now.
“You can text me,” he said instead. “If … if you need anything.”
Sebastian gave him another of those strained smiles, and then he stepped through the door, closing it behind him.
Jay let out a harsh breath and strode to the computer desk.
A search of the name “Jason Collier” turned up a few possibilities, but there was only one who had any reason to be at the reception last night. Jay fired up the portal that served as his back door into Different Computing’s phone backup archive; sure enough, he found an account matching the name. A quick check through the photo gallery, cross-referenced with the UK Parliament website, confirmed it was the right one.
Swiftly and methodically, Jay picked through every detail of Jason Collier’s life.
A natural consequence of John Clay’s chosen career—i.e. thief—was that he tended to sleep late. At around 11:00 in the morning, just as he was contemplating whether to get out of bed, his phone pinged with a text:
Hyde park, noon
He could tell without looking that it was from Moriarty. Nobody else he knew texted like a World War I telegraph operator.
Clay managed to get to the park by about noon-ish, but it wasn’t exactly a small place. As he wandered down through the Victoria Gate entrance, he sent off an answering text:
Where are you?
Italian gardens
Not too far, then. Clay wandered down the path toward the gardens until he spotted Moriarty standing by the central fountain. He was alone—a rarity, these days, now that he had Moran following him around. Clay sidled up next to him; the park wasn’t as busy this late in the year, but it wasn’t so empty that two blokes having a chat would draw any notice.
Moriarty didn’t bother to say hello; instead, he asked, “What do you know about Jason Collier?”
“He’s one of the new MPs, isn’t he?” Clay paused to flip through his mental catalogue; he didn’t know the man personally, but he’d heard his name a few times. “Moved back this year from the States. He’s supposed to have been some kind of business consultant over there. Married to Kara Blanchard, maybe the most powerful woman in tech right now.” Judging by the expression on Moriarty’s face, none of this was new information. “You didn’t ask me here just so I could tell you what you already know.”
“I didn’t,” Moriarty confirmed. “I need you to break into Collier’s house.”
Clay mulled it over. Collier was in Parliament, sure, but he wasn’t a frontbencher; he wouldn’t have a protection detail following him around. Blanchard had almost certainly footed the bill for some decent security around the house, but there were ways around that.
“Collier and Blanchard have a kid, don’t they?” Clay asked. “A baby?”
Moriarty nodded.
“All right,” Clay said. “We’ll need an evening where they’re both out of the house. Security system won’t be on while the nanny’s watching the baby.”
“They’ll both be at a party tonight,” Jay reported.
Tight timeline, but not unworkable. Although Clay did have one last question: “Isn’t this the sort of thing you usually get Moran to do?”
Moriarty’s face was utterly blank. “Moran’s not available.”
Chapter 2 of “A Reckoning in Whitehall” will be published on March 2. To get it delivered directly to your inbox, subscribe here:
… And if that’s too long to wait, you can also get the completed story as an ebook.
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