The Adventures of Morrigan Holmes: No Cage for a Crow | The Death of a Swan
Coming 2019
The Death of a Swan
The Adventures of Morrigan Holmes
Volume 2
Sherlock Holmes has become legend, but his sister was lost to history.
Morrigan never meant to return home, but her hand is forced when she receives word that her sickly eldest brother, Sherrinford, has taken a turn for the worse. Nothing good could possibly come from a Holmes family reunion–not now, not after the events of last January. But family drama quickly turns dark as Horatio Swan, Sherrinford’s future brother-in-law, is found floating in the fish pond with Sherrinford’s hypodermic syringe shoved through his carotid artery.
From Chapter 1:
As the house came into view, I realised that I had expected the intervening months to make some difference. They had not. My stomach clenched and my pulse raced. The first wisps of evening mist felt very cold against my flushed face.
It was ridiculous. I had grown; I ought to be able to handle this.
Or at the very least, I ought to be able to own up to the embarrassment of returning home. But in the light of the low evening sun, all my reasons for running away in the first place seemed very distant. I could hardly recall why it had seemed necessary. In retrospect, it seemed impulsive and reckless. Well, it had been. I had been.
I had not had to explain my reasoning to Sherlock or Mycroft, not really. Both had pieced together my motivations on their own and let me know in simple and certain terms that I had acted foolishly. That had not been easy, but neither had it been intolerable. But sweet, sensitive, nervous Sherrinford would require from me a complete explanation. I would have to sit down opposite him in the study—or at his bedside, if he were still too weak to rise—and tell him exactly why I had gone, why I had let him fear me dead.
I was not certain I could bear it.
I was not certain I could bear to see him white and limp, prostrated by the nervous attack my disappearance had brought on. I had been told he might not recover, this time. I had been told they had not been sure they could safely return him to the country, and only made the attempt in the surety that the City’s air would kill him. That for a few days after the journey, he had been too exhausted to eat or take fluids, and they feared for his life.
My doing, my fault. My responsibility. And yet, there was nothing whatever I could do about it.