The Invisible Amateur Read Online Free PDF Page B

hotel owner and
put in the name of the hotel she was staying at and Mycroft Holmes.
As she scrolled through a few results that didn't tell her much she
spotted a familiar name.
    The Diogenes Club
was where she'd interrupted him and it had also been founded by
Mycroft Holmes. It was only a little more information, but after
flicking through several pages of description about the club and
what members had done through the ages, she found an image of the
great man.
    She sat back and
stared, wide-eyed. It was a painting and old, but it was so similar
it could have been him. A chill ran through her and made her
shiver. If Myron was Mycroft, then the Holmes brothers had found a
way to make themselves ageless. A thought that her mind struggled
to accept.
    The next twenty
minutes were spent in a daze as she tried to search generically
enough that no one would be able to guess what she was looking for,
but specific enough the results gave her more information. Little
more of interest came up. There was no family tree, and Holmes was
a common enough surname that without specifying one of the family
members she was overloaded with irrelevant information.
    When her time ran
out, Amelia decided to leave and go back to the hotel. She could
think about what it might mean and how they might have achieved a
supernatural status from somewhere less out in the open. At the
moment, she still didn't know for sure if Myron had summoned her to
London for her safety or to learn from him.
    With a sigh she
pulled on her coat, paid her bill and stepped back out into the
cold January air. It was dark now and even colder than before, so
she huddled down into her coat, trying to keep her neck warm.
    As she rounded the
next corner she bumped straight into a guy coming the other way.
She bounced off him but he caught her and held her upright until
she was steady again. Only then did she look up.
    “Sebastian!” She
immediately tried to think of some way to explain her presence
without giving away her secret arrangement with Myron, but her
brain fogged up in response.
    “Amelia, you're in
London. Where are you staying?”
    “The Raddison,”
she replied, not willing to volunteer anything else.
    “Ah, so brother of
mine has brought you here.”
    “You know about
that?” Relief made her exhale and relax the muscles in her
shoulders. Hiding the agreement from one of the most observant men
in the world wasn't an easy task.
    “Yes. I talked to
Myron about taking an interest in you a few weeks ago. Do you have
plans this evening? I know a particularly good seafood restaurant
not too far away.”
    She confirmed she
had no plans and allowed Sebastian to offer her his arm. A few
seconds later she walked right back past the internet café she'd
been sat in, and she thanked the heavens that she'd left when she
had. It wouldn't have been easy to explain to him what she was
doing in there, and now she was standing beside him and listening
to him talk about a mysterious problem he'd solved, she couldn't
believe what she'd been thinking of. Sebastian and Myron were flesh
and blood, just like her. Eccentric, highly intelligent flesh and
blood, but mortal.
    Pleased to have
some company in a new place, Amelia shook off her silly concerns
and laughed at his description of his latest case. There was a very
amusing conversation with the father when Sebastian had figured out
he was hiding the evidence of his family's enforced diet by feeding
the almost empty food wrappers to the dog.
    “Was the dog all
right in the end?” she asked, aware he was being a little callous
in his description of the events.
    “Yes. It's on a
special diet and being monitored by some vet, but it will live, if
that's what you mean.” Sebastian waved his hands in the air as if
the detail was a fly buzzing around his mind and bothering him.
    They walked into
the restaurant and were taken straight to a cosy table in the
packed building. The waiter greeted Sebastian by name, and less
than a minute