Iron Cast (10 page)

His soft eyes and the freckles across his pale face always made him look much younger than seventeen. Normally that was something Corinne teased him about, but now it just made her feel worse. She drove her fingernails into her palms until they stung. She knew she owed it to Ada to say what needed to be said.

“You've always been a good friend to me,” she said at last.

“But?”

“But Ada is much more than that, and I saw where she spent the past two weeks.”

Saint buried his head in his hands. “I didn't know what else to do,” he murmured.

“I believe you,” Corinne said. “But I'll always stand by Ada. You know that.”

He didn't reply. Corinne sat beside him for a few more minutes, thinking more about the night with the cookies, how those three children never once suspected what the ensuing years would bring. Finally she shook herself free from the memories. She patted Saint on the back and left without saying anything more.

In Johnny's office, Ada dropped the money on his desk. She refused the seat he offered her. Johnny counted the cash and began dividing it bill by bill. The only sound in the room was the shuffle of paper.
The smell of cloves and pine that had been so comforting the night before was suffocating now. Finally Ada couldn't stand the silence.

“What did Saint tell you happened?” she asked.

“He told me everything,” Johnny replied, still counting.

“Then when will he be gone?”

Johnny stopped counting. He folded his hands and looked at her.

“He's not going anywhere, Ada. He's one of us. You know that.”

She shook her head. “He sold me out to save his skin. He's not one of us, not anymore.”

Two weeks ago, Ada had run a simple—if slightly illegal—errand for Johnny. With Corinne home for Christmas break, Saint went as the lookout. Ada knew he wasn't quite comfortable on the street, but he had played the role before without incident. No one could expect to live at the Cast Iron without paying their dues, even Saint—whose father had served in the same regiment as Johnny.

When things went awry, she'd kept her mouth shut at the police station. It never once occurred to her to flip on Saint, or to doubt that Johnny would bail them out before they were sent to Haversham. It also never occurred to her that Saint would fold under their bluff, that he would betray her for the chance to walk free.

Johnny closed his eyes briefly. He always had such a calmness about him. Ada could never figure out where that kind of serenity came from.

“I can't turn him out,” he said.

Ada stared at him, incredulous. “Johnny, loyalty is the only thing that's ever mattered to you.”

“I've got bigger concerns than that right now. If Prohibition passes next week, the Cast Iron's days are numbered.” His tone had a grim edge to it.

“Do you really think it will pass?” Ada asked.

The movement to ban the sale of alcohol had been quietly fuming for as long as she could remember. Alcohol was a huge part of the Cast Iron's income, especially now that they could host hemopath shows only every couple of weeks. If alcohol was banned too, then the club would be sunk for good.

Johnny shrugged. He pulled out his pocketknife and slit open an envelope on his desk. Whatever was inside must have been unimportant, because he tossed it away. He rammed the tip of the knife into the wood and looked at her.

“Saint isn't going anywhere. I'm not asking you to forgive him, or to even speak to him. But he's staying.” Johnny glanced down at the bills stacked on his desk. With a single finger, he straightened an errant note until the pile was perfectly even. “I've got debts to pay. Same as anyone else.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

He sat erect in his chair, and the expression that had crept across his face vanished, replaced by his usual genial smile.

“I'll have your cut for you in a couple of hours.”

He turned his attention back to the money, and Ada realized she had been dismissed. She left and shut the door quietly behind her. The anger was still there, a tiny, persistent flame, but Ada was too tired to fan it right now. Corinne would make sure Saint kept his distance, but there wasn't much else to be done. Whatever his reasons, Johnny had made his decision.

Saint had broken the number one rule of the Cast Iron: trust. But Ada knew better than to break the second, which was to never cross Johnny Dervish.

That evening, Ada took advantage of the empty common room to tend to her violin. The instrument had been a gift from Johnny a
couple of months after she'd first found her way to the Cast Iron. A sympathetic doctor had whispered Johnny Dervish's name to Ada's parents, who were wretched with worry when their daughter suddenly fell ill, racked with pain from the inside out. Hemopath manifestation was a gruesome process, usually lasting at least a week, and Ada's blood had turned when she was relatively young—only ten. She had blocked out most of that horrific time and remembered only how sweet the iron-free relief of the Cast Iron was. Johnny had offered to let her stay there as long as she needed, and her parents had relented, because they didn't know what else to do. Young hemopaths needed years to adjust to the city's plethora of iron sources, and the ones who couldn't find or make an iron-free refuge either fled to the countryside, committed themselves at Haversham, or turned to more grisly, permanent means of escape.

Ada had always intended to move back home, once she could cope with the ever-present ache of the outside world, but somehow it had never happened. The closest she'd ever come was when Corinne had first moved in—Ada had decided she would rather live in an iron box than deal with the petulant, demanding, blue-blooded twit Johnny was making her share a room with. Sometimes she thought about how different her life would have been if she had followed through with the decision, but in four years she had never once wished she had.

Ada slid the hair of her violin bow across a block of rosin, coating it to the right density. Then she systematically tuned her violin, tweaking the pegs until every note sang with perfect pitch. Once she was satisfied, she sat on the edge of the couch and sailed through the first few measures of “Amazing Grace.” It was one of the songs her father had taught her. When she was small, he'd bought her a cheap violin from a pawn shop. It had a seam down the back and a bridge
that never seemed to stay in place, but none of that had mattered to Ada. She practiced every spare moment she had. Her father called her a natural, but that was generously ignoring the late nights she spent drilling herself over and over again, no doubt driving every resident of their run-down tenement insane.

The violin Johnny had given her was seamless, with superior sound and strings that were exquisitely responsive to her touch. Even away from her father's tutelage, she had excelled, improving her technique and learning new ones from the violinists Johnny paid for shows. The first time she had played an emotion, it had been an accident. Johnny had explained the nature of hemopathy to her, of course, and she knew that somewhere inside her lurked the ability to make people feel anything she wanted them to feel. But it had still come as a surprise when a sonata she was playing made Danny start to cry, right in the middle of pouring a drink.

She'd started practicing emotions with the same vigor as she had practiced her father's lessons, and soon Johnny was letting her play with the house band. The shows had been bigger back then, before the law. There were usually several bands in one night and performances four or five times a week. Ada had loved the unbridled thrill of it, the knowledge that she was giving people exactly what they wanted, what they paid for. Back then it had all been so simple.

Ada had played through nearly to the end of “Amazing Grace” without thinking about it when Corinne bounded down the stairs.

“There you are,” she said. She collapsed on the couch beside Ada in exaggerated relief. “Danny just made me help him mop the club, and it was terrible. Why don't you ever have to help?”

“I help Danny all the time,” Ada said, lowering her violin. “You're the one who's always conveniently absent. Serves you right.”

Corinne rolled her eyes at her. “I can't help that I'm better at
being unproductive than you.” She twisted to face Ada, crossing her legs on the couch.

“Let's play a few rounds. We haven't in ages.”

“You may have forgotten, but I've been indisposed for the past couple of weeks.”

Corinne poked her on the knee. “That means you're rusty. You need the practice.”

Ada wrinkled her nose in consideration but shook her head.

“I was going to straighten up our room and go to bed early tonight.”

“That is possibly the saddest thing I've ever heard.” Corinne grabbed her upper arm with both hands. “Please? I'm bored, Ada.”

She dragged Ada's name into a whine, giving her best puppy eyes, which Ada never had the heart to tell her weren't persuasive in the least.

“Fine,” Ada said. “One round, and only because you're so pathetic.”

“I'll take it,” Corinne replied, scooting back so that Ada had room to pull up her legs and mirror Corinne's posture. They sat face-to-face, Ada still holding her violin.

“You start,” Ada said. “Someplace warm.”

Corinne nodded, her face screwed up in concentration. Then she began to speak in measured rhythm.

“I found you and I lost you,

All on a gleaming day.

The day was filled with sunshine,

And the land was full of May.”

Ada released a breath and let herself succumb to the illusion. It was less like opening her mind and more like jumping into a rushing
current. The room began to change around her. The ratty armchairs and cluttered coffee table dissolved like burning paper, crumbling into nothing. Suddenly they were sitting on a beach. Ada could feel the coarse sand tickling her legs and taste the salt in the air. The sun was scorching overhead, raising a sweat on her arms. She looked out over the cerulean sea and watched the white-capped waves. She could hear their rise and fall, a steady pulse beneath the cawing birds.

When Corinne created illusions, she usually only gave the broadest strokes, letting her audience's mind fill in the details. She had told Ada once it was easier that way, and she still had control over the illusion as a whole. But with more effort, Corinne could draw every detail from her own mind, shaping it with precision so that every aspect was her own design.

Corinne grinned at her, and Ada realized it was her turn. She raised her violin and let the bow hover over the strings for a few seconds while she racked her mind for the perfect melody. Then she started to play, letting the emotion carry through the whole room, since there was no one but Corinne to feel it. Corinne softened as she let it wash over her.

Ada began with simple joy, then built in layers around it. Love. Wistfulness. The tiniest hint of fear at the inevitability of such joy fading.

Ada couldn't read people's minds to know their memories, but she could harmonize emotions to call forth specific types of recollections. Usually she just knew whether the listener would be remembering their childhood or thinking of a past love or mourning a loss. With Corinne it was different, because she knew so many of her memories so well. Ada had tailored her song to evoke the Wellses' summer vacations on Martha's Vineyard when Corinne was a child.

She could tell by Corinne's expression—nostalgia chased by irritation—
that she had succeeded. Corinne didn't like being reminded of her family.

“Not fair,” Corinne told her.

Ada smiled and kept playing, but she slid into a new melody, drawing inspiration from the ocean that still stretched beyond the horizon. She summoned only emotions this time, no accompanying memories. Freedom. Power. A boundless, howling rage.

It was Corinne's turn.

Corinne closed her eyes as the emotions filled her. She licked her lips and began to recite.

“Oh, a hidden power is in my breast,

A power that none can fathom;

I call the tides from seas of rest,

They rise, they fall, at my behest. . . .”

As she spoke, the tide began to rise. The sun fell behind roiling gray clouds, and the ocean boiled with the oncoming storm. Ada blinked, and they were no longer on the beach but on the edge of a towering cliff. The wind beat around them, pelting icy rain. A crash of thunder shook the rocky ground, reverberating in her chest. Then came the lightning, a jagged gash so bright that it seared the insides of Ada's eyelids.

Corinne was grinning again, looking far too pleased with herself.

“Lightning comes before thunder,” Ada said.

Corinne scowled at her, and the illusion dropped. They were suddenly back in the common room, knee to knee on the couch. The rain that had been dripping down Ada's face just a moment earlier had vanished without a trace.

“Best two out of three?” Corinne asked.

Ada laughed. Years ago, when they had first started this game, it had been a way to practice, with Corinne holding the illusions of everyday objects in her hands and Ada coaxing the simplest emotions from her violin. The harder they had pushed each other, the more complex the exercise had become, until it was less like practice and more like a conversation—a call and response with an intimacy that was lacking during onstage performances.

“I told you, I'm going to bed early,” Ada said.

“Wait.” Corinne grabbed her wrist before she could get up. “Don't you want to talk about Saint?”

The feeling of contentment Ada had managed to cultivate shattered. She slid her legs off the couch and started wiping down her violin with the felt cloth she kept in her case.

“He's a coward and a snitch,” Ada said. “What else is there to talk about?”

“He's been our friend for years.”

“That's what I thought too, but friends don't push your head onto the chopping block to save their own neck.” She shoved her violin into the case, a little more roughly than she intended.