Iron Cast (34 page)

“Who shall hear of us

in the time to come?

Let him say there was

a burst of fragrance

from black branches.”

The shuddering stopped, and he breathed deeply and released. A rich, rushing sound. Corinne left him with a head full of blue skies and sunshine and went back to the open doorway. Gabriel was standing there, watching her with an expression she didn't understand.

“What?” she asked.

For a couple of seconds, he just kept staring. Then he shook his head. “Nothing,” he said.

He stepped aside to let her enter first, and Corinne went inside without looking back at Harry. She didn't want to think about the double-edged sword right now. There wasn't time.

Ada's solitude lasted only a few minutes before Dr. Knox returned. He blinked in confusion at the new placement of her chair but didn't address it. He took his seat again and flipped to a clean page in his notepad. Ada still couldn't reconcile his brisk, professional demeanor with the dank horror of their surroundings.

“Now,” he said, “I believe my files on you and Wells are sufficient, but there are some items missing from Sebastian Temple's. Tell me about his affliction.”

Ada stared at him, trying to fumble her way through her own confusion and weariness to a reply. “His affliction?” she echoed.

“His hemopathy,” Dr. Knox said with an impatient wave of his hand. “His talent. I don't know the slang you people use for it.”

Ada swallowed and shifted her stare to the floor. She didn't speak.

“Remember the rule, Ada,” Dr. Knox said, pulling a second iron coin from his pocket and setting it on the table. “I'm afraid I can't make any exceptions.”

Ada's stomach turned so violently that she thought she might be sick. She wished, for the fifteenth time in so many minutes, that Corinne were still beside her. Then she berated herself for wanting that. Corinne was free so that she could help Saint. It was the only way.

“We know about the Cast Iron's secret basement,” Dr. Knox said in response to her silence. “Agent Wilkey and Agent Pierce are on their way now to pick up Temple. There's nothing you can tell me that I won't find out for myself in a couple of hours. I just want to speed up the process. Now tell me about his affliction.”

Ada hesitated, unable to pull her eyes away from the iron coin. Such a simple, unobtrusive object to hold such a consuming threat of agony.

Surely there was nothing wrong with telling Knox things that were already common knowledge.

“He's an artist,” she said. “He can pull objects from his paintings.”

Dr. Knox's hand fluttered again. “Yes, yes, I know all that,” he said. “But I've been told that he can do more.”

“Who?” The question burst from her before she could think twice. “Who is telling you all these things?”

“That's not relevant,” Dr. Knox said. “Let's stay on task, shall we?”

Ada rested her head back against the wall, frustrated.

“I don't even know what you're talking about,” she said. “He can pull anything from a painting that will fit through the canvas. I've never seen him do anything else.”

“This is getting tiring,” Dr. Knox said, setting down his notepad and picking up the coin. “I would have expected as much from the Wells girl, but I was hoping
you
would be more sensible than to lie to me.”

“I'm not lying,” Ada said, unable to keep a tremor from her voice. She was trying to remain strong and silent and unaffected, but with Corinne gone, she felt like she was missing that half of herself. With Corinne gone, she couldn't pretend this was just a game to be won. It was so much more than that. So much worse. “I've never seen him do anything else, I swear.”

Dr. Knox tapped the edge of the coin on the table and regarded her with a crease between his eyebrows. Ada could hear her own heartbeat slamming against her chest. She was desperately relieved that she didn't know anything else. If she did, she knew she would tell him everything. That realization was an acrid taste in the back of her throat.

“All right,” Dr. Knox said at last. He set down the coin and put away his notepad. “I'll get the rest once Temple and Wells are here.”

He was getting up to leave, but Ada knew she had to at least try to find out more.

“Don't you think that the Wellses are going to notice when their daughter goes missing again?” she asked. She didn't even try to mute her panic. “Don't you think this will be the first place they'll look?”

The lightbulb flickered, casting Dr. Knox's thoughtful expression in and out of focus.

“Mr. Wells's intervention was a regrettable complication, but it won't make a difference,” he said. “When the law against hemopathic activity passed, I was assured by Councilman Turner that I would be given every consideration for my work here.”

“Ned Turner?” Ada knew that his embarrassment on the Harvard Bridge had driven the councilman to throw his full support behind the bill to outlaw hemopathy, and that he had been the chief reason it had passed, but she had never guessed his hatred for hemopaths would extend this far.

“I suggest you try to get some rest,” Dr. Knox said, opening the door. “We'll start the next round of experiments soon, and I'll need you in fighting form.”

Ada wanted to ask him how he expected her to get any rest in this hellhole, with steel around her wrists and the suffering on the other side of wall, but before she could open her mouth, the door had been shut and latched.

She was once again alone.

The basement of the Cast Iron was quiet and dark. Corinne hated seeing it like this. In the past there had always been a light burning
somewhere, even in the middle of the night. She maneuvered her way through the common room by touch. She managed to avoid the armchair but bashed her shin on the edge of the coffee table, rattling the glass bottles. She cursed right as the light came on.

“You okay?” Gabriel asked from the light switch. There was a hint of amusement in his voice that Corinne opted to ignore.

“Never better,” she said.

She went into Saint's room without knocking and was surprised to find the light on, bathing his paintings in a dingy yellow. Before she could speak, Saint's arms were around her in a fierce embrace.

“I thought you were dead,” he told her.

Corinne coughed into his shoulder, and he released her.

“Where were you? Why didn't you call?” And then, when he'd had a chance to take in her bedraggled state: “What happened to you?”

“There's not enough time for the long or the short version,” Corinne said. “We have to get out of here. The HPA is—”

When the door shut behind her, her first thought was that Gabriel had come into the room. She turned, but he wasn't there. There was a soft click, and her heart leapt into her throat before her mind had even registered what the sound was.

A key turning in the lock.

She tried the handle, because she didn't want to believe it, because she
couldn't
believe it.

“What's going on?” Saint asked behind her.

“Gabriel,” Corinne said, pressing her cheek against the wood. “What are you doing?”

There was a moment of quiet, a moment when she still had hope, but then his voice came through the door.

“I'm so sorry, Cor.”

Her disbelief was eclipsed almost instantly by a searing, blinding panic. She yanked at the handle, ignoring the blood coating her palm, and when that didn't work, she threw her weight into the door. It shuddered but didn't budge. Her breaths were stabbing pains in her chest. She couldn't stop thinking of that iron corridor, of the woman's screams echoing in her ears, and of Wilkey's sunny, stomach-turning smile.

You'll be back soon.

“They're going to take us both back there,” she cried into the unyielding wood. “Gabriel, the things they're doing to hemopaths—it's—you can't—please.”

“I don't have a choice.” His voice was softer now, barely audible over the pounding of her pulse.

“Gabriel,” she screamed, throwing her weight against the door again and again. “Gabriel!”

But there was no reply.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Corinne didn't give up her assault on the door until her shoulder ached so badly she was afraid she had broken something. She turned to find Saint kneeling on the floor, putting final touches on a large canvas that leaned against the opposite wall. It was the outside of the Mythic Theatre at night, the marquee glowing orange and red, the sidewalk dark and slick with recent rain.

“If you're not too busy, you might consider helping me escape our doom,” Corinne said.

Saint dabbed his brush on the palette. “Even if you did manage to knock down the door with a hundred and twenty pounds of raw obstinacy, how were you planning on dealing with Gabriel and his gun on the other side?”

He smudged the orange around the letter
M
to give it a bleary look in the misty air.

“I was leaning toward strangling him with my bare hands,” Corinne said, dropping onto Saint's cot. “I'm open to suggestions, though.”

“The door opens inward,” he said. “All you're doing is exhausting yourself.”

He was very matter-of-fact about it. His attention seemed to be mostly on his work. There were flecks of black paint in his auburn hair and a smudge of orange on his chin.

“So you just want to sit quietly and finish up your magnum opus until it's time for us to be dragged to the asylum?” Corinne asked.

Saint snorted. “It's hardly my magnum opus. At least I hope it's not.” He frowned at it, considering. “A little derivative of Van Gogh, actually, but it'll do the trick.”

“You mean trip up the HPA when they come through the door?”

Saint stood up, dusted off his trousers, and put the paintbrush into a cup. He sat down next to her on the cot and took her bleeding hand in his. He pulled a rag from his pocket and pressed it against her palm.

“I'm sorry about Gabriel,” he said. “Really.”

“He doesn't matter,” Corinne said.

But she couldn't find any conviction to inject in her words. There were voices outside the door. Footsteps. Corinne thought of Agents Pierce and Wilkey sauntering arrogantly through the life they had built, and her pulse roared in her ears. Saint jumped to his feet and faced her.

“Come here,” he said, offering her his hand.

“Why, Sebastian, are you going to propose?”

“You will literally be making sarcastic comments as they pour dirt in your grave, won't you?”

“Probably.” She took his hand and stood up, keeping the rag gripped in her right palm.

“I've never done this before,” Saint said. “Not with a person.” His eyes were bright in the dim light. She could see that he was anxious, but there was also excitement there.

“If you're thinking about kissing me,” Corinne said, “I'm not sure how to break this to you, but you're half in love with someone else, who happens to be a man.”

He blushed at that but otherwise ignored her words.

“If this doesn't work, I'm sorry,” he said.

“Saint, what the hell are you—”

He moved backward quickly, dragging her along. She saw that he was about to back straight into his wet painting and tried to pull him to a stop, but he kept tugging, until he was falling backward and Corinne was falling into him.

When she opened her eyes and rolled off him, she was lying on damp concrete. She looked up and saw the marquee lights of the Mythic Theatre, glaring red and orange.

“Saint,” she said, struggling to her feet. “Saint, what did you do?”

She turned in a circle. Her shoulder was aching in rhythm with her heartbeat, radiating through her fingertips, but she ignored it. This part of town was mostly dark at this time of night, but there was no denying that they were in front of the Mythic Theatre, in all its shabby grandeur.