Iron Cast (36 page)

“What you saw was my husband trying to pay them to leave our boys alone,” Eva said. “But the HPA wouldn't take the money. If I had to guess, I'd say they have a better arrangement with someone else.”

“The bulls?”

“Johnny Dervish.”

Eva said it like a challenge. She was facing Corinne head-on. No more pouting smiles or tinkling laughs. Eva Carson was all business.

“Why would Johnny have anything to do with the HPA?” Corinne asked.

Eva shrugged without uncrossing her arms. “Maybe he was bargaining to keep the HPA away from the Cast Iron. Or maybe he knew that when enough of our crew disappeared, it would be Luke's head on the chopping block. Or maybe he just needed the money.”

“I'm going to get to the bottom of this,” Corinne said. “If you help me, then Luke will be able to come home.”

For a moment she thought Eva was going to laugh. Instead, she let out a long sigh.

“Luke was a good husband,” Eva said. “But he's done all he can for me, and he knows it. The Red Cat is my club.”

“Cold,” Madeline said.

Eva shrugged again. “He knew the deal when we got married,”
she said. “He's got enough money for a new life. Maybe one day he'll make his way back here. Until then, I've got bigger fish to fry.”

She pushed between Corinne and Madeline to open the stage door.

“That's it?” Corinne asked. “No burly men with guns to take us for a ride?”

Eva did laugh this time. It was different than Corinne remembered—rich and full instead of twittering.

“I meant it when I said I liked you, Corinne. Stay out of my way, and I'll stay out of yours. And you'd better take care of Charlie.”

The door clicked shut behind her, and Corinne exchanged a glance with Madeline.

“I changed my mind about being an actress,” Madeline said. “I want to be her when I grow up.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Ada wasn't sure if hours or minutes had passed since Dr. Knox left. Her headache had faded—or rather, it had melted into her bloodstream so that her body held nothing but pain. The nausea came in waves, and she only barely managed to keep the contents of her stomach where they belonged.

She wondered if the agents had arrived at the Cast Iron yet, and if Corinne had made it in time. She wondered how badly it would hurt to die, and if her mother would ever know what had happened to her.

She wondered who at the Cast Iron had betrayed them.

She couldn't do anything but wonder, and that was worse than the steel on her skin.

When the latch on the door slid open, Ada struggled to sit up straight, to effect some semblance of fortitude, but in the end she was too exhausted. She slouched back down as the door opened to admit Agent Wilkey, who looked much more composed than when she'd last seen him. He smiled at her and picked up the metal gag from the table.

“Dr. Knox asked me to prep you for the second phase,” he said almost casually. “He doesn't trust the nurses down here. Weak stomachs, you know.”

Ada had thought that she was well past panic by now, but it reared in her throat again. Before she could attempt a desperate melody, Wilkey had fastened the gag in her mouth. Her headache flared again with renewed vigor, draining the little strength she
had left. Wilkey half dragged, half carried her into the other room, past the rows of beds with white sheets covering the atrocities that had been committed underneath. The woman hooked up to the machine wasn't screaming anymore. Her breath came in crackling, irregular gasps. Someone had pulled a sheet over the man in the bed beside her.
Failed subjects,
Dr. Knox had called them.

At the far end of the room, near the door to the corridor, there was a wooden chair with dangling leather straps beside a table of metal instruments that blurred in Ada's vision. She realized with distant mortification that she was crying, but she couldn't stop the welling tears. Wilkey uncuffed her hands and pushed her into the chair.

She tried to rise, more from instinct than from any real thought of escape, but her arms and legs felt disconnected from her body. She was nothing but her pulsing headache and her hot tears. Without her violin or her voice, what power did she have?

Wilkey worked quickly, buckling the straps across her chest, arms, and ankles. Ada tried to remember the devastation she had wreaked on him, but it didn't make her feel any better. She had never wanted to use her talent to hurt people. She wanted to be like Charlie, playing hope and joy into places where there had been none before. Now she would never get the chance.

The thought of Charlie softened her headache somewhat but made the tears flow faster. He had told her that he loved her, and she'd given him nothing in return. Another chance lost.

Wilkey pulled something off the table, cradling it with both hands. It was a brass cagelike apparatus, a dizzying conglomeration of rods, screws, and knobs.

“I'll confess I'm not entirely sure how this thing works,” Wilkey said conversationally. “Dr. Knox tells me that once it's tightened
over your head, it will guide in those metal spikes I mentioned earlier. Of course, we'll have to drill the holes in your skull first.”

He smiled at her again, an almost cherubic expression in his doughy features.

Ada fought back her surging nausea and broke from his gaze. The door to the corridor opened, and Ada clamped her fingers around the arms of the chair, expecting Dr. Knox. Would they give her anesthesia first? Maybe she would just go to sleep and never wake up.

When she first saw Johnny, she thought they must have already injected her with something. Johnny Dervish was dead. He couldn't be striding through Haversham's basement with the same confidence he'd once had in the Cast Iron.

When he spoke, his voice was so real that Ada realized she must be dead too.

“Wilkey, what the hell is going on here?” he asked, taking in the sight of Ada with a disturbed frown.

“You're not supposed to be down here,” Wilkey replied. He set the apparatus back on the table with the utmost care.

“Dr. Knox owes me money.” Johnny glanced at Ada. “And an explanation as to why he's taking my people.”

“You're dead, remember?” Wilkey said. “They aren't your people anymore. And none of the other hemos you've given us survived the tests.”

“That's not my problem. I delivered on my end of the deal, and I want my money. Where's Knox?”

“Busy.”

Ada's head was pounding with every word they spoke. She thought about Stuart Delaney and the other Red Cat musicians Charlie said had gone missing. Her heart was stuttering as she
looked down the length of the room at all the silent beds. Johnny had been selling hemos to the HPA? He'd been selling them into this hell?

She was misunderstanding. She had to be. She coughed around the gag, desperate to speak.

Johnny leaned over and loosened the straps behind her head, ignoring Wilkey's objections. The gag fell into her lap, and she sucked in a breath.

“Johnny”—but that was all she could manage. Her eyes were burning with tears again.

“Are you okay?” he asked her. “Don't worry. I'm going to get you out of here.”

Wilkey laughed shortly. “As amusing as your selective compassion is, Dervish, you're not taking her anywhere. Dr. Knox has big plans for this one, and the other two you've been keeping all to yourself.”

“They're just kids,” Johnny snapped.

“So were a lot of the others,” Wilkey said, gesturing toward the long line of beds. “And none of them were half as potent as this one. Dr. Knox isn't going to—”

The door flew open again. It was Dr. Knox this time, dragging Corinne by the arm. Ada wasn't sure if she was relieved or furious to see her down here again. They both stopped in their tracks when they saw Johnny.

“Johnny, you— I thought you were—” Corinne sputtered. She looked at Dr. Knox, then at Ada, but no explanation seemed forthcoming.

“Knox, just what do you think you're doing?” Johnny asked. His voice was low, dangerous.

Dr. Knox licked his lips, opened his mouth, shut it again. He
had dropped Corinne's arm, but she didn't move. She was still staring at Johnny, her features balled up in confusion.

“My job,” Dr. Knox said at last.

“We had a deal,” Johnny said. “I want my money.”

“Right, right,” Dr. Knox said, bobbing his head. There was something wrong with him. He seemed bewildered. “Agent Wilkey, if you would be so kind as to—”

But he cut himself off and frowned.

Wilkey was shaking his head and chuckling. “Slagger bastard,” he said, drawing his gun. “You almost had me.”

“What are you talking about?” Knox demanded. He threw out an arm to shove Corinne back as she tried to move forward, which was the moment when Ada put it together.

“Knox's eyes aren't blue,” Wilkey said, raising the gun.

Before his finger made it to the trigger, Johnny whirled on him, something glinting in his hand. Ada saw that it was his pocket-knife half a second before he sliced it across Wilkey's throat. For a moment everything was still. Wilkey coughed once. It was a wet, horrible sound. The gun fell to the floor, and he pressed his hands against his neck. They were immediately rimmed with blood. He staggered, and Johnny gave him a shove. Johnny's expression was one of pure disgust as he watched Wilkey fall.

“I never liked you much,” he said to the twitching form. Then he cast an appraising glance over Dr. Knox, who seemed to be sagging around the edges. “Let me guess. James Gretsky?”

“We all thought you were dead,” James said, becoming himself again in less than the time it took for Ada to blink.

“How did you even get in here?” Johnny asked. He knelt down and started unbuckling Ada's ankles.

“We called ahead,” Corinne said. “James imitated Mr. Haversham so that the nurse would have the gate open.”

“And she bought that?”

“There may have been a very persuasive French horn in the background,” James said.

“Where have you been?” Corinne asked.

“I'm sorry,” Johnny said. He pushed his hands through his greasy hair. “I had to take care of some things, but it's over now.”

He met Ada's eyes, and she felt him searching her. Trying to guess how much she had figured out. How much she was going to tell the others.

“Johnny, why?” she whispered.

She could see in his expression that his mind was racing, but she couldn't tell what choices he was weighing. She did know the moment he made his decision. She saw it in the set of his jaw, in the flash of regret in his eyes. He stopped his work, having freed only her left ankle, and sat back on his heels.

“You were never supposed to know,” he said softly. “I tried to keep you both out of it.”

“What are you talking about?” Corinne asked.

“Johnny, all those people.” Ada's gaze was drawn over his shoulder, toward the rows and rows of unmoving bodies. They'd been snatched off the street and murdered by a madman's experiments. And Johnny had been the one to give them up.

“Can we talk about this later?” Corinne looked between the two of them, frowning. “We've got to get out of here.”

She moved to help Ada but hesitated when Johnny stood. He turned his knife over once in his hands. Wilkey's blood still gleamed red along its edge.

“I can't let you leave,” he said. “No one else can know.”

He spoke so frankly, so simply. Then he drove his blade into Corinne's belly, aiming upward for her heart.

Ada's vision slanted, but in that moment her nausea and headache deserted her. She was left with nothing but the clarity of Johnny Dervish with a bloody knife in his hand, and Ada knew he was coming for her next. She closed her eyes and told herself to sing, but the music had deserted her too. A hot, aching sob was building in her chest. She couldn't breathe.

In a faraway and foggy part of her mind, she had the thought that maybe she couldn't live without Corinne. Maybe her lungs knew that. Maybe her heart would stop next.

When she heard Corinne's voice, echoing around her in a cloud of static, she almost couldn't comprehend the words.

“This is a public service announcement, brought to you by Gerard Manley Hopkins, who gave a lot more thought to the meaning of life than is strictly healthy.”

The cavalier tone was entirely Corinne's. Ada opened her eyes to the impossibility before her and immediately felt sick again. James was kneeling on the floor, and the girl in his arms was Madeline, her long hair tangled around her face as she gasped for breath.

Johnny was staring down at them, knife in hand. He looked wildly around the room; then realization dawned on his face. Ada followed his eyes to the loudspeaker mounted over the door. Johnny swore and fumbled for his earplugs. He ran into the corridor.

“Maddy, come on,” James was saying, his voice breaking. “Maddy, please.”