Iron Cast(104)

She massaged her temples and sighed. “You and Charlie drop Jackson off at the station and take Saint to the Red Cat,” she told Gabriel. “Ada and I will be there later.”

The lines in his forehead deepened, and he took a step forward.

“You two can’t just go off alone,” he said. “The HPA is still looking for you.”

“Let’s get something straight,” Corinne said. The flaring anger in her chest was easier than her other conflicted feelings, and she latched onto it. “You don’t get a say in how we conduct our affairs. Normally I would tell you that New York is a pit of despair where dreams go to die, but maybe it’s for the best if you take your mother and go.”

She didn’t relish the hurt that registered in his features, and she hated herself for the words as soon as they left her mouth, but she didn’t take them back. It didn’t matter how sorry he was. Madeline was gone. Nothing would ever be the same again. She turned away before she could reconsider and walked out of the warehouse.

Ada followed Corinne without hesitation. Corinne didn’t say where they were going, but it didn’t seem to matter anymore. They were in step again, in the way that drew everything into sharp relief, in the way that balanced the world. The night was still clear, with a raw wind blowing from the east, howling through the streets. Their skirts blew about their knees as they walked. They didn’t pass many pedestrians on their way, and the farther into the financial district they went, the more deserted the streets became.

“We’ve made a balled-up mess of things, haven’t we?” Corinne hugged herself and pressed her chin against her chest.

“Johnny used us,” Ada said. “We couldn’t have known that all he cared about was the money.”

“We could have seen it,” Corinne said. “If we’d wanted to.”

The bitterness in her voice was impossible to miss. Ada had to listen harder to catch the wounded strains underneath. Ada thought about her mother’s last admonition and nodded.

“You’re right.”

Corinne stopped walking and squinted up at the buildings around them.

“It was right here,” she said.

“What was?”

“Our first con together.”

Corinne dropped down to sit on the curb, mindless of the freezing concrete and the remnants of snow packed in the gutter. After a few seconds Ada sat down beside her. They were across the street from the Oriental Tea Company, with its giant teakettle sign over the front door. Steam drifted from the spout in ghostly whorls.

“You jumbled the lines to ‘Song of the Moon’ and lost the illusion halfway through,” Ada said.

“Only because I was distracted by your pitiful attempt at Beethoven.”

“Tchaikovsky, actually.”

“My point.”

Ada laughed. She nudged her shoulder against Corinne’s, and Corinne nudged her back.

“Damn, we were good, though, by the end,” Corinne said.

The way she said it made Ada realize where the conversation was really headed. Corinne had rested her head on Ada’s shoulder. She was picking at a loose thread on her navy-blue dress, unraveling the seam stitch by stitch.

“Do you remember what it felt like, when it actually worked that first time?” Corinne asked.

Ada watched a light in an upstairs window across the street flicker off. She listened to the sound of distant motors revving, carrying people to their homes. One block over, a trolley whirred its way down the icy tracks.

“Not really,” she said. She remembered the pride that had welled inside her when Johnny had handed her that first stack of cash. She remembered the look on her mother’s face when she’d seen her new apartment for the first time. She spent every day of her life trying to forget all the rest.

“I do,” Corinne said, in a distant voice. “It was like we were invincible. I guess Johnny probably knew that.”

Looking back, knowing what she knew about Johnny, Ada could see the patterns now. The way he’d used their dependence on the Cast Iron against them, how he had made sure the danger of the HPA was close but not too close, how he had whittled away their ties to their old lives until they’d felt they had no choice but to trust him. No choice but to lose themselves in the thrill and glamour of the Cast Iron’s underworld.

It wasn’t all Johnny’s doing, though. Ada knew that after her father was arrested, a part of her wanted to be lost. Pretending she didn’t have a choice was easier than admitting that she had made the wrong one.

“I don’t know if we can do better,” she said, resting her cheek against Corinne’s head. “But I think we should try.”

“How?” Corinne asked. “Even if we could somehow set the Cast Iron to rights, we still have the HPA after us. And what about Haversham? We can’t just abandon those people to Dr. Knox and his sick experiments.”

Before Ada could remind Corinne that she was always the one with the brilliant plans, an idea came to her. She stood up and pulled Corinne to her feet.

“I know something we can try,” Ada said. “You’re going to hate it, though.”

“Try me.”

“How did you leave things with your brother?”

Corinne groaned. “You’re right. I hate it.”

Ada laughed and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. They headed south, in the direction of the Red Cat, leaving the sleepy quiet of the financial district behind them.