Iron Cast(13)

“So no elephants then?”

“No elephants. And stay away from the councilman.”

Corinne grinned. The so-called Bengali banker scam had been run once or twice in history to moderate success, but it wasn’t considered by grifters to be a tenable scheme. Corinne had modified it for her and Ada’s peculiar skill set, and the resulting con was her magnum opus as far as she was concerned. She refused to apologize for it. Despite nearly popping a vein when he’d first heard about it, Johnny had since made peace. The two thousand dollars that Corinne and Ada had scored softened the blow. It was enough to keep the Cast Iron supplied with food and booze for half a year.

“We’ll go in the morning,” she said, heading for the door.

“Take Gabriel along,” Johnny said. “Someone’s got to show him the ropes around here, and I’ve got my hands full.”

Corinne paused with her hand on the doorknob, trying to decide the best way to dodge the responsibility. She wasn’t sure what it was about Gabriel Stone that irked her so much. It might have been the way he’d spoken to her in the alley, or his refusal to argue so that she could prove herself right, or the way he seemed generally unimpressed. Possibly a mixture of the three.

“Are you sure I’m the best person for that job?” she asked.

“No, but Ada tends to be competent enough for the both of you, so I’m not concerned.”

Corinne weighed the consequences of arguing further, but in the end it seemed to be more trouble than it was worth. As long as Gabriel kept a lid on the moralizing that regs were so fond of, she might be able to keep a civil tongue.

“Fine. But if he can’t keep up, we aren’t going to hold his hand.”

“Fair enough,” Johnny said, leaning back in his chair and thrumming his fingers on the desktop. “Get some sleep. You did good tonight, Corinne.”

She shut the door behind her without a reply, but the rare praise suffused her as she crossed the dark common room to her bedroom, so that she barely felt the cold.

Despite the weariness deep in her bones, Corinne lay awake for a long time that night, running through the events of the day in her head, comforted by the occasional creak of Ada’s bed. When she’d been cornered by the bulls tonight, it had never occurred to her to be worried, even when they’d touched the iron to her skin. She’d known that Ada wouldn’t be far away. It was an incontrovertible fact of her existence that Ada would always be there for her. That was what had made the past two weeks almost unbearable. She’d felt like half of her was missing.

With a small, strangled sound, Ada sat bolt upright in bed. Corinne pulled herself up onto her elbows, squinting in the darkness. Ada panted for a few seconds, rubbing her face vigorously, then flopped backward. A nightmare. Corinne lay back down, listening to her friend’s uneven breathing for a few minutes.

“We can talk about it, if you want,” she said at last.

Since they’d left Haversham, she’d seen the changes in Ada—the muted fear and disquiet that Ada tried valiantly to hide. The asylum was iron-free, touted as the “humane” alternative to prison for hemopaths, but that didn’t make it any less a prison. Every cell was solitary, every surface cold and unyielding. Corinne remembered seeing an old photo once, with the founders of the asylum in their Victorian garb, staring humorlessly from the shadow of the great brick structure. The camera hadn’t captured the wrought-iron fence around the perimeter. Or the fact that hemopaths who were taken there never seemed to have a court date or a sentence. Once they were taken through those iron gates, they never came back out.

Ada hadn’t spoken, though Corinne could tell by her breathing that she was still awake.

“I don’t think we should go tomorrow,” Ada said at last. “The HPA will be looking for me.”

Corinne stared at the dark ceiling, trying to pick out the images from the magazines that she and Ada had pasted up there. For her side of the room, Corinne had chosen castles on the moors in Europe and poems and reviews from the Literary Digest and the Atlantic.

“Boston’s a big city,” Corinne said.

“Not that big.” Ada’s voice was soft and slurred with sleep. “I don’t want to go back there, Cor.”

Haversham Asylum for Afflictions of the Blood had been a looming presence at the edge of Boston since its construction thirty-six years ago, but it was only in the past year—since the new law had passed—that stories had started trickling through the hemopath clubs about what its true purpose might be. The theories ranged anywhere from lobotomies to ritualistic slaughter. Corinne chewed on the inside of her lip and thought about the man the two HPA agents had brought to the basement. She knew that there was something comforting she was supposed to say to Ada, but she also knew she had never in her life managed to say the exact right thing.

“We don’t have a choice,” she said. “The Cast Iron can’t stay open without us. And what about your mother?”

She rolled onto her side and squinted through the darkness. The walls on Ada’s half of the room were an eclectic mix of foreign landscapes and clippings from Garden & Home Builder of the “Picture-Perfect Kitchen!” and “A Rose Garden Fit for a Queen.” Pasted in the center of it all was an old, wrinkled picture of her parents. Her mother was perched neatly on a fence, her hair wrapped in a scarf, trying to keep her skirt from blowing in the breeze, while Ada’s father stood on tiptoe, one hand on his hat, leaning in for a kiss.