Iron Cast(26)

The uniform was a white pleated skirt, white blouse, white stockings, and white Mary Janes. Billings had an obsession with the color. The school motto, Super Omnia Puritatis, “Purity Above All,” was emblazoned in various strategic places across the sprawling campus. Since it was located in Pennsylvania, Corinne didn’t have to worry about her parents stopping by for a surprise visit, and she used almost all of the money she earned running cons to compensate the headmistress for her role in the elaborate deception that was Corinne’s life.

She didn’t particularly enjoy lying constantly to her family, but she didn’t have any other choice. When her hemopathy had manifested, she had been starting her second year at the academy. She grew too ill to function, barely able to leave her room. A nurse had recognized the symptoms almost immediately, but she hadn’t told the headmistress, or Corinne’s parents, or even the Hemopath Protection Agency, which was supposed to be notified of all hemopaths so that they could be properly registered. Corinne learned later that the nurse’s younger brother was a hemopath, living in seclusion in the countryside, safe from society’s fear and hatred.

The nurse had heard the stories of the club owner in Boston who took hemopaths under his wing. She wrote to Johnny Dervish, and a week later there he was: a man dressed like a farmhand who had pockets full of cash that he handed around the ward, buying allies, buying silence. He didn’t try to buy Corinne. He explained to her, very simply, what her choices were. She could register as a hemopath, weather her family’s disappointment, and spend the rest of her life wearing her affliction as a public brand of shame. Or she could go with him to Boston, to a safe haven where she could develop her talent, where the only rules were loyalty and trust, where she could thrive among her peers.

She had chosen Boston, without hesitation. Her only acts of penance were the occasional visits to her parents’ home. A small price to pay for a life of bliss.

She lugged her suitcase up the stairs and went out the front door of the club, rather than risk dirtying her Mary Janes in the alley. After walking a couple of blocks with the suitcase banging against her leg and the cold gnawing through her coat, she started to consider swallowing her aversion to the giant steel traps that were taxicabs, at least for the ten-minute ride to the train station. By the next block, her left shoe had started to rub a blister, and she gave up.

As she searched the street for a taxi, she saw two men at the corner of the block, both in nondescript suits, hats, and overcoats. She might not have noticed them at all except that they were both staring in her direction. Neither was moving. They just stood there. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, and Corinne strengthened her grip on the suitcase. Even at this distance there was something unsettlingly familiar about them. Every instinct inside her screamed that she should run, but she took only a single step back. The men still didn’t move. They also didn’t look away.

A taxicab cruised around the corner, and Corinne flung out her arm so quickly that her shoulder popped. The cab screeched to a stop beside her, and she shoved her suitcase into the backseat before the driver could even climb out to help her. She followed her suitcase and slammed the door shut. The effort to block out the instant throbbing from the steel and iron cost her dearly, but she told the driver her destination and sat back with a forced air of comfort. There was a sign prominently displayed in the front passenger window: NO NEGROES, NO HEMOPATHS. Corinne gritted her teeth against the headache clawing at her skull and peered through the window as they passed the corner where the two men were standing.

They were gone.

Corinne dug her pocket watch from her coat and gripped it in her right hand, like an anchor to her own sanity. She shut her eyes and didn’t open them until the cab reached the train station.



The Wellses were expecting Corinne on the twelve o’clock train. The cab dropped her off with only a few minutes to spare, and she ran through the station with her suitcase banging against her thighs. A few people gave her strange glances when she ran to the arrival platform. The train hadn’t come yet, and she could see her parents at the opposite end of the platform. She cursed and stepped behind a potted plant. When the train pulled in, she waited until the rush of people disembarking had flooded the station; then she wended her way through the crowd and tapped her father on the shoulder.

“Corinne!” he said. “You always sneak up on us.”

“Very light feet,” she said. “Those dancing lessons at school have their practical applications.”

She dearly hoped her parents would never call on her to display her so-called skills, which the headmistress of Billings detailed in quarterly letters to the Wellses. Corinne embraced them each in turn. Her mother asked about the Latin competition, and Corinne gave purposely vague answers to all her questions, until finally her mother gave up and started telling her excitedly about some fete that had gone better than anyone expected. Corinne tried to listen, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the two men outside the club, why they looked so familiar, and Ada’s insistence that the Hemopath Protection Agency wouldn’t trust the bulls to deal with the Cast Iron. The HPA had been formed by special appointment from the mayor less than a week after hemopathy had been declared illegal. Supposedly the agency’s purpose was to ease the integration of hemopaths into society through mandatory registration, but in the past six months, it had become obvious that the HPA was more interested in sweeping hemopaths off the streets for any imagined offense than in helping them integrate into society. Corinne had never come face-to-face with any agents, but if tales were true, they were ruthlessly efficient and handpicked for their heightened resistance to hemopathy.