Iron Cast(35)

Just as the doctor was finishing, Ada came in, her violin in hand.

“Come on, Doc,” she said. “I’ll walk you upstairs. How’re the kids?”

Doctor Reeves talked happily of his youngest, who had just lost her first tooth, and followed Ada out of the office. Gabriel watched them go, a strange expression on his face.

“What?” Corinne asked, pausing briefly in her pacing.

“She can just . . . make him forget? Take an entire chunk out of his life?”

“Cripes, you make it sound so dramatic. She’ll just blur the past hour or so in his mind. There’s no harm done.”

Gabriel didn’t say anything, which Corinne didn’t like.

“What?” she demanded.

“If it’s so easy to just do what you like with people’s minds, why bother conning anyone? Why doesn’t Ada just play a little ditty and have them hand over their life’s savings?”

Corinne leaned in, resting her palms on the top of the desk. “You’re pretty self-righteous for someone who’s carrying a gun.”

Gabriel shrugged, then grimaced at the motion. “I’m not passing judgment. Just making an observation.”

Corinne snorted. “Well, maybe it will aid you in your observation to know that Ada can make people more trusting and susceptible to suggestion, but she can’t just make them do anything she wants. And we don’t take people’s life’s savings. Our marks are always regs who had it coming. You can’t con an honest john.”

“So you’re Robin Hood.”

“And you’re a smug prick.”

Gabriel leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes again. “Why do you turn everything into an argument?” he asked.

“I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”

“Am I going to have to separate you two?” Ada asked, coming into the room.

“Forget it,” Corinne said. “What’s the plan here?”

“The plan is to stay put, like Johnny said,” Ada replied.

“I hate that plan,” Corinne said.

“At the risk of being called more names, I have to agree with Ada,” Gabriel said.

“Shut up,” Corinne said without heat. “And put on a shirt.”

He raised an eyebrow at that. Now that the blood was mostly gone, his bare chest was even more distracting, but Corinne wasn’t going to admit to that. She just glared at him until he reached for the clean shirt that Johnny had left on the desk, then resumed her pacing. It was making her dizzy, but her blood was pumping too fast to stand still.

“We have to do something,” she said. “Where do you think Johnny went?”

“Probably to the Red Cat or Down Street,” Ada said.

“You think he’d really just walk in like that? No protection or anything?” Corinne asked. “I’d say it’s pretty obvious that either Carson or the Witcher brothers are responsible for this.”

“We don’t know that,” Ada said. “Carson and Johnny called a truce. And the Witcher brothers don’t care about anything but their cause.”

It was true that the Down Street saloon, though it was iron-free, had very little to do with the competition between the Red Cat and the Cast Iron. The Witchers didn’t put on hemopath shows, even though the meetings they held in their secret back rooms were just as illegal. Corinne had met the Witchers only once, and it was clear that neither of them particularly liked Johnny, but that didn’t mean they wanted to hurt him.

Corinne sighed. “So there’s a rogue bunch of hemopaths, roaming Boston and shooting up the crew of one the most powerful men in the northeast?”

“Could’ve been ironmongers,” Ada said.

“They would never work with a thespian. Besides, their brand of vigilante lunacy is more of the ‘drag you out of your bed in the middle of the night’ type.”

“Maybe Messina then. He’s hired hemopaths before.”

“How would he even know that they would be there tonight?” Corinne asked. “Johnny keeps the warehouse close to the vest. I’ve never even been there before.”

“Me neither,” Ada said. “But there are shipments there almost every night. Anyone could have figured it out.”

Corinne shook her head and sat down heavily in a chair.

“We need to know who the thespian is,” she said. She glanced at Gabriel. “Would you recognize him? His real face, I mean?”

Gabriel considered for a moment, then nodded.

“Better yet, could you describe him?” Corinne asked, suddenly sitting up straight.

“Why?”

“Cor, what are you thinking?” Ada asked, an edge to her voice.

“I’ll get Saint,” Corinne said, jumping to her feet. “He can sketch whomever Gabriel saw.”

“Corinne, no,” Ada said. “I am not—”

“Then go tune your violin or something, Ada,” Corinne snapped. “Don’t we have bigger things to worry about than your hurt feelings?”

She regretted it as soon as the words left her mouth. The damage was written all over Ada’s face as she stiffened. Ada shoved past Corinne and left.

Corinne kicked Johnny’s coat rack and cursed.