Iron Cast(51)

Ada set down her violin, but Corinne’s illusion remained, unyielding in its furor.

“Do you remember the first fight we had?” Ada asked.

“You mean five minutes after I moved in?”

“You asked me if I was in charge of the laundry.”

“In my defense,” Corinne said, “I was a complete and utter bonehead back then.”

“Just back then?”

Corinne tried to kick her, but she couldn’t disentangle her legs from the blankets. At some point—Corinne couldn’t remember exactly when—she had dropped the illusion, and the comforting familiarity of their cluttered bedroom surrounded them again. The petty provocations during their first few months together seemed almost like a dream now. They hadn’t hated each other exactly, but Ada would practice her violin late into the night, and Corinne would say ignorant, unfeeling things almost every time she opened her mouth, and it hadn’t seemed possible for them to do anything but coexist.

Corinne couldn’t pinpoint the moment they had become an inseparable, unstoppable force. She did remember the day of her grandfather’s funeral, when she had wept alone on this same bed for almost two straight days, and instead of leaving her to break apart, Ada had played a song so beautiful on her violin that Corinne had felt for the first time that she might be able to go on.

“Despite your appalling first impression, we’ve been at this for years,” Ada said. “We’ve never come across anything we can’t crack.”

“What about the HPA?” Corinne asked. Her grief was muted for now, but the fear still remained. “We can’t hide from them forever.”

Ada plucked at one of the violin strings, her expression tense with thought. Then she dug through the blankets until she found Corinne’s hand. She gripped it tightly and looked her in the eye.

“This is you and me we’re talking about, remember?” she said. “If we’re in this together, then they don’t stand a chance.”





CHAPTER NINE



The Red Cat was in a nicer part of town than the Cast Iron, surrounded by hotels and banks and ritzy restaurants with cloth napkins and French waiters. Luke Carson liked things big, bold, and gilded. The front entrance had a uniformed doorman and a sign encircled by buzzing electric lights. Inside there were gold chandeliers, champagne, and tablecloths the color of blood.

Ada, Corinne, and Gabriel went to the back entrance, which was considerably less classy but much more private. Corinne had wanted it to just be her and Ada, since they had both performed at the Red Cat before and might be able to talk their way in. Saint hadn’t argued about being left behind, but Gabriel had flatly refused. In the end, it had seemed like less trouble to bring him along.

Corinne knocked on the back door until a man cracked it open. He narrowed his eyes at them in recognition but shook his head.

“Your lot ain’t coming in here tonight. Carson’s orders.” He spat a wad of tobacco toward their feet.

“We don’t want to come in,” Ada told him.

“We don’t?” Corinne asked.

“Fetch Charlie Lewis,” Ada said. “He asked me to meet him here.”

“He did?” Corinne asked. Gabriel nudged her.

The man was staring at Ada hard, as if trying to find a reason to call her a liar.

“If you don’t get him, and he finds out I had to stand out here in the cold all night, you’re going to be in a heap of trouble,” Ada told him.

From what Corinne knew about Charlie, she couldn’t imagine him causing trouble for anyone, but she dutifully kept her mouth shut. The man was obviously at war with himself, but after a few seconds he told her to wait a minute, then slammed the door shut and locked it.

“Well, that was easier than I expected,” Corinne said.

“I figured if we waited on you to sweet-talk him, we’d be out here all night,” Ada replied.

Corinne jabbed her with an elbow, and Ada ignored her with the long-suffering air of a mother whose toddler was misbehaving. After a few minutes the door creaked open again, and Charlie slipped into the alley with them, hollering over his shoulder at the man to stop being such a dictator.

“Hey, Ada,” he said, barely nodding toward the others. “I’m going on in fifteen minutes—I can’t—”

“You’ve got to let us in,” Ada said.

“What?” He looked around the alley, then lowered his voice. “You know I can’t. Not tonight.”

“Why not tonight? Charlie if you know something about Johnny, I swear—”

“What’s going on with Johnny?” Charlie asked.

Ada hesitated.

“Nothing,” Corinne said. “Something’s ruffled his feathers, and we think Carson might be able to help. Why can’t we come in?”

“Tensions are high, is all,” he said, scratching the back of his head. “After what happened at the docks—well, you just need to go.”

“Please, Charlie,” Ada said. “We’re not here to cause trouble. We just need ten minutes.”

“You can’t really think that Luke is going to talk to you. You’ll be thrown out the second he sees you.”

“Let us worry about that.”

Charlie regarded them for a few seconds, his expression flickering in the moonlight. Finally he nodded.