Iron Cast(76)

The door opened, and Pierce came in. He took in the scene with a stony expression, gun in hand. The sight of his partner seemed to bring Wilkey back to himself.

“Get the cuffs,” Pierce said.

“This is unacceptable,” Dr. Knox said, waving his notebook with fervor. “The agency promised me the highest degree of professionalism.”

Pierce ignored him and crossed the room. He yanked Ada up by her arm and deposited her back in her chair. She tried to struggle, but her failing strength ended the attempt quickly. He righted Corinne’s chair and gestured at her wordlessly with the gun. She looked at him with undisguised fury and cast a glance toward Ada.

Ada shook her head fiercely. She would never forgive Corinne if she got herself shot right in front of her. Corinne set her jaw, but she sat down without protest. Ada saw that one of the chair legs wobbled now, and she felt the strangest urge to smile. The urge was fleeting.

Wilkey handcuffed their hands behind their backs again, just as a buzz of static made Ada jump in her seat. She looked toward the source to see a beige loudspeaker mounted in the corner of the room.

“Dr. Knox,” came the voice of the desk nurse, “we need you upstairs.”

Dr. Knox muttered something to himself and gathered his notebook and pencil.

“You two come with me,” he said to the agents. “I don’t trust either of you with my test subjects.”

Neither Wilkey nor Pierce objected, though Wilkey cast a deathly glance over his shoulder on the way out. They left the metal gags where they were on the table, and Ada could still feel the angry pulse of the iron coin somewhere on the floor behind her. Dr. Knox shut the door behind them. The lock clicked into place.

She and Corinne were both silent for a while, readjusting to the sting of the steel on their wrists. Ada’s head pounded with Wilkey’s words, but she fought them back. She wouldn’t give him what he wanted. He could hurt her, but he wasn’t stronger than her. She’d watched him crumple beneath the weight of her music.

When she finally gathered herself enough to speak, her voice came out scratchy and soft. “I’m sorry if you felt any of that song,” she said. “I tried to aim it at Wilkey.”

Corinne shook her head slowly. She was staring hard at the tabletop. Ada could see her hands were shaking behind her back.

“I’ve never heard you play anything like that before,” she said. “I didn’t—I didn’t know you could.”

Ada hadn’t known she could either. She’d had no idea that she even had the capacity to hate someone as much as she’d hated Wilkey in that moment. It wasn’t really Wilkey she hated, though. It was everything he stood for. It was the atrocities they were committing in the next room. It was this world that these men were forging in their underground lair. A world where she was just a test subject, where she had no choices, no recourse, no power.

Johnny had given her those things when he’d given her the Cast Iron. She wasn’t willing to surrender it, not to Haversham Asylum or to the Hemopath Protection Agency or to anyone else.

Corinne had felt only a sliver of the emotions that Ada had unleashed on Agent Wilkey, and even that was enough to make her heart clench and her head swim. She didn’t pity the man in the least. After the sight of him with his hand around Ada’s neck, she wished that Ada had given him much worse. She was worried, though. Ada felt guilty about using her skill to con even the most corrupt, cruel, deceitful john out of his money. What kind of pain was she feeling if she was willing to wreak such devastation now?

“They’re the ones who asked for it,” Ada said.

“I know.”

With slow, painful movements, Corinne edged her chair closer to Ada’s, until their shoulders touched. They sat in silence like that for several minutes. When the lock on the door turned, neither of them moved. Corinne told herself that whatever came next, she and Ada could handle it. She only wished she could believe herself.

It wasn’t Dr. Knox or the agents who came through the door.

It was her brother.

“Come on, Corinne,” he said, taking in the room with an expression of pure disgust. “We’re leaving.”

It took Corinne another few seconds to even register that she wasn’t hallucinating, that her brother, Phillip Wells, military academy graduate with honors, aspiring politician, and fiancé to one of the wealthiest women in Boston, really was standing in the room with them, still wearing his tuxedo from the rehearsal dinner.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“One of the nurses called Angela’s father when she heard that you were here,” Phillip said. He was eyeing the metal gags on the table with obvious disquiet. “Thank God he came to me instead of Father. How did you even— Never mind, let’s go. Mother’s in the car.”

“You brought our mother?” Corinne demanded. Somehow that seemed like it warranted immediate discussion.

“I didn’t have much of a choice when she overheard Mr. Haversham. As far as she knows, this is all a terrible misunderstanding, and we’re going to keep it that way. Now let’s go.” He crossed the room and grabbed her arm, but Corinne yanked herself free.

“Not without Ada,” she said.

“Absolutely not.” Dr. Knox had come into the room, handkerchief in hand. “Miss Navarra is a dangerous criminal, and I cannot allow her to leave this facility. I’m sorry, Mr. Wells, but your influence doesn’t reach far enough to pardon convicted felons.”