Iron Cast(81)

Corinne was positive that if she kissed Gabriel at that moment, he would kiss her back.

But the smell of sewage reached her nostrils, and the steel in his gun was intruding on her consciousness as a bare twinge of pain. Miles away, in the depths of Haversham Asylum, Ada was sitting in handcuffs, alone.

“I have to wake up Saint,” she said.

There was a sound at the end of the alley. When a lurching figure turned the corner at the edge of the building, Corinne was so relieved that it wasn’t Wilkey or Pierce that she almost didn’t react. He was hunched under an oversized coat, and his steps dipped and swayed with the roiling of an invisible sea.

It was Harry.

Corinne swore under her breath right as he saw them. He stumbled faster toward them, arms outstretched in pleading.

“You’re here,” he said. “Everything is dark, and I can’t see straight. Corinne, you gotta help me. I just need some blue skies and sunshine. Just need to shake the ghosts loose.”

He looked worse than the last time she had seen him. The skin was sagging around his emaciated face, and his eyes were cavernous in his skull. Corinne felt that she was in Haversham again, staring into the dying man’s face as his blood trickled away, but it was the hemopath clubs that had drained the life from Harry. She shuddered when his grimy fingers touched her sleeve. It was a light touch—spectral, as if he already had one foot in the grave.

“I can’t help you,” she told him.

“You won’t help me.”

His fingers curled around her arm, but there was no strength in them. To her right, Gabriel moved, as if to push Harry away, but she pressed her free hand against his elbow to stop him. She peeled Harry’s fingers away from her sleeve. She used to think that edgers were weak, but now she was thinking about that moment in Silas Witcher’s office, when he had laid down a few words and twisted her brain into darkness. And the way Ada’s song had climbed into her head and forced her to leave her best friend behind. Their gifts were a double-edged sword.

The Cast Iron and the Red Cat had given Harry blue skies and sunshine, without warning him of the ghosts that crept through the cracks. Without warning him that every song and poem he chased led him closer to the edge.

What must it be like, to crave your own destruction?

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Stooped as he was, his eyes were close to hers. Once they might have been a clear gray, but now they were bloodshot and murky.

“Where’s Ada?” he asked.

She was still holding his quivering fingers in her hand.

“She’s in trouble,” Corinne said. “I can’t help you because I have to help her.”

Harry dragged his hands across his face. His fingernails were torn and bleeding. She couldn’t tell if the dampness on his cheeks was sweat or tears.

“Ghosts in my head,” he murmured. “God help me, I don’t know what to do.”

Neither did Corinne. She reached out, tentatively, but let her hand fall short. He would find no comfort in her touch. For the first time, she wondered if they were wrong trying to put everything back to the way it was before. She wondered if they were any better than Dr. Knox.

“Corinne,” Gabriel said.

He didn’t have to say more. Corinne remembered why they had come, how much they had to lose. She nodded, and he opened the door. She made it two steps into the storage room before she turned and walked out again, brushing past Gabriel.

Harry was on the ground with his head between his knees. His shoulders were shuddering, though he made no noise. Corinne crouched beside him and quoted into his ear.

“Who shall hear of us

in the time to come?

Let him say there was

a burst of fragrance

from black branches.”

The shuddering stopped, and he breathed deeply and released. A rich, rushing sound. Corinne left him with a head full of blue skies and sunshine and went back to the open doorway. Gabriel was standing there, watching her with an expression she didn’t understand.

“What?” she asked.

For a couple of seconds, he just kept staring. Then he shook his head. “Nothing,” he said.

He stepped aside to let her enter first, and Corinne went inside without looking back at Harry. She didn’t want to think about the double-edged sword right now. There wasn’t time.



Ada’s solitude lasted only a few minutes before Dr. Knox returned. He blinked in confusion at the new placement of her chair but didn’t address it. He took his seat again and flipped to a clean page in his notepad. Ada still couldn’t reconcile his brisk, professional demeanor with the dank horror of their surroundings.

“Now,” he said, “I believe my files on you and Wells are sufficient, but there are some items missing from Sebastian Temple’s. Tell me about his affliction.”

Ada stared at him, trying to fumble her way through her own confusion and weariness to a reply. “His affliction?” she echoed.

“His hemopathy,” Dr. Knox said with an impatient wave of his hand. “His talent. I don’t know the slang you people use for it.”

Ada swallowed and shifted her stare to the floor. She didn’t speak.

“Remember the rule, Ada,” Dr. Knox said, pulling a second iron coin from his pocket and setting it on the table. “I’m afraid I can’t make any exceptions.”