Iron Cast(82)

Ada’s stomach turned so violently that she thought she might be sick. She wished, for the fifteenth time in so many minutes, that Corinne were still beside her. Then she berated herself for wanting that. Corinne was free so that she could help Saint. It was the only way.

“We know about the Cast Iron’s secret basement,” Dr. Knox said in response to her silence. “Agent Wilkey and Agent Pierce are on their way now to pick up Temple. There’s nothing you can tell me that I won’t find out for myself in a couple of hours. I just want to speed up the process. Now tell me about his affliction.”

Ada hesitated, unable to pull her eyes away from the iron coin. Such a simple, unobtrusive object to hold such a consuming threat of agony.

Surely there was nothing wrong with telling Knox things that were already common knowledge.

“He’s an artist,” she said. “He can pull objects from his paintings.”

Dr. Knox’s hand fluttered again. “Yes, yes, I know all that,” he said. “But I’ve been told that he can do more.”

“Who?” The question burst from her before she could think twice. “Who is telling you all these things?”

“That’s not relevant,” Dr. Knox said. “Let’s stay on task, shall we?”

Ada rested her head back against the wall, frustrated.

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” she said. “He can pull anything from a painting that will fit through the canvas. I’ve never seen him do anything else.”

“This is getting tiring,” Dr. Knox said, setting down his notepad and picking up the coin. “I would have expected as much from the Wells girl, but I was hoping you would be more sensible than to lie to me.”

“I’m not lying,” Ada said, unable to keep a tremor from her voice. She was trying to remain strong and silent and unaffected, but with Corinne gone, she felt like she was missing that half of herself. With Corinne gone, she couldn’t pretend this was just a game to be won. It was so much more than that. So much worse. “I’ve never seen him do anything else, I swear.”

Dr. Knox tapped the edge of the coin on the table and regarded her with a crease between his eyebrows. Ada could hear her own heartbeat slamming against her chest. She was desperately relieved that she didn’t know anything else. If she did, she knew she would tell him everything. That realization was an acrid taste in the back of her throat.

“All right,” Dr. Knox said at last. He set down the coin and put away his notepad. “I’ll get the rest once Temple and Wells are here.”

He was getting up to leave, but Ada knew she had to at least try to find out more.

“Don’t you think that the Wellses are going to notice when their daughter goes missing again?” she asked. She didn’t even try to mute her panic. “Don’t you think this will be the first place they’ll look?”

The lightbulb flickered, casting Dr. Knox’s thoughtful expression in and out of focus.

“Mr. Wells’s intervention was a regrettable complication, but it won’t make a difference,” he said. “When the law against hemopathic activity passed, I was assured by Councilman Turner that I would be given every consideration for my work here.”

“Ned Turner?” Ada knew that his embarrassment on the Harvard Bridge had driven the councilman to throw his full support behind the bill to outlaw hemopathy, and that he had been the chief reason it had passed, but she had never guessed his hatred for hemopaths would extend this far.

“I suggest you try to get some rest,” Dr. Knox said, opening the door. “We’ll start the next round of experiments soon, and I’ll need you in fighting form.”

Ada wanted to ask him how he expected her to get any rest in this hellhole, with steel around her wrists and the suffering on the other side of wall, but before she could open her mouth, the door had been shut and latched.

She was once again alone.

The basement of the Cast Iron was quiet and dark. Corinne hated seeing it like this. In the past there had always been a light burning somewhere, even in the middle of the night. She maneuvered her way through the common room by touch. She managed to avoid the armchair but bashed her shin on the edge of the coffee table, rattling the glass bottles. She cursed right as the light came on.

“You okay?” Gabriel asked from the light switch. There was a hint of amusement in his voice that Corinne opted to ignore.

“Never better,” she said.

She went into Saint’s room without knocking and was surprised to find the light on, bathing his paintings in a dingy yellow. Before she could speak, Saint’s arms were around her in a fierce embrace.

“I thought you were dead,” he told her.

Corinne coughed into his shoulder, and he released her.

“Where were you? Why didn’t you call?” And then, when he’d had a chance to take in her bedraggled state: “What happened to you?”

“There’s not enough time for the long or the short version,” Corinne said. “We have to get out of here. The HPA is—”

When the door shut behind her, her first thought was that Gabriel had come into the room. She turned, but he wasn’t there. There was a soft click, and her heart leapt into her throat before her mind had even registered what the sound was.

A key turning in the lock.