Iron Cast(84)

“I can’t believe this. The eggs—you should have told me.” Corinne was still turning slowly, trying to get her bearings. Of course she knew exactly where they were, but it was hard to wrap her head around it. Only seconds ago they had been ten blocks away.

Saint climbed to his feet. “It never seemed important before.”

“Are you joking? This is incredible, Saint. I can’t believe this.”

“You said that already.” In the dimly glittering lights of the marquee, she could see that he was blushing again.

They went around the back of the theater, and Corinne banged again on the stage door. For a while there was no answer, but Corinne kept knocking, and eventually the panel slid open. James’s face appeared, midyawn. His eyes were bleary and his hair rumpled.

“What?” he said, banging his forehead against the wood of the door. “What in the name of all things sacred are you doing here?”

“I brought Saint with me,” Corinne said helpfully. “Let us in.”

“Hello, Sebastian,” James said, managing to sound vaguely cordial. He looked back at Corinne. “It’s three in the morning. I’m going back to bed, and you can come back tomorrow. Or never. Not you, Sebastian, of course. You can come back whenever. But not at three in the morning. That is the point I’m trying to make here.”

He started to slide the panel closed.

“There are HPA agents at the Cast Iron,” Saint said quickly.

James hesitated but still didn’t open the door.

“So? They were bound to raid it eventually.”

“Gabriel is a rat,” Corinne said. “He told them—I don’t know— probably everything. And if he told them about the Cast Iron, you can bet he told them about you and Madeline.”

James stared at her for a few seconds. He swore softly. Finally the door opened.

“Come on,” he said, looking past them nervously, as if he half expected the agents to be on their heels.

They congregated in the dressing room, and James woke up Madeline.

“Maybe you’re blowing this out of proportion,” she said, once she had been brought up to speed. She was slumped on the couch in a black silk dressing gown, her dark hair in tangled disarray.

“Johnny’s dead,” Corinne said. “Luke Carson was run out of town for selling off his people as lab rats, and Silas Witcher is probably still at the asylum. There aren’t any safe havens left for hemopaths in Boston.”

“Well, I don’t know what you expect us to do about it,” Madeline said with a yawn. “James and I have always avoided Johnny and all the rest. We don’t have anything to do with it.”

“She’s right,” James said. “You’re the ones who mixed us up in this. Maybe it’s best if you both leave.”

“James, listen to me,” Saint said. His voice was taut but even. “Things are only going to get worse.”

“We don’t have anything to do with this,” James said, echoing his wife’s sentiment. “We just want to run our theater.”

“We’re past that now,” Corinne snapped. “Gabriel saw everything. He knows everything. You don’t get it, do you? What they’re doing to hemopaths. Dr. Knox is a madman, and he won’t be happy until he’s sliced us all open and figured out what makes us tick.”

James pursed his lips.

Madeline had sat up a little straighter. “You’re exaggerating,” she said, not as a statement but more as a probative question. “They can’t get away with that. We have rights.”

“They are getting away with it,” Corinne said. “I’ve been there. I’ve seen it.”

The iron corridors, the glistening white tile, the draining blood—she didn’t think she would ever be able to stop seeing it.

“What are you suggesting, then?” James asked.

“We save Ada,” Corinne said. “And then . . . I don’t know. I really don’t.”

“We have to get her out of Haversham tonight,” Saint said. “And I don’t think we can pull it off without you two.”

Madeline and James looked at each other, their conversation a silent one.

“I’ve always wanted to play a doctor,” James said.

“The Mythic is in the red anyway,” Madeline said. “I don’t suppose some light felonies will do us any harm.”

“Thank you,” Corinne said. She had never meant those two words so much. She glanced at Saint. “Thank you.”

“Please tell me there is an actual plan in place,” Madeline said. “Or are we expected to come up with that as well?”

“I think I have an idea,” Corinne said. “But we need a songsmith.”

“Everyone who worked at the Cast Iron is gone,” Saint said. “I don’t know where to find them.”

“Actually, I have someone else in mind,” Corinne said. “We need to make a stop at the Red Cat.”





CHAPTER SIXTEEN



They stayed at the Mythic long enough for Madeline and James to get dressed and for Corinne to talk them through her plan. Then Corinne and Madeline set off for the Red Cat on foot, while James and Saint gathered the rest of what they needed from the theater.