Iron Cast(89)

At last he tore his gaze away from Madeline and laid her gently on the floor. He fumbled at the buckles with shaking hands but finally managed to free Ada’s right wrist. She helped him with the other straps and jumped up. Together they dragged Madeline to her feet. She screamed through gritted teeth but stayed upright between them, her arms over their shoulders. Ada had never seen so much blood on a person. Madeline’s pale pink dress was drenched in crimson.

They staggered through the iron-paved corridors. Ada kept looking over her shoulder, certain that someone would be following them. The hall remained empty. The loudspeakers were silent now, but the uneasy quiet was short-lived. A bell started ringing from the upper floor—the fire bell, Ada realized. Corinne’s poem must have fabricated flames for everyone in earshot. Under the dual spell of her words and Charlie’s horn, no reg without earplugs would have been able to resist.

She made sure that James had a good hold on Madeline and started to open the door.

“Wait,” James said. His voice was hoarse. “Corinne said to wait.”

“Wait for what?” Ada whispered.

“She said we’d know.”

There were nurses running past, as well as a few men in suits who must have been HPA. None of them noticed that the basement door was cracked. Ada watched the flashes of color until there was no one left in the hall. Another few interminable seconds passed, and Ada itched with the impulse to throw open the door and run for freedom. She waited.

The speakers crackled again, and Corinne’s voice filled the hall.

“That’s all for tonight, ladies and gents. Don’t forget to tip the band.”

Ada pushed open the door and helped James and Madeline up the last few steps. The three of them weaved through the corridors toward the lobby. Madeline was gasping in her ear, and Ada’s hand was so slick with blood that she could barely keep a grip on her.

Corinne and Charlie ran to meet them as they stumbled into the lobby. The fire bell was still clanging with deafening fervor. Looking over Corinne’s shoulder, Ada saw that the desk nurse was slumped over her paperwork, snoring loudly.

“Go!” Corinne shouted.

Charlie wrenched open the front door. Corinne pushed at Ada and James from behind. They barely managed to keep Madeline supported between them. The cold air assaulted Ada as Charlie yanked the door shut behind them. He was saying something, but Ada couldn’t hear him over Madeline’s cries and the ringing echo of the fire bell in her ears.

Someone grabbed her arm, and Ada whipped her head around. It was Saint.

The world was cacophony and blood. Haversham’s night-shift employees were scattered across the edges of her vision, watching them with numb confusion. Charlie’s playing would only just be wearing off. Any second now they would start to realize what had happened. Saint pulled her across the gravel drive, away from the people. Ada couldn’t focus on anything but Madeline’s weight. She squeezed Madeline’s wrist so hard that she couldn’t tell if the erratic pulse she felt was Madeline’s or her own. The doors to the asylum opened again, and Dr. Knox emerged, flanked by three HPA agents.

Ada realized that even if the gate was still open, they had nowhere to go.

She had the thought, brief but piercing, that they weren’t going to make it. They were going to die in the basement of Haversham, strapped into chairs while Dr. Knox recorded the time in his little notebook.

Saint was still pulling on her arm. He wasn’t leading her toward the car that was parked near the gate but onto the grassy lawn to the left of the drive. There was a blanket spread across the ground—no, it was a giant painted canvas, like a backdrop for a play. Ada recognized it from a recent production at the Mythic Theatre. That was all she had time to register before Saint stepped through the canvas, dragging her with him.

Corinne was last in the chain that Saint pulled through the backdrop. She felt someone’s fingers—she didn’t know if it was Dr. Knox or one of the agents—brush across her coat sleeve just before the painting swallowed her. She fell downward, feetfirst, but almost as soon as the asylum’s lawn and iron gate disappeared, the world shifted and suddenly she was stepping forward. She closed her eyes against the twisting sensation, willing herself not to be sick. Charlie’s hand fell from hers, and for a split second she was utterly alone, with only the solid ground beneath her feet to reassure her that she had made it to the other side.

When she opened her eyes, Corinne was staring across a body of water. The sun was starting to rise, inching over the horizon to her right. Boats bobbed on the choppy waves, their tiny lights twinkling in the hazy distance. Through the early-morning fog she could see the smokestacks and masts of the Navy Yard across the harbor. They were in the North End.

The clanging of the fire bell was gone, replaced by a faint buzzing in her ears.

She looked down to see James on his knees, clutching Madeline. There were angry streaks of red across his cheek and in his blond hair. Ada had pulled off her coat and was pressing it into the wound, but Corinne could already see that there was too much blood.

She knelt down on Madeline’s other side and took her hand. She brushed the dark hair out of her face so that Madeline could see dawn blossoming in the sky overhead. James was sobbing in short, shallow bursts, gripping Madeline’s arm as if he could somehow pull her back. Corinne looked pointedly at Saint, who knelt down beside James and put his arm around his shoulders.