“There’s not,” Ada said. “Please, just go. They’ll be back any second.”
The girls’ faces were still only inches apart, their cheeks pressed into the comforting wood, their eyes locked.
“I won’t,” said Corinne. “I have to do what I think is right.”
Corinne was still trembling. Ada could see the burn of the iron written all over her face. She could see how much Corinne wanted to leave, wanted to be free of this place. And she could see that she would never admit that to herself. Ada loved her for it, and hated it too.
“I know you do,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, Cor.”
Ada squeezed her eyes shut, found focus deep inside herself, far away from the pain and the anger and the guilt that had already begun to take root. She found a melody from her childhood and started to hum.
“Don’t.” Corinne’s voice was a strangled gasp.
Ada made herself look at her. Tears had sprung into Corinne’s eyes. Corinne straightened up, shaking her head violently, but Ada kept humming. The melody had already begun to take hold. Ada knew she was too weak now to resist the full force of the song.
“Please” was the last thing Corinne said before her eyes began to glaze.
Ada felt tears well in her own eyes. Her heart ached inside her. It was worse than iron. It was a kind of betrayal.
It was the only way.
She hummed, weaving the music like a net over Corinne, trapping her best friend into her will. She could make people feel any emotion she wanted. She could make them trust her implicitly and even blur their memories, but she’d never been able to make people do anything but the simplest of actions. She could make a rowdy patron sit down or a cop walk past on the street, but nothing more.
With Corinne it was different. She knew her so well, every twist and turn of her mind. Convincing Corinne that she had to leave was easier than convincing herself that it had to be done. Somehow that only made it worse.
When Phillip and Dr. Knox reentered the room, Ada stopped humming and closed her eyes.
“I’ll go,” Corinne said. Her voice sounded distant, mechanical.
“Thank God,” said Phillip.
Ada heard Dr. Knox fumbling with Corinne’s handcuffs. She heard the scrape of the chair against wood and the shuffle of footsteps. When she opened her eyes, she was alone with Dr. Knox.
“Strange,” he said. He didn’t say more.
Ada was surprised that he didn’t consider all this data for his little notebook. She wouldn’t let herself think about what was coming next. Corinne was safe, and Saint would be too. Maybe down here she didn’t have any choices or recourse or power, but she could still protect the people she loved.
“There you are,” Dr. Knox said as Agent Pierce appeared in the doorway. Dr. Knox stepped into the other room, pulling the door behind him, but it didn’t latch. Through the narrow gap, Ada could see the white of Dr. Knox’s sleeve and catch scattered fragments of what he was saying.
“—tell him—I want her back—Temple—” Dr. Knox’s voice was low and frenetic.
Agent Pierce said something, but all Ada could hear was Phillip’s name.
“We’ll move them all if we have to.” Dr. Knox was speaking louder now, more agitated. “We finally have subjects who might survive the tests. I won’t let all this work go to waste.”
Pierce said something else, and the door slammed shut. Ada heard the lock slide into place. Once she was sure they had left, she inched her chair sideways until she was as far from the iron coin as possible. She leaned her head against the concrete wall and sang a lullaby that her mother had taught her. Even though she couldn’t manipulate her own emotions the way she could others’, the familiar melody gave her a small amount of comfort. Music was easier than thinking about the renewed screams outside the door, or the gnawing fear that she had just seen her best friend for the last time.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Corinne’s world was a haze of colors and sounds and the grip of her brother’s hand on her arm. Her thoughts were wraiths. Her emotions were blank. All she knew was that she had to leave. She had to leave this place.
The beds full of bodies in various stages of dying evoked no grief anymore. That same woman, screaming, screaming, was only a distant idea now. A vague notion of horror. Phillip was pulling her faster now, and her footsteps on the tiles seemed to drum out the only thing she knew for certain. She had to leave this place.
The corridors with their iron floors pricked at her consciousness, but even that felt irrelevant. Phillip hesitated at a junction and tried the door on the left. Cool air flooded Corinne’s senses, and for a moment her mind cleared. The room was some kind of cold storage. And it was stacked with corpses.
Phillip cursed and backed out. Corinne stumbled with him. She fell to her hands and knees. The iron rose up to meet her. Scalding pain and nausea rose in her chest, and she retched. Her mind was fogging again. There was a fading melody inside her, telling her she had to leave this place. But she couldn’t move.
Her brother picked her up, cradling her, and pushed through the other door. The stairs were in sight now. Beyond them the lobby. Beyond that the outside world. She had to leave this place. Phillip was saying something, softly.
“I can’t believe we let this happen.”
Corinne tried to reply, but her mouth wouldn’t form the words. She rested her cheek against her brother’s shoulder and recited poetry in her head until the haze dissolved, until the melody was gone.
Corinne didn’t regain her full faculties until she was at the car and buried in her mother’s arms, breathing deeply of her perfume. She swore.
“Corinne,” her mother snapped. “Watch your language.”
Corinne looked back to see the asylum waiting behind her, its brick facade unperturbed by the icicles along its eaves, by the frigid wind whipping around them. The cold cleared Corinne’s mind even further.
“Dammit, Ada,” she exclaimed into the open air. “Mother, I have to go back. My friend—”
“We’re going home,” said Mrs. Wells. “And we’ll never speak of this to anyone.”
She was gripping Corinne’s upper arm, her lips pursed tightly. Her fur coat gaped open in the front, revealing her silk dress from the party. Corinne was suddenly aware of her own pitiful state. The hem of her dress had dried from their tromp through the sewers, but there was a rip in it, past her knee. She’d been too distracted in the asylum to think much about it, but even in the fresh air the smell was appalling. And she still had the taste of vomit in her mouth.
Phillip was cranking the car, and Mrs. Wells herded Corinne into the backseat. She climbed in beside her. Corinne’s mind was reeling with the suddenness of everything. She barely felt the metal of the car around her. All she could think was that she was leaving Ada behind.
And Ada had made her do it.
The car roared to life, and before Corinne could decide what to do next, Phillip was steering them down the gravel driveway. The iron gates flew past with a fleeting ache, and then Haversham was lost in the distance. Corinne pressed her face into her hands, trying to shake the last vestiges of Ada’s melody from her head. Vaguely, she remembered Agent Wilkey in the lobby, while her brother was browbeating the desk nurse into opening the front gate. Wilkey had leaned against the wall beside the door, smiling. All trace of the damage from Ada’s song was gone from his features.
“Don’t worry,” he told her with a wink. “You’ll be back soon.”
Corinne drove her fingernails into her skin, trying to find control of her own fear. Ada wouldn’t have been able to manipulate her will so easily if a part of her hadn’t already wanted desperately to leave. Corinne hated herself for that.
“This is my fault,” her mother said. Her wavering voice was barely audible over the jolting wheels.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Mother,” Phillip said. “Corinne got mixed up in bad company. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s all there is to it.”
“That’s all there is to it,” Corinne echoed, not sure what else Phillip wanted her to say.
She knew he’d seen what was happening in the basement. Even in the murky memory of the past ten minutes, the room full of corpses stood out sharply in her mind, turning her stomach. Phillip showed no signs of distress, though. He was his normal, mildly officious self.
Her mother was shaking her head with a mournful expression.
“I knew you were getting yourself into some kind of trouble when you showed up at the dinner with Gabriel Stone. I should have gone straight to your father. I just don’t even know how you met someone like him.”
“What are you talking about?” Corinne asked. “How do you know him?” And why had her family decided tonight of all nights to stop being unfailingly predictable?
Her mother faltered. She picked nervously at the furred cuff of her sleeve. “I . . . I’ve seen him at certain . . . meetings. On Down Street.”
Corinne’s mouth fell open slightly. “Are you . . . a socialist?”
The car swerved slightly as Phillip looked back in alarm. “Mother, what is she talking about?” he asked.
Mrs. Wells turned her face toward the window, where Boston’s outer edges rolled past. The tenements and scattered storefronts were dark, with only the silver of the moon to illuminate their icy rooftops.
“I’m not a socialist,” she said.
“A communist?” Corinne asked.
“No, Corinne, I’m— It started as curiosity, that’s all. You and Phillip were both off at school. A friend of a friend told me about these meetings, of people who just enjoyed sharing ideas. She said it was powerful.”
“So you went to one?”
Again her mother faltered. “I’ve been to several.”
The car swerved again. Mrs. Wells leaned forward to grasp her son’s shoulder. Her eyebrows were drawn together in consternation.
“Please, Phil, you have to believe that I would never do anything to hurt your campaign. I always stay in the back of the room so that no one will recognize me. When you announce your candidacy, I promise I’ll stop.”
Phillip didn’t say anything. His gaze remained locked resolutely on the road.
“Does Father know?” he asked at last.
Mrs. Wells sat back in her seat and nodded. “He doesn’t like it, but he’s never stopped me.”
Phillip shook his head in disbelief. Corinne laughed shortly.
“An arrest scandal and socialist propaganda,” she said. “My, how the mighty Wellses have fallen.”
“Don’t talk like that,” her mother said, grabbing her hand. “I don’t think Gabriel recognized me, but you can’t go near him again. I’m not a socialist, but I think that he must be.”
“I know.”
“You’re not listening to me, he’s— Wait.” Her mother reached out and turned Corinne’s chin, so that they were eye to eye. “You know?”
“It’s not as if he murders puppies or anything. Obviously you don’t find the ideas all that terrible, if you keep going back for more.”
Her mother’s forehead creased, but she didn’t deny it. Corinne had never seen her mother in this light before. She had never thought of her as someone with ideas—other than ideas for the next dinner party. She also wasn’t particularly pleased with the notion of her mother under the same roof as Silas Witcher, perhaps even speaking with him or shaking his hand. But that was a concern for another day.
“What will people say if they find out?” Mrs. Wells said softly.
“They won’t,” Corinne said. “You said it yourself. We’ll never speak of this to anyone.”
“She’s right,” Phillip said.
Mrs. Wells looked between her two children and nodded to herself, relief settling visibly over her. “I’ll just be glad when we’re all home,” she said.
Corinne stared at the passing streetlights through the window. She recognized the neighborhood they were in.
“Unfortunately, the night’s not over for me yet,” she said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Phillip asked.
Corinne turned back to her mother and clasped her hand. “I’m so sorry for what I’m about to do. It’s the only way, and if you don’t want me to end up back in Haversham, you won’t call the cops.”
Her mother’s expression was disturbed. “Corinne, what are you—”
“But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course. . . .”
For a couple of seconds her mother only stared at her in confusion. Then a cow appeared in the middle of the road. Phillip cursed and threw on the brake. As soon as the car stopped, Corinne threw open the door and ran. She ducked through the side streets and alleys so that they couldn’t follow, angling her way in the direction of the Cast Iron.
She could hear her mother’s shouting, but it was soon drowned out by the rush of cold wind in her ears. She ran all the way to the club, sliding on the icy sidewalk at every corner. She fell only once, a block away, but picked herself up before her knees and palms could even start stinging. Her chest was heaving when the red front door finally came into sight. She ducked down the narrow passage between the Cast Iron and the empty store next door. She slowed her run when she saw Gabriel in the back alley, leaning against the brick wall beside the door. His left hand was shoved into his coat pocket, and he held a lit cigarette in his right.
When he saw her, he straightened up. His features were as cool and inscrutable as always, but she couldn’t stop thinking about his face the last time she had seen him, just before they took him away. Vulnerability wasn’t something she’d ever expected to see in Gabriel Stone.
“Is Saint downstairs?” she asked him, resting her hands on her knees to gasp in a few breaths.
He nodded, taking in her disheveled appearance without any clear indication of what he thought about it. “He’s asleep, I think. Are you okay?”
“Well, I’m not dead,” she said.
“Where’s Ada?”
“Being a noble idiot. You get out early for good behavior?”
“Turns out it’s not actually illegal to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They released everyone they took to the station. I’m guessing Haversham wasn’t so forgiving?”
Corinne’s mind flitted past the wooden door, down the dark steps, and across the iron floor. So many people dead and already forgotten. She wouldn’t let that happen to Ada.
“Ada’s still there,” she said. “The HPA agents are coming. We have to get Saint and get out of here.”
“Wait.” Gabriel grabbed her wrist before she could open the door. “I should have told you sooner that I knew the Witchers. I’m sorry.”
Corinne looked at him, unsure what to do with the sudden apology. He hadn’t changed out of his tuxedo yet, though he had unbuttoned his coat enough to loosen his tie. Corinne could see that the shoes and the cuffs of the trousers were ruined from Silas’s sorry excuse for an escape route.
“It doesn’t matter now,” she said.
She expected him to protest with another apology, but she should have known better.
“I suppose it doesn’t,” he said. “How did you get out of the asylum?”
“Apparently my brother’s marrying into the Haversham family grants me some privileges.”
“So what makes you think they’re coming here?”
“It’s a long story.”
His hand was still around her wrist, and she wondered if he could feel the unsteady rhythm of her pulse. The chandeliers and champagne
of the rehearsal dinner felt faraway now. The world had shrunken into this dark alleyway, crowded on all sides by the terror of the asylum and the ache of missing Ada already and the feeling that maybe she should say something more to Gabriel Stone, but she couldn’t think of what.
“Your hand is bleeding,” Gabriel said. His brow furrowed as he turned her hand over.
Corinne looked down at the blood from the scrape on her palm. “I’ll live.”
“Cor, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” he murmured.
Corinne’s head was ducked, but she could feel him looking down at her. The last time he had been this close, they had been in the car, and she had felt his warm breath on her lips. Corinne wasn’t sure why, in this moment of all moments, she was remembering how that felt. Or why she couldn’t shake the thought that if she lifted her face and stood on tiptoe, her lips would meet his without any trouble at all.
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.
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