“We don’t have a choice,” she said. “The Cast Iron can’t stay open without us. And what about your mother?”
She rolled onto her side and squinted through the darkness. The walls on Ada’s half of the room were an eclectic mix of foreign landscapes and clippings from Garden & Home Builder of the “Picture-Perfect Kitchen!” and “A Rose Garden Fit for a Queen.” Pasted in the center of it all was an old, wrinkled picture of her parents. Her mother was perched neatly on a fence, her hair wrapped in a scarf, trying to keep her skirt from blowing in the breeze, while Ada’s father stood on tiptoe, one hand on his hat, leaning in for a kiss.
“And what’s my mother supposed to do if we’re both carted to the asylum and never seen again?” Ada asked.
“We won’t get caught,” Corinne said. “Not as long as we’re together.”
Ada didn’t say anything more, and soon her breaths deepened into sleep.
Corinne tried to calm her own mind, but to no avail. She pulled her grandfather’s pocket watch from the wooden crate that served as her bedside table. Clutching the cool brass to her chest, she laid her head back on the pillow. Her fingertips searched out the familiar grooves of the inscription inside the delicate timepiece, lulling her mind into a blank peace. She fell asleep still cradling it.
Ada couldn’t fall back asleep. She forced a steady rhythm into her breathing, trying to trick her mind into rest. It was no use. No matter how many times she told herself that she was free, that she was home, whenever she closed her eyes, she was back there. Gray walls around her. Fear like acid in her throat.
Her first day at the asylum, she’d thought it was going to be a breeze. The corridors were dreary and the cells were cold, but there were no instruments of torture, no prisoners being dissected. The rumors must have been exaggerated by gossiping regs and paranoid hemopaths. Ada knew that Corinne would come for her. All she had to do was wait.
On the second day, they brought her into an examination room for tests. She remembered with clarity the framed diploma on the wall and the black-and-white tiles—not unlike the Cast Iron’s dance floor. A porcelain washbasin sat in the corner, pristinely white and draped with a soft cotton towel. As touted to the public, the facility was iron-free, so she had succumbed to their poking and prodding. They had checked for lice, rashes, symptoms of influenza. Nothing that wouldn’t happen in any ordinary doctor’s office in Boston.
When the Dr. Knox who was heralded on the diploma came in, he seemed so harmless with his spectacles and warm smile that Ada found herself smiling back.
“Family?” he asked a nurse, who handed him a chart.
“Father, in prison,” said the nurse. “Mother, address unknown.”
Dr. Knox nodded thoughtfully, and Ada felt the first twinge of worry in her gut. She was sitting on a wooden exam table, her legs dangling. Suddenly she felt exposed. Helpless.
“She’s a songsmith?” he asked as he thumbed through the chart. “Are you any good, my dear?”
Ada stared back at him, unsure how to answer.
“According to the agency, she’s one of the hemopaths involved in that scam on the bridge,” said the nurse. “The one with Councilman Turner and the elephants?”
Dr. Knox’s eyes lit up with new interest, and he scratched his chin.
“One of Dervish’s girls then?”
“Will that be a problem, sir?” the nurse asked.
Dr. Knox was studying Ada like she was a slab of meat in the butcher’s shop.
“I’ll need her in the basement for the second phase,” he said at last. “We’re still disposing of the failed subjects, so it will be a few weeks yet.”
“We can keep her upstairs for now,” the nurse said. She took back the chart and made a note in it.
“The second phase of what?” Ada asked.
Dr. Knox seemed surprised that she’d spoken. He frowned slightly, then turned to the nurse.
“Let’s take some blood samples while she’s here. Give me a syringe.”
When Ada saw the gleam of metal in the nurse’s hand, she scrambled off the table. She tried to run for the door, but the doctor was in the way. She shrank back into the corner. She could feel the stinging presence of the metal only with concentration, which meant it was some sort of iron alloy. Probably steel. The only thing she knew for certain was that she wouldn’t let them stick that needle in her.
“No,” she said, and was pleased with the vehemence in her voice. It was a strength she didn’t feel.
“None of that,” Dr. Knox said sharply.
He snatched the syringe from the nurse and reached for Ada’s arm. Her body was tense and coursing with adrenaline. She sidestepped the doctor, leapt onto the table, and rolled to the other side. Then she flipped it on top of him.
All the rest was a blur in her mind. The nurse screaming. Others rushing in to help. Ada tried to run, but someone pushed her down. There was a lancing pain in the back of her shoulder, and then she fell unconscious. When she awoke, she was in her solitary cell, with nothing to do but await the basement. And wonder what Dr. Knox meant by “failed subjects.”
She hadn’t told Corinne any of that yet. She wasn’t sure if she could.
Corinne would have a thousand questions. She would want to figure it out, solve the mystery. Ada didn’t want to know what was happening in the basement, though. She wanted to ease back into her comfortable life and forget the asylum even existed.
After an hour or so, she did manage to drift off. But the screams of the woman from the next cell over followed her into her dreams.
CHAPTER THREE
The next morning Ada slipped out early to go see her mother. Corinne considered joining her but fell back asleep before she could decide. After another hour of sleep, she pulled on the first dress she could find from a pile on the floor and trudged upstairs to the bar for breakfast. The tables were populated with the morning crowd of those who worked daylight hours for Johnny. Most were groggily clutching white mugs of coffee. A few were eating from the breakfast spread on the sidebar.
Gabriel was at a corner table—alone, predictably enough. The Cast Iron crew was slow to trust and even slower to pleasant chitchat. Corinne sighed to herself, then loaded up a plate with eggs and toast and joined him.
“Sleep well?” she asked.
He just looked at her. His short brown hair was as disheveled as it had been the night before, though every part of his attire, from his plain collared shirt to his pressed black trousers, was fastidiously neat.
“That’s called a question,” Corinne said when he didn’t reply. “In polite society, it involves an answer.”
His eyebrows shot up, and Corinne could detect a hint of what could have been a smile or a smirk around his mouth. The movement did nothing to soften the severe line of his jaw. The tousle of his hair made the angles on his face even more pronounced, and there was something etched in his features that she couldn’t quite pinpoint. Like a gaunt hunger.
“I wasn’t aware that I was in polite society,” he said.
“You can’t hold last night against us,” Corinne said, turning her attention away from his jawline and back to her toast. “Not every day here involves asylum escapes and police raids.”
“I’m not sure I believe that.”
Corinne smiled and hid the expression with another bite of toast. Now that she’d had a few hours of sleep, she had decided to play nice with Gabriel Stone. Johnny wasn’t an idiot, and he didn’t let just anyone join his crew. If he’d hired Gabriel, there was a good reason for it.
“I thought we’d start with the tour,” Corinne said.
“Don’t you want to finish your breakfast first?”
“No need. There’s the stage, the backstage door—that’s where the musicians shoot the breeze when they’re waiting for their set. Beside that is the kitchen door, which leads, predictably enough, to the kitchen. You’ve been to Johnny’s office downstairs, and the other rooms down there are all private, aside from a few clos
ets.”
“Thorough,” he said drily.
Corinne ignored his tone and continued. “Danny runs the bar every night, but don’t believe a word he says about me because he is a bitter, bitter man, and I am a darling. I’m sure you met Gordon, our resident charmer. He’s usually only on duty when the club is open, to keep drunk patrons from snooping. There used to be a show every night, but the new law complicates things.”
“I’d say police raids are more than just a complication.”
“Debatable. Anyway, Ada and I had it covered.”
“Right,” he said.
It wasn’t the way he said it but his fleeting expression that gave Corinne pause. “What?” she asked.
He hesitated.
“Look,” she snapped. “If you’ve got a problem with Ada, then—”
“I don’t have a problem with Ada.”
“Then is it women in general who shouldn’t be handling things?”
He sat back in his chair, obviously bemused. “I didn’t say anything like that,” he replied.
Corinne eyed him and finished off her toast.
“Sorry,” she said once she swallowed. “I guess I’ll let you actually say something stupid before I berate you for it.”
“Appreciate it.”
Corinne stood up. “Nice chat,” she said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to change into something more suitable. We’re meeting Ada at ten. I’ll explain on the way.”
Corinne dropped her dishes off in the kitchen and went downstairs. She and Ada didn’t have a wardrobe in their room, so finding a dress that wasn’t hopelessly wrinkled was a challenge, although Ada never seemed to have a problem. Corinne dug her maroon silk out of a crate. Not the right material for the season, but with its belted waist and gold thread trim, it was her most respectable dress. She pulled on stockings and her black suede kitten heels. Ada’s black felt cloche finished the ensemble, and Corinne grabbed her coat off the pile of clothes at the foot of her bed and ran out the door.
She made it two steps before running into Guy Jackson.
“Slow it down, sweetheart,” he said, gripping her arms as she caught her balance.
Corinne shook him off. “You forget my name already?” she asked.
Jackson grinned at her toothily. He was of average height, with compact muscles, a shaved head, and permanent stubble on his chin. His brown eyes were always either darting or leering. Right now it was the latter. Corinne slipped her coat on and started for the stairs. He joined her.
“Good show last night,” he said in a pleasanter tone. “Your friend all right?”
“Ada’s fine.”
“Glad to hear it. Haversham’s a nasty place.”
At the top of the stairs, something occurred to Corinne and she turned around. He was a couple of steps lower than her, making their height even.
“Did you go into the basement?” she asked. “What are they doing down there?”
His brow furrowed at the question. “I don’t think you want to know what’s going on down there, sweetheart,” he said, scratching his stubble absently. “I think you’d be better off praying that you never have to find out.”
There was something about his tone that made her feel very young all of a sudden. Maybe it was the lack of his usual smarmy self-satisfaction, as if he were talking to a child and not a fellow member of Johnny’s crew. Other girls her age were sitting in classrooms right now, listening to lectures and passing secret notes. Another day she might have laughed off his uncharacteristic concern, but the sight of that hemopath dangling limply between the two HPA agents was still fresh on her mind. She and Ada had been only a hundred feet away. It could have just as easily been either of them.
Corinne backed away from the stairwell and went into the club, telling herself that Jackson probably knew as little about it as anyone else and she didn’t have the time to waste.
“Be careful out there,” Jackson called after her, his voice dipping again into smugness. “Ironmongers don’t care who your daddy is. They’ll chain and drain you same as the rest of us.”
With gritted effort, Corinne managed to ignore him. She knew he was just trying to get a rise out of her, which wasn’t much of a challenge, but she did enjoy deliberately disappointing him on occasion. Gabriel was waiting for her near the front door, in a black coat and brimmed hat. Corinne grabbed his sleeve and yanked him outside before Jackson could catch up.
“Everything all right?” he asked, letting her drag him along for a few steps.
Corinne released him and forced herself to take a breath. The sun was shining today, but a bitterly cold breeze pricked at her exposed skin.
“We’re going to be late” was all she said. She slipped on a pair of gloves from her pocket and started walking at a more reasonable pace.
Gabriel fell into step beside her, and they headed northeast on Tremont, toward the financial district. The war in Europe had ended only two months before, and the sides of buildings were still plastered with posters, telling passersby to “Buy war bonds!” and “Help America’s sons win the war!”
She and Gabriel were both quiet as they walked, and Corinne was just beginning to think that the silence had shifted from peaceful into awkward when Gabriel spoke.
“Okay, I have to know. How did you pull off the Bengali banker?”
“What?”
“I asked Johnny, but he just said that you and Ada have a knack for the ridiculous and changed the subject.”
Corinne smiled at that and glanced at him. His expression was folded in deep thought.
“I mean,” he went on, “obviously Ned Turner must have been a gullible idiot who lucked his way into office, but the papers said there was a crowd of people on the bridge. Someone must have seen through it.”
Corinne laughed.
“Ned Turner? That suspicious son of a gun? Don’t worry, our councilman is no idiot. You know he was the one who first started wearing an iron ring as a way to identify hemopaths when he shook their hands? Every jeweler in the city made a mint after that story broke.”
“I don’t see how you did it, then.”
They passed under the tracks of the elevated railway, and a train rumbled overhead. Sunlight glinted off its windows as it passed. Corinne walked a little faster until they were free from the crushing weight of the steel and iron.
“It’s not that hard to follow,” she said. “The Bengali banker is a long con based on the pig in a poke. But instead of foreign banknotes, we used elephants.”
“Why elephants?”
Corinne shrugged.
“Currency can be counterfeit. No one’s going to pay for foreign bills without having them examined. When Ned Turner saw those elephants, he was practically throwing money at us. No one can counterfeit an elephant.”
“No one except a wordsmith.”
“No one except an exceptionally skilled wordsmith,” Corinne said, skipping over an uneven patch of concrete. “Elephants aren’t particularly subtle.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“It’s not that complicated. We pretended we were with a failing circus from Canada, selling off our attractions as we traveled south. The Franklin Park Zoo is managed by the city, and Turner was eager to make his mark as councilman. We offered to sell our elephants for an absurdly low cost—or I guess it was. I’m not entirely sure what the market value for elephants is. Honestly, I didn’t expect him to make such a public spectacle of the deal.”
Once the newspapers had been tipped off, Ada wanted to call it quits, but Corinne couldn’t resist the challenge. If they could swindle the councilman on a bridge full of citizens and press, then they would be the talk of Boston for decades to come. Hemopaths had been running small cons in the city for as long as Corinne had been alive, but no one had ever pulled off anything like her version of the Bengali banker. The fact that the councilman was the chief proponent of the movement to illegalize hemopathy only made their success that much sweeter. She just wished she coul
d have seen Ned Turner’s face at the moment the elephants faded into nothing.
“I understand the con,” Gabriel said, with only the barest hint of irritation in his voice. “I just don’t see how you tricked a Columbia graduate with twenty years of politics under his belt into thinking there was an elephant on the Harvard Bridge.”
“It was four elephants,” Corinne said. “And in my experience, the smartest person in the room is always the easiest one to fool.”
Gabriel shook his head. “Maybe if you catch them off guard. Maybe years ago before anyone knew what hemopaths could do. But as soon as I hear you start quoting Wordsworth or Keats, then I know that you’re about to create an illusion. I know it’s not real.”
“First of all, I would never waste breath on one of the Romantics. Second of all, are you really suggesting that I couldn’t fool you, right here, right now?”
Corinne stopped walking and turned to face him.
“How could you, if I know you’re about to do it?” Gabriel asked.
“Take off your hat,” Corinne said.
“What?”
“Let’s find out if you’re smarter than the councilman. Take off your hat.”
“I just said—”
“If it only works on the weak brained or the gullible, then you have nothing to worry about.”
Gabriel looked ready to protest further, but he removed his hat, holding it in both hands. There were a few people passing on the sidewalk, but they were all bundled in their coats, lost in their own business.
“Now, what are you holding?” Corinne asked.
With a pained expression, Gabriel tried to keep walking, but Corinne blocked him.
“I know we just met last night,” she said. “So here’s the first thing you should know about me: I never back down from a challenge.”
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