Iron Cast

by Soria, Destiny;

  “A thespian,” said Ada.

  “Which means Jackson is probably at the bottom of the harbor,” Corinne said quietly.

  Johnny slowed a little in his pacing, his expression taut, but he didn’t disagree.

  Gabriel had closed his eyes. “He fired at me, but I got away. He didn’t follow.”

  “The doctor will be here soon,” Ada said. There was a sheen of sweat on her forehead and a frown etched between her eyes.

  “Ada,” said Johnny, “when the doc’s finished patching up Gabriel, I want you to make him forget he was ever here.”

  Ada frowned. “Doc Reeves has been coming here for years. Surely he’s not—”

  “No chances,” said Johnny. He turned to Corinne. “I want everyone who doesn’t live here to leave—even Danny. Close the bar.”

  Corinne nodded. Johnny was grabbing his coat and hat from the rack.

  “On second thought,” he said, pausing in the doorway, “you’d better tell Gordon to stick to his post. No telling who will be nosing around.”

  “Where are you going?” Corinne asked.

  He was out the door without answering. The three of them were quiet for a few moments; then Ada sprang into motion.

  “I’ll talk to Danny and wait upstairs for Doc Reeves,” said Ada, gesturing toward Corinne. “Come here and keep pressure on this.”

  “Why me?” Corinne protested.

  “I’m fine,” Gabriel said at the same time.

  “I’ve been playing nursemaid for half an hour now, and it’s your turn,” Ada said to Corinne. “And Gabriel, there’s a lot of blood here, so stop pretending you’re not going to faint in the next ten minutes.”

  Begrudgingly, Corinne moved around the desk and took up Ada’s post.

  “What am I supposed to do if he does faint?” she called out, but Ada had already whisked out of the office.

  “I’m not going to faint,” Gabriel told her. “And I can hold pressure myself.”

  He pressed his hand over the top of hers. Corinne hesitated, considering Ada’s reaction if Gabriel did collapse and bleed to death. Finally she slipped her hand free from his and stood up. He had closed his eyes again, but she was fairly certain he was still conscious, so she didn’t panic. She pulled herself up to sit on the edge of Johnny’s desk, her feet dangling. There was a smear of blood on her palm, but she didn’t want Gabriel to see her wipe it off.

  “It almost always takes a thespian to spot another,” Corinne said. “That’s why Johnny hired Jackson in the first place. Anyway, you’d only met Jackson once or twice, and it was dark. There’s no way you could have known.”

  Gabriel’s eyes sprang open, and he gave her a wary look. Corinne couldn’t blame him. She wasn’t sure why she was trying to reassure him either.

  “I’m just saying it could have happened to any of us,” she said. Had the conversation with Jackson really been that morning? It felt more distant than that. She couldn’t even remember the last thing she’d said to him. She hadn’t known Glenn that well, but he had been around for years. She hoped Johnny was going to make sure his body made its way to a proper burial.

  “Thank you,” Gabriel said, still slightly skeptical, as if he thought her consolation was some sort of trap.

  “You ever been shot before?”

  He shook his head. That didn’t surprise her. She didn’t think he could be any older than eighteen. He’d most likely been hired by virtue of a steady gun hand and the ability to keep his mouth shut. What he probably didn’t have were years of experience running in a gangster’s crew.

  “I took a bullet in the leg once,” she told him.

  He watched her for a couple of seconds, then shook his head again. “Bullshit.”

  “Dammit,” she said. “Usually Ada’s the only one who can tell when I’m lying.”

  “High stakes are the key to a good bluff.”

  “Well, there’s my problem,” she said. “I don’t care enough to try to impress you.”

  He shifted in the chair and winced. The wiry muscles in his shoulders were strained in sharp definition, and his entire torso was slick with sweat.

  “Why lie, then?” he asked, his voice labored.

  Corinne leaned forward on her perch, suddenly certain that he was about to pass out. He didn’t, though, and after a few seconds his breathing evened out. When Corinne pulled her gaze away from his chest, she realized he was watching her expectantly. Warmth crept up the back of her neck, but she told herself he hadn’t noticed. Probably.

  “To see who I’m dealing with,” Corinne said, resting her forearms on her knees. “It takes a good liar to spot another.”

  “That why Johnny hired you?”

  She laughed shortly. “Johnny didn’t hire me. He saved me.”

  Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “From what?”

  The lamp on Johnny’s desk cast twin glows in the centers of Gabriel’s pupils, and Corinne realized for the first time how dark his irises were. Almost black. Briefly, seduced by the deceptive intimacy of the moment, she wanted to tell him everything. About Billings and her parents and her brother and the entire life that she could never quite leave behind, that was still waiting for her even now.

  Then the moment passed, and she slid off the desk.

  “Never mind,” she said. “I’m going to change out of this dress. Try to stay conscious for that long.”

  He no doubt had a retort to that, but Corinne didn’t stick around to hear it.

  Once Corinne had changed into something less flashy and more comfortable, she went back to the office and resumed pacing where Johnny had left off. Doctor Reeves had arrived finally and was stitching the gash across Gabriel’s rib cage. Despite the doctor’s cajoling, Gabriel had declined to let a songsmith ease the pain. Corinne suspected that his staunch refusal had something to do with the memory of Harry, frothing in the alleyway, desperate for one more hit.

  Just as the doctor was finishing, Ada came in, her violin in hand.

  “Come on, Doc,” she said. “I’ll walk you upstairs. How’re the kids?”

  Doctor Reeves talked happily of his youngest, who had just lost her first tooth, and followed Ada out of the office. Gabriel watched them go, a strange expression on his face.

  “What?” Corinne asked, pausing briefly in her pacing.

  “She can just . . . make him forget? Take an entire chunk out of his life?”

  “Cripes, you make it sound so dramatic. She’ll just blur the past hour or so in his mind. There’s no harm done.”

  Gabriel didn’t say anything, which Corinne didn’t like.

  “What?” she demanded.

  “If it’s so easy to just do what you like with people’s minds, why bother conning anyone? Why doesn’t Ada just play a little ditty and have them hand over their life’s savings?”

  Corinne leaned in, resting her palms on the top of the desk. “You’re pretty self-righteous for someone who’s carrying a gun.”

  Gabriel shrugged, then grimaced at the motion. “I’m not passing judgment. Just making an observation.”

  Corinne snorted. “Well, maybe it will aid you in your observation to know that Ada can make people more trusting and susceptible to suggestion, but she can’t just make them do anything she wants. And we don’t take people’s life’s savings. Our marks are always regs who had it coming. You can’t con an honest john.”

  “So you’re Robin Hood.”

  “And you’re a smug prick.”

  Gabriel leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes again. “Why do you turn everything into an argument?” he asked.

  “I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”

  “Am I going to have to separate you two?” Ada asked, coming into the room.

  “Forget it,” Corinne said. “What’s the plan here?”

  “The plan is to stay put, like Johnny said,” Ada replied.

  “I hate that plan,” Corinne said.

  “At the risk of being called more names, I have to
agree with Ada,” Gabriel said.

  “Shut up,” Corinne said without heat. “And put on a shirt.”

  He raised an eyebrow at that. Now that the blood was mostly gone, his bare chest was even more distracting, but Corinne wasn’t going to admit to that. She just glared at him until he reached for the clean shirt that Johnny had left on the desk, then resumed her pacing. It was making her dizzy, but her blood was pumping too fast to stand still.

  “We have to do something,” she said. “Where do you think Johnny went?”

  “Probably to the Red Cat or Down Street,” Ada said.

  “You think he’d really just walk in like that? No protection or anything?” Corinne asked. “I’d say it’s pretty obvious that either Carson or the Witcher brothers are responsible for this.”

  “We don’t know that,” Ada said. “Carson and Johnny called a truce. And the Witcher brothers don’t care about anything but their cause.”

  It was true that the Down Street saloon, though it was iron-free, had very little to do with the competition between the Red Cat and the Cast Iron. The Witchers didn’t put on hemopath shows, even though the meetings they held in their secret back rooms were just as illegal. Corinne had met the Witchers only once, and it was clear that neither of them particularly liked Johnny, but that didn’t mean they wanted to hurt him.

  Corinne sighed. “So there’s a rogue bunch of hemopaths, roaming Boston and shooting up the crew of one the most powerful men in the northeast?”

  “Could’ve been ironmongers,” Ada said.

  “They would never work with a thespian. Besides, their brand of vigilante lunacy is more of the ‘drag you out of your bed in the middle of the night’ type.”

  “Maybe Messina then. He’s hired hemopaths before.”

  “How would he even know that they would be there tonight?” Corinne asked. “Johnny keeps the warehouse close to the vest. I’ve never even been there before.”

  “Me neither,” Ada said. “But there are shipments there almost every night. Anyone could have figured it out.”

  Corinne shook her head and sat down heavily in a chair.

  “We need to know who the thespian is,” she said. She glanced at Gabriel. “Would you recognize him? His real face, I mean?”

  Gabriel considered for a moment, then nodded.

  “Better yet, could you describe him?” Corinne asked, suddenly sitting up straight.

  “Why?”

  “Cor, what are you thinking?” Ada asked, an edge to her voice.

  “I’ll get Saint,” Corinne said, jumping to her feet. “He can sketch whomever Gabriel saw.”

  “Corinne, no,” Ada said. “I am not—”

  “Then go tune your violin or something, Ada,” Corinne snapped. “Don’t we have bigger things to worry about than your hurt feelings?”

  She regretted it as soon as the words left her mouth. The damage was written all over Ada’s face as she stiffened. Ada shoved past Corinne and left.

  Corinne kicked Johnny’s coat rack and cursed.

  “Shut up,” she said preemptively to Gabriel. “Stay here while I find Saint.”

  Gabriel lifted his hands in mute surrender. Corinne crossed the common room and banged on Saint’s door until he answered. He was wearing his smock, and his fingertips were smudged with paint. A single gash of blue sliced across his forehead, brilliant against his pale skin.

  “What?” he asked, peering suspiciously past her, as if expecting an ambush.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, all hell has broken loose. Get your sketchbook and come on.”

  Saint didn’t move.

  “Don’t worry,” Corinne said. “Ada’s not there.”

  He considered her for a few moments, then slipped off his smock. He took up a pencil and a pad of paper and followed her to Johnny’s office. When she introduced him, Gabriel shook his hand, not giving any indication that he knew about Saint’s transgressions. Corinne was oddly grateful for that. Saint seemed more relaxed once she shut the office door, which was good. His art suffered when he was pressured or upset.

  Corinne explained what she needed him to do, and he nodded.

  “I’ve done it before for Johnny,” he said, and looked at Gabriel. “I’ll just ask some questions and make some sketches, and you tell me what looks right.”

  He pulled the chair around to sit beside him and they started working. Corinne paced again, thinking that she should go and find Ada but still unsure how to make amends. She hadn’t entirely meant what she’d said, but then she hadn’t necessarily not meant it either. Corinne didn’t like apologizing for things that weren’t her fault.

  In the end, she didn’t leave the office, reasoning that Ada would come around eventually. Their fights never lasted long. It took almost an hour before Gabriel agreed that the likeness Saint had created was the man who had shot at him. He was a middle-aged white man, round-faced, with a meaty nose and drooping ears.

  “I don’t recognize him,” Corinne said, frowning at the portrait. “Do you?”

  Saint shook his head. “Johnny probably will,” he said. “Ask him when he gets back.”

  Corinne scowled at the thought of waiting, but she knew that the others were right. They couldn’t leave tonight, after Johnny had expressly forbidden it. Maybe this was some sort of misunderstanding, and he would smooth it out by morning. Even as the thought occurred to her, she inwardly berated herself. Misunderstandings didn’t end in two men dead. Whatever had happened tonight, it wasn’t going to end quietly.

  Normally Ada was the motherly one, but since she was still missing, Corinne found a room with a cot that Gabriel could use for the night. It was technically a closet with a cot stored inside, but she figured it was homey enough, considering there weren’t any obvious spiders or rats.

  “I can probably find some spare blankets around here,” she said as Gabriel eased himself onto the cot and leaned his back against the wall.

  “I’m fine.”

  Corinne hesitated in the doorway. “I can get your coat.”

  “I’m fine,” he repeated. He had closed his eyes.

  Corinne was already feeling the chill in the tiny room, but she wasn’t entirely sure where his coat was, and she didn’t particularly want to search for it.

  She was debating whether or not to say good night, and whether or not she had already lingered too long in his doorway like an idiot, when he spoke again.

  “Do your parents know about you?” he asked. “I mean, that you’re a hemopath?”

  Corinne was caught off guard by the question but shook her head. Then she realized his eyes were still closed. “No,” she said.

  “Do you ever wonder what they would say? What they would do?” His words were growing soft and slurred.

  “No,” Corinne said, even though she did. Her brother would disown her and possibly call the police. Her father would start contacting hospitals and universities in search of a cure. And her mother would melt into hysterics of the collapsing-on-floors, begging-God-to-take-her-now variety.

  Gabriel was obviously falling asleep, still propped against the wall. Corinne glanced behind her, but the common room was deserted. She maneuvered past a mop and bucket into the room and put her hand on his shoulder. He jerked awake, his dark eyes wide for a second before he focused on her face.

  “You need to lie down,” she said. “Or you’re going to fall over and rip your stitches.”

  “I’ll go to sleep when Johnny gets back,” he said.

  “Don’t be stupid,” she said, even though she had been planning on doing the exact same thing. “It could be hours.”

  “You know, you’re not very good at this whole nursing thing,” he said. He had rested his head back against the wall, and there was a definite smile playing on his lips.

  Corinne told herself to leave, but her feet didn’t move. All that was waiting for her in her room was a cold bed and an angry Ada. She didn’t want to face either right now. She sat down gingerly beside him on the cot
, half expecting a snide comment, but he didn’t say anything.

  “What about your parents?” she asked. “Do they know how you spend your time?”

  His smile twisted into something sadder.

  “My father died when I was a kid. My mother thinks I drive a grocery truck.”

  “Impressive.”

  “She wants me to run my own store one day. She likes the idea of not having to buy groceries anymore.”

  “You could do the grocery shopping for her, you know.”

  “I tried once, but I came home with cornstarch instead of cornmeal and a carton full of broken eggs. She never trusted me with the grocery money again.”

  Corinne laughed. “The first time I ever saw a carton of eggs,” she said, “I thought there were live chicks trapped inside, and I broke every one trying to free them.”

  Gabriel laughed with her this time, and the cot creaked beneath them. Corinne was surprised at how comfortable she felt beside him, with her bare arm brushing against the crisp cotton of his shirt sleeve. He smelled of smoke and blood and something else that she couldn’t identify. Something sharp but earthy, like concrete after rain.

  “Can I ask you something?” he said.

  He had turned his head and was looking at her. She met his gaze, suddenly conscious that his face was only a few inches from hers. She could feel his breath on her cheek.

  “Sure,” she said when she had caught her own breath.

  “Don’t you feel guilty at all? When you swindle unsuspecting regs—people like the doctor?”

  His tone was cautious, and his eyes had a kind of regretful determination about them. He obviously was expecting her to react poorly. Corinne decided to keep her temper, just for the sake of being contrary.

  “Before I answer, can I ask you something?” She kept her voice even.

  Gabriel nodded, not breaking from her gaze.

  “Have you asked Johnny if he feels guilty? Or Jackson?”

  A hint of a frown flickered across his face, and he shook his head.

  “Then why are you asking me?” Corinne said.

  “Because I’m trying to figure you out,” he replied.

  “And because I’m a girl, so my tender, feminine feelings ought to make me feel sorry for the marks that Johnny gives us? Is that why?”