Sometimes Ada felt the same way. And sometimes she felt like the Cast Iron was her second choice, except she had never really been given a chance at her first.
Gabriel didn’t seem caught off guard by her question, though he took a long time answering it. For a few moments he considered the couch, but maybe the impeccable press of his suit dissuaded him, because he didn’t sit down.
“I didn’t know him for very long, but Johnny didn’t deserve to die. Especially not like that.”
“Justice, then? That’s why you’re staying?”
He did look caught off guard by that. Perhaps he’d thought that she would be satisfied with his initial answer. Ada wasn’t, though. It wasn’t a reason, just a statement of fact.
Gabriel crossed his arms and uncrossed them. He was so uncomfortable in the tuxedo that Ada almost felt bad for hounding him. He ran his hands through his dark hair, leaving it disheveled and in stark contrast to the rest of his person.
“My father died when I was seven,” he said at last. “He was killed right in the middle of the day, and my mother found out from our busybody neighbor, who she hated. I don’t think she ever forgave him for that.”
His musing tone belied the weight of his words. He finally dropped onto the couch, heedless of his attire for the first time since putting it on.
“I don’t even remember how I found out—whether I overheard the conversation or my mother told me herself. I just remember her kissing my forehead and telling me that I was safe, because she loved me, and we must always protect what we love.”
Ada was so still that she could hear the sizzling of the furnace, the thrumming of her own pulse. Gabriel’s brow was furrowed and his lips were slightly apart. His eyes focused by slow degrees as his mind skipped forward across the years, until he blinked and was present again. He looked at Ada.
“Johnny never did anything but try to protect what he loved,” he said. “I don’t think I can just leave, not when you’re all still here, not when I can help.”
His hands squeezed into fists, only briefly, and Ada got the feeling that only moments earlier they had been trembling. He jumped to his feet without warning.
Ada followed his gaze to where Corinne stood, leaning in the doorway of the bedroom. In her gauzy evening gown, with her hair curled and her lips yet undone, she looked just like her mother. Not that Ada would dare tell her that.
From Corinne’s expression, Ada could tell exactly how long she had been standing there. Corinne didn’t say anything, though. She just straightened and touched her gloved hand to the back of her head, as if she were afraid her curls had escaped.
Gabriel coughed. “You look—” But he seemed to have lost whatever words he had in mind. “Are you ready to go?”
“Almost.” Corinne must have been having trouble with words too, because her mouth wavered for several seconds, her eyes still on Gabriel. “Ada, can you help me with my necklace? It took me forever to get these gloves on, and I’m not about to take them off.”
Ada, whose amusement had her in sudden good humor, slid off the chair and followed Corinne into their room. Corinne dug around on the vanity until she found a string of pearls. She handed it to Ada and turned around. Ada fiddled with the clasp, waiting to hear what Corinne had to say, but apparently Corinne had decided against it. For once she was silent.
“You should kiss him tonight,” Ada told her.
Corinne jerked, and Ada almost dropped the necklace.
“Very funny,” Corinne said, but her voice was breathy and a higher pitch than normal.
Ada smiled and adjusted the necklace. The pearls were milky against the flushed pink of Corinne’s neck. Ada patted her on the back, a conciliatory gesture. “Just a suggestion,” she said.
The Lenox Hotel was a fortress of red and white brick. Its hundreds of windows glistened so perfectly with frost that Corinne’s first absurd thought was that someone must have hand-painted each of them. She craned her neck to see the roof, but it disappeared into the darkness. She had stayed here once with her mother, the night before she took the train to Billings Academy. Corinne was five years older now, but the hotel might as well have grown with her. She had never seen anything so vast.
Gabriel handed the Ford off to the waiting valet and took the ticket. Although she was dreading the dinner, Corinne was grateful to go inside. Her head already ached from the ride in the car, and the Lenox’s sheer height was starting to give her vertigo.
They entered the grand foyer and were instantly assaulted by warmth and light and clouds of ladies’ perfume. The marble floor glared with reflections, and overhead crystal chandeliers tinkled delicately as gusts of outside air blew in. There was a sign to the left pointing them toward the Wells-Haversham Party in the Washington Ballroom.
“Haversham?” Gabriel asked. “Like the hemopath asylum?”
“Dearest Angela’s grandfather built it,” she said to Gabriel, through a plastered-on smile.
“Why? Was he a hemopath?”
“I don’t know, but I doubt it. Can you imagine the scandal of a hemopath in the Haversham family?”
“Worse than one in the Wells family?”
“Much worse,” she said. “The Havershams have been anti-hemopath since before it was fashionable. About ten years ago, Angela’s father published a bunch of essays arguing that the hemopath affliction should be studied further, and the bodies of dead hemopaths should become government property for scientific experimentation.”
Corinne paused as a footman in a smart uniform jacket waylaid them to take their coats.
“No one paid him much attention,” she continued once he had gone. “But no one actively disagreed with him either—other than hemopaths, of course.”
“Are the rumors about the asylum true, then?” Gabriel asked, his voice low. “Jackson said the basement is being used for something other than storage.”
His expression was strangely conflicted, like the topic wasn’t something he wanted to broach at all but he felt he had to. A far cry from the scandal-mongering at her parents’ party. Corinne wasn’t sure how to reply. She’d asked Ada about the basement, but Ada didn’t know any more than anyone else. Just gossip and tall tales. There was something happening down there, though. That was where the HPA agents had taken their prisoner. Another one for the basement, they’d said.
“We’re late,” she said, instead of answering him. “Let’s just get this over with.”
Even the looming promise of hours of brutal small talk and pointed questions sounded better right now than continuing to dwell on Haversham and its mysteries. Corinne leaned momentarily on Gabriel’s arm. Her feet ached in her new shoes, and one of the tiny silver buckles was biting into her ankle. She managed to loosen it slightly, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
Gabriel was watching her with an eyebrow raised, and Corinne couldn’t understand why her face prickled with warmth, despite the goose bumps on her arms. The dress her mother had bought her was nothing but cream silk and frothy lace, embroidered with pale blue and pink roses. The low waist and capped sleeves were stylish, at least, but there was little to protect her from the chill.
“Shall I carry you, then?” he asked.
She realized she was still gripping his arm. She released him and ran her fingers down his sleeve to smooth the wrinkles.
“It might come to that— Wait.” She looked him over with narrowed eyes. Then she leaned in and whispered, “Are you armed ?”
“How can you always tell?”
“You fidget,” Corinne said.
“I’m not fidgeting.”
“I can also feel the iron in it.”
That explained the tingling under her skin when she touched him. She felt strangely vindicated.
“I’m not going anywhere near a ritzy hotel full of the degenerately wealthy without a weapon.”
Corinne rolled her eyes and took his arm again, this time so they could enter the ballroom in proper fashion.
“Yes,” she s
aid. “I’m sure Aunt Maude will be a real threat, what with her rheumatism and trick hip.”
The ballroom was brighter than the foyer, if that was possible. The crowd was already thick, threaded with waiters in white jackets serving champagne and dainty hors d’oeuvres. Corinne could feel the body heat and furtive stares and, as always, the sources of iron in the room. A hundred pinpricks of pain, scattered across her consciousness.
“You’re the one who wanted me to come,” Gabriel said.
He was surveying the room with a grim expression that wouldn’t have been out of place at an executioner’s block—not that Corinne could blame him. This event was a rehearsal dinner only in name. It was really an excuse for the Wellses and the Havershams to rub elbows and revel in their status.
Corinne wondered idly what it meant to gird one’s loins and whether she should do so now.
“Just because I— Oh cripes, here comes my mother. Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Go get me a drink,” she said.
“Shouldn’t I—”
“Go.” She shoved him away just as her mother arrived. She was flushed a pretty pink from excitement and looked after Gabriel with her mouth slightly ajar.
“Corinne, aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”
“He’s just fetching me a drink, Mother.”
“You didn’t say you were bringing someone.” She studied Corinne with shrewd eyes, and Corinne had the oddest feeling that she suspected something was amiss. Or maybe her mind had already drifted to a separate crisis, like the color of the roses or the quality of the crystal. It was hard to tell with Mrs. Wells.
“Hamish Everett will be so disappointed,” her mother said. “He was looking forward to being your escort when we go in for dinner.”
“He’ll survive, I’m sure. Gabriel is just a . . . friend.”
Her mother, predictably enough, seized on the hesitation. “Where is he from, then? Do I know his parents? Corinne, you really can’t just show up with a stranger to your brother’s rehearsal dinner. I’m not sure if I—”
She cut off when Gabriel arrived with the drinks. His was already half empty.
“Mother, this is Gabriel Stone,” Corinne said. “Gabriel, this is my mother, Constance Wells.”
Gabriel took her hand in what Corinne thought was a more than passable greeting for polite society, but her mother’s face had gone white.
“The pleasure is all mine,” she managed to say before jerking her hand away. “I beg your pardon, but I just remembered I forgot to tell the caterers that my aunt is allergic to sage.”
She whisked away before Corinne or Gabriel could reply.
“What did you do to her?” Corinne demanded.
“I didn’t do anything to her. I just got here.”
“She acted like she knew you. Like she’d seen you kill a puppy or something.”
She expected Gabriel to be flippant with her, but he was studying her mother’s retreating figure carefully, his brows knitted in concentration. Finally he shook his head.
“Honest, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her before,” he said.
Corinne couldn’t read anything but truth in his face. She shrugged. “My mother does tend toward exaggeration, and my great-aunt really is allergic to sage.”
As they made it through the gauntlet of elderly relatives, the matter didn’t come up again. No one seemed to recognize Gabriel, and those who treated him with suspicion did so only because they trusted no one without a country club membership. One half-deaf distant cousin with bluish-gray hair and an oversized fur stole thought he was a film star and congratulated Corinne in what she probably thought was a whisper on bagging herself a sheik.
By the time they finally had a few minutes alone, Corinne had made it through three glasses of champagne and Gabriel wasn’t far behind.
“Is it time for you to fall ill yet?” he asked her.
“Not until after my toast,” Corinne said, patting his arm. She was feeling much more congenial toward him now that her head was fizzy with champagne bubbles. He also hadn’t shot anyone yet.
“Shouldn’t there be a wedding rehearsal at some point during this rehearsal dinner?”
He must’ve felt the champagne too, because he wasn’t stiff and wary anymore. There was an unguarded leisure about him, even in the tuxedo, that Corinne liked better than his usual intensity. The memory of him on the sofa, speaking softly of his parents, sprang unbidden to her mind. She knew hardly anything about Gabriel Stone, but the way his mother had grasped him close, pressing her lips to his forehead like he was the last thing she had left to love, was somehow enough.
“I’m sure there was a rehearsal,” Corinne said, “but as I’m not part of the wedding, my presence wasn’t necessary.”
“Bride doesn’t like you?”
“Why do you say that as if it’s the obvious conclusion?” Corinne asked.
His eyebrows arched.
“I’ll have you know that she asked me to be a bridesmaid, but I talked my way out of it,” Corinne said. “I don’t like the man she’s marrying.”
“You mean your brother.”
“Yes.”
Gabriel took a sip of champagne.
“Shut up,” Corinne said, though she couldn’t summon any malice.
“Yet again, I didn’t say anything.”
“How can I be expected to play nice with someone who married into Boston’s foremost anti-hemopath family just to advance his political career?”
“Still not saying anything.”
“Well, I wish you would, every once in a while.”
“What?” He stopped examining his cuff link and looked at her.
“You never say what you’re thinking. It’s tiring,” she told him, and snatched a napkin from the tray of a passing waiter. “Also you still have some of Aunt Maude’s lipstick on your face.”
She wiped at the smudge with short, angry strokes, avoiding his eyes.
“I don’t say what I’m thinking because my opinion doesn’t change anything,” he said, his voice low.
“It matters, though,” she said.
“That so?”
Corinne realized she was still wiping his cheek, even though the lipstick was gone. She lowered her hand, risking a glance into his eyes. His gaze didn’t flinch away from hers, and Corinne tried to remember why she had been so determined not to kiss him tonight.
When the dinner bell rang, she couldn’t decide if she was irritated or relieved.
Ada practiced her violin for a while, trying to pass the time, but her heart wasn’t in it. She gave up and rested it in her lap, fingering the polished spruce and taut strings. Even though she’d played the old violin her father gave her for longer than this one, she still felt that this violin had always been hers. It was hard to remember a time before she’d known it better than her own two hands.
She placed it back in its case on the coffee table right as the door at the top of the stairs slid open. Saint had returned from the Mythic, and he was more chipper than Ada had seen him in a long time. He was humming a tune as he peeled off his coat and retrieved his sketchbook from his room. From the couch, Ada watched him with a raised eyebrow. He sat in the armchair and gnawed thoughtfully on his pencil for a few seconds before he noticed her.
“Hi,” he said.
“Nice night?”
He shrugged. “Just painting the set for James and Maddy’s next show,” he said. He hunched over his sketchbook, but Ada could see his smile.
“You’d think that being around Corinne for four years would make you a better liar,” she said.
“I don’t want to be a good liar,” he replied, his pencil scratching away.
Ada smiled at the top of his head. His auburn hair was burnished by the warm lamplight and flecked with dried blue paint. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen Saint without some trace of paint on his person. There was something comforting about curling up on the sofa, watching as he sketch
ed. She could almost forget how much everything had changed since her arrest. Almost.
“We’re going to Down Street tonight,” she said.
Saint was quiet for a while, and she began to wonder if he’d even heard her.
“I know,” he said at last, glancing up. “But I still don’t understand why.”
“If Carson doesn’t know anything about Johnny’s murder, then maybe the Witcher brothers do.”
Saint tapped his pencil on his knee, frowning in thought. After a few seconds he went back to his sketch without a reply.
“Corinne thinks it’s our best option,” Ada said.
“She’s usually right about these things,” he said absently.
“Usually. You can come with us if you want.”
Saint looked strangely amused at the invitation. “The last time I tagged along, it didn’t end so well.”
Despite the subject still being tender, Ada felt the urge to giggle. Maybe she was more tired than she thought.
“I guess you’re right,” she said. “But doesn’t it drive you mad, waiting around here alone?”
For as long as she’d known him, Saint had spent most of his time in the Cast Iron. He left only when Johnny had a job for him, or when he was visiting James at the Mythic. The rest of the time he was perfectly content to stay home with paintbrush or pencil in hand.
“I like it here,” Saint said, returning to his sketch. “It’s safe.”
He spoke the last so softly that Ada wasn’t sure if she’d heard him right. She waited, but he didn’t say more. He was lost again in his work. After a couple of minutes, the silence got the better of Ada and she stood up. There was a phone call she had been putting off, and she was running out of time to do it.
She went down the hall to Johnny’s office. The electric light buzzed and flickered when she turned it on, before it settled into a dull hum. She sat down in the chair across from the desk and pulled the phone toward her. She told the operator her mother’s number and waited for the line to connect. Her mother answered in a polite, if wary, tone. She wasn’t accustomed to using the phone.
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