What she’d seen outside was starting to make more sense. The lunatic had been trying to replace hemopaths’ blood completely, which meant there were regs being used too. Drifters, probably. People with no families to miss them. She turned her head slightly, trying to catch Ada’s eye, but Ada was staring straight ahead, her shoulders squared, her jaw locked.
Dr. Knox sighed like a professor disappointed in his students.
“I wouldn’t expect you to grasp the full importance of what we’re doing here,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “If we can isolate a cure for hemopathy or an antidote to make non-hemopaths immune, then the scientific benefits will be immeasurable.”
“Don’t you mean the paycheck will be immeasurable?” Ada asked. She was still staring straight past him, her chin raised slightly in residual defiance. In that moment she looked so much like her mother that Corinne’s heart ached.
Dr. Knox actually reddened at her words. He tugged his collar.
“Well, of course there are certain monetary considerations,” he mumbled. “This has become my life’s work. I’ve had my eye on you two since that incident on the Harvard Bridge, and I suspect that your skill may be more potent than our other subjects’. That, coupled with your youth, makes you prime candidates for my new study.”
“And what does this study entail exactly?” Ada asked.
Agent Wilkey bared his teeth in a gesture that only vaguely resembled a smile. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
Ada flinched, and Corinne swallowed hard, her mind still echoing with the woman’s screams. They had quieted now. Maybe she had run out of strength. Maybe she was dead.
Dr. Knox cleared his throat again.
“There’s no need to concern ourselves with that at this juncture. First we need to ensure that you both are up to par, so to speak. Shall we begin?”
The longer Dr. Knox’s test dragged on, the more outside herself Ada felt. There was something surreal about sitting in this chair, staring at an HPA agent as he sweat in intense concentration. Beside her Corinne was quoting her way through Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market,” her pace lagging only slightly as she glared at Agent Wilkey in equal concentration. They had been at it for almost an hour now, by Ada’s estimation. Thankfully, their cuffs had been removed earlier, at Corinne’s insistence that she couldn’t concentrate with the steel against her skin.
At the beginning, Corinne had attacked the task with vicious precision, using Poe to conjure a creature so hideously fierce that even Ada was taken aback. Wilkey had resisted for almost two minutes before frowning and informing Dr. Knox that he could see the illusion. When Corinne knew that he was seeing it, she had it jump at him, claws outstretched and fanged mouth gaping. Despite his attempts to remain unruffled, Wilkey had jerked back in his chair.
Beneath the table, Ada had turned her hand palm up, so that Corinne could tap her fingertips twice. Dr. Knox had barely glanced up from his notes. He checked the time, then told Corinne to do it again.
That was sixteen poems ago. Ada knew that Corinne was running out of steam. She was slurring the words to “Goblin Market,” and though Ada was just passingly familiar with the text, she was fairly sure that Corinne had skipped a few stanzas. Under normal circumstances, she needed only a few lines before she could conjure an illusion for someone, and she could keep creating the illusions for several minutes after—as long as the poem was still swimming in the hearer’s brain. Wilkey proved tougher to crack, and Corinne had to quote continuously in order to break through his concentration. Her voice was starting to give out.
“A goblin?” Wilkey asked when he finally saw the illusion. “That’s the best you can do?”
Corinne sat back heavily in her chair and didn’t reply.
“She can’t do another,” Ada said. “She’s too tired.”
She half expected Corinne to protest the insinuation that she had any such limitations, but she was silent, which meant she was even more exhausted than Ada thought. Dr. Knox looked up from his data and frowned. The gleam from the lightbulb flashed in his spectacles.
“I’ll decide when we’re finished here,” he said. He reached out and slid the iron coin half an inch closer, as a reminder.
Ada bit her lip and clenched her fists in her lap. Dr. Knox tapped his pencil against his chin in absent thought, studying Corinne.
“Fine,” he said. “I think the data is sufficient for an accurate average. Do you need a break before we move on to the songsmith,
Agent Wilkey?”
Wilkey shook his head and smiled leisurely at Ada. “I’m ready,” he said.
“I play the violin,” Ada told them.
“I’ve been told that your voice serves you just as well,” Dr. Knox said with a dismissive wave. “Agent, if you’ll be so kind as to nudge me when you start to feel something. I need these in order to focus fully on the data.”
He fished some earplugs out of his pocket and pushed them firmly into his ears. Ada guessed that he had been able to disregard Corinne’s illusions because he knew they weren’t real, but Ada’s talent wasn’t so easily ignored. Agent Wilkey leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. Ada glared at him and took stock of her own emotions, which were dwarfed by a single, overwhelming feeling. Hate.
She started to hum a funeral dirge, directing the full force of it at Wilkey. It took more effort to angle emotions at one person rather than let them blanket the room, but she doubted Corinne would have enough focus right now to block it out. This particular emotion was something she wanted only Wilkey to feel.
Utter, impossible, complete desolation.
In less than a minute his expression began to change. It was subtle at first. He was still trying to block her out. She didn’t increase her volume. The song’s quality was more important than anything else. Ada pushed the desolation into every single note. Wilkey would find himself spiraling through every hurt and heartache and loss that he had ever experienced. She played loss for the patrons at the Cast Iron sometimes, in order to sweeten the joy that would come later. This was different, though.
She didn’t want to manipulate Wilkey’s emotions. She wanted to use them to annihilate him.
When he felt the first wave of it, Wilkey smacked Dr. Knox’s arm with a reflexive jerk. The doctor nodded and wrote down the time, but Ada didn’t stop. She layered on the grief and despair, twisting them together with every ounce of guilt and shame she had ever felt. She had never purposefully used her own emotions in a song, but tonight it came naturally to her.
“That’s enough,” Agent Wilkey said through gritted teeth.
Ada still didn’t stop. Her voice was the only weapon she had in this hell they’d created. She would inflict as much damage as she could before it was over.
“I said that’s enough,” Wilkey shouted.
He jumped to his feet, chair skittering backward. In one fluid motion, he snatched up the iron coin, rounded the table, and grabbed Ada around the neck. Her vision exploded red as he lifted her and thrust her against the wall. He wasn’t a big man, but he was deceptively strong. She clawed at his wrist but couldn’t find purchase. Her lungs screamed for air, racking her head with pain. With his left hand, Wilkey shoved the iron coin into her mouth. She didn’t think it was possible, but the pain expanded, filling her completely, pouring out of her in waves.
“You want to know what the new study entails, slagger?” he hissed in her ear. She could barely make out his words. “The good doctor is going to ram metal spikes into your head and pump you full of electricity. And when your body finally does give out, he’ll drain every drop of your diseased blood. I’ll make sure we ship your corpse back to your mother.”
He might have had more to say, but he didn’t get the chance. Corinne chose that moment to smash her chair into his back. There was a crack—Ada couldn’t tell if it was Wilkey or the wood. He howled, and his grip loosened. Ada fell to the floor, spitting out the coin and gasping for breath. She dove out of his reach, but not befor
e aiming a kick at his kneecap.
“Stop!” Dr. Knox was shouting.
Wilkey didn’t seem inclined to listen. He had rounded on Corinne, and she backed away until she was against the wall. Ada managed to drag herself to her knees, but her legs wouldn’t cooperate. Spotty vision. Splitting headache. But she had to get up. She had to help Corinne.
The door opened, and Pierce came in. He took in the scene with a stony expression, gun in hand. The sight of his partner seemed to bring Wilkey back to himself.
“Get the cuffs,” Pierce said.
“This is unacceptable,” Dr. Knox said, waving his notebook with fervor. “The agency promised me the highest degree of professionalism.”
Pierce ignored him and crossed the room. He yanked Ada up by her arm and deposited her back in her chair. She tried to struggle, but her failing strength ended the attempt quickly. He righted Corinne’s chair and gestured at her wordlessly with the gun. She looked at him with undisguised fury and cast a glance toward Ada.
Ada shook her head fiercely. She would never forgive Corinne if she got herself shot right in front of her. Corinne set her jaw, but she sat down without protest. Ada saw that one of the chair legs wobbled now, and she felt the strangest urge to smile. The urge was fleeting.
Wilkey handcuffed their hands behind their backs again, just as a buzz of static made Ada jump in her seat. She looked toward the source to see a beige loudspeaker mounted in the corner of the room.
“Dr. Knox,” came the voice of the desk nurse, “we need you upstairs.”
Dr. Knox muttered something to himself and gathered his notebook and pencil.
“You two come with me,” he said to the agents. “I don’t trust either of you with my test subjects.”
Neither Wilkey nor Pierce objected, though Wilkey cast a deathly glance over his shoulder on the way out. They left the metal gags where they were on the table, and Ada could still feel the angry pulse of the iron coin somewhere on the floor behind her. Dr. Knox shut the door behind them. The lock clicked into place.
She and Corinne were both silent for a while, readjusting to the sting of the steel on their wrists. Ada’s head pounded with Wilkey’s words, but she fought them back. She wouldn’t give him what he wanted. He could hurt her, but he wasn’t stronger than her. She’d watched him crumple beneath the weight of her music.
When she finally gathered herself enough to speak, her voice came out scratchy and soft. “I’m sorry if you felt any of that song,” she said. “I tried to aim it at Wilkey.”
Corinne shook her head slowly. She was staring hard at the tabletop. Ada could see her hands were shaking behind her back.
“I’ve never heard you play anything like that before,” she said. “I didn’t—I didn’t know you could.”
Ada hadn’t known she could either. She’d had no idea that she even had the capacity to hate someone as much as she’d hated Wilkey in that moment. It wasn’t really Wilkey she hated, though. It was everything he stood for. It was the atrocities they were committing in the next room. It was this world that these men were forging in their underground lair. A world where she was just a test subject, where she had no choices, no recourse, no power.
Johnny had given her those things when he’d given her the Cast Iron. She wasn’t willing to surrender it, not to Haversham Asylum or to the Hemopath Protection Agency or to anyone else.
Corinne had felt only a sliver of the emotions that Ada had unleashed on Agent Wilkey, and even that was enough to make her heart clench and her head swim. She didn’t pity the man in the least. After the sight of him with his hand around Ada’s neck, she wished that Ada had given him much worse. She was worried, though. Ada felt guilty about using her skill to con even the most corrupt, cruel, deceitful john out of his money. What kind of pain was she feeling if she was willing to wreak such devastation now?
“They’re the ones who asked for it,” Ada said.
“I know.”
With slow, painful movements, Corinne edged her chair closer to Ada’s, until their shoulders touched. They sat in silence like that for several minutes. When the lock on the door turned, neither of them moved. Corinne told herself that whatever came next, she and Ada could handle it. She only wished she could believe herself.
It wasn’t Dr. Knox or the agents who came through the door.
It was her brother.
“Come on, Corinne,” he said, taking in the room with an expression of pure disgust. “We’re leaving.”
It took Corinne another few seconds to even register that she wasn’t hallucinating, that her brother, Phillip Wells, military academy graduate with honors, aspiring politician, and fiancé to one of the wealthiest women in Boston, really was standing in the room with them, still wearing his tuxedo from the rehearsal dinner.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“One of the nurses called Angela’s father when she heard that you were here,” Phillip said. He was eyeing the metal gags on the table with obvious disquiet. “Thank God he came to me instead of Father. How did you even— Never mind, let’s go. Mother’s in the car.”
“You brought our mother?” Corinne demanded. Somehow that seemed like it warranted immediate discussion.
“I didn’t have much of a choice when she overheard Mr. Haversham. As far as she knows, this is all a terrible misunderstanding, and we’re going to keep it that way. Now let’s go.” He crossed the room and grabbed her arm, but Corinne yanked herself free.
“Not without Ada,” she said.
“Absolutely not.” Dr. Knox had come into the room, handkerchief in hand. “Miss Navarra is a dangerous criminal, and I cannot allow her to leave this facility. I’m sorry, Mr. Wells, but your influence doesn’t reach far enough to pardon convicted felons.”
“There was never even a trial,” Corinne protested.
Phillip stared at Dr. Knox for a while, sizing him up. The doctor wiped at his forehead with the handkerchief but did not back down.
“Come on, Corinne,” Phillip said at last. “Angela called in a few favors to get me down here, but she’s not going to call in any more.”
“I’m not leaving without Ada.”
“Cor,” Ada said sharply.
“No,” Corinne said, looking straight at her.
“Corinne, I swear I will carry you out of here kicking and screaming.” Phillip took a step forward.
“Are you sure, Phil?” Corinne sat back in her chair. “Think of what that headline would do to the Wells name. Just go. You can tell everyone that I died of Spanish influenza. That way I won’t be a smear on any future campaigns.”
Phillip was taken aback by her words. He was wearing the same expression he’d had outside the Lenox only hours ago. Wounded and uncertain. Two things she had never thought that the mighty Phillip Wells, soon-to-be heir to both the Wells and Haversham fortunes, could ever be.
“Do you really think I came here for my political career?” he asked her.
“Phillip,” Ada said, not taking her eyes off Corinne, “would you give us a couple of seconds?”
Phillip looked between them, at a loss for possibly the first time in his life, and nodded.
“I really must protest—this is highly irregular,” Dr. Knox said.
“What’s highly irregular is the fact that the basement of this facility is supposed to just be for storage.” Phillip put a massive hand on the back of Dr. Knox’s shoulder and propelled him toward the door.
Dr. Knox’s mouth worked like a fish’s as he tried to come up with a reply. He hadn’t found one by the time Phillip shut the door. Corinne stared resolutely anywhere but at Ada. She had never accepted help from her arrogant, grandstanding brother in her life, and she wasn’t going to start tonight. No matter what Ada had to say about it.
Ada knew the look in Corinne’s eye. She’d seen it earlier that night outside Down Street. Corinne had always been stubborn, but this was more fatalistic than that. In the dim, unsteady light, with her hair plastered with s
weat to her forehead and her eye makeup running down her cheeks and her shoulders hunched from the pain of the handcuffs, Ada almost didn’t recognize her. That scared her more than anything else.
“You have to go with him,” she said to Corinne. “This is your only chance.”
“I won’t go without you.”
Ada nudged her arm and stared at her until Corinne finally met her eye.
“They’re going after Saint,” Ada said. “You have to get to him before they do.”
Corinne hesitated at that. She had obviously forgotten. She shook her head again. “If I go with Phillip, he’ll never let me out of his sight. I’ll be trapped in that house until I die.”
“Not if he thinks you just want to go home,” Ada insisted. “As soon as he lets his guard down, you can get away. Please, Corinne. You know Saint. He’s not like us. You know what this place would do to him.”
“Those things that Wilkey said—” Corinne’s voice broke. “As soon as we leave, that’s what they’re going to do to you.”
Ada’s breath caught in her throat, and fear lanced through her chest. But she fought it. She was stronger. She had to be.
“So you want to stay here so they can do the same to you? Now is not the time to be noble, Cor.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“You’ve broken me out before, and you can do it again,” Ada said.
“You don’t know that! I’m not leaving.”
“Dammit, Cor. Why not?”
“Because I’ve seen what leaving you behind did to Saint, and I can’t do it.”
Corinne laid her head down on the table, her cheek pressed against the wood. Ada rested her cheek on it as well, so that they were eye to eye.
Corinne’s eyes were red, though she wasn’t crying. “I can’t live with that,” she whispered.
“Saint was afraid, and he made a mistake,” Ada said. “I’m telling you this is the best way—this is the only way.”
“It’s not fair for you.”
“You think this is the first time life hasn’t been fair for me? Don’t be an idiot, Corinne.”
“You’re being an idiot. You’re the one being noble.” There was a fever in her tone. “As long as we’re together, we can figure this out. There’s another way. There has to be.”
Iron Cast Page 23
