Within half an hour, the shore was empty once again, with only a dark stain seeping into the winter ground to tell of the morning’s tragedy. James had refused to leave Madeline, and so it was decided that he would take her to the hospital with a story of a mugging. He promised to meet up with them later, but Ada wasn’t sure when that would be, and if he would even be able to find them.
Ada had led the others into the safety of the city, keeping to the empty side streets. She was ahead of the others, with Charlie a few steps behind her, and Saint trailing even farther back with Corinne, who hadn’t said a word since they’d left the shore. She had that same fatalistic look in her eye that she’d had outside Down Street and in the basement of Haversham, only now it was tinged with defeat instead of determination. Ada had never felt so far away from her before, even when they were miles apart.
There was a knot of grief and guilt and fury balled up so tightly in Ada’s chest that she could barely breathe. When she’d shaken hands with Johnny Dervish four years ago, on the day she’d first decided to help Corinne on a con, she had never dreamed it would end like this. All she had wanted was enough money to give her mother a good life, and maybe the chance to take back some of the power that had been stripped from her because of the color of her skin, the affliction in her blood.
Now everything she’d worked for was falling to pieces, and Madeline Gretsky was dead.
Ada jumped when she felt a touch on her arm. It was Charlie. His fingertips were warm.
“Take my coat,” he said.
Ada shook her head, but he had already slid out of it and was dropping it on her shoulders.
“Thank you,” she said.
She didn’t know what else to say. He was so close to her, the backs of their hands brushing with every step. In the clear sunlight, the bruising around his eye was a myriad of purples and greens, subtle shades in the brown of his skin. She wanted to ask him if it hurt, to caress every inch of his face that wasn’t bruised. She wanted to tell him she was sorry, even though she didn’t know what she was sorry for, exactly.
All of Boston felt faraway and irrelevant in the face of the night’s events. Ada was adrift in a vast ocean, and Charlie was the distant shore. He was so tall and imperturbable, with his horn dangling from his left hand, with a soothing tune in the back of his throat.
“I’m sorry you got caught up in this,” she said.
“I’m not.”
She knew that should make her happy. Instead, her aching chest tightened further. She sucked in a breath of the morning air and swiped the back of her hand across her eyes before the tears could form.
“You remember when you said you felt like there were things I wasn’t telling you?” she asked. She kept her voice quiet, so that only Charlie could hear. Saint and Corinne were still half a block behind them.
“Yes.”
“That’s because there are,” she said. “If you even knew half of the things I’ve done for money—twisting people up inside, stealing their memories, forcing them to remember what they would rather forget—then I’d lose you. I know I would. And I can’t stand the thought of it, but it’s not fair for you, Charlie. You’ve never done anything but give people hope and joy, and I don’t think I’ve ever done anything but take it away from them.”
Charlie was quiet for a while, his eyes fixed steadily ahead.
“I think you’re being too hard on yourself,” he said at last.
The city was coming to life around them. Ada could hear the revving of cars and the blare of work whistles from the direction of the docks. Even from the narrow side street they were walking, she could smell the bread from a bakery a few blocks over.
Ada’s breath escaped her like a sigh. “Tonight I used a man’s worst memories to crush him, because I thought he deserved it. And even when I could see that he’d had enough, I kept going.”
She could feel Charlie’s gaze on her profile, but she didn’t look at him. She didn’t want to read his thoughts on his face. From the corner of her eye, she could see him rolling up his sleeve.
“Did I ever tell you why I got this?” he asked.
Ada glanced over to see the leafless tree inked on his forearm, its branches black and twisting. She shook her head.
“When I was a little boy, I used to climb a tree just like this every day of the week.” He rubbed his thumb absently along the trunk. There was a single line etched between his eyebrows at the memory. “Then one morning I went out to climb, and they’d hanged a man from the branches. After that, I never went near it. I started having nightmares so bad that I woke the neighbors. Finally, months later, my mother made me pick a bunch of wildflowers from the yard. Then she took me by the hand and led me straight down the road to that old tree. There were budding leaves on it and a bird’s nest right where the rope had been tied. And my mother said to me, ‘Charles, sometimes there’s more bad in this world than good, and sometimes it’s the other way round. But nature ain’t good or bad, and it can’t help that some people get so mixed up that they can’t tell one from the other.’”