“Our first con together.”
Corinne dropped down to sit on the curb, mindless of the freezing concrete and the remnants of snow packed in the gutter. After a few seconds Ada sat down beside her. They were across the street from the Oriental Tea Company, with its giant teakettle sign over the front door. Steam drifted from the spout in ghostly whorls.
“You jumbled the lines to ‘Song of the Moon’ and lost the illusion halfway through,” Ada said.
“Only because I was distracted by your pitiful attempt at Beethoven.”
“Tchaikovsky, actually.”
“My point.”
Ada laughed. She nudged her shoulder against Corinne’s, and Corinne nudged her back.
“Damn, we were good, though, by the end,” Corinne said.
The way she said it made Ada realize where the conversation was really headed. Corinne had rested her head on Ada’s shoulder. She was picking at a loose thread on her navy-blue dress, unraveling the seam stitch by stitch.
“Do you remember what it felt like, when it actually worked that first time?” Corinne asked.
Ada watched a light in an upstairs window across the street flicker off. She listened to the sound of distant motors revving, carrying people to their homes. One block over, a trolley whirred its way down the icy tracks.
“Not really,” she said. She remembered the pride that had welled inside her when Johnny had handed her that first stack of cash. She remembered the look on her mother’s face when she’d seen her new apartment for the first time. She spent every day of her life trying to forget all the rest.
“I do,” Corinne said, in a distant voice. “It was like we were invincible. I guess Johnny probably knew that.”
Looking back, knowing what she knew about Johnny, Ada could see the patterns now. The way he’d used their dependence on the Cast Iron against them, how he had made sure the danger of the HPA was close but not too close, how he had whittled away their ties to their old lives until they’d felt they had no choice but to trust him. No choice but to lose themselves in the thrill and glamour of the Cast Iron’s underworld.
It wasn’t all Johnny’s doing, though. Ada knew that after her father was arrested, a part of her wanted to be lost. Pretending she didn’t have a choice was easier than admitting that she had made the wrong one.
“I don’t know if we can do better,” she said, resting her cheek against Corinne’s head. “But I think we should try.”
“How?” Corinne asked. “Even if we could somehow set the Cast Iron to rights, we still have the HPA after us. And what about Haversham? We can’t just abandon those people to Dr. Knox and his sick experiments.”
Before Ada could remind Corinne that she was always the one with the brilliant plans, an idea came to her. She stood up and pulled Corinne to her feet.
“I know something we can try,” Ada said. “You’re going to hate it, though.”
“Try me.”
“How did you leave things with your brother?”
Corinne groaned. “You’re right. I hate it.”
Ada laughed and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. They headed south, in the direction of the Red Cat, leaving the sleepy quiet of the financial district behind them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The day after the Wells-Haversham wedding, which was the headline of all the society pages and the talk of all the country clubs, Phillip Wells followed the handwritten directions his sister had given him to a building between the South End and the theater district. Corinne met him at the door and let him inside. He didn’t say much, just stood in the empty club and stared at the lonely microphone on the stage.
“What did you tell Angela?” Corinne asked.
She moved behind the bar, still watching her brother as he walked the length of the Cast Iron, his hands shoved into his pockets. It was strange, having him here. Two parts of her life that were never supposed to meet had collided.
“I told her that my sister left me a mysterious urgent note to meet her at one of the most notorious hemopath clubs in town,” Phillip said. He had stepped between two tables to examine one of the framed photos hanging on the wall—Johnny shaking hands with his predecessor.
Corinne thought he was joking at first, but then he turned and she saw the frank expression on his features.
“Wait, you told her the truth?”
“Of course I did.”
“Did you tell her about going to Haversham too?”
“She’s my wife,” Phillip said, speaking slowly, as if Corinne might not understand otherwise. “I love her, and I trust her. So yes, I told her about the asylum.”