Corinne sat on a stool at the corner of the bar, nearest the back door, and laid her head down on her arms. Ada picked absently at the buttons on her coat. Exhaustion crept over her, but she didn’t want to sit down. “We should probably go downstairs and get some sleep,” she said.
Corinne didn’t move. Saint, who was wiping down the bar at the opposite end, looked at her again but didn’t reply. She couldn’t blame them. They had gone to the basement only once, two nights before. Knowing that Pierce and Wilkey had been down there, sifting through the lives they had built, was a violation that Ada couldn’t stand to think about. Johnny’s office had been mostly emptied out. The entire contents of her and Corinne’s bedroom were in a heap on the floor, and all the decorations on their walls—the newspaper clippings and swatches of wallpaper and silken scarves—had been torn down. She’d seen her violin on top of the pile. The case had been opened and one of the strings had snapped, but otherwise, it appeared unharmed. It was still the most beautiful object she had ever touched. The only companion more constant than Corinne. But Johnny had given it to her. It was a remnant of a life she hadn’t meant to live. She left it where it was.
Ada had peeked into Saint’s room, where he was sitting on his cot, arms on his knees. He had raised his soft gray eyes to her, and the bleakness there wrenched Ada’s heart. All his paintings were gone. She had gathered blankets from a storage closet, and the three of them had slept on the stage, spending half the night in whispers.
Ada turned around, taking in the Cast Iron’s disarray. Even though hours ago it had been packed with laughter and clinking glasses and swinging music, it felt emptier than it ever had before. She tried not to think about what had been lost, about Madeline by the waterfront, about Johnny in the warehouse.
“It feels smaller than it used to,” Saint said. He wasn’t looking at either of them, or at the scattered tables and chairs, or at the last of his paintings mounted on the wall. He just kept pushing the rag across the bar in methodical motion.
Ada glanced back at Corinne, who had straightened up on her stool. She seemed to know exactly what Ada was thinking. As always.
“For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.”
Instantly the lights dimmed and changed—no longer strings of electric bulbs but flaming sconces along the walls and glimmering candles on the tables. The tablecloths were gone, the furniture rearranged. Instead of a dance floor there were more tables, spaced between oaken pillars. Ada could see the first-ever patrons of the Cast Iron like faded ghosts in the candlelight, men in waistcoats and knee breeches, some with powdered wigs and polished buckles on their shoes. They leaned close over their mugs of ale, eyes bright with the talk of revolution. Ada moved forward into the scene, transfixed by the intricacy of the illusion all around her. The years passed by like a rushing wind, and the patrons flashed in and out of focus, a parade of changing fashions and evolving ideals.
Revolutionaries and poets. Intellectuals and industrialists. Soldiers and politicians. The Cast Iron had hosted them all throughout the decades, reg and hemopath alike.
Seeing all that had come before made Ada realize how far the Cast Iron had fallen.
“Touching.” Johnny’s voice, somehow both achingly familiar and terrifyingly strange in the midst of the shifting apparitions, made Ada whirl.
The illusion fell away, and she saw Johnny standing in the doorway of the storage room. Corinne saw him too, but before she could move, he lunged forward and dragged her off the stool. Ada ran forward, and Corinne cried out in pain, but she quieted abruptly. Johnny held her tight in front of him, his knife against her neck. Ada froze.
“If you even think about singing, I’ll cut her throat,” Johnny said.
He was in the same clothes he’d worn in the warehouse, unkempt, eyes bloodshot. Corinne made a cursory attempt at struggling but winced as Johnny pressed the blade harder against her skin. In her gauzy party dress, with her gold headache band askew, she looked like a porcelain doll in his hands. She looked helpless.
Ada tried to breathe. After Haversham and the sunrise by the waterfront, drenched in Madeline’s blood, Ada had thought that nothing could scare her. But as she stared at the knife against Corinne’s neck, there was terror burning in her veins. For a few moments the only sounds in the club were Johnny’s jagged breathing and Corinne’s short gasps.
“If you kill her,” Ada said slowly, “you’ll be unconscious before she hits the ground. I only need a few bars. You know that.”