“So sorry, Princess. I could always leave you here. Maybe your next rescue will be more to your liking.”
Ada knew it was a joke, but the mere notion of going back was like a knife in her stomach. Even as they went deeper into the wood, she could feel the asylum looming over them. Suddenly every stone and fallen branch was excruciating beneath her ill-protected feet. Corinne was looking at her strangely again as they walked, no doubt confused by Ada’s sudden reticence. Ada forced a tight smile.
“I’ll admit,” she said, “I was hoping for some explosions or at least a sleeping draft in the head nurse’s tea.”
“What are we, gangsters?”
“Well—”
“Never mind.”
The dead trees and underbrush extended for only a few hundred yards before opening onto a dirt road, where the hulking black Ford was waiting. Ada climbed in to shield herself from the rising wind, and Corinne leaned in through the driver’s side to grab some leather gloves from the seat.
“There’s a coat in the back, and aspirin’s under the seat,” Corinne said.
Ada immediately snatched up the bottle of aspirin and swallowed three. She shook a few into Corinne’s palm as well. Then she retrieved her coat from the backseat and slid into it gratefully, buttoning it all the way. The winter chill had reached her bones by now, but she felt marginally better buried under the thick gray wool.
It took Corinne almost twenty minutes to start the car, but finally it roared to life. Ada never understood how Corinne, who was small and wiry, with only five feet and a couple of inches to her name, ever found the strength to crank the pistons to life—and with only one broken thumb on her record. It wasn’t an achievement many sixteen-year-olds could boast of. She suspected Corinne was just more stubborn than the engine.
Corinne eased the Ford, humming and juddering, along the dirt road until they reached the main roadway. She hit the gas, and the countryside whipped past. Behind them, the asylum receded into the distance. Ada told herself firmly that she was free, but there was still a tingling at the back of her neck, a certainty in her chest that it couldn’t be this easy. No one ever made it out of Haversham.
After a few minutes of silent driving, Ada made herself speak, if only to break free from her own twisting anxiety.
“What’s a declension, anyway?” she asked, because that was the first thing that popped into her head. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the rumbling wheels.
“How the hell should I know? I think I only attended one lecture that entire term.”
“What a waste of a good education.”
“That’s funny coming from someone who thinks Walt Whitman is a brand of chocolate bar.” Corinne fiddled with the mirror for a few seconds, looking at the dark, empty road behind them. “Besides, I spent that time learning the first three cantos of the Inferno in the original Italian. A couple lines of Dante serve a wordsmith better than a year’s worth of Latin conjugations.”
“Careful, Nurse Salem—we’re not far from your namesake. They’re probably still burning our type for being witches there.”
“Then you’d better be nice to me, or I’ll be tempted to drop you off.”
“What could they possibly want with me?” Ada made a show of straightening her head scarf. “I’m but a simple escaped convict. You’re the one taking the name of their beloved town in vain, as one of the most idiotic aliases in the history of crime.”
The familiar banter was like a tonic, keeping her exhaustion at bay. Haversham was retreating slowly from her thoughts as the aspirin eased the ache of her muscles.
“It wouldn’t have been nearly as transparent if you hadn’t started laughing like a fool.”
The car careened over a pothole, and Corinne had to hug the wheel to keep it steady. Ada braved a glance through the back window, but even in the moonlight, the road behind them disappeared almost immediately into darkness. Hidden behind hills and trees, Haversham wasn’t even a distant glimmer anymore.
“You come in there with a name like Nurse Salem, and you want me to keep a straight face?” Ada asked, looking forward again.
“It really does mean peace,” muttered Corinne.
Ada laughed for only the second time in two weeks, a reckless, helpless laugh that rang over the rumbling of the wheels and the roar of the engine. After a few seconds, Corinne laughed too. Her fair skin was flushed a rosy pink. She rolled down the window and yanked off her blond wig, revealing her short brown hair, plastered with sweat. The blond braid flapped wildly, then was rushed away by the wind. The January cold dipped into the window, nipping at Ada’s skin. She didn’t mind, though.
She was going home.
CHAPTER TWO