“If Johnny was holding it against you, then why has he let you stay?” Ada asked. “The bad blood was between him and your father. It doesn’t have anything to do with you. Johnny would never have left you to the bulls.”
“Haven’t you ever wondered about that day?” Saint asked, turning to face her. “You and Cor have run that money a hundred times before without a problem.”
Ada bit her lip. She’d had plenty of time to wonder while in the asylum, but she’d spent most of it wondering why Saint had betrayed her, and when Corinne was going to show up. It was true that the errand had been routine. Once a month, she and Corinne would drop off money on the Common for one of the clerks at Johnny’s bank. It wasn’t a large sum—just some grease money to ensure that whenever the Bureau of Internal Revenue got nosy, they wouldn’t find anything amiss with Johnny’s accounts.
But two weeks ago, three cops with earplugs had shown up instead of the clerk. Ada and Saint never even had a chance to run.
“The clerk ratted on us for reward money or something,” Ada said. “Johnny didn’t have anything to do with it. Why would he?”
Saint didn’t have an answer for that. He lowered his head again. Ada could see the lines of a building taking shape in his sketchbook, but there wasn’t enough detail yet to identify it. She thrust her palms together in her lap, trying to relieve the frustration in her chest.
“If you didn’t trust Johnny, couldn’t you have at least trusted me and Cor?” she asked at last.
He was quiet for a while, running his fingers across the page, smudging the lines slightly.
“I was scared,” he said. “Just like my dad. I’m sorry, Ada.”
Ada considered standing up and leaving him there. She considered letting those words be the last between them. In some ways, maybe it would have been easier. But she couldn’t stop thinking about his father’s funeral, how she had held his hand, and how he had trembled during the three-volley salute. She couldn’t walk away now.
“I forgive you,” she said.
Saint looked at her through his shaggy auburn bangs.
“Really?”
“Only because I need help reining in Corinne. After cracking Haversham, she thinks she’s some kind of mastermind.”
After a moment of hesitation, a smile crept across Saint’s face. Ada smiled back.
CHAPTER TEN
When Corinne woke up, she was shivering so hard that she almost couldn’t make it to her feet. The pocket watch clutched in her hand had no warmth, and her toes ached. She got dressed in as many layers as possible, including her coat and ankle boots. Ada’s bed was empty, her blanket gone. Bleary-eyed, Corinne stared at the space above the bed, where Saint’s painting of the tree and wildflowers now hung in pride of place. Despite her discomfort, she couldn’t help but smile.
She stumbled into the common room, where the furnace was fuming. Even so, it was only marginally warmer.
“Another few inches of snow since last night,” Ada said.
She was on the couch, her legs curled beneath her, her blanket around her shoulders. Her hair was still wrapped in the silk scarf she wore to bed. She had a damp newspaper in her lap, and there was a mug of something hot on the table. Corinne stared at it enviously for a few seconds, then went to stand by the furnace, willing the warmth to seep through her layers.
“Where’s Saint?” she asked.
“The Mythic. He left a few minutes ago.”
Corinne didn’t have anything nice to say about the Mythic or its inhabitants at present, so she adhered to the old adage and said nothing at all.
“A hemo went missing last night,” Ada said. “Apparently he was snatched right off the street.”
“Ironmongers?”
“I don’t know. There’s not much to the article. His name was Stuart Delaney. A musician at the Red Cat.”
“Never met him.”
“Me neither. I wonder if those HPA agents had anything to do with it,” Ada said. There was a frown etched between her eyebrows as she took a sip of her coffee.
“If Carson is taking money from the agency, then he must be up to his eyeballs in something,” Corinne said.
She moved reluctantly away from the furnace and huddled onto the couch beside Ada.
Ada handed Corinne the mug and flipped the paper open to the back page.
“There was nothing in the obits about Johnny. Do you—do you think we’re supposed to write one?”
Ada’s voice was thin and wavering at the edges, and she didn’t look up from the paper. Corinne shrugged and took a long sip, not caring that the bitter drink scalded her tongue and throat. Discussing Johnny’s obituary wasn’t something she could handle this early in the morning.
“When Gabriel gets here, we need to talk about tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“If we want to see the Witchers, we’ll have to leave here by eight. We’ll sweet-talk our way into the back rooms and get them to tell us what they know.”