CHAPTER TWELVE
Despite the hardened, graying snow on the sidewalks, the city was bustling with pedestrians wrapped in warm coats. Corinne cracked the window for some fresh air and could hear them laughing as the car rumbled past. She dug under the seat for the aspirin bottle and shook a few into her hand.
“I hate this rattling death trap,” she murmured.
“Does that help?” Gabriel asked, nodding toward the pills.
Corinne swallowed them dry and considered. “Not really,” she said. She pressed her forehead against the cool glass of the window. The jolting worsened her headache, but her face was so hot she couldn’t stand it. The night rolled by in a blur of golden light and shadow.
“What does it feel like?”
Gabriel’s voice was barely audible over the engine, and for a second Corinne wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. No one had ever asked her that before. The doctors and scientists who studied hemopaths’ blood hadn’t found a satisfactory explanation for their aversion to the iron element—or for anything else. In the eighteenth century, when the terms witchcraft and magic were replaced with hemopathy, it was generally agreed that there was something different—and therefore diseased—in hemopath blood. There was never any further consensus reached about the exact nature of the difference.
Iron was painful to be near and excruciating to touch. Alloys like the steel in the Ford were less severe but still unpleasant. Corinne never thought much about the cause that was hiding somewhere in her blood. Her body’s reaction to iron was just a natural part of her life. She couldn’t touch fire or drink arsenic either.
“You know when you put two magnets together and they repel?” she asked.
Gabriel didn’t say anything, but his gaze slid away from the road and onto her for a moment. Corinne decided that was his way of saying yes.
“It feels like that,” she said, closing her eyes. “As if every drop of blood in your body were one magnet, and the iron were another. Or like holding a red-hot brand half an inch from your skin. Except the pain is waiting everywhere. It’s in the ceilings and the walls and the floors. It’s in the simplest objects that no one else ever thinks twice about. The whole city is a minefield.”
Gabriel’s reply was a long time coming. “I’m sorry.”
Corinne wondered if he was sorry for his gun or for the car or just for her in general. She would gladly accept apology for the first, but the second he couldn’t help, and even the notion of the last infuriated her.
“I wouldn’t trade it,” she said. “Not for anything.”
His eyes met hers again. Corinne could feel her heartbeat in her head, pounding once, twice, thrice. Gabriel looked forward again. He had to keep the car at a crawl on the slick road, and Corinne watched the passing streets through the frosty window.
They were only a few blocks from the Cast Iron when Gabriel spoke again.
“I wish you and Ada would reconsider going to Down Street.”
He didn’t look at Corinne this time. She studied his profile, but she couldn’t read him in the uneven shadows. She could see that his hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel.
“Johnny wouldn’t want us to give up,” she said. “We have to figure out who’s responsible.”
“And what about when the HPA catches up with you? Or the ironmongers? Dammit, Cor, it’s not a—”
He had to swerve to miss a car that was backing into the street. Corinne slid across the seat and into him. He turned his head, and for a split second their lips were a hairbreadth apart. He smelled of champagne and cigarettes, and she could feel the hard line of his shoulder against her chest.
Outside, a car horn rang out, and Corinne blinked out of her daze. She dragged herself back to her side. Gabriel swore again under his breath and straightened the car. Corinne saw the storm brewing in his expression, but he was silent now. She’d never seen his temper crack before. It was almost a relief to know that his control wasn’t as perfect as it always seemed.
“Johnny gave me everything,” Corinne said. “I was sick and alone, and he was there for me. Without him I would never have become a wordsmith. I would never have met Ada. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him, even now that he’s dead.”
Neither of them said anything more until Gabriel braked the car in front of the Cast Iron.
“I don’t know what to think about you,” Gabriel said.
The way he said it was like a confession. His grip on the wheel had loosened. The amber glow of a streetlight through the window softened his features, until all the angles and severity were faded, and he seemed suddenly unguarded.
“Think the worst,” Corinne said. “I don’t like expectations.”
She was watching him closely, so she caught the smile that brushed his lips. It felt strangely like a victory.