“Cold,” Madeline said.
Eva shrugged again. “He knew the deal when we got married,” she said. “He’s got enough money for a new life. Maybe one day he’ll make his way back here. Until then, I’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
She pushed between Corinne and Madeline to open the stage door.
“That’s it?” Corinne asked. “No burly men with guns to take us for a ride?”
Eva did laugh this time. It was different than Corinne remembered—rich and full instead of twittering.
“I meant it when I said I liked you, Corinne. Stay out of my way, and I’ll stay out of yours. And you’d better take care of Charlie.”
The door clicked shut behind her, and Corinne exchanged a glance with Madeline.
“I changed my mind about being an actress,” Madeline said. “I want to be her when I grow up.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Ada wasn’t sure if hours or minutes had passed since Dr. Knox left. Her headache had faded—or rather, it had melted into her bloodstream so that her body held nothing but pain. The nausea came in waves, and she only barely managed to keep the contents of her stomach where they belonged.
She wondered if the agents had arrived at the Cast Iron yet, and if Corinne had made it in time. She wondered how badly it would hurt to die, and if her mother would ever know what had happened to her.
She wondered who at the Cast Iron had betrayed them.
She couldn’t do anything but wonder, and that was worse than the steel on her skin.
When the latch on the door slid open, Ada struggled to sit up straight, to effect some semblance of fortitude, but in the end she was too exhausted. She slouched back down as the door opened to admit Agent Wilkey, who looked much more composed than when she’d last seen him. He smiled at her and picked up the metal gag from the table.
“Dr. Knox asked me to prep you for the second phase,” he said almost casually. “He doesn’t trust the nurses down here. Weak stomachs, you know.”
Ada had thought that she was well past panic by now, but it reared in her throat again. Before she could attempt a desperate melody, Wilkey had fastened the gag in her mouth. Her headache flared again with renewed vigor, draining the little strength she had left. Wilkey half dragged, half carried her into the other room, past the rows of beds with white sheets covering the atrocities that had been committed underneath. The woman hooked up to the machine wasn’t screaming anymore. Her breath came in crackling, irregular gasps. Someone had pulled a sheet over the man in the bed beside her. Failed subjects, Dr. Knox had called them.
At the far end of the room, near the door to the corridor, there was a wooden chair with dangling leather straps beside a table of metal instruments that blurred in Ada’s vision. She realized with distant mortification that she was crying, but she couldn’t stop the welling tears. Wilkey uncuffed her hands and pushed her into the chair.
She tried to rise, more from instinct than from any real thought of escape, but her arms and legs felt disconnected from her body. She was nothing but her pulsing headache and her hot tears. Without her violin or her voice, what power did she have?
Wilkey worked quickly, buckling the straps across her chest, arms, and ankles. Ada tried to remember the devastation she had wreaked on him, but it didn’t make her feel any better. She had never wanted to use her talent to hurt people. She wanted to be like Charlie, playing hope and joy into places where there had been none before. Now she would never get the chance.
The thought of Charlie softened her headache somewhat but made the tears flow faster. He had told her that he loved her, and she’d given him nothing in return. Another chance lost.
Wilkey pulled something off the table, cradling it with both hands. It was a brass cagelike apparatus, a dizzying conglomeration of rods, screws, and knobs.
“I’ll confess I’m not entirely sure how this thing works,” Wilkey said conversationally. “Dr. Knox tells me that once it’s tightened over your head, it will guide in those metal spikes I mentioned earlier. Of course, we’ll have to drill the holes in your skull first.”
He smiled at her again, an almost cherubic expression in his doughy features.
Ada fought back her surging nausea and broke from his gaze. The door to the corridor opened, and Ada clamped her fingers around the arms of the chair, expecting Dr. Knox. Would they give her anesthesia first? Maybe she would just go to sleep and never wake up.
When she first saw Johnny, she thought they must have already injected her with something. Johnny Dervish was dead. He couldn’t be striding through Haversham’s basement with the same confidence he’d once had in the Cast Iron.
When he spoke, his voice was so real that Ada realized she must be dead too.
“Wilkey, what the hell is going on here?” he asked, taking in the sight of Ada with a disturbed frown.