It was a French poem about trudging alone through forests and mountains, about a bouquet of holly and heather and a grave to lay it on.
As she quoted, Madeline’s eyes glazed over with the sights of Paris. By the time Corinne finished the last stanza, Madeline was gone. James buried his face in Saint’s chest, his shoulders shaking. Corinne found her feet and walked closer to the water’s edge. The sun had almost broken free from the horizon, and the water reflected its light in blinding white.
For a long time she stared at the rippling waves, cresting toward the light, then falling back into the blue-black of the harbor. Eventually, Ada joined her.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Ada said.
Her voice was thick, and when Corinne glanced at her, she could see that Ada had been crying.
“I dragged them out of their beds,” Corinne said. “I told them this was the only way, that if we did nothing, we’d all be human science experiments. I didn’t give them any choice but to help me.”
“You weren’t lying,” Ada said.
“I guess not,” Corinne said. “Probably the first time in my whole damn life that I told the honest-to-God truth, and now Madeline’s dead.”
They stood without talking for several minutes, just letting the daylight wash over them. The day was going to be warm for this time of year. Corinne had the distant, irrelevant thought that her brother was getting married today.
“Where’s Gabriel?” Ada asked.
The way she asked it was like she already knew the answer. Corinne bit her lip. She didn’t want to think about her hand in his, or the lipstick on his cheek at the Lenox, or his mother calling him myshka.
She made herself think about the room in the basement of Haversham, the glossy tile floors so white beneath so much death. She thought about the woman screaming, the scratching of Dr. Knox’s pencil, and the look in Ada’s eyes as she sang Corinne into submission.
If Gabriel had told the HPA about the secret passage at Down Street, then he was the reason that Ada and Corinne had been caught in the first place. He was the reason that Madeline was dead.
“He’s been helping the HPA this whole time,” Corinne said. “He was just going to let them take me and Saint back to the asylum.”
She felt like there was more to say. There was so much more inside her, pushing to be free. She closed her eyes.
“Cor, we can’t stay here,” Ada said. “They’re going to figure out where we are. Knox or Johnny or—”
“Johnny?” Corinne’s eyes flew open, and she looked at Ada, whose lips were twisted with uncertainty.
“He was in the basement,” she said. “He—”
“That’s impossible,” Corinne said.
She backed away from Ada and stalked toward the group. There was a sudden cluster of pain behind her eyes that made her feel ill.
“Just listen to me,” Ada said, chasing after her.
“Johnny can’t be alive,” Corinne said. He would never have abandoned them to the HPA like that. He would never have let the Cast Iron go dark.
“Who else do you think stabbed Maddy?” James was climbing to his feet. He was covered in her blood.
“What did you just say?” Corinne demanded, her fingers clenching into fists.
“You heard me,” James said, shaking off Saint when he tried to put a hand on his arm. “Your precious Johnny Dervish gutted Madeline with a knife when he still thought she was you.”
Corinne fell back a step.
“He wouldn’t do that,” she said. Her vision was swimming with her headache. “It had to be someone else.”
“You think I wouldn’t know another thespian if I saw one?” James asked. There was a terrible sneer on his face, birthed of all his rage and bitterness. “I’m sure it was in his best interest to play dead while Boston fell to pieces.”
“You’re wrong!” Corinne was dimly aware that she was shouting. “Johnny would never do this to us.”
Ada’s touch on her arm was whisper soft, and Corinne’s tight fists loosened just the slightest bit.
“If it had been a thespian, he would have seen through Madeline’s disguise,” Ada said. “Johnny’s been selling names of hemopaths to the HPA. He was there to collect his money. I think—I think he wanted to kill us so that we wouldn’t tell anyone the truth.”
The implications of Ada’s words swarmed Corinne, adding to the anger and grief that had nowhere to go. She felt like the world was falling in on itself. Like something nameless had splintered inside her. She felt like she had when Gabriel had locked that door, when the first few notes of Ada’s song had wrapped around her mind.
She felt broken.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN