Iron Cast by Destiny; Soria Page B

Johnny said he was lying low.” Corinne glanced toward the closed office door. “I wonder if Johnny knew the whole story.”
    She drummed her fingers on her knee, thinking. Then she shook her head and jumped up. “I’ll be right back,” she said.
    She went to Saint’s door and entered without knocking. The pungent smell of oil paint greeted her. Saint’s room, though not any bigger than hers, doubled as his studio. Every inch of wall was covered with a canvas, and every inch of floor space held an easel or a can of paint or a bucket of brushes. There was only the slenderest of paths from the door to the cot. Saint was sitting there, slouched with his back against the wall.
    Corinne toed her way through the chaos and sat down on the foot of the bed. Leaning against the wall, stacked against several other paintings, was one of the larger canvases she’d seen Saint work on. It was only broad strokes right now, but she could already see that it was the Mythic Theatre, which was odd. Saint usually spent time only on paintings he could pull an object from.
    A reg looking around the room would assume the brass candlestick in the corner was the model for the painting above it, but Corinne had been there the day he pulled the candlestick from the canvas. It was one of his first successful pulls, and she could remember Johnny slapping him on the back. She remembered how happy Saint had looked.
    Tucked among the painting supplies was evidence of other practice pulls. A milk can, a vase of wilting flowers, even a bowl of eggs. Johnny had been pressuring him in the last year to paint items of value that they could sell, but no matter how much time Saint spent on the painting, the objects he pulled were never quite perfect. Precious gems were declared worthless by jewelers. Gold bars were little more than gilded lead. Even the candlestick, which was brass by all appearances, was pliable to the touch, like modeling clay.
    Johnny never said much to Saint about these attempts, but somehow that only made the failures more cutting. Corinne knew their talents had always been intertwined with their duty to the CastIron, but the stakes hadn’t always been so high. She remembered a night, years ago, not long after she and Ada had moved to the club.
    The three of them had sat on the floor of Saint’s room, legs crossed, breath bated, while he pulled out a plate of steaming cookies from a fresh painting. The treats hadn’t tasted quite right, but that didn’t stop them from devouring the lot until their stomachs ached.
    â€œI’m sorry about Ada,” Saint said suddenly, not looking at her. “That’s all I can say, all right?”
    His soft eyes and the freckles across his pale face always made him look much younger than seventeen. Normally that was something Corinne teased him about, but now it just made her feel worse. She drove her fingernails into her palms until they stung. She knew she owed it to Ada to say what needed to be said.
    â€œYou’ve always been a good friend to me,” she said at last.
    â€œBut?”
    â€œBut Ada is much more than that, and I saw where she spent the past two weeks.”
    Saint buried his head in his hands. “I didn’t know what else to do,” he murmured.
    â€œI believe you,” Corinne said. “But I’ll always stand by Ada. You know that.”
    He didn’t reply. Corinne sat beside him for a few more minutes, thinking more about the night with the cookies, how those three children never once suspected what the ensuing years would bring. Finally she shook herself free from the memories. She patted Saint on the back and left without saying anything more.
    In Johnny’s office, Ada dropped the money on his desk. She refused the seat he offered her. Johnny counted the cash and began dividing it bill by bill. The only sound in the room was the shuffle of paper.The smell of cloves and pine that had been so