Tina Connolly - Copperhead

He growled at her, “Don’t plan to owe a debt to a Copperhead, ” and turned away, back into the crowd. The air seemed to crackle with electricity. A knife flicked into his hand, and he crouched, motioning at the men to dare step forward. The overcoated men surrounded him, ringing him, a circle of leering hydras. He was so small compared to them, and yet as he gestured with his knife they backed up a step. “I’m tired of bending over to you lot,” he shouted. “Don’t think you can tell us what to do. Don’t think it’s not going to come back to bite you.” A pile of maple leaves whisked furiously past, uncovering more and more blue on the sidewalk.

“Oh, just go on home to the slums,” shouted one, and then suddenly he caught sight of something over the dwarvven ’s shoulder and fell silent. Helen could not see what he saw, but one by one they all went agape, and backed up.

“That’s right,” jeered the dwarvven . “Cold metal will scare you, won’t it? Not so brave now—”

The trolley doors closed in front of her as a sea of blue rose from the surrounding plants and maple tree and sidewalk. The air tingled as the blue surrounded the young dwarvven . He dropped his knife, trying frantically to extricate himself from the tangle of slithery blue.

And then there was a noise she hadn’t heard in five years, a sharp metallic noise.

The explosion of a fey bomb.

Helen tugged at the trolley doors, certain she should get back out and do something, although she did not know what. But the steel would not budge, and the conductor hurried over and said firmly, “Miss, stop, stop.”

Through the greasy trolley windows she could see that the blue had died away, leaving only a small figure, still and silent upon the ground. The overcoated men were picking themselves up, dusting themselves off, hurriedly backing away from the scene of the accident. The explosion seemed to have been contained by the whirlwind of blue fey that brought it. No one else was hurt. But oh, that poor young man …

“Please sit down, miss. The trolley is starting.”

From a distance she saw someone running. The trolley jerked under her feet, and through the tears standing in her eyes she saw a slight black-clad figure leap over a fence, running toward the man.

Him. The man she had seen twice now—at the Grimsbys’ and on the trolley.

What was he doing here?

As he reached the crumpled form of the dwarvven, he looked at the trolley, and their eyes met. She was sure of it. Just for a second, and then they were pulling away, and she could no longer see anything clearly through the trolley window.

Helen opted for a long bath instead of Painted Ladies Ahoy! She washed her hair thoroughly, trying to scrub out the imaginary scent of blood and smoke and fey. There was no return telegram from Mr. Rochart yet. And Alistair had not come back—he was probably out with Grimsby, hearing that his wife had been gallivanting around town today. She sank under the water, eyes closed, and wished she could just stay there.

But she couldn’t hold her breath forever. She climbed out and got into her mint green bathrobe and snuggled into her pink chair in front of the fireplace in her rooms. Mary had gotten it well and thoroughly going, and set out more chocolate, and some buttered toast, and a little vase with a red-leafed maple twig. Helen tossed the twig into the fireplace without a second thought.

There was a fashion magazine on the table (SKIRTS! FROM VAREE! it exclaimed) and Helen reached for it to complete her evening of sitting and drinking chocolate and forgetting about everything else (she was going to help Tam tomorrow, surely that was enough?) but instead her treacherous fingers picked up the faded leather journal, and her notepad and pencil, and then there she was, settling in for an evening of work.

“Bah,” muttered Helen. Apparently she was going to see whom she could win over next, now that she had convinced Mrs. Smith. Her mind leapt back to Jane, and, sidetracked, she thought perhaps she should investigate what Mrs. Smith had said about the dwarvven . If Copperhead was anti- dwarvven, then perhaps dwarvven were anti-Copperhead? They had infiltrated a meeting, unbeknownst to anyone. Sure, okay. And then ransacked Jane’s flat … why?

She tapped the pencil against her chin. Start over. Millicent was stuck in fey sleep and Jane was gone, but what if both things were an accident? What if someone had been trying to stop Millicent from running away, and ended up kidnapping Jane so she wouldn’t tell anyone? But no, Millicent hadn’t decided to run until Jane talked her into it. Scratch that. She rolled the pencil back and forth. What if it was an accident in a different way? Grimsby had surely not expected that showing off his toy would end in a disaster of that magnitude—surging the lights and so on. Perhaps his machine had been sabotaged. By the dwarvven ? Again, why? And if whoever sabotaged the machine knew what effects it would have … well, Jane was anti-fey, but not anti- dwarvven . Jane was notoriously not aligned with Copperhead. And who knew that Jane was going to be in the garret doing a facelift that night? Only Helen, and though she was flaky and flighty, she knew she had not told.

Helen sighed and dropped the pencil into her lap. She could not make it make sense.

She went back to the notes she had made earlier, looking through the list of eighteen women Jane had tried and failed to convince. She had reread about half of them when a niggling thought in the back of her mind forced its way out. “Alberta,” she said out loud, and peered at the short list again. Yes. Alberta was on it, right at the top, and halfway down there was a Betty.

Helen flipped back to the journal, to the long list of 99 women that started the book. Down at number 73 she saw Desirée.

“Bah,” Helen said again, and pulled out Frye’s bright orange missive from that morning to check. Those were the names in her PS: Alberta, Betty, and Desirée.

Helen stood, putting down her chocolate and kicking off her slippers. “Oh, bother, here we go,” she muttered, and found herself dressing for a party and heading out the front door.

Frye’s house was not at all like any of the other society houses she’d been to. And of course not; Frye was not exactly high society. Yet she was clearly educated and well-spoken, she had some money—oh, artists were hard to classify. She lived in a medium-sized brick house on a row of other brick houses. But inside, every square inch was covered with artwork and memorabilia. Helen moved down the hallway, looking at the framed sheets of music, signed by their composers; lush oils, charcoal sketches, dashed-off nudes. She thought that Jane should be the one to be here; she would appreciate it. But then, this woman knew Jane, didn’t she? Perhaps Jane had already seen this bounty of art.

The hall began to curve around a central staircase, and the wall decor turned from art to theatre memorabilia. Posters from shows, some framed, some not, some torn, some signed, all the way from cheap printings to elaborate productions with color painted onto them. Some of the newest ones had STARRING MISS EGLANTINE FRYE in bold letters on them. Interspersed were curio shelves with gloves and cups and beads and a wide variety of oddities that Helen could only assume were props, mementos. Behind it all was intricate wallpaper, the pattern of which changed every time it had the slightest excuse of a corner or chair rail.

The wood floors were covered with long runners of carpets in exotic patterns. Flowers bloomed in profusion; birds darted in between them. Helen got so caught up in trying to decide whether there was a pattern to the birds that she only belatedly realized she was still hanging around the hallway, and piano music was banging away at a distance, somewhere else in the house.