Tina Connolly - Copperhead

They didn’t all nod, but many of them did, because the ones that were here were the ones who were brave enough to come through the night, break the curfew, come to Frye’s. Helen scanned the room, seeking out who was being swayed, who needed more convincing. She could do that. But not from a distance.

“We need your help,” said Helen, and she took center stage once more. “Frye did a lot, but there’s only one Frye. We’ve thirty-five of us here. Six have been done. The seventh … well. That means fifty-seven left to go—minus the ten he already has, but we don’t know who they are, so we can’t cross them off. Then a few people are listed by first name only. How many of those are there, Frye?”

“Five,” Frye answered immediately. “Women, think who of your acquaintances is spectacularly beautiful and answers to one of these: James, Marlys, Phyllis, Ulrich, Yvette.”

“Yvette Aubin!” shouted several women at once.

“James and Ulrich?” questioned another. “Do we want to get men involved?”

“Perhaps not,” said Helen. “There were only three of them, if I remember correctly. At least, if you do try to take the men on, feel them out cautiously before telling them what’s going on. If you see a hydra pin, run the other way.” Helen looked at Frye. “So what does that leave us, fifty-four?”

“Monica Preston-Smythe was taken by a fey last week,” someone said. “Her family hushed it up.”

“Fifty-three then,” said Helen, not missing a beat. Gallows humor. “All right, everyone. Go to Frye and collect one or two names.”

“I know Louisa Mayfew,” shouted one. “She isn’t here.”

“I know Agatha Flintwhistle. She’ll come if I have to threaten to uninvite her to next week’s dance.”

“Come to that, where’s my invitation?” joked Helen, and the woman shot back, “In the mail with everyone else’s,” which made everyone laugh and things grow a hair less tense.

“Good, good,” said Helen. “Between us we should know practically everyone on that list. Maybe we can figure out the rest of the cryptic notations. As soon as it’s light and curfew lifts, go. Convince your women they have to come meet us. We’re all in this together. And everyone bring iron. A knife or a hatpin or what-have-you.”

“Something sharp and poky,” shouted Frye.

“Right,” said Helen. “Together we’re a lot stronger than those men would believe. We’ll meet at the warehouse at noon.”

She stepped down, turned away from the center of the room, making way for the women to move to Frye and the journal. Some did. Some did not.

Helen drifted back toward the wall, watching the roomful of color ebb and flow. She was so tired, and they were not even all moving to Frye. And this wasn’t even half the women. If they could not even convince all these, how could they possibly convince all one hundred?

Over the shoulders of the crowd she saw a blond woman pushing her way to the door. Alberta was following her, trying to reason with her, but the blonde was agitated. Behind the blonde pushed a dark-skinned brunette, and then a pale redhead.…

Everything they had done. Helen could not bear to make more mistakes, and the huge rushing hollow in her heart could not tell her if it was worse to let them go or to make them stay.

But what was the point of power if you didn’t use it for good? She had been willing to change Alistair. She would have been willing to change Grimsby. She was losing Rook because she couldn’t trust herself not to change him, and if she was going to pay the penalty for the power, she should use what she was buying.

Helen pushed through them all until she blocked their frantic exit. They stared at her with their inherent fey glamour, but Helen had her own, and she was the one with practice wielding it, she was the one who knew what Frye had said. That you could convince.

One by one.

Helen touched soft hands, squeezed silk-clad shoulders. Looked into their eyes and, with the help of the fey intuition, saw what they were made of, told them what they needed to hear. For some, that was enough. For the rest, she gripped her copper necklace until they fell to her charm, blindly agreeing to go, to bring everyone here, to save them all. She was on her last wind, but every woman who fell to her power boosted her, bore her up. Perhaps I shouldn’t, Helen told herself each time, but I am and I will. She was setting all of her pieces in play to win.

Helen did not stop until she was looking around for another woman to convince and found they had all been done; that they all sat in clumps, little knots of color eagerly discussing plans and strategies for the morning. Alberta caught her as she stubbed her toe on a chair and fell, staggering.

“When did you last sleep?” Alberta said.

“A very long time ago,” said Helen.

“You can’t leave till dawn anyway,” said Alberta, and she pulled Helen through the throng and made her go into Frye’s guest room and lie down.

“But Jane, and Tam—,” said Helen.

“Asleep in the kitchen and under the piano, respectively,” said Alberta.

“And Mr. Grimsby, and the warehouse—” Helen’s mouth felt full of marbles. She was so tired now that she actually was on the bed, and lying down. Had Rook gotten away? Had they all? Helen could not think who had been trying to get away to where. Some people who were dear to her, all going home to the mountains, for good and always. So tired, and her eyes were shutting, shutting.…

“Ssh,” said Alberta, and turned out the light, and Helen slept.

They let her sleep too long. The house was eerily silent when she woke, and the slanting sunlight betrayed the hour of the morning. Helen shook out the skirts of the apple green voile she had not taken off. It was well-creased from sleep and she said to it, “You can withstand a trolley explosion but even you have limits.” She looked around, thinking that she would perhaps stretch Alberta’s kindness too far by borrowing—and then likely destroying, the way things had been going—one of her dresses, and her eye fell on a neat pile of clothes by the door. Someone had cleaned and pressed—and apparently, even mended—her herringbone suit from the day before.

She picked up the jacket, and the blouse, and the skirt you could not really climb in, and below that was one more neatly folded item, and she shook it out and found it was a pair of trousers. “Well, then,” she said, and took off the apple green voile and put them on. They had not been Frye’s, for they were only a little big, and she belted them with the accompanying belt, and put on the blouse and herringbone jacket, and put her hands on her hips, contemplating.

She strode out into the rest of the house before she could think too hard about it. Jane and Tam were in the kitchen, frying bacon with one of the piano players—Stephen—for company. Everyone else appeared to be gone on their tasks. Jane looked lost and Tam looked as though he had a hangover. Brilliant sun streamed through the narrow windows, erasing the usual November fog.

“I think you’re loony,” Stephen said in a chummy gossipy voice, not turning around from his bacon. “A hundred of you girls against those fey? Against that awful Grimsby person who runs Copperhead? You know he’s attempting to have the Prime Minister tried for treason, don’t you?”

“Not girls,” said Jane. “Women.”

“Semantics,” Stephen said cheerfully. “Here, eat up before you go into battle.”