Tina Connolly - Copperhead

Jane shook her head, and her green eyes held all the intelligence and fire they once had. “I feel as though you wiped the fey clean for a moment,” she said. “It may not have done what you wanted, but it shook it up. It’s just a little piece again. And I’m me.” She shook her head, seeming to remember all the times she’d made similar claims over the last day and a half. “Me for real. I promise.”

Helen narrowed her eyes. “Do you remember coming in and out before? And the memory gaps, and the confusion, and telling us things like go to the warehouse?”

Jane grimaced. “Yes. It has been very strange—and by strange I mean terrifying. Like a dream where you are half-asleep, and sometimes you can make the right words come out, and sometimes you can’t.”

“So what do you mean about a fey that’s the same as the fey in the necklace? And why would that matter?”

Jane swallowed, felt around her forehead delicately, as if seeing if her face was still attached. “I’ve been thinking, very slowly, way in the back of my mind. A fey needs a piece of fey to attach to to enter somebody,” she said. “And we always thought if a fey took someone over, they were stuck there.”

“Unless they’re killed with iron, or the host dies,” said Helen.

“I think this fey has found a loophole,” said Jane. She looked directly at Helen, who knew her next words, a sad blow to the heart. “I was taken over by a fey.”

Stephen gasped. Tam looked on somberly.

“He calls himself the Fey King,” said Jane. “He’s very strong—as strong as the Fey Queen was. Maybe that’s part of it. But he’s able to come and go. Sometimes I have no control, other times I have a little, but I’m dazed. It’s not like when the Fey Queen tried to take me. She was ready to wipe me clean. He—it’s almost like he wants me to be able to use my body. But he wants to use it, too.” She shuddered. “Sometimes I would be cut out completely, and then I felt lost in the back of my own mind, trying to fight my way out. He’s been going in and out since the night in the garret, but he always had a toehold in my mind. Watching. You shook him out for a moment.”

“But why—?” said Helen. “How? How can he do this?”

“Do you remember that I told you that I suspected the Fey Queen took over Edward occasionally?” Jane looked sideways at Stephen, a little embarrassment showing at talking about the delicate situation of her fiancé. “I’ve often wondered how she could. I think it was because the fey in his hands was a part of her . Not just some random fey, but part of the Fey Queen specifically. Somehow that made it possible for her to slip in and out without getting stuck in the host body.”

“And this?” said Helen.

“I think the fey in my mask once belonged to the Fey King,” Jane said.

“And the fey in your necklace, too,” said Tam.

They all looked at Helen’s necklace, dangling gently from her fingers, swaying in the still air.

“Get rid of it,” said Stephen.

“Does it make you do things?” said Jane.

“I don’t think so,” said Helen. “ I can do things with it. It’s given my power a boost.”

“You think. But maybe he’s making you. You don’t know.”

Helen’s fingers closed around the necklace. “You,” she told Jane firmly, “have been in and out of it the last few days. Loopy as a crocheted curtain. I’ve had to do everything.”

“But listen, Helen.”

“No, you listen,” Helen said. “I’m the one who’s been here. I’m the one who’s been putting all of this together while everyone is drunk and off their heads around me. I know what I’m doing .”

Jane raised her eyebrows. It was completely infuriating, and it made Helen close her hand tightly on the necklace. It was warm and comforting in her hand—a tangible source of the power she’d never had. She had made Alistair change, she had made The Hundred change, and she would win this war yet.

Small fingers tugged her fist open, took the copper snake away. Tam looked apologetically up at Helen, but said, “You don’t really want this.” He threw it down on the table, and with a strange, set expression, ripped off his lapel pin and put it there, too. “It can see us,” he said in a voice that rose high. “He sees out of them.” He looked around—saw the iron skillet. He kneeled up on his chair, hefted it with both hands, and dumped it with all its bacon grease on top of the two copper-covered bits of fey. “I always wondered how my father knew everything I was up to.”

“Oh, Tam—”

“He’s not my father,” he shouted, and his voice broke.

“Oh, Tam—,” Helen repeated helplessly. She pulled him into a hug.

“You might have cleaned out the pan first,” said Stephen. Helen glared at him. “Oh, sure, blame me for saying what we all were thinking.” He pushed his chair back from the table, throwing his napkin onto the rivulets of bacon grease oozing out from under the pan. “Well, I’m off. Another day in the salt mines.”

“I thought your Saucy Whatnot wasn’t going forward,” said Helen. She reluctantly let go of Tam as he sat up, rubbing his face.

“Men in drag,” said Stephen. He took his coat from his chair and headed down the hall, saying over his shoulder, “Only one man has quit in solidarity with the women so far—the rest are all ‘The show must go on.’” He shrugged. “Besides, I rather like the music. Cheerio.”

Stephen opened the front door, and from down the hall they could hear another voice saying, “Pardon me, is Miss Eliot within?”

“Edward!” said Jane. “Dorie!” She rose to run to them, and, turning white with the effort, hurriedly sat back down. The man entering broke into a run at the sight of her, seized her close.

Helen felt a funny shock of pain at the sight of their happiness. She firmly swallowed it and looked down the hall to where a small figure was standing by the door. “Dorie,” she said. She seemed to remember that Dorie was not much for being touched, so she merely went down the hall, and beckoned her to come in and join them at the table.

Like her father, Dorie was neatly dressed, but the seams of her dress betrayed where they had been let out, and both outfits had places that had been carefully mended. At the clothes the resemblance ended, for Dorie looked like a china doll, with blond ringlets, blue eyes, and a rosebud mouth, whereas Edward Rochart tended to gauntness and was not conventionally handsome. One of his hands had two stiffened fingers; the other was ruined, the fingers stiff and curled in—he usually kept that hand in his pocket.

Mr. Rochart stood, clasping Jane’s hand with his mostly good one. “You’re holding up well,” he said to Helen, his eyes traveling over the face that he had created. He sighed and turned to Jane. “I wish I could help you restore all the faces, but—” He gestured with his crippled hands.

Jane laid a good hand on his ruined ones. “No,” she said. “I’ll be able to finish this task.”

“Not until you rest,” he said. “And more than that, we need to get the fey out of you.”

“We tried—but it looked as though it would make things worse,” said Helen.

“Let me consult,” Mr. Rochart said. “Dorie?” He turned to see Dorie and Tam sitting cross-legged on the floor together, both apparently entertained by something; Helen couldn’t think what.

Tam turned, and for the first time that morning a hint of a smile crossed his face. “Look what she can do!” he said.