Copperhead (13 page)

“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.

Chapter 6

DANCING BACKWARDS

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.

Her spirits began to rise with the prospect of dancing. It was emphatically not what she was here for. She was here to talk to Frye, to find those other three women that Frye had lured her here for, to convince them all to see the light, to come to Jane. To find out if they knew anything about Jane. She had done it this afternoon; she could do it again.

But, oh, the dance. Oh, how she missed the dance.

Helen followed the curve in the hallway and there in a burst of light was the party. It was a small room, too small for the number of laughing bodies that filled it. But it was gold and warm and glittering with strings of that yellow electric light. The heady smell of burning clove cigarettes drifted out, and from somewhere else, almonds. The music came from a battered upright piano in the back corner—a long-legged man in fitted sweater and wide slacks thumped out a riotous tune, and three young women in variously scarlet red, bright orange, and deep purple dresses sang with him. The one in bright orange was perched on top of the piano and was dark-skinned, slim, and so lovely that even Helen did a double take.

Well, she’d found one of the women, she thought dryly.

Chairs and stools were pushed back against the wall and in the middle, a messy glut of couples and singles danced the very latest dances, wild affairs with kicks and elbows and enthusiasm. A smile began to curve up Helen’s face. She had not seen these dances since the days at the tenpence music hall. Heaven knows they did not do them in Alistair’s house, or any of the other places she went.

A hand grabbed hers and suddenly she was in the dance, despite all her good intentions to stay on task. A good-looking chap with a riot of curls swung her in and out, and she dredged up old memories from seven months ago to keep pace with him, glad that seven months ago was not hopelessly out of date, that she was somewhat still au courant.

The piano thumped to a stop, and the curly-haired chap beckoned an invitation for the next, eyes sparkling, but she demurred, smiling at him, and threaded her way through the dancers to the doorway. The party spilled out into the next small room, and then to the balcony after that, where French doors stood ajar and brought in welcome relief. She was pleased to see that the time she had spent at her wardrobe attempting to figure out exactly what you wore to an actor’s aftershow party was not in vain; many of the girls were wearing the more up-to-the-minute higher waists and wide shoulders of her own seafoam silk. Some outfits were more daring, and some simply fit no scene that she knew at all, and she particularly studied those girls, watching to see where creativity had hit on something new and desirable.

She fetched up against a trio of giggling girls whose combination of baby fat and gangle marked them as probably too young to be here. She wondered if they were actors, too; she wondered if she had ever been that young. Behind them, a woman in an atrocious purple dress made of scraps of silk and what looked like faux fur looked out an open window into the night. She turned at Helen’s approach, and the perfection of her heart-shaped face made Helen instantly sure she had found a comrade.

You didn’t just
ask,
though.

“Breath of air?” she said to the wistful-looking girl.

“Bit stuffy, ain’t it?” the girl said. “It was hot in the theatre tonight, too.” She fanned herself with a discarded playbill and wafted over a cloud of rose perfume. It was the same expensive scent as Calendula Smith’s, which was both amusing and informational. This girl must have a benefactor.

“Are you an actor?” said Helen. She wondered if the girl had chosen the face for the same reason as Frye, to advance her career. But the girl’s dreadful accent would probably hold her back, she thought. Frye could switch in and out of beautiful diction at will, apparently, and Helen had paid attention to her own when she first started working as a governess, trying to eradicate any country from it. This girl sounded as though she had marbles in her mouth.

“No,” the girl said wistfully. “I’m just a dresser for Ruth.” The way she said
Ruth
made it sound like it was someone Helen should know. “It’s a good job and I’ve met a nice man from it but it ain’t exactly like being onstage now is it?” She crossed her long legs and it seemed to Helen that the “nice man” must be the someone who had paid for her face and scent, for surely this girl with the terrible accent had no connections or money of her own.

“I’m Helen,” she said.

“Betty,” the girl said, confirming Helen’s hunch that she was one of the three she was supposed to meet. “You been in a show with Frye?” Dull envy flashed in her eyes.

“No, we just met last night,” Helen said.

“Oh,” said Betty. “Seems like you could be. I thought this would do it,” and she gestured at the perfect face, “but seems not. Do you think the producers want something else besides face and body? ’Cause I don’t know what else I got.” Her forehead furrowed prettily. “You are like me, ain’t you?”

“Yes,” said Helen. “We are alike.” Betty nodded, and Helen followed up that line of persuasion, adding, “I often feel it didn’t really change anything inside. Do you feel that?”

This philosophical statement seemed to go over Betty’s head. “Inside? I still have the same body, I suppose. I was asleep for the part where the man did it. I was so scared when he knocked me out.”

Helen seized on this admission. “I was scared, too,” she said. “And now when I go outside, because of the fey.”

That was it. Betty’s eyes grew wide and she said, “I didn’t know there was gonna be all this fey everywhere. I have to wear my iron mask every time I leave the theatre or Richard’s flat, and Richard, that’s my man you know, he says what did he do it for if I can’t be seen, but he don’t know what it’s like to know there’s blue devils waiting to get into your bones. I don’t think a man really can know, do you?”

“No,” said Helen fervently. “Look, my sister, Jane, is helping people change back. I think you should let her help you.”

Wide eyes again, looking to Helen for help. “Do you really think I should? She scared me a bit, she was so determined I should do what she said. I don’t like being afraid, it’s just the worst feeling, worse than auditioning where your throat dries up and so on.”

“I think you should change back,” Helen said gently. “I think we all should. What about Ruth? Is she nice?”

Betty nodded emphatically. “For all she’s
Ruth,
she’s nicer to me even than me mum.”

“Stay with Ruth and be her dresser always. You don’t want to be onstage anyway, because it’s frightening up there. If you want to move on from dressing you should try to work up to being—” and Helen seized on what she could intuit from Betty’s dress— “a costumer. You’d be an important part of the theatre without having to be afraid.”