Copperhead (30 page)

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.”

“It’s not battle,” said Helen. “We’re just going to show up and take our faces back. Oh, and take apart his weapon, whatever the heck it is. Then leave.” She began to repin her hair, using a small round mirror hanging between the show posters. It was funny, but she felt as though she moved differently in the slacks. They were just clothes, weren’t they? And yet she of anyone should know the difference that clothes made.

“Bacon, bacon, bacon,” said Stephen, dropping it onto plates. “And what’s to stop him from making another weapon?”

“Well, he won’t have us to do it with,” Helen said to the reflection. “There’s that.”

“He didn’t exactly have his wife’s permission, did he?” said Stephen.

“How did you know about that? I didn’t think you were here last night.”

Stephen shrugged. “Jane’s been telling us the whole story. How you went to look in the warehouse window last night and saw him there. Oh, and talking to someone in a sort of fey trance. Did she make it all up?”

Helen sat down at the table, straddling the back of the chair because she could, and looked hard at Jane. “You know things,” she said. “I didn’t mention those details.”

“I know things,” Jane said dreamily.

“Listen, Jane,” Helen said. “There’s a fey inside you. I know it.”

Tam raised his head from his hands, looking wide-eyed at Jane.

Jane suddenly backed up from the table, skittering away, and Helen cursed herself for a fool. “He’s not, he’s not,” she said, eyes wide. “He’s not.”

“What do you mean,
he’s
not?”

Jane closed her eyes. “He comes and goes,” she said. “Sometimes I vanish. Sometimes I see everything. I saw you in the warehouse. I saw Millicent. I saw her go out into everything, searching into all the blue. And then … go.”

Stephen looked from one to the other, eyes wide.

“Tell me,” Helen said urgently, and she gripped the back of the chair. “Are you Jane now? Can you tell?” She did not know what this
sometimes
business was and yet it fit with everything she’d seen so far. She had thought Jane was warring with a fey that lived inside her. But how could the fey come in and out? Jane herself had said several months ago that the fey could not do that. Once they went into a person they were there until death—their death, or the body’s.

Jane’s eyes darted around. She seemed unable to speak.

“Tell me,” Helen pressed. Subconsciously her hand closed on the copper necklace. “Tell me.”

Jane’s mouth opened. “That’s him,” she said, pointing at the necklace. “That’s him too.”

They all looked at the copper hydra. The necklace that had been clinging around Helen’s neck like a snake itself ever since Alistair had given it to her. The necklace that did not want to come off. Helen started to pull it off and said, “That’s silly, Jane. How could a necklace be a fey?” She let it fall again.

“Copper’s not poison to fey,” said Stephen. “Back when we had all the bluepacks—bits of fey I guess they were—you put them in copper casings to run things.”

“I think my lapel pin’s hollow,” said Tam. “Maybe they all are.” He rubbed bleary eyes, peering at Helen’s hydra charm as if he were much older.

“It seems so silly to want to take it off,” said Helen. “And now that’s making me feel very disturbed. Why don’t I want to take it off?”

“You should keep it on,” Jane said dreamily.

“I think not,” said Helen. But her hands did not move.

“I’m not touching it,” said Stephen.

“I’ll do it,” said Tam. He scrambled off his chair and clambered up on the one next to Helen, binoculars waving. Carefully he stood and reached for the necklace. “It feels … funny,” he said. “Like a friend.”

“Don’t trust it,” said Helen.

Tam grasped the chain and carefully lifted it from around Helen’s neck. Instantly Helen felt the compulsion to keep it on lessen. She could see it as just a pretty necklace. “It likes me,” Tam said. He stroked the copper heads. “It likes Jane. Mostly it just wants to go home.”

“What are you, the fey whisperer?” said Stephen. He looked at Helen with disgust. “Did you know you’d been walking around with that on?”

“Of course not,” said Helen. Although she should have known. She had been able to do more with it, hadn’t she? “Give it here,” she said suddenly to Tam.

Obediently he handed it to her, and she cradled the little piece of copper in her hand. It was hard to believe it had a piece of fey captured inside. And yet … “It likes Jane, you say?” Helen looked at Jane. “Like should call to like, I think,” she murmured.

“What are you—
oh,
” said Jane. She put her hands to her face.

“Come here,” Helen crooned. “Come here.”

Jane’s face lit up a strange fey-blue for a moment, then faded away.

“Did you see that?” Helen said.

Tam put a hand to Jane’s face. “It wants to come,” he said. “It wants to join the one in the necklace.”

Helen cupped her hands around the necklace and tried again. “Come here,” she said. “Come here.”

Again the blue rose to the surface. It started to spin out toward Helen, blue smoke tendrils curling through the air.

“Come here,” Helen told it, and she could see it trying.

“Stop it,” Stephen said suddenly. “You’re hurting Jane.”

Helen looked and saw that Jane’s face was dead white where the blue had left it, pink around the edges like a curling ribbon. Like her face was lifting away.

“Her face,” Helen said.

“Don’t they all have fey in their faces?” said Stephen. “The Hundred?”

“Oh no, oh no,” said Helen, and she tried to reverse the command, tell the bit of fey to return to Jane. “It’s the bit of fey that animates the clay on her face,” she said. “Without it it wouldn’t act like skin.”

“She wouldn’t have a face,” said Tam.

“Or anything,” said Stephen, for Jane was having trouble breathing now. She gasped for air, her skin dead white.

“Go back, go back,” crooned Helen as fervently as she had bid it come to her. But the fey in Jane’s face had tasted freedom, felt its bit of fellow fey in the necklace. Helen grasped the necklace tightly, enclosed the fey in her hand. “Go back to Jane.”

Tam reached over and grabbed Helen’s fist in his two little hands. “Go back,” he told the fey, along with Helen. “Go back.”

Slowly, slowly, the blue returned to Jane. It sank in and disappeared, and as it did, pink life returned to her cheeks, and she started to breathe normally again.

Helen seized Jane in her arms and hugged her close, patting the dark hair. “Well, that didn’t work,” Helen said, with a touch of hysteria at the understatement.

“What were you trying to do?” said Stephen.

“I thought there was fey in her. Like a whole fey. I thought I could make it come out. But I guess all the fey is only that little bit it’s always been. How can that be a problem? We all have that, and Jane knows how to deal with it.”

Under her arms, Jane stirred. “Because it’s the same fey that’s in your necklace,” she croaked. “It belongs to the same entity.”

“Jane!” shouted Helen. She seized her sister’s hands and sank down next to her. “It’s you! It is. Tell me what just happened.”

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.