Copperhead

by Tina Connolly

  “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.

  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.

  Helen’s eyes widened as she saw that the little girl’s hand had disappeared, replaced by a hand of fey blue.

  “Dorie,” said Mr. Rochart with some asperity. “Not now. Come and look at Miss Eliot. Can you lend your talents to study her? She’s not strong enough to resist the Fey King from coming back. We need to keep him out.”

  Dorie obediently crossed to Jane, who smiled and hugged her close. Dorie’s hand of misty blue touched Jane, and Jane very obviously tried not to flinch, even as she kept her tight hug on the girl. Dorie shook her head. “Can’t get it out,” she said. “Give her a mask.”

  “Is there damage? Is she all right?”

  Dorie nodded. “Sure.”

  “Please make your hand back into a human hand now,” Jane said patiently. Dorie sighed and obeyed.

  Mr. Rochart sighed, an echo of his stubborn little girl. “This is part of what we were doing in the woods,” he said. “Dorie has fey heritage. She’s determined to find out more about what it’s going to mean for her future. We have a fey guide.…”

  “And I still say there are safer ways to ‘explore heritage’ than go into that forest,” Jane put in, spots of color rising to her cheeks. “It’s not a good idea for either of you.” It was clear this was an old argument, and Helen briefly wondered if that was part of the reason Jane had refused to talk about Edward lately.

  “Fey are dangerous,” said Mr. Rochart. “Capricious, even. But they’re not vicious. Not the mass of them—and most of them aren’t in the forest now, regardless.”

  “No, they’re all in the city,” said Helen.

  “Without a leader, they prefer just drifting around,” said Mr. Rochart. “The Fey Queen ruled for a thousand years. She molded them into shape. She started the trade with the humans. And she instigated the fey punishment of forcing them to split into pieces whenever they were being punished—the trade literally consisted of bits of fey, you know. Without her, they’d be more like the copperhead hydra—deadly if it strikes, but you can avoid it, or avoid provoking it. It wouldn’t come seek you out.”

  “Bad analogy,” murmured Helen irrepressibly. She rose and started cleaning up the bacon grease for something to do. “Mr. Grimsby is very fond of seeking The Hundred out. He’d like to strike us all down.”

  “And the fey,” said Jane.

  “And the dwarvven,” said Helen.

  “And all women really, and…,” said Jane.

  “Wait, Mr. Grimsby?” said Mr. Rochart, interrupting this litany. “I don’t understand why he’d be so set against fey faces. He has one himself.”

  Helen looked at him in dead shock.

  “If it’s the same Mr. Grimsby,” said Mr. Rochart. “It was quite a while ago, but it was a very different case. Not like most of the clients. He had an unusual given name—Uriah or Ulysses, something like that.”

  “There was a name like that in the journal,” Helen said slowly.

  “Ulrich,” Jane said quietly. To Rochart she said, “It was only in your notes by the first name.”

  “He was a very private man,” Mr. Rochart agreed. “I’m trying to recall the details. There’d been an accident of some sort.…”

  “The motorcar accident,” Helen said. She felt all trembly and she sat down hard. “That’s what Mary said. He was in an accident with his wife. He went through the windshield. He … he must have been cut up all over his face. You can still see the scars in his hair, but they stop, just over his ears—” She looked at Mr. Rochart in horror.

  “That’s correct,” said Mr. Rochart. “He wanted to look the same again. Not handsome.”

  “And then no one ever suspected him of having fey in his face,” said Helen. “Because he’s—”

  “Hideous,” said Jane.

  “Mary said he changed because he hit a dwarvven,” Helen said. “That he went mad from guilt.” She shook her head. “But that wasn’t it at all.” She remembered the moment in the attic when he had seemed genuinely sad about Millicent. “It’s just like Jane,” she said. “Sometimes the old Mr. Grimsby comes out. But mostly—”

  “He’s been taken over
by the Fey King,” Jane finished. She looked quite ill. “The same one who controlled me. But why start Copperhead? They hate the fey.”

  But Helen knew these kind of social mind games. You turned on whoever was necessary to rally your circle together, make you come out on top in the end. “It was the best way to get power,” she said. “And it explains so clearly why Copperhead has that weird bent against the dwarvven as well.”

  “But you said he destroyed a fey. In front of everyone.”

  “What better way to demonstrate his loyalty?” said Mr. Rochart.

  Helen nodded. “To get into closed circles, you turn on your dearest, most unfashionable friend, and you destroy her.” She thought back to the warehouse. “But his machine then, the one that your friend Niklas made. Grimsby can’t be planning to destroy all the fey with it. That would be too far.”

  “Niklas has gotten quite fanatical,” Jane admitted. “But he wouldn’t have made something to harm humans.”

  “No,” said Helen. “But Grimsby’s been making ‘improvements’ to it—so who knows what its real purpose is? Well. Not the real Grimsby, of course. That horrible Fey King, making Mr. Grimsby destroy his own wife. Just like he made you…” The sentence trailed off as Helen saw Jane realize what she had done on the trolley.

  Jane went ashen. The horror penetrated her bones, followed a split-second later by the mind-numbing, irrevocable guilt, and Helen felt it all along with her, because of her fey empathy and because it was her sister and she could not bear it.

  A bewildered Mr. Rochart was reaching out to comfort Jane, but Helen seized her sister and helped her cry. With wet eyes she looked at Jane’s fiancé and said, “Even if you two wanted to come help us stop Grimsby, you can’t. Jane must stay here. You must stay with Jane.”

  “Of course,” said Mr. Rochart. And Helen carefully helped Jane to sit up, and brought her more tea, and watched her looking at nothing as if she was taken by the fey all over again, and felt her heart crack even as she was glad to be the strong one, the one who was there for her sister.

  Jane shook her head, trying to turn her thoughts away from what she had been made to do, trying to bear up under the combination of starvation, brainwiping, and anguish. “So long,” she whispered to Helen, and her face was white and red as her empathy for others poured out. “He’s been taken over for so long. His poor son.” Jane looked at Tam, who was playing on the floor with Dorie. Softly said, “His mother gone. His stepmother. And his father—?”