Copperhead

ridiculous and tangled reason of being the best friend of a woman who had wanted Alistair for herself. Helen never could understand being so tied up over a man that you (and all your friends) would hate another woman for his sake. Surely the first woman could have thought of a more interesting reason to hate Helen. Hate her for her copper blond curls, hate her for her blue eyes. But really. A man? And now Calendula Smith, hating Helen merely to stay in her friend’s good graces.

Well, you played the game or it played you.

“Won’t you have another piece of cake?” purred Mrs. Smith. “You’re practically skin and bones.”

“I know, it’s a shame, isn’t it?” returned Helen. “And yet Alistair was just saying how glad he was I hadn’t let my figure go after marriage like some women.”

“Men! Who can predict their bizarre tastes.”

“I was just thinking the same.”

The initial pleasantries exchanged, Helen looked around the room under pretense of admiring it. It was all over roses. A pink rose sofa perched daintily on a red rose rug, and two tasseled rose chairs faced each other. Rose-pink curtains in a gauze that was the very height of fashion draped the windows. It was completely hideous, Helen decided with satisfaction. But she smiled and made nice about the roses (not to mention Calendula’s matching perfume) while deciding exactly how to play her hand.

“Now, Mrs. Huntingdon, come to the point. What can I do for you?”

Concern, Helen decided. Lead in with concern and goose it with gossip. “Well,” she said dramatically. “I was just talking to my sister, Jane, and she said she’d seen you the other day.”

Calendula tensed. Sort of around the shoulders, but Helen caught it. “I wasn’t very interested in her conversation,” Calendula said sharply. “Seems to me she should keep her nose in her own affairs.”

“I’m so glad you feel that way,” said Helen. “I told her it was unthinkable for a woman of your stature to go back to her old face.”

Those perfect eyes narrowed. “I have no idea to what you refer. More tea?”

“Certainly,” said Helen, and leaned back, studying the woman.

Calendula Smith’s fey-brilliant face seemed incongruous on that broad-shouldered, wide-waisted body. But when Helen looked again—no, the woman was stunning after all. Helen had seen it time and again, but that was the brilliance of what Mr. Rochart had done. He had made each person not into some cookie-cutter girl, but into the most dazzling version of themselves. It was why you couldn’t have said for sure with so many of them. You thought they were more beautiful—but was it that they were just more alive, more real?

This woman was not meant to be pretty. She was perhaps not meant to be a dainty little girl, although that was the sort of comment Jane was always chiding her for. But what else was Helen supposed to think? Mrs. Smith was built like a man, with a wide frame that strained against the panels of her mauve silk dress. A silk rose dangled incongruously from a waist that even the draped bias cut could not slim. “You should wear slacks,” Helen said, and then put a hand to her mouth, far too late.

“Excuse me?” said Calendula Smith.

Helen valiantly tried to save the situation. “They’re chic, I mean. I’ve been seeing them more frequently. I just thought you could carry them off.”

“Thank you, I suppose,” said Calendula, not sounding terribly mollified. “I’m not sure that slacks would be appropriate for a pillar of society. One has to set an example, you know.”

“One does,” agreed Helen. And then more gently she added, “And sometimes one has to do it by admitting mistakes have been made.” She carefully did not say by whom. “Sometimes only the pillars can lead the way.”

Calendula looked at her for a long time. At last, choosing her words with the air of someone stepping through a minefield, she said, “It’s not just that people are drawn to beauty—though they are. The new face comes with its own glamour—a charisma I never had. And … you don’t know it yet, Mrs. Huntingdon, but you get older and you become invisible. I work for the Children’s Mercy Hospital. I raise funds for them. When I started volunteering, I thought I could really do something. I had all these connections. And yet … people listened to me politely and then went about their business.

“But then I got the new face.”

Helen nodded, feeling the moment like a living thing between them, warm and growing. “And they listened.”

“They all listened. I raised so much money the first year.” Her words spilled out warm and impassioned. “Money we desperately needed. All those families who were barely getting by before their fathers died in the war. Mothers who had never had to ask for help before were bringing us children whose illnesses could have been prevented with better nutrition.…” Calendula suddenly recalled herself, and her face shuttered closed. “So you see that things are not as black-and-white as your sister would like to believe.”

Calendula thought she was set against Helen, but the connection between them was there. Helen could find it again. Helen set down her empty teacup and began to unbutton one of the sleeves of her chartreuse jacket. “Do you remember the May Day celebration at my house?” she said.

“I fear my invitation must have gone astray,” Calendula said tartly.

“I am glad to hear that, because it means you were safe,” said Helen, not batting an eyelash. “But surely you heard the rumors.”

“I did,” admitted Calendula. “Bosh, I thought at the time. But then the fey started coming into the city … and I wasn’t sure anymore.”

Helen seized on this moment of genuine connection. “It’s all true,” she said, and then there was only simple truth, as she tried to make this woman hear it. “Shortly after Mr. Rochart gave me the new face. It really happened to me. I was invaded by the fey.”

Calendula swallowed at hearing the tale confirmed. “My brother went to one of those Copperhead meetings,” she said. “He told me of this story. But to hear it from you…”

“I suppose Alistair must have spoken of it,” said Helen. Most of their meetings were men only. She did not like the thought that she was being talked about, but perhaps the confirmation was helping to sway this woman.

Calendula looked away, at the rose-papered walls. “I’m not entirely sure about them,” she said in a low voice. “My brother was filled with such a strange fervor after meeting with them. He said they had such great plans to clean the city of the dwarvven. I had thought we were allies—the dwarvven hate the fey, too. I do not trust blood heat. But I suppose you must know more what they are about, since your husband is among their leaders.”

Helen bit her lip. “I do not,” she said. She closed her eyes and dared say it. “I am not entirely sure I trust them either.”

Calendula looked back at her. Genuine concern for their future was in her eyes. The connection between them was back again; she was listening to Helen. “What was it like?” she said. “Would I know if I was taken over? I have had such strange dreams.”

“You would know,” Helen assured her. “It was as if I was being erased. I had felt nervous anyway from the shock of the face—from the fey substance being attached. Have you—do you feel it, too?”

Calendula barely nodded.

“But then an actual fey, a whole fey—you know that your new face contains a little piece of fey, right?— came at me to take me over. When we have iron around the doorways we can forbid the entry. But when there’s substance right on your face there’s nothing you can do. It came in and I couldn’t stop it.”

A glint of hope rose in Calendula’s eyes; she could refute Helen’s dire warnings. “But you’re here now,” she said.

“Because Jane was standing a foot away and she drove sharp iron into my arm a few seconds after it happened,” Helen said. “Imagine you’re choking on a grape. That’s the amount of time you have for someone else to save you.” She had finished rolling back her sleeve during the conversation. Now she held out her arm to show the ugly puckered scar marking the flesh above her elbow.

Calendula looked at the scar. Helen saw wavering in her expression. Helen was so close she could taste it. Her fingers closed around the copper hydra and she squeezed it like a talisman. “The fey rips clean through you like the windstorm that tore the cupola off of the Queen’s country house. You’re blown out of your own body. You can’t resist it. Within seconds it’s replaced you and you’re gone for good. And then you can’t help the hospital at