Copperhead

know it’s Lionel,” she said. “No one else would dare.”

“It is not,” he said, laughter in his voice.

Helen wheeled to find herself in the arms of the young man she had seen three times before—at the Grimsbys’, on the trolley, and near the fey attack.

Chapter 7 SECRETS IN THE NIGHT

“You,” she said, and stared, agape.

“You,” he agreed, studying her in return.

He was indeed just her height—and she was not tall—but lithe, as if he were a professional dancer or acrobat. His clothes were similar to yesterday’s—fitted, trim, nondescript—the sort of clothes she had identified as being for a quick getaway. His hair was ruddy-brown and his eyes flashed with light. Even in the gay room of actors and singers in bright colors he seemed like something wilder, something more real and alive. “Who on earth are you?”

“Who wants to know?”

A bit of temper flashed at his evasions. “After that uninvited dance, I think I have the right to know.”

“You didn’t seem to mind the dance while dancing.”

“My husband might mind,” she said, trying to squash him.

“There’s always a husband,” he said, unsquashable.

She glared at him, but his grin was unrepentant.

“There’s someone looking for you,” he said, and pointed over her shoulder.

“I’m not falling for that—,” said Helen, but then Frye swooped in and enveloped her in a one-armed embrace that knocked her off balance.

“Helen, darling!” shouted Frye over the clamor of the party. “You made it. Have you met the girls?”

“Alberta, Betty, and Desiree?” guessed Helen.

“The same.”

“No,” said Helen, “but I did meet—”

But of course he was gone.

“Bah,” Helen said, and turned back to Frye, who looped a companionable arm around her shoulders and led her off to the open bar.

“Now I will tell you all about them so you can bring them over to the side of good and light.” Frye gestured to the bartender, who seemed as though he might be a fellow actor she’d roped in for the night. “Two martinis, very dirty.” She turned back to Helen. “Desiree is divine. She has the most glorious voice. And this rubbish little old husband, but we don’t talk about him.”

The bartender had a striped shirt rolled up over olive-skinned muscles and a lopsided, winsome grin that he employed to great effect on the pair of them. “Very dirty,” he repeated.

“None of your lip, and put in more olives,” said Frye. She had a long purple caftan embroidered with a dragon that billowed around filmy green slacks, and dark red heels that made her even taller. “Now, it turns out Desiree is allergic to iron. Can’t wear one of the face masks without going a funny shade of green. So she’ll be no problem at all. Just scheduling conflicts with her; she’s got engagements all over the place, and next week she’s going to—”

“Is she here?” cut in Helen.

“Yes, and she’s wearing the most atrocious peppermint-striped dress; you can’t miss it. She lets that ancient husband pick out her clothing. I can’t imagine why.”

“Maybe she actually likes him,” said Helen.

Frye dismissed this with a wave. “Oh, what glorious martinis, Cosmo. Helen, yours,” and she passed it across.

Cosmo grinned his lopsided grin at her and went to the next order. Helen rather liked that he seemed to be immune to her fey charm, perhaps through so much saturation in association with the charming actors around them, including the three enhanced women. That man she had danced with had seemed to be immune, too, although that hadn’t left her with exactly the same positive feeling.

“What about the other two?” Helen said to Frye, who had gone into an explanation of a perfectly terrible martini she had had last week while Helen hadn’t been listening.

“Oh, yes,” said Frye. “Just keep me focused. And Cosmo, one for the road if you would—?”—this while tapping the martini glass. “So little Betty’s here somewhere, in this dreadful purple fur thing she made herself, but she is an absolute lamb, you will love her.”

Helen noted for future reference that Frye didn’t seem to think much of anyone else’s personal taste. Of course, if that peppermint dress over there by the punch bowl was Desiree … perhaps Frye was just speaking truth. “I think I found Betty,” she said. “Did Jane mention talking with her?”

“Oh, Jane,” said Frye. “Now of course we both love Jane, but between you and me and the hall tree she went about it all wrong. Betty just needs to be told what to do, but not in a schoolmistressy way, you know? She’s an utter lamb, and you need to sit her down and hold her hand and tell her it will be all right and she can stop being afraid once she changes back. She’s going to get fired if she’s too afraid to get to performances, which she currently is, so you sit her down and explain that very nicely to her and she’ll come along.”

“Like a little lamb,” agreed Helen, satisfied that Frye’s estimate dovetailed so nicely with Helen’s accomplishment. She saw the mysterious fellow over by the window and turned to Frye. “Say, do you know who that man is—?” she started to say, but just then a tall lady in yellow ran up and air-kissed Frye and started talking a mile a minute about some performance that had been disastrous, didn’t Frye know. Helen waited patiently a few moments, as Frye turned half back to Helen and said “oh dear” and “just a minute,” but Helen perfectly well knew the signs of a busy hostess with three hundred people who wanted to talk to her, so she slipped away and tried to find the girl in the orange dress who had been singing at the piano.

The pianist was still banging away, and had been joined by a plump brown man in disheveled tie and specs. They were having too good a time at their duet to be interrupted.

You would think it wouldn’t be that hard to spot someone in orange, Helen thought, but here it was. The whole room was alive with color and fashion, and she was rather amused to note that everything she knew about fashion (and she knew rather a lot; on a good day she could pin you to an income and street just by the cut of the coat you wore) went out the window here, where it was apparently not only acceptable, but celebrated, to cross- dress in slacks or a bow tie, or to make a dress out of a slip with feathers stitched on, or to combine pink and orange, crimson and aqua, silver and gold.

The whole gaiety and life of the small house made her quite happy and giddy, as though she’d finally found a place to relax and just be. It was strange how sometimes you could feel that in a crowd, particularly as sometimes you couldn’t.

“Frye said you wanted to see me?”

Helen turned to see the perfect face of the dark-skinned girl in orange who’d been sitting on top of the piano. Hard to judge age with The Hundred, but Helen would guess mid-twenties. “Alberta?” she said.

The young woman nodded, eyeing her warily. Helen wished Frye had prepped her so she knew what this one was about. Jane’s only notes had been: Met. Dismal.

“I’m Helen,” she said. “I just met Frye last night and she dragged me over here. Are you in the show with her?” She began feeling out what the girl did for a living. It seemed as though most of the women at the party had jobs, even if they were exciting artistic ones.

Alberta shook her head. “Nightclubs,” she said.

“Oh, a singer,” said Helen. She was realizing that for the women she had met through Frye, a more beautiful face was not just vanity—it was part of their livelihood. Where did that fall on Jane’s line of who should and shouldn’t make themselves more beautiful? People would always rather go hear a beautiful chanteuse than a plain one, even if they had the exact same voice.

But Alberta shook her head. “Saxophone,” she said.