Copperhead

in an explorer hat, sliding half-off a footstool, holding a tumbler of beer.

Alistair and his friends were getting Tam drunk.

Helen dropped Jane’s bag and stormed into the room, a whirlwind of frustration at herself and them. “What are you doing? Absolutely not. What is this? What is…?” she spluttered off in frustration. She could not even handle the topic of the women for the moment; all her focus was on that small boy she had tried to protect. She had given Alistair specific instructions. Not specific enough?

Alistair furrowed his brow. “You said to entertain him and have a good time.”

“Not like this. I said—”

“Entertain him,” finished Alistair.

“And we’re doing that,” said Boarham. He squeezed the waist of the girl perched on his chair and Helen saw with rapidly growing distaste that the girl was wearing a mask of iron. Not a real mask of iron. A lacy half mask meant to mimic Helen’s own, but giving shape and allure to an ordinary set of features. Helen glanced at Morse, whose wife really did have a fey face. The girl in his lap was not his wife. She, too, wore a domino of grey silk.

Helen was left momentarily speechless.

“Look, Master Thomas, tell Miss Helen she can suck it,” said Boarham.

“You can suck it,” said Tam, sweet funny Tam.

Helen was a whirlwind of indecision. She couldn’t leave Tam. And yet, how safe was it in the dwarvven underground? They wouldn’t hurt a child, she was sure. That seemed a small hope to pin things on, and yet that small voice inside her told her she could still trust Rook.

She ran through her other options. Frye—gone. Jane—mentally gone. And she couldn’t stay here at Alistair’s house with Tam, because Jane was outside, circling in a cab, and if Jane came in these drunken louts would sober up and take her away for murder … or worse.

“You’re coming with me,” Helen said to Tam. At least he would be with her, and she could keep him safe, whatever happened.

“It was only one drink,” said Hattersley, offering her a tipsy smile. “Young man has to learn to hold his beer.”

“Get your coat,” she told Tam. He crossed his arms, trying to imitate Boarham’s pugnacious stance. “Now,” she said, and he went.

Morse looked sharply at her from his spot in the armchair, arm held firmly around the girl’s waist. He had always been a nasty sort of drunk, she remembered. It struck her for the first time how sad it was that she could recite the exact sort of way all these men got drunk. Emotional, sleepy, quarrelsome … “What about that new curfew Grimsby got passed, hey? I expect you’re supposed to be off the streets soon.”

“To stop walking them,” snorted Boarham, pleased with his wit. He tumbled the girl from the arm of the chair to his lap and she giggled.

Morse waved his glass of whiskey around with his free hand. “If she were my wife she’d know what’s what,” he told it.

“Some of us know how to sacrifice for the cause,” said Boarham in a self-satisfied way to Morse. Helen imagined him slinging an unconscious Jane over his shoulder and she wanted to wipe that smirk off his face.

“She has an escort,” Alistair said with a funny simpering smile. “That dwarf fellow of Grimsby’s.”

Morse barked laughter. “What, is she going to help him blow up the slums?” He smiled maliciously at Helen. “I didn’t know you were into that sort of thing.”

“I’m going,” Helen said quietly, but firmly. She nodded at the quiet girl in Morse’s lap, the giggling one in Boarham’s. “You can come, too, if you want.” But they both shook their heads no, and truth was Helen had no idea what she would do if the men rose up against her. They were so big, so wild, so unpredictable in their drunken whims. And she did not think she could change them the way she had changed Alistair. It had felt with Alistair as though she knew him so well she could move things, make new things lock, pull out the Alistair she thought she knew. She had changed that man in the street through anger and fear. But a whole crowd of them, drunken and pressing in? No.

She looked at Alistair, relaxed in a chair with water in his hand. At least her power seemed to be holding. “You can go,” he said dreamily.

“Really,” said Morse.

Boarham snorted. “If he doesn’t care about his reputation, why should you? Pass the whiskey.”

“He cared about it the night we met those dancing girls from Varee,” said Morse. He smirked at Helen and her heart beat faster. Surely he was not telling her to her face that Alistair was even worse than she had imagined. That it was only chance that he didn’t have a girl captive in his chair, half-mask on her face.

Hattersley looked sideways at her. “Before your time,” he muttered. He had always been the nicest of the bunch, though Helen did not know if that meant he was telling her the truth, or a lie to make her feel better.

“Has it really been that long?” said Morse. Ostentatiously he counted back months on his fingers. “November, October…” He shrugged, dropping the game. “What about your little theatre piece, Hattersley? Bitty or Betty or some such?” His free hand inscribed suggestive lines an inch away from the girl he held.

“She’s fine,” Hattersley said neutrally.

Morse dipped a finger in his whiskey and sucked it off. “Consolation prize after you-know-who?”

All of Alistair’s friends suddenly stopped and looked at Helen, including Hattersley, who was frozen in shock. She felt her face flame bright red, and did not know exactly what had happened. She looked at Alistair, but he was staring off into nothing, a vacuous expression on his face.

Tam stumbled back in, his coat on upside down, laughing at himself. He had his jar of bugs in one hand and his binoculars strung around his neck. “Ready for an expodishon,” he said.

Helen seized his free hand with relief. “Come on,” she said gently. To the men she said, “Enjoy yourselves,” and then she took Tam’s hand and hurried out the door, eyes peeled for the circling cab. Had Hattersley been interested in her? She had never particularly thought about him. She hadn’t even met him till the wedding, she thought, so what did he mean consolation prize? If Betty was the Betty Helen had met at Frye’s party, they probably had been together longer than she had been married. Betty had mentioned a Richard, and she rather thought that might be Hattersley’s first name.

Helen paused at the foot of the stairs, realizing the absence of what she sought.

The cab was not there.

She turned left, thinking the driver’s circling might take him around that corner, and hurried Tam along down the street, watching. No moving cars; all was silent. It felt as though the city were preparing for the oncoming dusk and curfew. There was only a thin lone figure at the end of the road, walking slowly along and staring at the sky.

Jane.

Helen pulled Tam along until they caught up with Jane, and she seized her arm with her free hand. “What happened? Where’s the cabbie?”

“I have bugs,” said Tam. “They flyyyyy around.”

“Do they?” said Jane.

“Jane,” repeated Helen. “What happened?”

Jane turned those green eyes on her. “I was asking the driver if he’d ever touched one of the blue bits of fey and tried to see what it’s thinking. Because I wonder how many bits have to join together to cross over into being full-fledged fey. A whole fey can lose some pieces, but they don’t like it. When does it become just unthinking little bits, like we used to power our lights with? Do the small bits dream? One of the fey made me dream. And then the driver said any amount of money wasn’t worth it and he stopped the car and opened the door and I got out and walked around the block just as we were doing in the car and now I’m here.”

“Argh,” said Helen. She did not know how she had gotten in a mess that involved standing on a street corner with an addled sister and a drunk child, late for an appointment in the dwarvven slums with a citywide curfew about to fall any moment. In that moment it seemed just more proof of her inability to make good decisions, for who else would find themselves like this? The one good thing was that surely there was nothing else to go wrong right now.

“It’s snowing!” said Tam.

Really. Snowing?