Copperhead

“And you don’t know a thing about it.”

“No, I do.” Rook looked down at her. “I was the one to pull the driver out of the wreckage. He … didn’t make it. But he told me he saw a girl in a grey dress come into the cabin and take something out of a large bag.”

“What? No.”

“I know you thought she was kidnapped,” he said. “What if she’s actually … working with them?” Quickly he added, “I haven’t told anyone but you. You need to help me figure out what to do with her.”

Instinctively Helen backed away from his words, flattened against the door to his bunk. “Maybe she was lost. She’s confused but she’s not militant. Not like that. You don’t know.”

Rook sighed. “I’ve locked her in my room for now. Go in and talk to her. I’ll come right back and meet you. I think there are a couple people that are suspicious, but no one would harm her because of you.”

“Me?”

“The way you helped us.”

“Anyone would have,” Helen demurred.

Rook shook his head silently, then touched her shoulder. “Don’t let your love blind you,” he said, and then turned and vanished into the dark of the tunnels.

Fingers shaking, Helen turned the doorknob and pressed into the room. What did he think he was saying? How could they possibly suspect Jane? It was Rook who was supposed to attack the dwarvven—Morse had said so. Rook had orders from Grimsby. That was the business he’d been doing there, the double-crossing he’d frankly admitted to. Jane was a red herring, an outsider he had seized on to blame.

Helen was adrift. She could not trust any of them, and she had led Jane and Tam into this rats’ nest. Besides, what did he mean, they would turn on Jane if not for her help? Her help was nothing, insignificant. The barest of candle-flame breaths and the dwarvven would blow the other way, come and roust them from their room into the snow. Or worse.

Helen sat down on a small trunk beside the bed, shrugging her coat off. The wet wool stank of smoke and blood. Tam was snoring peacefully on a cushioned chair in the corner, his explorer hat shading his eyes and his binoculars tight in his hands. Jane lay under the covers, dark hair spread around her pale face with its red lines. Yet her cheeks were pinker than they had been; she breathed.

Helen took Jane’s hand in her own, looking around the tiny brick room. The floor was a wood platform, raised off the cement below, and the ceiling was open at the top to the tunnel. A faded brown quilt hung on the wall, and when she flicked aside the edge of it she saw there was a short tunnel there, a back escape hatch. The only things in the room were the bed, chair, and trunk, and it was as neat as a pin. No ornaments or mementos. It was not the room of someone who intended to be there for long; it was not the room of someone who felt at home.

She was suddenly curious what was in the trunk.

She should not look, of course, but if she did everything she was supposed to she wouldn’t be here in the first place. She released Jane’s fingers and rose, swiftly knelt and pushed the lid back. She had a sudden thought that perhaps this wasn’t even Rook’s room at all, despite what he had said.

But there was a thin black jacket folded on top, and she thought that perhaps it was Rook’s after all. Carefully she lifted it off. A few more items of clothing, all dark. A knife. A stack of books. She lifted the top one out, curious.

Jane stirred and instantly Helen was there, seizing her hand, crushing it. “You’re back,” Helen said. She shoved the jacket back into the trunk and sat down.

Jane smiled and she was there in her eyes. “I am,” she said.

Helen squeezed her hand tighter. “What’s been happening to you, Jane? Do you know how strange you’ve been?” The tactless words tumbled out.

Jane sobered. “I have felt so strange, Helen,” she said. “I remember you finding me at the warehouse and leading me around. But large gaps are missing. It’s like a dream, that fades when you awake, and you only see snatches.”

“But you’re back now, really back,” said Helen, as if repeating it enough could keep Jane with her. She thought of what Rook had said and cast it aside. Jane could not hurt a fly, even if Grimsby’s machine had damaged her mind. Sleepwalking did not change who you were. She stared into her older sister’s face, reassuring herself over and over that Jane was Jane was Jane.

Jane seemed not to notice. “What are you reading?” she said, nodding at the book Helen still held.

“It’s Rook’s,” said Helen. She turned it over in her hands. It was a crackled black book, quite weathered.

“Is he the man who brought me here? I almost wonder if he’s part dwarvven.”

“He is,” said Helen, and read off the spine, “Lady Adelaide’s Secret. I have heard of it, but I never did read all those books I was supposed to in school—did you?”

Jane raised amused eyebrows at the title. “Yes, but it’s not a school assignment book. It’s a scandalous thing about a man who accidentally marries two women. You’d probably like it. The man tries to do the right thing and leave the second wife, the one he really loves, but…”

“But?” said Helen.

“But the first wife is actually a murderess, and the second one is a detective tracking her down. And then it turns out the husband’s really been dead since about halfway through the book, and you don’t even know it even though he’s been telling you the whole story.” Jane put a hand to mouth. “I might have ruined it for you.”

“Thus marking the first time I tell you to think before you speak,” said Helen. She sighed and carefully replaced it in the trunk. Not a clue then, except to the fact that he really was half-dwarvven, as they had notoriously lurid taste in fiction. “Jane,” she said. “I’m worried that Rook was involved in the accident.”

“The trolley?” said Jane. “But the detonation happened at a dwarvven stop. And he went in to save people.”

“Oh, but I haven’t had a chance to tell you everything,” Helen said in a low voice. “Alistair told me Rook was working for Grimsby, and Rook confirmed it. That he was like a double agent or something. And then, tonight, Morse said something about how Rook was going to blow up this compound.”

“Was he very drunk?” said Jane.

“As always,” Helen admitted.

Jane shook her head. “There has to be another explanation. The dwarvven I know are not like that. They’re strict. They’re fair. They love scandalous books and dancing.”

“Rook said they were having one tonight,” said Helen. She smiled ruefully. “I put a dress in your carpetbag just so I could go.”

“You should go meet him there and feel out his motives.”

“Nonsense,” said Helen. “They couldn’t possibly be dancing now. Not after the trolley.”

“Funny people, the dwarvven,” said Jane. “Nothing stops a celebration when they’ve decided to have one. Not hell, not high water. You’d like them.”

“They wouldn’t want me,” Helen demurred. She felt suddenly shy. Rook had said she was on their good side, she was the offset for Jane. These people liked her.

It could only go downhill from here.

“It’s not a date, it’s sleuthing,” Jane said with some asperity. She rummaged a thin hand through her carpetbag and produced Helen’s go-to dress, none the worse for being shoved in a bag and going through an explosion.

Helen glanced over at the sleeping boy, then quickly stepped out of the ruined peacock blue knit and into the clean apple green voile Jane held, turning so Jane could hook up the side. She felt better already. “If you’re sure you’re all right in here.”

Jane’s fingers moved nimbly up the hooks. “I feel much better,” she said. “I have a lot of thinking to do. Have you made progress with getting the women together?”

“Yes,” said Helen. “Well, I’ve done some, and Frye’s working on it right now. We’ll get them to the waterfront like you said.”