Copperhead

together. Risking herself.”

“Jane said we needed to all gather and change back now,” Helen said. “Which seemed reasonable enough, when she first said it. Except changing back now involves Mr. Grimsby, and this warehouse, and his invention that some of you saw a couple nights ago, the one that surged all the power in the house and zapped Jane. And I don’t know exactly what his plan is,” she said, and took a deep breath. “But he has all of our original faces. All at the warehouse with him.”

Gasps, denial. “No!” and “How do you know?”

Through the din, Helen pointed a finger at Calendula. “Because I saw one of them, plain as day,” she said.

Calendula went white and red all at once as shock warred with embarrassment. “Me, there,” she said. “The original.”

“All of us,” said Helen, cutting over the voices. “We’re all in this together.”

“But what’s he planning to do?”

Helen swallowed. “Something involving hooking us up to the machine. It drains us through the bit of fey in our faces, feeds some sort of power to the machine. I don’t know what he plans to do with the machine. But I saw him drain one of us. His wife.” One woman let out a sharp cry of sorrow at that, and Helen felt deep regret that she could not have told Millicent’s friend in a more measured fashion.

“So he has our faces as what, bait?”

“Perhaps,” said Helen. “Regardless, Jane said that all of us are supposed to gather there—tomorrow at noon.”

“You trust that?” someone said, pointing at carpet-tracing Jane.

“Clearly not,” Helen said, to both gasps and laughter. “No, it’s a trap,” she said. “And we have to spring it.”

Another wave of riot. “That actress didn’t say anything about danger,” said someone.

Another: “Thought this was making us safer.”

“We have to,” Helen shouted through the crowd, and the hold she had on them started to slip. “He’s got ten of us lined up for tomorrow. I heard him. They may be bait, but we have to rescue them.”

“And you think they’d do the same for us?”

“I came through curfew for this?”

The voices swelled, rose up loud and ugly. Underneath, another sound from the hall—thumps, bangs, and the loud clack of heels as Alberta burst into the room, disheveled and splattered with mud. “They got Betty,” she said. Silence fell as heads turned to look. “We were leaving her flat—and I had my eyes peeled for cops, you know—but this joe nobody on the street corner said, ‘Don’t you birds know not to break curfew,’ and then he turned and he had the copperhead pin on, and suddenly there was a black car pulling up and they grabbed Betty. And they got my scarf, but I twisted out and dodged them. I had to lose one of them on the way here.” She glanced behind her as if to double-check that they were still alone.

A low voice said into the shocked silence: “The first to fall.”

Across the room Helen caught Alberta’s eye. The one woman with more reason to keep her new face than anyone, and here they were at the moment of truth, and Helen didn’t know how Alberta would decide. Alberta nodded at Helen and came forward into the room, straightening out torn fabric and brushing off mud under everyone’s gaze. Helen said calmly to the room, “I want you to hear a little story first. Then you can decide if you want to stay or go home.”

In simple, plain language, Alberta told them of the husband she had fled. How her new face that made her vulnerable to the fey was the only thing that kept her safe from him. “But I’m tired of letting him win,” Alberta said. “And you’re all tired, too. Every day we go around with these new faces we’re in danger of our lives, and those lives aren’t even our own. They’re borrowed. Well, I’ve had it. I want my own life. I want my own face, my own city, and my own freedom. I want to walk around after dark whenever the hell I want. And I don’t want the fey, or Copperhead, or some damn husband telling me what I can and can’t do. I’m going to get my own face back and then I’m going to see my husband divorced and put behind bars. And then I’m going to go out after midnight and paint the town red. That’s what I’m going to do.”

They didn’t all nod, but many of them did, because the ones that were here were the ones who were brave enough to come through the night, break the curfew, come to Frye’s. Helen scanned the room, seeking out who was being swayed, who needed more convincing. She could do that. But not from a distance.

“We need your help,” said Helen, and she took center stage once more. “Frye did a lot, but there’s only one Frye. We’ve thirty-five of us here. Six have been done. The seventh … well. That means fifty-seven left to go— minus the ten he already has, but we don’t know who they are, so we can’t cross them off. Then a few people are listed by first name only. How many of those are there, Frye?”

“Five,” Frye answered immediately. “Women, think who of your acquaintances is spectacularly beautiful and answers to one of these: James, Marlys, Phyllis, Ulrich, Yvette.”

“Yvette Aubin!” shouted several women at once.

“James and Ulrich?” questioned another. “Do we want to get men involved?”

“Perhaps not,” said Helen. “There were only three of them, if I remember correctly. At least, if you do try to take the men on, feel them out cautiously before telling them what’s going on. If you see a hydra pin, run the other way.” Helen looked at Frye. “So what does that leave us, fifty-four?”

“Monica Preston-Smythe was taken by a fey last week,” someone said. “Her family hushed it up.”

“Fifty-three then,” said Helen, not missing a beat. Gallows humor. “All right, everyone. Go to Frye and collect one or two names.”

“I know Louisa Mayfew,” shouted one. “She isn’t here.”

“I know Agatha Flintwhistle. She’ll come if I have to threaten to uninvite her to next week’s dance.”

“Come to that, where’s my invitation?” joked Helen, and the woman shot back, “In the mail with everyone else’s,” which made everyone laugh and things grow a hair less tense.

“Good, good,” said Helen. “Between us we should know practically everyone on that list. Maybe we can figure out the rest of the cryptic notations. As soon as it’s light and curfew lifts, go. Convince your women they have to come meet us. We’re all in this together. And everyone bring iron. A knife or a hatpin or what-have- you.”

“Something sharp and poky,” shouted Frye.

“Right,” said Helen. “Together we’re a lot stronger than those men would believe. We’ll meet at the warehouse at noon.”

She stepped down, turned away from the center of the room, making way for the women to move to Frye and the journal. Some did. Some did not.

Helen drifted back toward the wall, watching the roomful of color ebb and flow. She was so tired, and they were not even all moving to Frye. And this wasn’t even half the women. If they could not even convince all these, how could they possibly convince all one hundred?

Over the shoulders of the crowd she saw a blond woman pushing her way to the door. Alberta was following her, trying to reason with her, but the blonde was agitated. Behind the blonde pushed a dark-skinned brunette, and then a pale redhead.…

Everything they had done. Helen could not bear to make more mistakes, and the huge rushing hollow in her heart could not tell her if it was worse to let them go or to make them stay.

But what was the point of power if you didn’t use it for good? She had been willing to change Alistair. She would have been willing to change Grimsby. She was losing Rook because she couldn’t trust herself not to change him, and if she was going to pay the penalty for the power, she should use what she was buying.

Helen pushed through them all until she blocked their frantic exit. They stared at her with their inherent fey glamour, but Helen had her own, and she was the one with practice wielding it, she was the one who knew what Frye had said. That you could convince.

One by one.

Helen touched soft hands, squeezed silk-clad shoulders. Looked into their eyes and, with the help of the fey intuition, saw what they were made of, told them what they needed to hear. For some, that was enough. For the rest, she gripped her copper necklace until they fell to her charm, blindly agreeing to go, to bring everyone here,