Copperhead

father—?”

“Has long been dead,” said Helen softly in response. She remembered that moment when Grimsby had wept at Millicent’s side and amended her statement. “Or at least, there’s only a sliver of him left inside. I don’t know if it can come back out.”

Chapter 14 WHAT ALISTAIR DID

The Hundred met on the cobblestoned alley by the warehouse. Well, not quite a hundred. Despite all their best efforts, some of the women simply couldn’t be convinced—and then, of course, there were those who could not be found. Still, there were a lot of them, and they spilled out around the building in hues of violet and buttercup and rose. They were beautiful. They were delicate. They were mad.

Helen went among the newest ones, shaking hands and turning on her fey-enhanced charm to make sure they were fully rallied to the cause. She talked to them face-to-face, and then she had them pull their iron masks on and buckle them securely. By the time she had made the entire rounds, everyone except for her had on their full iron mask.

Now they looked grim. Even in their sea of beautiful dresses they were frightening with their identical iron grey faces. Helen smiled to herself at how delightfully awful they looked in the shining silks and glinting metal. The world was bathed in sunlight; the snow of last night was melting rapidly, and Helen found she was not particularly missing her wool coat. The slacks were a good deal warmer than the voile, or for that matter, than the skirt that usually went with the jacket. Helen took a deep breath of the crisp and river-stenched air as she made her way to Frye, identifiable as always by her trousers.

“The doors aren’t even locked,” said Frye. “It can’t be this easy, can it? That we just walk in?”

Helen grimaced. “I doubt it. But what else can we do? How else do you spring the trap?”

Frye shook her head, then grinned. “That’s why you’re the ringleader of this circus,” she said. “You get to make the hard decisions.”

“Yeah,” Helen muttered, and then a flash of movement behind Frye caught her attention. “Tam?”

He crept around Frye, wearing his binoculars and explorer hat and a stubborn look. “I followed you,” he said.

“Tam—,” she began.

He cut in quickly, “Dorie said you might need this after all.” He held out a copper hydra charm, shiny with wiped-off bacon grease.

She took it from him and said, “And now you must go home. We have to face your—”

“It’s not my father in there,” said Tam. “You know it’s not. I have to see.”

“It’s not a good place for you to be,” said Helen gently. “Besides, that creature looks like your father. That’s going to be hard.”

He set his lips in a line and she remembered Charlie picking up a staff and saying he was going in to fight.

It was hard no matter where you were. It was hard whether you stayed back, or went in, and though she would have protected him from this with her last breath she also would not stop him now. She looked up at Frye, who looked quite sympathetic to Tam’s cause. “You two stay to the rear,” she ordered.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Frye.

“And if it looks at all as though he’s in danger, you take him away.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Frye again.

Helen looked down at Tam. “You swear to obey Frye? This isn’t a free-for-all. There are rules in war.”

He nodded, and Helen shook her head with the tension. Frye clapped her on the back. “Cheer up. You only live once.”

Gallows humor again. Helen smiled because there didn’t seem to be anything else to do.

It was eerily silent from within the warehouse. She held the shiny necklace in the palm of her hand and concentrated, studying the way the warehouse lit blue when she focused on it. She let go and the light faded. The women milled about, chattering, but she knew the nervous energy, the anticipation, would shortly turn to funk and gloom if they didn’t move soon. None of these women had done anything like this, knew what they were up against.

Helen squared her shoulders. Nobody knew what they were up against. Nobody had faced down a fey leader except her sister, six months ago.

And what Jane could do, so could she.

“All right, women!” Helen shouted. No need for a surprise attack. Whoever was inside knew the women were here, not least because Grimsby surely knew of Helen’s whereabouts through the necklace she held. Well then, let him see. She held it up as she moved through the crowd to the front, and shouted: “Everyone is in charge of finding your own face, first and foremost. As soon as you do that, focus on finding the women they’ve captured and freeing them. Don’t get distracted by whatever the men do. If we take back what we own, they lose control over us.” She took a deep breath. “Iron masks secure? Now. In we go!” Helen flung open the warehouse doors.

The room was a thick cloud of fey blue that swirled and blew. Helen could not see her hand in front of her face. She felt her way forward—and then shouts from behind made her turn.

Helen whirled to see the women behind her being pulled to the side of the warehouse as if being sucked under by a wave. In a clear space in the blue fog she saw a large strange machine that whirled and made a loud thrumming sound. The little iron letter opener Frye had lent her slipped through her fingers, slicing them as they went, and flew toward the machine.

“Masks off, everyone!” Helen shouted. “It’s magnetic.”

So this was part of the trap—they had to advance without protection. Several women helped those who had been caught get unbuckled.

The blue cleared as Helen stepped forward. Inside the cloud she saw them. The men. Twenty or so of the highest-ranking members of Copperhead. Alistair’s friends.

Each one stood in front of a supine body. A caged woman, a funnel attached to her perfect face. And in the middle of the room, sucking all their fey power into the copper hydra box—Grimsby.

Helen’s heart broke as she saw those women. Some she knew, instinctively, without seeing their faces. She knew the missing ones of The Hundred—and some of them had the misfortune to be the wives and girlfriends of Alistair’s friends. Without a doubt she knew that Morse, for example, was standing next to the body of his very own wife. And there, next to Hattersley—poor Betty, who had been supposedly taken by the police for curfew violation.

Heart beating rapidly, she looked for Alistair, but she could not find him. She almost laughed in relief, but then he advanced out of the shadows and said, “Grimsby wishes me to tell you your presence is requested.”

“What are you doing here?” she said.

“I am appointed emissary,” he said dreamily. “Ambassador. Go-between. We men understand that sacrifices must be made in war. Today, we will annihilate the fey. We would like you to assist in the glorious cause.”

“You men understand very little,” said Helen sharply. “We do not choose to lay down our lives for some fey’s nefarious plot.”

There was movement then, and she heard some of the men shifting in concern at her words, but whether at the “lay down our lives” or “fey” she did not know.

Alistair turned wide dreamy eyes on her. “Our leader has assured us that none of you will be permanently harmed,” he said. “If anything, you may come out of it more docile and sweet-tempered, which surely you would rejoice to hear.”

Helen smiled then, with all her teeth. “You may tell Grimsby—or rather, that fey living in him—that our presence is neither necessary nor required. Except that we will get what we came for.”

“You think so?” he said with curiosity.

The blue sharpened and the men stood straighter.