Copperhead

Small footstep noise behind her, and Helen whirled. It was Jane, it was the mystery man with the flashlight—no.

It was the small boy. Tam. He blinked in the flashlight’s glare. He had a jar with a tiny creature in it and Helen’s heart burst into a million pieces.

“Everyone was shouting and it woke up Sam,” he said.

“Oh, Tam,” said Helen. She hurried over to him, keeping the flashlight away from Millicent and blocking her from his view. “Your stepmamma’s … resting now. Perhaps you can show her your pet later.”

She knelt beside him at the top of the stairs. From below the lanterns had turned back to light—they had got the power working again. She heard the heavy pounding steps of men, moving closer.

Tam wriggled the small jar of bugs out of his pocket. “Do you want to feed Sam now?” he said. He pressed the small jar into Helen’s hand as Helen crouched, listening, waiting. She pulled Tam to the side in the garret room as they came up the steps, all those men, thundering up and into the small attic room. Alistair and Hattersley and Morse, and more she did not know, for Copperhead seemed bigger every day. Grimsby was at the head of them and he went straight to Millicent, lantern swinging, a hunting dog to its prey. The yellow light gleamed upward onto his chin, casting cruel black shadows across his face. A white candle fell to the floor.

Helen thought how awful she would feel if that were Jane, if that were Mother, if that were someone she loved so devotedly that her heart would shatter to see them like that, trapped in the fey sleep, all unknowing if they could ever come out. She tried to transfer that sympathy to Mr. Grimsby, but she watched the black shadows curl across his face and could not do it.

“Millicent…,” Grimsby said, and then he turned, and his lamplight fell on Helen, holding on to his son. “What do you know about this?”

All the men crowded in, and Alistair turned on her, his face sharp with the surety of her betrayal. Which was not fair, she thought. “I don’t know anything,” she said, which was at least partly true. She had known that Jane and Millicent were up here. But Jane knew how to do the operation. Helen did not know what had happened to bring them to this disaster, and if anything, she thought it likely to be the men’s fault, the fault of that dreadful machine Grimsby called their salvation. “You all saw me downstairs. I thought I heard noises from up here. I came up to try to find Jane.” Her arm tightened on Tam, who, surprisingly for a small boy, did not immediately squirm away.

The movement seemed to call attention to the boy. “Come here, son,” Grimsby said in a thin, cold voice. Tam obediently wriggled free and crossed the room in silent steps that seemed to shake the floor.

“It is good you are here, Thomas,” said Grimsby, looking down at the boy. Tam seemed very small next to that tall thin man. He was a mannequin, frozen, his fingers tight on his glass jar. “I have very sad news to tell you, so you must be brave.”

The constriction inside Helen’s chest loosened an inch. Mr. Grimsby would make it okay. He and his son would become closer while they waited and worried about Millicent. He was not as frightening as she had always thought.

“Your stepmother is dead.” Grimsby stared down at Tam and Helen saw that little form suppress a flinch. Tam did not speak.

“I say, Grims—,” said one of the other men and then was silent.

Helen found her voice. “But she’s not dead,” she said, moving impulsively to Millicent. “She’s in the fey sleep. She might wake up.” Helen smoothed Millicent’s hair, pressed her wrist, willing the pulse to suddenly start.

Mr. Grimsby cut her off. “As good as dead, for what fey would be willing to revive her? Do not count on a children’s tale, a sleeping beauty revived. We have to prepare ourselves for the worst.” Now he knelt beside his son at last, but apparently only to pick up something he saw on the floor. Helen could not think what it might be, but the movement called her attention to another find—Jane’s carpetbag, humped in a bit of shadow by the door.

Grimsby rose, his hand clenched around his prize. “And I know what will be the most important to you, son. Justice. Vengeance. We will make the murderer suffer.” Pause. Beat. “And we know who the murderer is.” Grimsby pointed at Helen, a tactile placeholder for his accused. “The fiend who did this is Jane Eliot. The ironskin.”

Grimsby opened his hand and in the yellow lantern light she saw it.

A tangle of iron strips, the iron that had crisscrossed Jane’s perfect, fey-infused face.

The iron that had protected Jane from the fey.

The men looked curiously at Helen. Alistair’s face was lit with a wild mixture of worry and glee.

This must be problematic with his social standing, she thought, and it was as if from a long way away, just as she had felt downstairs when Grimsby’s machine had been running. He’s so pleased to have the news—he’s grown to loathe Jane—and yet no one sensible would want an accused murderer in the family.

If you had put a dagger to her throat and said how would Alistair react to something like this … well, deep inside she might have predicted it, every word. But she would have told that small voice it was wrong, that Alistair would never rejoice at such a thing. That she would never stand here seeing it now, in the flesh, Alistair—her husband, Alistair—rubbing his hands together and pondering over how Copperhead would trap her sister. The unholy glee at having an excuse to bring Jane down was written from ear to ear.

Helen had thought Alistair handsome when she met him, charming. The fact that he was wealthy was an added inducement—she was grateful for his wealth in a way she dared not remember, even now, without doubling up in shame. She had loved him once; she had been grateful. She had thought he would be kind to her. Was he not kind? She stared at the restless energy burning behind those reddened, soft cheeks, and wondered what she had done wrong to make him into who he was now.

“Well, Helen,” said Alistair. “Do you know where your sister might have run to?”

“No … no,” she said, and the part of her that was social, that carried on despite whatever true Helen felt deep inside, did a pretty little gasp for the men to see. Raised the pitch of her voice and said in a silly way, “Goodness, you don’t really think my sister did anything wrong, do you? If anything, it seemed as though that machine did something to her.”

“The machine did nothing to her except reveal her despicable behavior,” said Grimsby. “Meddling in things she didn’t understand. Shouldn’t be dealing with. If she crossed into those forbidden boundaries, she was as good as working with them.”

“Jane? No. She hates the fey as much as any of you.”

“It’s not a question of hating the fey,” Grimsby said. His blue eyes were intense; they burned into Helen as if they could see every little thought flicker across her brain. “This is what Copperhead is here for, Mrs. Huntingdon, don’t you understand? One People. One Race. Nothing good can come of mixing with the other, even with the best intentions. Humans will only be safe once the fey and dwarves are eradicated. Your sister was working with things she could not control, and when the machine revealed her actions to us, she ran.” With a sweep of his long arm he pointed to the skylight in the slanted roof, now open—the source of the cold wind Helen had felt moments ago.

Stoop-shouldered Morse crossed to the skylight and looked down. “She could have gotten onto the neighbor’s fire escape from here,” he said. A twisted smile played across his face. “Unless she fell and broke her legs.”

“She was frightened by the disaster she had caused, and she ran,” cut in Grimsby.

“I’m sure she meant well,” said one of the other men. Hattersley, the drunkest and most good-natured of the bunch.

Grimsby rounded on Hattersley, blue eyes flaming. “You dare say that with my wife right there?” He flicked his fingers in the direction of Millicent, a cold gesture somehow more dramatic than a sweep of arms. “‘Meant’ doesn’t enter into it.” Those keen blue eyes bored into Helen as he swiftly crossed the room and seized her shoulders. Suddenly she wondered how she could have ever written this man off as one of Alistair’s drunk friends. He was something else, something more. His iron grey hair was close-cropped; it lay flat across a sleek snaky skull. “You must tell us where she is. Where she would have gone.”

His eyes were penetrating her, sweeping back and forth. She was hiding in her own mind from him, darting between black bushes while the searchlight of his eyes swept the grounds. He would find her in another minute; everything she knew would come tumbling out. With an effort she gasped again, let a tear or two rise to the