Copperhead

Chapter 5 PLAYING THE GAME

There was another good reason to start with Calendula Smith, and that’s that Helen knew where she lived—over by the Grimsbys. Helen had not spent any real time in the woman’s company, but she had been to a dance there once. It was in the last six months—well, nearly all of her social engagements dated from after she received her fey face—so she had not seen the woman’s new face. The iron masks were just coming into use for The Hundred, and this woman had one. Helen had watched them all whirling around the ballroom in their bright gowns and hard masks and felt more alone in a crowd than she had ever done in her life.

Helen had changed from the comfortable dress into something suitable for going out—a crisp wool suit in chartreuse. An unusual color, but one that brought out the glints in her copper blond hair. She had bowed to her blisters and put on her most comfortable shoes, and had tied a string of seed pearls around her neck. Went back and forth on Alistair’s new necklace, but in the end decided to leave it on. He was trying to make it up to her, wasn’t he? And it was pretty, even if it was Copperhead’s symbol. It wouldn’t hurt her to stay in their good graces while she slunk about town. She smoothed the chain down under the seed pearls, feeling the copper snake warm against her skin.

Helen knocked on Calendula Smith’s doorknocker (a plain hoop, thankfully), and waited for the butler to formally forbid her to cross the iron threshold. Soon she and Mrs. Smith were seated in the parlor, drinking bergamot tea and eying each other with mutually concealed dislike.

“Dear Helen,” said the woman. “It’s so good to see you.”

“And you, Calendula,” said Helen, not meaning a word of it. This woman had shunned her at first, for the ridiculous and tangled reason of being the best friend of a woman who had wanted Alistair for herself. Helen never could understand being so tied up over a man that you (and all your friends) would hate another woman for his sake. Surely the first woman could have thought of a more interesting reason to hate Helen. Hate her for her copper blond curls, hate her for her blue eyes. But really. A man? And now Calendula Smith, hating Helen merely to stay in her friend’s good graces.

Well, you played the game or it played you.

“Won’t you have another piece of cake?” purred Mrs. Smith. “You’re practically skin and bones.”

“I know, it’s a shame, isn’t it?” returned Helen. “And yet Alistair was just saying how glad he was I hadn’t let my figure go after marriage like some women.”

“Men! Who can predict their bizarre tastes.”

“I was just thinking the same.”

The initial pleasantries exchanged, Helen looked around the room under pretense of admiring it. It was all over roses. A pink rose sofa perched daintily on a red rose rug, and two tasseled rose chairs faced each other. Rose-pink curtains in a gauze that was the very height of fashion draped the windows. It was completely hideous, Helen decided with satisfaction. But she smiled and made nice about the roses (not to mention Calendula’s matching perfume) while deciding exactly how to play her hand.

“Now, Mrs. Huntingdon, come to the point. What can I do for you?”

Concern, Helen decided. Lead in with concern and goose it with gossip. “Well,” she said dramatically. “I was just talking to my sister, Jane, and she said she’d seen you the other day.”

Calendula tensed. Sort of around the shoulders, but Helen caught it. “I wasn’t very interested in her conversation,” Calendula said sharply. “Seems to me she should keep her nose in her own affairs.”

“I’m so glad you feel that way,” said Helen. “I told her it was unthinkable for a woman of your stature to go back to her old face.”

Those perfect eyes narrowed. “I have no idea to what you refer. More tea?”

“Certainly,” said Helen, and leaned back, studying the woman.

Calendula Smith’s fey-brilliant face seemed incongruous on that broad-shouldered, wide-waisted body. But when Helen looked again—no, the woman was stunning after all. Helen had seen it time and again, but that was the brilliance of what Mr. Rochart had done. He had made each person not into some cookie-cutter girl, but into the most dazzling version of themselves. It was why you couldn’t have said for sure with so many of them. You thought they were more beautiful—but was it that they were just more alive, more real?

This woman was not meant to be pretty. She was perhaps not meant to be a dainty little girl, although that was the sort of comment Jane was always chiding her for. But what else was Helen supposed to think? Mrs. Smith was built like a man, with a wide frame that strained against the panels of her mauve silk dress. A silk rose dangled incongruously from a waist that even the draped bias cut could not slim. “You should wear slacks,” Helen said, and then put a hand to her mouth, far too late.

“Excuse me?” said Calendula Smith.

Helen valiantly tried to save the situation. “They’re chic, I mean. I’ve been seeing them more frequently. I just thought you could carry them off.”

“Thank you, I suppose,” said Calendula, not sounding terribly mollified. “I’m not sure that slacks would be appropriate for a pillar of society. One has to set an example, you know.”

“One does,” agreed Helen. And then more gently she added, “And sometimes one has to do it by admitting mistakes have been made.” She carefully did not say by whom. “Sometimes only the pillars can lead the way.”

Calendula looked at her for a long time. At last, choosing her words with the air of someone stepping through a minefield, she said, “It’s not just that people are drawn to beauty—though they are. The new face comes with its own glamour—a charisma I never had. And … you don’t know it yet, Mrs. Huntingdon, but you get older and you become invisible. I work for the Children’s Mercy Hospital. I raise funds for them. When I started volunteering, I thought I could really do something. I had all these connections. And yet … people listened to me politely and then went about their business.

“But then I got the new face.”

Helen nodded, feeling the moment like a living thing between them, warm and growing. “And they listened.”

“They all listened. I raised so much money the first year.” Her words spilled out warm and impassioned. “Money we desperately needed. All those families who were barely getting by before their fathers died in the war. Mothers who had never had to ask for help before were bringing us children whose illnesses could have been prevented with better nutrition.…” Calendula suddenly recalled herself, and her face shuttered closed. “So you see that things are not as black-and-white as your sister would like to believe.”

Calendula thought she was set against Helen, but the connection between them was there. Helen could find it again. Helen set down her empty teacup and began to unbutton one of the sleeves of her chartreuse jacket. “Do you remember the May Day celebration at my house?” she said.

“I fear my invitation must have gone astray,” Calendula said tartly.

“I am glad to hear that, because it means you were safe,” said Helen, not batting an eyelash. “But surely you heard the rumors.”

“I did,” admitted Calendula. “Bosh, I thought at the time. But then the fey started coming into the city … and I wasn’t sure anymore.”

Helen seized on this moment of genuine connection. “It’s all true,” she said, and then there was only simple truth, as she tried to make this woman hear it. “Shortly after Mr. Rochart gave me the new face. It really happened to me. I was invaded by the fey.”

Calendula swallowed at hearing the tale confirmed. “My brother went to one of those Copperhead meetings,” she said. “He told me of this story. But to hear it from you…”

“I suppose Alistair must have spoken of it,” said Helen. Most of their meetings were men only. She did not like the thought that she was being talked about, but perhaps the confirmation was helping to sway this woman.

Calendula looked away, at the rose-papered walls. “I’m not entirely sure about them,” she said in a low voice. “My brother was filled with such a strange fervor after meeting with them. He said they had such great plans to clean the city of the dwarvven. I had thought we were allies—the dwarvven hate the fey, too. I do not trust blood heat. But I suppose you must know more what they are about, since your husband is among their leaders.”

Helen bit her lip. “I do not,” she said. She closed her eyes and dared say it. “I am not entirely sure I trust them either.”

Calendula looked back at her. Genuine concern for their future was in her eyes. The connection between them was back again; she was listening to Helen. “What was it like?” she said. “Would I know if I was taken over? I have had such strange dreams.”

“You would know,” Helen assured her. “It was as if I was being erased. I had felt nervous anyway from the shock of the face—from the fey substance being attached. Have you—do you feel it, too?”

Calendula barely nodded.

“But then an actual fey, a whole fey—you know that your new face contains a little piece of fey, right?—came at me to take me over. When we have iron around the doorways we can forbid the entry. But when there’s substance right on your face there’s nothing you can do. It came in and I couldn’t stop it.”

A glint of hope rose in Calendula’s eyes; she could refute Helen’s dire warnings. “But you’re here now,” she said.

“Because Jane was standing a foot away and she drove sharp iron into my arm a few seconds after it happened,” Helen said. “Imagine you’re choking on a grape. That’s the amount of time you have for someone else to save you.” She had finished rolling back her sleeve during the conversation. Now she held out her arm to show the ugly puckered scar marking the flesh above her elbow.

Calendula looked at the scar. Helen saw wavering in her expression. Helen was so close she could taste it. Her fingers closed around the copper hydra and she squeezed it like a talisman. “The fey rips clean through you like the windstorm that tore the cupola off of the Queen’s country house. You’re blown out of your own body. You can’t resist it. Within seconds it’s replaced you and you’re gone for good. And then you can’t help the hospital at all, and what would they do without you?” Helen stared into Mrs. Smith’s eyes, willing her to understand the truth of her words.

Slowly Calendula nodded, her face ashen. “And … there is no other option?”

“Not to be safe,” said Helen. “You’ve seen them outside your door. When is the last time you stepped outside without your mask?”

A wistful look crossed the woman’s handsome face. “I used to love sitting in Chester Park in the summer,” she said. “Not good for the complexion, you know, but how lovely it was to just sit there with your face toward the sun. And we get so little sun … it seemed as though you could soak up enough on those few days to tide you over for the ten months of rain.” She touched her cheek, unconsciously feeling the warmth. “I couldn’t go outside this summer. Had to hurry straight from my car into a building. The mask was so hot in the sun I thought I might blister.”

Helen knew what it was to love something and not be able to do it. She took Calendula’s hands. “I don’t believe your new face had anything to do with the fund-raising at all,” she said. “I think you have the tenacity to do exactly what you did before all on your own. Raise twice as much money for the hospital as any year so far.” Helen meant every word and she willed Calendula to see it. “Will you let us help you? Will you lead the way for the others?”

A beat—breath held, world waiting. Calendula squeezed Helen’s hands in return, her lips set and resolute. “Yes,” she said. “I will.”

Helen left Calendula Smith’s house full of triumph. One down. One promised. One woman, swung to the side of victory for Jane. She thought about writing it down in Jane’s journal, but it seemed as though it would muddy Jane’s notes, and besides, it wasn’t Helen’s style. Writing things down meant someone could find out what you really thought.

Helen hurried along the sidewalk, thinking about that curious thing Calendula had said about Copperhead planning to clean the city of dwarvven. Calendula Smith herself did not seem entirely in favor of Copperhead—and she was someone who tried to be at the forefront of society, so that was interesting. Helen had also questioned Calendula about Jane’s visit. But Calendula seemed as stymied by Jane’s disappearance as Helen.

Still, Calendula had been convinced. Helen would get another woman’s name from the journal and go after her next. She was sticking to the plan. Jane would be proud.

The swathes of blue were thick outside Calendula’s house. Helen put her hands in her pockets—found nothing. No iron. She closed her hand on her copper necklace, wishing it were iron.

There was a leaf pile in front of her—orange and red and gold—innocuous except for the blue underneath, oozing out from underneath the leaves. It was as if the blue was eating the leaf pile from the underside, sucking it up like mold. Helen went around, eyes on the pile.

By the time Helen made it to the post office, it was lunch and the place was busy, mostly with men wrapped in thick overcoats and mufflers. The heavily postered walls held the usual mix of advertisements for stamps and bonds, instructions about sending telegrams and what you could not put through the mail. Except there, that mustard-colored poster with the red hydra snake on it—that was certainly new. ONE PEOPLE. ONE RACE. Posters on a random warehouse by the wharf had been one thing, but to see them in a government building …

Helen shuddered and turned resolutely away from those thoughts. She charmed her way through the overcoats to a spot near the front of the line. (The very front was held by a coat-hanger-thin woman of the strict governess type, and Helen didn’t think her eyelashes would work very well on that.) She still needed to work out what to say in a telegram, a stilted form of communication that squeezed all shades of meaning from your correspondence by making you be so wretchedly brief.

“Dear Mr. Rochart, please do not throw yourself out of any windows, but you must brace yourself for a shock of terrible proportions.…”

No, that was not it at all.

In the end she settled for “BAD NEWS SISTER VANISHED COME IF POSSIBLE SUSPECT BLUE.” She hoped “blue” would communicate fey to Mr. Rochart; she did not at all trust the skinny rumpled clerk, who looked as if he would immediately sell the penciled pink notecard to the highest bidder if she so much as mentioned MURDER or FEY.

She felt a momentary uplift of pleasure as she exited the post office. She was solving things, and this time it would all come out right.

It was perhaps the combination of winning over Mrs. Smith plus the telegram that made her suddenly turn right and swing down a side street, march across big yellow and blue piles of leaves to do something she would never in a hundred years have thought she would do.

Ask to take charge of a small boy.

Her heart rattled as she knocked on the hydra knocker that hung on the front door.

It was not the same muscular butler as at the meeting the night before. It was a wizened old woman, who said, “An’ ye be human, enter.”

Helen stepped inside to an abruptly dark and empty house. “Where are all the things?” she said.

“Getting cleaned out,” said the woman, who seemed quite happy to talk about it. “He can’t abide anything of hers to be left, he says. First he took her out—and all still and quiet cold she was. Then fired all the servants round about midnight, them as been with the family for years. One shock on another, I’ll tell you, and then the constables crawling over it all this morning and so on, and him going out with those ruffian friends of his last night after such a tragedy.” She lingered over her gossip with relish. “And then without a by-your-leave comes back from roulette and starts flinging everybody out around two A.M., brings in three young bucks with broad backs and they ferry furniture out all night and morning, nice electric lights blazing like they’d burn the house down. Dunno where they took all the things. Nothing left but his and Thomas’s beds and some plates. Now me and my daughter come over from next door to help box things and mop. We’ve been with that family for years you see, know the history of the whole street. I daresay he wanted us as we don’t talk too much.”

“I daresay,” murmured Helen. She peeked into the large drawing room. The tidy room she’d sat in only yesterday for the meeting was dismantled—the big items gone, the small items being packed into trunks and crates. It was oddly disorienting.

“You’ll have heard about the lady then?”

“Yes,” said Helen. “Terrible. And with that small boy, too.”

“None of hers, but for all that she was better for him than that cold father of his,” said the woman, lowering her voice. “Poor thing is just sitting in the attic where she was, and his father in and out and who-knows-where.”

“That’s actually why I’ve come,” said Helen, leaping into it. “I wanted to stop by and chat with Tam. I thought he could use a friendly face.” Stop by and get him out of here was more like it, but she managed not to say that. She added, “Millicent Grimsby and I were friends,” which was stretching the point, but still, she thought they might have been, if they had had the opportunity to really know each other.

The woman shrugged. “You can go up in the attic for all of me. I’ve got no instructions to the contrary.”

Helen went slowly up the stairs. Her heart went all tight again. Tam had had time to think about what happened to his stepmamma. Perhaps he knew she was responsible, she and Jane. He was not so young that he could not put things together.

Almost she fled, but the thought of Millicent lying still on the table steeled her spine and she went up.

Carefully she opened the door to the stairs that led to the garret, and went up and up. Her mind was full of poor Mrs. Grimsby.

The slanted room was empty—no furniture, no birdcages, no people. No daybed. No Millicent.

She turned, looking at where the daybed had been. She could see it still, Millicent Grimsby, pale as death, staring into nothing.…

“Come to gloat?”

Helen’s heart leapt from her chest as she turned to see Mr. Grimsby.

He was so tall. Had he always been so tall? And he wore a finely cut suit of grey-black, and his eyes glittered.

She could not think what to say, but then he took a step toward her, out of the shadows, and the glitter in his eyes resolved to a stony black. “No, you have always been kind and asked after Millicent,” he said. “I know you are not responsible for your sister’s actions.” He stretched his hands over where the daybed had been, and Helen saw that they were old, scarred hands, with thin ropes of scar tissue that ran up and disappeared into his sleeves.

“I am so sorry for what happened,” Helen said, the words tumbling out, as they might to someone less frightening, to someone who was simply dealing with loss and was not, perhaps, the most powerful man in the city, with the ear of the Prime Minister. “Is she … is she still the same?”

A nod. “My Millicent,” he said, and the words slipped out as if he was, after all, just a man. He ran a hand through his closely cropped black-and-grey hair, and she saw another of those ropy scars. It etched a white line in his hair, stopping just above his ear. It almost humanized him, that he could have an accident like anyone else.

Gently Helen persisted. “But where is she?”

Grimsby’s eyes sharpened, glittering again. He swung on her like a hawk, and he seemed seven feet tall once more, and not a bit human. “Someplace safe. What are you doing here?”

Steel, and the right, bright words. “I was so worried about you, dear Mr. Grimsby,” Helen said, and she made the pretty faces that she made to Alistair and his cronies when she wanted to be on their good side, to be petted and admired and not told to go to bed. “It must be so hard to deal with this situation! I can’t think what I would do if something happened to Alistair. I should have so much to manage, the iron doctors to call, remedies to try, and hardly time for anything or anyone else.”

“It has been busy,” he admitted.

“Therefore I thought I would just pop in and see what I could do. I know Alistair will have thought of everything to help and my little help could hardly be that useful. Still, I thought if there was something you or Tam needed—”

“Who? Oh, young Thomas. No, no.” He waved her off, but she pressed on.

“—perhaps just to take Tam on an outing, so you would have more time to deal with the situation.…”

He stopped and looked at her. Really looked at her, and she had the same sense as before that he was capable of penetrating her motives with one searching glance. But all he said was, “I’m so pleased you decided to wear our necklace. To join our glorious cause.”

It was very odd to hear Mr. Grimsby say things like “glorious cause” in his cold dry voice, she reflected. Someone so fanatical should slaver and gleam. But she was not going to allow him to distract her. “Now Mr. Grimsby, you see it might be helpful if someone took your son to find more of his snakes and bugs and slimy et ceteras. Surely you have so much to do, if you are shutting up the house in addition to tending to Millicent.”

“Perhaps I am too hasty,” he mused. “Yes, you may take him for an—outing, as you say. When?”

“Anytime,” said Helen, dismissing everything else she had to do from her mind. “Right now, even.”

“No, tomorrow,” he said. “I will send him to you tomorrow. Then we will be ready.”

Ready? thought Helen, but all she said was, “How lovely; I shall look forward to helping out.”

He said nothing, only stared at her, so she expected she was dismissed. Which probably made her dig her heels in, for she said, “Can I see him?”

He looked at her as if this were the strangest request anyone had ever had. She reflected crossly that that seemed to be a trait of his. “Young Thomas?”

“I would like to tell him how sorry I am,” she said. If Mr. Grimsby thought he could shut his son up in the bedroom or cellar or wherever he had him, he had another think coming.

Silently Mr. Grimsby motioned her back down the garret, and led the way through the house to the back door, where he propped open the door with hand in a gesture that clearly meant: You can go through this door, but I am going back to lurking in garrets or whatever else it is I do. It was very rude, but as she would rather be out of his company posthaste, she didn’t particularly mind the rudeness.

Tam was sitting on the damp ground in the cool morning, wrapped in coat and scarf and gloves. A little patch of sun had burned off some of the fog where he sat, but it was still chilly. He was busy tracking something on the ground.

Helen went down the steps into the back garden. She got all the way to Tam before she turned and saw Mr. Grimsby still standing, looking at them with covetous, glittering eyes. Did he know she was trying to get Tam away from his influence? She knelt, and Tam flicked his eyes sideways at her. Up close she could see that his face was unwashed; his cheeks streaked with the tracks of old tears.

“Tam,” she said gently. “I am so sorry about your stepmamma.”

He looked up at her, and when she saw his bright, wounded eyes, she knew the next question. “Did you make it happen?”

“I don’t know,” she said quietly, keeping her face turned away from the door. “We were helping your stepmamma so she would always be safe. But something went wrong.” Helen did not know if there was a better way to talk to small children; all she could do was treat Tam the way she wished someone would have treated her—tell him the truth, as much as she could. To the side she saw the door swing shut; Mr. Grimsby was gone. “The fey are dangerous,” she said. “But I’m trying to find my sister, and I hope my sister can fix your stepmamma.”

He looked down at his jar, which had two june bugs thudding around in it. Slowly he opened the jar and watched them crawl out. “I didn’t tell about you being up there with her,” he said. “I’m a good liar.”

“Er. Thank you,” said Helen. She squeezed his shoulder. “Your father says I can take you for an outing tomorrow. Where would you like to go?”

A bit of interest played around his features. “The Natural History Museum? Stepmamma said they have a big reptile exhibit with basilisks and copperhead hydras.” The big words flowed out with the ease of much use, though Helen was quite sure she had not heard of any of those creatures at his age, and even now could not tell you if a basilisk was a reptile or amphibian.

“Done,” said Helen. “It’ll be fun. I like snakes.”

“I know,” he said, and pointed at her necklace. “My dad gave me a pin like that. See?” He tugged on his coat lapel to show her.

Marking them. Owning them. Helen’s fingers closed on the copper. She wanted to rip their emblem off, snap the chain. And yet she did not. So it was a hydra—Grimsby’s hydra. Wasn’t it proof that Alistair cared about her? Some days she needed that proof. She let the necklace fall, smiling down at Tam. “Till tomorrow, then. And we’ll find you some more bugs. I’m afraid I lost yours.”

Tam watched one of the june bugs crawl around the lip of the jar, uncertain what to do with its freedom. He picked up the lid and held it over the jar, trapping the bug inside. Raised it, lowered it. “Do they have dwarvven in the museum?” he said.

“Um,” said Helen. “I don’t think so. You mean like pictures of them?”

“Father said they should be rounded up and shot, and then the potato-faced man said they should be put on display as a lesson, and then Father said someday the last dwarf will be like the stuffed bear in the museum. I like the stuffed bear. I can see his claws up close. I would like to see the stuffed dwarf.”

Helen recognized the “potato-faced man” as an accurate if unflattering description of Boarham. “I’m afraid there aren’t any stuffed dwarvven,” she said. It disturbed her to hear the ugly slur “dwarf” fall as easily as “basilisk” from the boy’s lips, but she supposed it was inevitable with that father of his. She stopped over the next bit and decided to say it anyway. “Whatever they say while drinking, take it with a grain of salt. I mean, it isn’t all true … or right.”

He nodded as if he understood, although she wasn’t sure he did. But the door was being opened by the cleaning woman, and clearly Helen’s time was up. “Tomorrow,” she promised, and left.

Back down the street toward the trolley. Helen was getting awfully sick of the trolley. She reached the stop in time to see one pulling away, and then she regretted saying she was sick of the trolley, for it was even more annoying to want to get on one and not be able.

Because it was a nice neighborhood, there was a small shelter, empty except for a dwarvven man just walking into it. She went in after him and stood there, stamping her feet against the cold. The brick wall around the Grimsbys’ back garden had dampened the gale, but here it whisked through the street in full force, blowing dead leaves before it, covering and uncovering the swathes of blue that lined the sidewalks. Tomorrow she would not take the trolley, that’s all. She would take Tam in the car to the Natural History Museum … and oh goodness, Helen, how foolish were you? Supposedly you were doing such a clever job of sneaking out, and now you went and saw your husband’s good friend and made arrangements to take his son out the next day? This is where rash decisions led you. The motive was good but the execution was abysmal.

Relax, she told herself. Alistair has never expressly forbidden you to leave. You are a grown woman, capable of leaving the house on your own. And yet she shook her head, despairing, running through increasingly ridiculous options in her head. She could get Mary to pretend to be Helen. She could ask Mr. Grimsby to lie about her visit.

People trickled into the shelter, waiting for the next trolley to pull up. Gentlemen, mostly, in worn but decent overcoats, copper lapel pins winking in buttonholes. A fellow in a soft cap eyed her and she tugged her own copper necklace out where it was more plainly visible. If she was marked as the wife of a top party member she might as well enjoy its benefits of implied protection. She moved away from him, closer to the dwarvven man, studying the inevitable lineup of posters. Trolley times and fares. A curling one for Painted Ladies Ahoy! that she smoothed out. She realized she had seen it before, and not known till now that the darling ink caricature of the central painted lady was clearly Frye.

“This shelter’s becoming crowded, isn’t it? Perhaps someone should know his place a little better,” said the man in the cap. He was staring at the young dwarvven.

The dwarvven folded his arms and did not budge. He appeared to be in his early twenties—a dangerous age for getting into trouble. “Know it as well as you do.”

“Not really right for your kind to be here with a lady present.”

“By lady I suppose you mean yourself?”

The man in the cap went red and the mood in the shelter suddenly turned much uglier. Helen could feel the overcoated men slowly shifting, moving into a circle to enclose the dwarvven.

The man in the cap bent down as though he were lecturing a child, tapped the dwarvven on the nose. “One people,” he said. “One race.”

The dwarvven was dying to take the first swing, she could tell. He settled for spitting: “You’ve learned your lesson well.”

Just then the trolley pulled up and Helen saw her cue. She tapped on the man with the cap’s sleeve and slid into the circle. “Thank you so kindly for protecting me,” she said to the man in the cap, “and I feel much safer now. We were just going.” She tugged on the dwarvven’s arm and pulled him through the openmouthed circle of men. Everyone was momentarily too stunned to resist, and Helen stepped onto the open trolley, motioning the dwarvven man to follow her.

But what had worked so beautifully with the dwarvven grandmother did not work with this young man.

He growled at her, “Don’t plan to owe a debt to a Copperhead,” and turned away, back into the crowd. The air seemed to crackle with electricity. A knife flicked into his hand, and he crouched, motioning at the men to dare step forward. The overcoated men surrounded him, ringing him, a circle of leering hydras. He was so small compared to them, and yet as he gestured with his knife they backed up a step. “I’m tired of bending over to you lot,” he shouted. “Don’t think you can tell us what to do. Don’t think it’s not going to come back to bite you.” A pile of maple leaves whisked furiously past, uncovering more and more blue on the sidewalk.

“Oh, just go on home to the slums,” shouted one, and then suddenly he caught sight of something over the dwarvven’s shoulder and fell silent. Helen could not see what he saw, but one by one they all went agape, and backed up.

“That’s right,” jeered the dwarvven. “Cold metal will scare you, won’t it? Not so brave now—”

The trolley doors closed in front of her as a sea of blue rose from the surrounding plants and maple tree and sidewalk. The air tingled as the blue surrounded the young dwarvven. He dropped his knife, trying frantically to extricate himself from the tangle of slithery blue.

And then there was a noise she hadn’t heard in five years, a sharp metallic noise.

The explosion of a fey bomb.