Copperhead

by Tina Connolly

  “I’m Helen,” she said.

  “Betty,” the girl said, confirming Helen’s hunch that she was one of the three she was supposed to meet. “You been in a show with Frye?” Dull envy flashed in her eyes.

  “No, we just met last night,” Helen said.

  “Oh,” said Betty. “Seems like you could be. I thought this would do it,” and she gestured at the perfect face, “but seems not. Do you think the producers want something else besides face and body? ’Cause I don’t know what else I got.” Her forehead furrowed prettily. “You are like me, ain’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Helen. “We are alike.” Betty nodded, and Helen followed up that line of persuasion, adding, “I often feel it didn’t really change anything inside. Do you feel that?”

  This philosophical statement seemed to go over Betty’s head. “Inside? I still have the same body, I suppose. I was asleep for the part where the man did it. I was so scared when he knocked me out.”

  Helen seized on this admission. “I was scared, too,” she said. “And now when I go outside, because of the fey.”

  That was it. Betty’s eyes grew wide and she said, “I didn’t know there was gonna be all this fey everywhere. I have to wear my iron mask every time I leave the theatre or Richard’s flat, and Richard, that’s my man you know, he says what did he do it for if I can’t be seen, but he don’t know what it’s like to know there’s blue devils waiting to get into your bones. I don’t think a man really can know, do you?”

  “No,” said Helen fervently. “Look, my sister, Jane, is helping people change back. I think you should let her help you.”

  Wide eyes again, looking to Helen for help. “Do you really think I should? She scared me a bit, she was so determined I should do what she said. I don’t like being afraid, it’s just the worst feeling, worse than auditioning where your throat dries up and so on.”

  “I think you should change back,” Helen said gently. “I think we all should. What about Ruth? Is she nice?”

  Betty nodded emphatically. “For all she’s Ruth, she’s nicer to me even than me mum.”

  “Stay with Ruth and be her dresser always. You don’t want to be onstage anyway, because it’s frightening up there. If you want to move on from dressing you should try to work up to being—” and Helen seized on what she could intuit from Betty’s dress— “a costumer. You’d be an important part of the theatre without having to be afraid.”

  “Do you really think so?” said Betty. It was amazing what a smile could do for even a phenomenally pretty face. “I designed this dress even, did you have any idea?”

  “Not at all,” lied Helen, “and it’s stunning. Look, I have to say hello to Frye, but as soon as my sister gets back into town we’ll set you up and she’ll get you fixed back. Is it a deal?”

  Betty put out her hand, then withdrew. “Does it cost? I hate to ask Richard for yet more.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” said Helen.

  Betty grinned, and you could suddenly see the down-home city girl inside the fey beauty. “I’ll make you a dress of your own to thank you. You and your sister.”

  Helen tried not to look startled. “That’s very kind of you, Betty. Thank you.”

  “I’m gonna go tell Ruth I’ll be her dresser always,” Betty said. “Excuse me.” She slipped off her stool, her slit skirt displaying her long legs as she crossed the room.

  Helen turned away from the window, pleased. One down, and sneaking out for the evening was already proving worthwhile.

  Through the doorway to the piano room she saw Frye, and she decided to brave the crowd again, circling around the crush of dancers, around the outskirts of the packed room. The current dance was a complicated and lively one that Helen did not know. She watched the patterns as she threaded her way through a waft of clove-drenched smoke, filing it away in the hope that someday she would get to dance it. She watched everyone’s feet so carefully that she almost got whacked three separate times by elbows.

  The piano finished with a flourish, the singers laughed and bowed to applause, and someone shouted, “Too easy! Try harder!”

  “The Shadow?” shouted back the pianist. “Change partners, everyone!” Shouts and cheers, and he plunged into the prelude of a familiar and intricate melody that went with a dance that was a mind-bending cross between a formal waltz and a risqué tango.

  All around her men and women released hands and found new ones, and Helen got pushed inside the dance floor. She pushed down the want and tried to slither away, eluding eyebrow-raised offers, outstretched hands.

  The dance proper started and the music all came back to her now, filled her from head to toe like a plucked violin string and she hummed along, remembering a night she had danced it with Alistair in the tenpence ballroom. Why did he not dance these dances in high society? He knew them. She kept going, avoiding the glides of the couples as they spun around for the back-to-front portion of the dance, where you did not look at your partner but let him guide you. If your partner was good, it was tremendous. Alistair had never been good.

  She was nearly out of the crowd when a hand slid behind her at a precise turn in the music, memory made flesh. One hand at her waist, one at the hand, its fingers firmly wrapping around her palm, and then her feet were moving through the familiar steps before she was fully aware of it. It had happened so like a dream that she had given in to that ache without realizing; she was dancing in reality before she knew it.

  She laughed with a moment of pure joy at the audacity of the young man who held her. “Who is this?” she said.

  “We have never been formally introduced,” he said, his breath warm on her ear, “yet I have seen you more than once.”

  If that was true then it was a puzzle; for Helen could not think who of her set might have overlap with Frye’s acquaintance. They turned and turned, and her feet moved with the joy of the music as she pondered. His hands were neither rough nor soft—lean and callused, hands that did things. A hint of something musky, like sandalwood, lingered in the air as they turned. Someone artsy, someone bohemian, someone not stuffy. That ruled out nearly everyone, she thought cynically.

  But be fair, Helen. Not everyone was bland and insipid, just because Alistair was so obsessed with status. She could figure this man out. She could tell from the way he held her that he was not tall—perhaps just her height. That ought to narrow it down and yet she still could not think who it might be. He held her waist lightly; she could turn at any time, and yet she did not. It amused her to play his guessing game.

  “Lionel Winterstock,” Helen said, naming a wealthy young man who wrote a lot of bad poetry and might think it exciting to know a bohemian slacks-wearing actress. “No—Georgie Pennyfeather.” True, Pennyweather’s rebellion had only extended so far as once upon a time thinking about running away to the Faraway East, but then deciding better of it—but he was short.

  “Nothing so grand. Close your eyes.”

  She did, and he spun her out, and in, somehow avoiding the other spinning couples that clustered the floor. Helen was a good dancer, but he, perhaps, was better. Or perhaps just exceptionally good at partnering. The subtle cues from his fingertips directed her safely away from him and back, even with her eyes closed.

  “There. We’re safe now. Continue your guessing game.”

  “Let’s see,” said Helen. She watched the eyes of the other couples as they danced for a clue. How did they look at her, at her partner? Smiles, grins, perhaps a touch of envy from a young woman or two. No surprise at seeing him, though, so he was part of this set, and known. “Are you an actor? No, wait. How did you meet Frye?” That would cover more information.

  “Not onstage,” he said, “though she did a remarkable Vera Velda on the Feathertoad stage last season. I may have been in the audience, just passing through. I may even have rushed up to her afterwards with an armful of roses gathered from every twopenny flowergirl in the street, laid them at her feet like some demented thing.” His touch was so delicate, so
fine, she fancied she could feel the amused, rueful twinge slide along his bones. “She let me down easy.”

  “Kind of her,” said Helen.

  “My turn,” he said. “What kind of game are you playing?”

  It was said lightly, yet she tensed under his fingers.

  “Easy, easy,” he said. “A simple question.”

  “I have no game,” she said tightly.

  “A woman of mystery, then,” he said. “Who turns up in surprising places. I expect next I’ll see you in the dwarvven slums, dancing around the statue of Queen Maud.”

  Dwarvven, not dwarf. Not a member of Copperhead, though that was unlikely from the mere fact that he was here. His hands were on hers and he was silent. She said brightly back, “All right then, why do you come? Clearly not to show off your limited dancing prowess.” A weak jab for such a clever dancer, but damned if she was going to let him sail by on that charm alone.

  “And I thought I was making such headway, too,” he complained. “Eyes.”

  “This is the last time,” she warned, but she obeyed and felt him guide her through the spin. “And you haven’t answered my question.”

  “Professional curiosity,” he said lightly. “Final pattern. Want to try it?”

  Laughing, she extended her arm for the last bit. If he thought he could do it backwards she wouldn’t be the one to fail. They spun in, out, feet tripped the fast bit at the end, and finished in the lift. Except there he finally did stumble against another couple, and they landed with a thud. Helen was grinning as she straightened up. “Now I know it’s Lionel,” she said. “No one else would dare.”

  “It is not,” he said, laughter in his voice.

  Helen wheeled to find herself in the arms of the young man she had seen three times before—at the Grimsbys’, on the trolley, and near the fey attack.

  Chapter 7

  SECRETS IN THE NIGHT

  “You,” she said, and stared, agape.

  “You,” he agreed, studying her in return.

  He was indeed just her height—and she was not tall—but lithe, as if he were a professional dancer or acrobat. His clothes were similar to yesterday’s—fitted, trim, nondescript—the sort of clothes she had identified as being for a quick getaway. His hair was ruddy-brown and his eyes flashed with light. Even in the gay room of actors and singers in bright colors he seemed like something wilder, something more real and alive. “Who on earth are you?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  A bit of temper flashed at his evasions. “After that uninvited dance, I think I have the right to know.”

  “You didn’t seem to mind the dance while dancing.”

  “My husband might mind,” she said, trying to squash him.

  “There’s always a husband,” he said, unsquashable.

  She glared at him, but his grin was unrepentant.

  “There’s someone looking for you,” he said, and pointed over her shoulder.

  “I’m not falling for that—,” said Helen, but then Frye swooped in and enveloped her in a one-armed embrace that knocked her off balance.

  “Helen, darling!” shouted Frye over the clamor of the party. “You made it. Have you met the girls?”

  “Alberta, Betty, and Desirée?” guessed Helen.

  “The same.”

  “No,” said Helen, “but I did meet—”

  But of course he was gone.

  “Bah,” Helen said, and turned back to Frye, who looped a companionable arm around her shoulders and led her off to the open bar.

  “Now I will tell you all about them so you can bring them over to the side of good and light.” Frye gestured to the bartender, who seemed as though he might be a fellow actor she’d roped in for the night. “Two martinis, very dirty.” She turned back to Helen. “Desirée is divine. She has the most glorious voice. And this rubbish little old husband, but we don’t talk about him.”

  The bartender had a striped shirt rolled up over olive-skinned muscles and a lopsided, winsome grin that he employed to great effect on the pair of them. “Very dirty,” he repeated.

  “None of your lip, and put in more olives,” said Frye. She had a long purple caftan embroidered with a dragon that billowed around filmy green slacks, and dark red heels that made her even taller. “Now, it turns out Desirée is allergic to iron. Can’t wear one of the face masks without going a funny shade of green. So she’ll be no problem at all. Just scheduling conflicts with her; she’s got engagements all over the place, and next week she’s going to—”

  “Is she here?” cut in Helen.

  “Yes, and she’s wearing the most atrocious peppermint-striped dress; you can’t miss it. She lets that ancient husband pick out her clothing. I can’t imagine why.”

  “Maybe she actually likes him,” said Helen.

  Frye dismissed this with a wave. “Oh, what glorious martinis, Cosmo. Helen, yours,” and she passed it across.

  Cosmo grinned his lopsided grin at her and went to the next order. Helen rather liked that he seemed to be immune to her fey charm, perhaps through so much saturation in association with the charming actors around them, including the three enhanced women. That man she had danced with had seemed to be immune, too, although that hadn’t left her with exactly the same positive feeling.

  “What about the other two?” Helen said to Frye, who had gone into an explanation of a perfectly terrible martini she had had last week while Helen hadn’t been listening.

  “Oh, yes,” said Frye. “Just keep me focused. And Cosmo, one for the road if you would—?”—this while tapping the martini glass. “So little Betty’s here somewhere, in this dreadful purple fur thing she made herself, but she is an absolute lamb, you will love her.”

  Helen noted for future reference that Frye didn’t seem to think much of anyone else’s personal taste. Of course, if that peppermint dress over there by the punch bowl was Desirée … perhaps Frye was just speaking truth. “I think I found Betty,” she said. “Did Jane mention talking with her?”

  “Oh, Jane,” said Frye. “Now of course we both love Jane, but between you and me and the hall tree she went about it all wrong. Betty just needs to be told what to do, but not in a schoolmistressy way, you know? She’s an utter lamb, and you need to sit her down and hold her hand and tell her it will be all right and she can stop being afraid once she changes back. She’s going to get fired if she’s too afraid to get to performances, which she currently is, so you sit her down and explain that very nicely to her and she’ll come along.”

  “Like a little lamb,” agreed Helen, satisfied that Frye’s estimate dovetailed so nicely with Helen’s accomplishment. She saw the mysterious fellow over by the window and turned to Frye. “Say, do you know who that man is—?” she started to say, but just then a tall lady in yellow ran up and air-kissed Frye and started talking a mile a minute about some performance that had been disastrous, didn’t Frye know. Helen waited patiently a few moments, as Frye turned half back to Helen and said “oh dear” and “just a minute,” but Helen perfectly well knew the signs of a busy hostess with three hundred people who wanted to talk to her, so she slipped away and tried to find the girl in the orange dress who had been singing at the piano.

  The pianist was still banging away, and had been joined by a plump brown man in disheveled tie and specs. They were having too good a time at their duet to be interrupted.

  You would think it wouldn’t be that hard to spot someone in orange, Helen thought, but here it was. The whole room was alive with color and fashion, and she was rather amused to note that everything she knew about fashion (and she knew rather a lot; on a good day she could pin you to an income and street just by the cut of the coat you wore) went out the window here, where it was apparently not only acceptable, but celebrated, to cross-dress in slacks or a bow tie, or to make a dress out of a slip with feathers stitched on, or to combine pink and orange, crimson and aqua, silver and gold.

  The whole gaiety and life of the small house made her quite
happy and giddy, as though she’d finally found a place to relax and just be. It was strange how sometimes you could feel that in a crowd, particularly as sometimes you couldn’t.

  “Frye said you wanted to see me?”

  Helen turned to see the perfect face of the dark-skinned girl in orange who’d been sitting on top of the piano. Hard to judge age with The Hundred, but Helen would guess mid-twenties. “Alberta?” she said.

  The young woman nodded, eyeing her warily. Helen wished Frye had prepped her so she knew what this one was about. Jane’s only notes had been: Met. Dismal.

  “I’m Helen,” she said. “I just met Frye last night and she dragged me over here. Are you in the show with her?” She began feeling out what the girl did for a living. It seemed as though most of the women at the party had jobs, even if they were exciting artistic ones.

  Alberta shook her head. “Nightclubs,” she said.

  “Oh, a singer,” said Helen. She was realizing that for the women she had met through Frye, a more beautiful face was not just vanity—it was part of their livelihood. Where did that fall on Jane’s line of who should and shouldn’t make themselves more beautiful? People would always rather go hear a beautiful chanteuse than a plain one, even if they had the exact same voice.

  But Alberta shook her head. “Saxophone,” she said.

  Helen’s face crinkled in puzzlement.

  A tiny smile broke through on Alberta’s sullen beautiful face. “I know. There aren’t too many of us. I can sing well enough, but … no. I play sax in a cabaret band called Sturm und Drang. You might have heard of us.”

  “I have,” said Helen, though admittedly the “heard of” amounted to Alistair grinching about the terrible modern music that was becoming popular for no discernible reason that he, Alistair, could see. She looked at Alberta with new respect. “But then why.…”

  Alberta looked wary. “Frye mentioned you. You’re Jane’s sister, aren’t you? You’re wasting your time.”

  “To convince you to do the facelift? It really is safer.”