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too new to have iron. Your father is working on the problem, but with the fey suddenly everywhere, iron’s gone short again.”
    Helen saw Jane roll her eyes at that and she hastened to intervene before Jane could go off on one of her rants about how the city folk didn’t have any sense, building without iron in the first place. “I just realized that’s a bug jar,” said Helen to the small boy. “Are you collecting bugs?”
    “For my snake,” he said. “I found a little garden snake. He’s green.”
    Helen shuddered in delight. “And you collect live bugs for him? My goodness.”
    Tam offered her a shy smile, possibly uncertain whether she was teasing him. “Do you want to feed him one?”
    “Not now, Tam.” Millicent Grimsby shook her perfect face and Helen saw again how very young she was, younger than Helen herself, who was barely eighteen and a half. (Though she felt she had aged a lifetime in the last six months; it was a mercy her fey face didn’t show eye bags and wrinkles or she was sure she would have them.)
    “After we visit with your mother,” promised Helen.
    “Tam is not mine,” Millicent Grimsby said quietly in response. “His mother died in a motorcar accident, poor thing. I’m the second Mrs. Grimsby, you see. Married last winter. My mother thought he was such a catch.…” Her voice trailed off, lost, and Helen overflowed with sympathy again. What kind of mother would tell this poor girl to accept frightening, fanatic Mr. Grimsby, wealthy though he might be?
    “Can I stay and play with the birdcages?” said Tam.
    “Oh, sweetheart,” said Millicent. She led the boy to the door and whispered something in his ear. He nodded and squeezed her fingers before plodding back down the staircase. Millicent Grimsby stared after the small disappearing form, her fingers knotted together. She wheeled and turned on Jane, her mousy form straightening, filling with iron. “You need to make them all safe, Jane,” said Millicent. She moved into the light. “Make them listen to you.”
    Jane pressed Millicent’s small hands. “That’s where Helen comes in,” she said. “She’s going to help win all of The Hundred over to our cause. And soon.”
    Warmth flooded a tight knot in her chest. Jane did want her to help. Jane trusted her. Jane saw that Helen was worth something. And deeper, inside— don’t screw up this time .
    Millicent turned her big brown eyes on Helen, and even Helen, with her own fey charm, felt the fey allure. “I’m so glad you’re on our side,” Millicent said. “You know what it’s really like to be attacked by the fey. You can be a real leader of the cause.”
    Jane was the real leader, thank goodness, but Helen was not about to rile up Millicent before the dangerous surgery. “Of course I will,” she said easily. “But did you say you’re going to run away?” She could see it now, little Millicent and her small frightened boy, in flight, on the run. A dangerous mission, fleeing through the cold winter winds …
    “Not run away,” said Jane. “She is her own person and Mr. Grimsby does not own her. We are leaving for her own good.”
    Helen waved semantics aside. “And it must be tonight,” she added, seizing onto the new plan. “Mr. Grimsby won’t let Millicent have her iron mask, so she can’t leave on her own. She needs your help.”
    Jane nodded. “I must make her safe and then we need to go, now, while we still can. We’ll take Tam with us. You will go downstairs and pretend not to know a thing.”
    “I am excellent at that,” said Helen. She turned back and said, “Wait, though. What’s this about convincing The Hundred soon ? These things take time, you know.”
    Millicent and Jane exchanged a significant glance as Millicent got back into position on the daybed. “There’s movement afoot,” Jane said. “Things are about to come to a head.”
    “Things?”
    Jane whispered over Millicent’s body. “The fey, Helen. The fey are rising