Copperhead Read Online Free Page A

again. Some follower of the dead Fey Queen, we think, has riled up the fey—is planning to infiltrate the city just as the Fey Queen had planned, by taking over the women. We can’t allow this opening for a foothold. We need every one of The Hundred safe as soon as possible.” Jane looked at Millicent for confirmation, who nodded. Jane stretched out a hand and laid it on Helen’s, a reverse of when Helen used to comfort her during times of ironskin stress. “But the walls have ears … and we must hurry to get Millicent and her son out of here. Come to my flat tonight after the meeting and I’ll tell you the rest. You promise?”
    Helen was not at all sure how her plan to give Millicent back her face had snowballed into Helen going down to the wharf to find Jane’s flat in the frostbitten November night, but she nodded to quick skip over the part where people wanted her to promise things. Promises were such cold, hard-hearted, rigid things.
    Millicent Grimsby lay down. Then she sat up, took Helen’s hands, and squeezed them. “You won’t let him find out you helped me escape, will you?”
    “Who, Mr. Huntingdon?” said Helen, startled by the woman’s concern. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
    Millicent set her lips and nodded.
    “Now just relax,” said Helen.
    Millicent Grimsby lay back down, closing her eyes. Her thin hands clenched the sheets, the knuckles white.
    Jane carefully took some of the precious fey-infused clay from the water bag inside the carpetbag and smeared a thin layer on her hands, adding to the power she could control. Jane placed one hand on Millicent’s forehead and one hand on her heart, till the woman’s eyes fluttered, and finally stopped. Her breathing and heartbeat slowed.
    Then she was as still as marble.
    “One hundred of them,” Helen said softly.
    “And you’re key to this,” said Jane. “You have one purpose for the next week. Convince every last one of them. Be single-minded. I’ll do the rest.”
    Helen swallowed. “But what if—?”
    “No buts,” said Jane. “I’ve got my own plans that have to happen. Scalpel, please, and then you’d better go. You’ll need an alibi—isn’t that what the detectives call it?”
    Helen wiped the scalpel with carbolic disinfectant and passed the handle to Jane. In her fey trance, the woman seemed like a lifeless doll, as if there had never been a mind activating that beautiful, silent face.
    *   *   *
    The crowd downstairs was on recess as Grimsby and stoop-shouldered Morse fiddled with the machine under the sheet. It might be a meeting, but it was still society. The earthy smell of liver pâté trickled by as more of the homely maids passed canapés and drinks. What was this fashion for unpleasant-faced girls? thought Helen. But she supposed it was Grimsby’s grim fanaticism again. Fey had always been drawn to beauty in humans—the faces that The Hundred wore were fey-beautiful. The ugliness of the serving girls was proof. No fey here. Grimsby himself was perhaps the perfect Copperhead leader in that regard. He had a hard, unfriendly look, and his features were too sharp and jutting to be at all pleasant.
    No fey here.
    Nervous energy coursed through her as she wended her way through the crowd, smiling and nodding. As she had told Alistair, going without the mask made her the prettiest woman there, and it was obvious in the way heads turned to track her passage. Normally she would have basked in the attention—the pleasure of it hadn’t completely worn off, when among these people who hadn’t been quick to welcome her after her marriage. But tonight she did not want attention. Tonight her heart beat a steady thrum at what her sister was doing upstairs.
    Helen was determined to help Jane. She remembered full well the moment of fey takeover. Only Jane’s quick action plunging an iron spike into Helen’s arm had killed the fey inside her, saved her life. Helen had roused from her fey trance a day later