Copperhead Read Free Page B

stairs, slipped through the door.
    The garret was irregular and pocked with gables. A cluster of candelabra lit the area with the most headroom; the rest of the garret fell away into dark piles of unwanted things as it sloped to the black wooden floor. It smelled of mildewing wood; of the sour poison of mothballs; of beeswax. Millicent lay in the center of the light, a small dark figure on a daybed draped with a white sheet. Jane worked efficiently around her, setting out her tools on a heavy scarred chest. No matter what nerves Jane had professed, as always, her sister seemed as cold as ice.
    It was going to be done. Her plan would work. Helen wanted to clap her hands and burst into speech, tell the two women a million things, but she restrained herself, moving noiselessly over to the white daybed, still like falling sun.
    Helen remembered the day Mr. Rochart had worked on her—the small white room, the deep sleep as he etched around the skin of her face to replace it. She had had such peculiar dreams. Strange to think that her sister had learned to carry out the same fey-powered operation.
    Millicent had been staring out the slanted skylight at the fog that obscured the stars, but now she turned her face to see Helen, and pressed her hand. “It will be all right,” she said softly. “I have told your sister everything. She will help.”
    “Excellent,” said Helen, wondering what “everything” was.
    Jane turned from her preparations. “You did a good thing by setting this up,” she told Helen.
    Helen warmed at the praise. She felt almost holy in that moment, filled with doing things right .
    “We’re going to get her out of here tonight. And then deal with you-know-who.” Jane and Millicent exchanged a significant glance.
    “Good,” said Helen. “Wait, what?”
    “Millicent has to get away from this house for good,” said Jane. “As soon as I make her safe from the fey.”
    Helen did not like Mr. Grimsby one bit—the Copperhead leader seemed the coldest of any of Alistair’s friends—and heaven knows none of them were worth much; but still, she was shocked. “Leave her husband?”
    A small tap on the door, and before the women could react, it opened and a little boy sidled around the splintering doorframe, a jar clutched in his hand.
    “Oh dear, Tam,” said Millicent Grimsby, and she sat up and hurried to the small figure at the door. She bent down so he could whisper in her ear, his hand clenched on her dark skirts. In the flicker of candlelight, the contents of the other jar appeared to be moving.
    “I’m sorry,” Millicent said, standing up again. “Tam is supposed to be asleep, but he saw Miss Eliot from the staircase and wanted to ask her about her iron. He’s really a sweet child—I’m so sorry, I know it’s quite inappropriate, but you have no idea how stubborn he gets.”
    “I can imagine something of it,” said Jane with a rueful smile, and she knelt by the boy, one flickering taper in hand. “My face has iron in it,” she said. “Do you want to touch it?”
    Tam put his free hand to Jane’s face, considering. “What does it do?” he said.
    Helen saw Jane search for an explanation, not because she was flustered—Jane was much better with small children than Helen was—but because it was complicated to explain. Jane had been an “ironskin,” one of those hit with fey shrapnel during the war who wore iron to cover the grotesque, poisonous scars. Rochart had made her a new, fey-perfect face to replace her disfigurement. Now Jane had thin iron strips set right on top of the fey skin in her face to keep the fey from taking her over. At least Helen could remove her iron mask when she was indoors, but poor Jane would never look normal again.
    “The iron helps keep me safe from the fey,” Jane said at last. “Like the iron strips around your door and windows.”
    Tam looked up at Mrs. Grimsby, puzzled.
    “This house was built post-war,” Millicent said to the boy. “It’s