Free Copperhead by Tina Connolly Page A

back and enjoy being the wacky maiden aunt again. Besides, between you and me, being the ingénue isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Drippy girls pining over young men who aren’t worth it. I had my fun—my rabid fans, my scandalous love affairs. Sat as an artist’s model for the bronze outside the ballet, you know the one—?”
    “Intimately,” said Helen dryly.
    The woman laughed again and put out a hand, strong and bold like a man’s. “I like you,” she said. “There’s more in you than one would suspect.”
    Helen thought that might be sort of an insult, but it was said so forthrightly she couldn’t possibly take offense. She shook the woman’s hand heartily in her own. “Helen Huntingdon,” she said.
    “Eglantine Frye,” the woman said. “But please, call me Frye.”
    “All right,” said Helen. She had never met someone like this; she knew how to make bright and brittle small talk with men and women of all sorts but not hold a real conversation with this strong-willed woman in slacks who stood in her sister’s destroyed flat, joking about ripping off her face. “Frye it is.”
    “Great,” said Frye. “So tell me. How soon can you replace my face?”
    Helen looked at the woman in shock.
    “I’m serious,” said Frye. “Jane’s not here but you are. She wanted to do me last week. I shouldn’t have beat around the metaphorical bush, but I wanted one last good carouse before going back to my old life. So here I am, high on courage and gin and no Jane.”
    “You don’t want me to do that,” said Helen.
    “I don’t want this face anymore,” Frye said adamantly. “I’m in danger with it.”
    “You’re in danger if I try,” said Helen. “Beyond the fact that I don’t know how—that’s how Jane disappeared tonight. She was doing a facelift and something went wrong. Besides, you wouldn’t want me even if I thought I could do it. I’m…” I’m silly, she wanted to say. I’m not sensible. And when I make big decisions, like marrying Alistair, I think maybe I ruin everything. How could you trust me to do something big like this, something important? “I’m not Jane,” she finished lamely.
    “Hold everything,” Frye said. “You’re saying Jane actually disappeared?” She whistled like a boy as she surveyed the wrecked flat. “This is looking grimmer by the moment.” Frye seemed to do nothing by economy. She swung back around to look at Helen and her whole frame followed the motion of her glance. “But that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To find Jane. No! To find clues—to track her down. She must have gone underground, gone into hiding. Say no more. I’ll help you search.”
    Frye fell to with a will, sorting the small room to rights. Helen fell in beside her, sorting through the shadows. Gone into hiding, she thought. Yes. That’s all. Jane has gone into hiding— I have my own plans —and Helen would find a clue here to where that hiding place was. She was not sure exactly what that clue would be, but surely something would turn up if she just kept standing up chairs and hanging up clothes. Not that there were many clothes to hang up. Two dresses, both dark—and probably only that many so Jane wouldn’t have to stand in her slip and wash her only change of clothes in the communal sink. None of the pretty things she had given Jane. No, this was sensible Jane from head to toe, and Helen thought again how useful she could have been—would still be—to Jane in her quest. Those women didn’t want their savior to be sensible and plain. Nobody trusted sensible and plain. They trusted smart. Turned out. Fashionable.
    “Whoever wrecked this was looking for something,” mused Frye, her penciled eyebrows knitting together. “But what could you hide in a room this small?”
    “Or maybe they wanted to disguise whatever it was they were doing,” said Helen.
    “Mmm, like in The Ruby Dagger of Deidre, ” said Frye. “You come back after the second act to find the