Poule’s eyes darted around the room, taking everything in, fell on Edward within a single heartbeat. “Come quick,” Poule said. “The kitchen. It’s Blanche.”
Edward turned for the door, pausing only long enough to say to Jane: “Stay here with Nina. I don’t want her to be alone when she wakes up.”
Then the two of them were pounding down the stairs and Jane was alone, trembling emotion crashing through her body, swaying her tired feet. Jane looked down at the unconscious woman. She was so stiff and silent—it was all wrong for Nina to be silent, quiet, powerless.
Despite his orders, Jane could not stay in the studio. She was propelled irresistibly after him, after Edward who both wanted and feared her. Softly down the stairs, clutching her robe around her. In the hallway to the kitchen she moved like a ghost, her bare feet quiet and cold on the scarred stone floor.
Voices. Edward, calming; a woman, sobbing and spitting words.
Jane crept closer, until she stood concealed in the shadows of the hallway.
Blanche Ingel stood in the kitchen like a crazed Shakspyr heroine, all in white with unbound hair. Her left hand, the one she had cut on a thorn earlier that evening, streamed blood onto the floor. Her right hand held a silver knife.
“Get it out, get it out,” she cried, but it was her eyes that frightened Jane. They were glassy and wild.
They were like Edward’s had been in the studio.
“It’s all right, Blanche,” Edward soothed, and he tried to reach in and grab her knife hand without getting cut himself.
Poule stayed back from the woman, nostrils flaring, scenting. She circled around them and then said, “Back away, Rochart. It’s fey.”
Shock pooled Edward’s face. “No—she’s alive.”
“There’s a fey inside her for all of that.” The two looked at each other with grim faces, and in the shadows Jane’s own face was surely white.
A fey in a live human. Such a thing was possible? It turned her world upside down.
“I don’t know if it’s making her go mad or what,” said Poule. “Is she trying to cut it out with that knife?”
“It’s not iron,” said Edward.
Poule agreed. “Then we need to find some.” She wrestled a steel butcher knife from the butcher block, held it up.
Jane tumbled out of the shadows, gasping. “Wait! You’ll kill her!”
“The iron doesn’t have to go in the heart, just a line to it,” said Poule.
But Edward agreed. “No. It’s too risky. And we don’t even know for sure if what you suspect is true.”
“You’re wasting valuable time,” warned Poule.
“Come here, Blanche,” called Edward in a soothing voice. “Come here.”
Blanche looked slightly less wild; she drifted toward Edward. Her arm raised—
“Pull him back!” shouted Poule to Jane, and Jane did, even as Poule lunged for the woman’s knife arm and twisted it behind her back, causing the knife to drop from her fingers. Blanche’s face smeared with pain, and Jane’s breath caught, for despite her new beauty Blanche had always seemed kind, and they were hurting her.
“You didn’t have to do that to her,” said Edward, but Poule just grunted.
“You did her mask yourself, and you’re under her spell. Blasted humans.” She wrestled Miss Ingel toward the side door, and Jane and Edward hurried after. The screen at the door was sturdy, repaired just that afternoon by Poule. Poule opened it and pulled Blanche out onto the lawn. The iron door banged closed.
“Stay inside and call to her,” said Poule. She released the woman and stood there, short and hefty and ready to tackle her again at the least provocation.
“Blanche,” crooned Edward. “Blanche, come to me. Come to me.”
The woman tottered forward, back to the door.
“Go on,” whispered Poule. “Touch it.”
“I forbid you entrance, Blanche,” said Edward in a low voice. Through the mesh, Jane saw Blanche’s eyes film over white, and she swerved away from Edward, from them, and Jane could not tell if she avoided the door on purpose or because she truly could not go through it.
Poule was many things, but nimble on her feet was not one, and Blanche easily darted past her and took off down the back lawn toward the forest. Her white nightgown disappeared into the trees and was gone.
Jane and Edward joined Poule on the lawn. Poule’s face was pale. “There’s definitely fey in her,” she said. “Fey in a living woman. But how—and when?”
They were all frightened by the how. Fey taking over the fey-bombed dead was bad enough. If the rules had changed, no one was ever safe again.
But the when—a chill of realization coiled in Jane’s chest. “She was in the forest tonight,” she said. “I know she was, because she cut her hand on the thorn trees.”
“We’re going after her,” said Edward. “Poule, suit up. Jane, you’re in charge. Keep checking on Dorie.”
The two disappeared back into the house, toward Poule’s basement suite to get iron, Jane supposed.