Page 105 of The Exorcism of Faeries

“I’m getting tea.” Professor Vasilios sighed and left the room.

Sonder scrubbed at his jaw.

“Emmy, it doesn’t get any clearer thanit’s not a Plague. Faeries are possessing people,” Atta explained, her patience drained.

A mad laugh crackled out of Emmy. “It’s just mental, you know?”

Nods passed around the room. “But it’s important,” Gibbs interjected.

“And we need your help.”

Emmy considered their words and Sonder stood. “I have to go.” He bent and kissed Atta’s cheek. “I’ll be back.”

He was hardly out the door before Emmy turned on her. “Explain what’s going onthere, right fucking now.”

Gibbs snorted and pushed his glasses up. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Oh, the sexual tension could be cut with abladeit’s so thick,” Emmy teased, and Atta pushed her. It was nice to have Emmy around again.

Marguerite came in with a fresh pot of tea. “Please. No one saw that tension before now? It’s been obvious since day one.”

They all looked at Professor Vasilios, and she paused. “What? No one noticed Sonder pining after Atta? His eyes always straying toward her? The fact no one else would have lasted five seconds as his TA?” The other three looked at one another, and Marguerite chuckled. “Oh, you dear young folk. I’ve sure as hell never seen Sonder like this, not in the ten years I’ve known him.”

“I did suspect there was something there when he climbed in my fucking window to make me monitor Atta’s migraines,” Gibbs offered.

“You said that before.” Atta squinted at him. “What was that all about?”

“Just what I said. In the middle of the night one night, he climbed a fucking tree and came through the window of my room and woke me. He was a mess, worried about your headaches I didn’t even know you had.”

It dawned on her that Gibbs must mean the night she fainted on Sonder’s lap in the graveyard that first time and he’d dropped her off at Briseis.

Marguerite was looking at her intensely, concern in the line of her brow. “You have migraines, love?”

Atta nodded. “That’s probably what we need to go over next.”

This was the part they hadn’t told even Gibbs. He cocked his head to the side in question and Atta spotted something on his shoulder. She leaned in and he backed up, startled at her close proximity. “What are you doing?”

Atta looked up at him with narrowed eyes, then back down at his shoulder. “Gibbs, why do you have long, blonde hairs stuck to your hoodie?”

Emmy gasped, the entire situation making Atta feel like they were in secondary school.

“Oh, em, I?—”

Atta reached to pluck one off his shoulder. As soon as her fingers made contact, she knew exactly who they belonged to, and all gathered got a front-row seat to hermigraines.

Where she used to be blonde and snarky, the young woman had become a hollowed-out vessel with a gaping mouth, the thin trunk of a juniper maiden jutting out of the column of her throat, her eyes sprouting branches lush with frosted indigo berries.

“Atta!” They were all shouting her name when she came to, her cheek smashed against the wood of the tabletop. Marguerite was fanning her, Emmy was panicked, and Gibbs was yelling for someone to call Sonder.

“Stop,” she croaked, sitting up. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“I’ll get you some water,” Marguerite declared and rushed out of the library.

Atta nodded her thanks and turned to Gibbs. “You need to go get Imogen immediately. Bring her here. The Fae have their sights on her.”

His eyes were wide as saucers, a tremble starting in his fingers and travelling quickly up his arms. “Wh–what?”

“Imogen?” Emmy screeched. “Your old roommate? What the fuck does that?—”

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