Page 11 of The Exorcism of Faeries

The truth beckons

Tick flick tick

The clock keeps time with the candle

Until they all get sick

Wax slides down the gilded stick

And the Fae invade with bramble

Atta

Most people don’t realise how hard it is to close a dead person’s eyelids. It’s not like in films. They often spring back open.

Closing the eyelids of an Infected is even more disconcerting.

Atta hadn’t squirmed away from a corpse since she was a child—she knew the spirit was gone and the body was just the coat left behind—but there was always something mystifying about the Infected. Almost like there was somethingotherleft behind. Something alive, but inhuman. She knew in her heart of hearts it had to be related to the flora.

After finishing bagging and tagging for the day, all she had to do was document the necessary details for the Identified—both naturally occurring deaths and the Infected—and then double-check the list ofTBBs. It was a shorter list of bodies to be burned than usual, which was a good thing in the grand scheme of things, but it meant there were only a couple of Unidentified Infected and Attareallyneeded one to take to Achilles House after last night’s debacle.

It was possible she could take the one she had down in the basement, but it had been out of the chill room for hours already. It wouldn’t be a viable option. In fact, she needed to hurry with her duties because the corpse could very well turn by the time Siobhan and Seamus left for the night.

As quickly as she could accurately manage, Atta finished her duties. At the last second, she decided to document both Unidentified Infected. It was too risky to take one of only two.

Peeking out into the corridor, she heard Seamus’s bone saw in the autopsy room down the way and Siobhan’s voice echoing from the front as she spoke with someone. A widower perhaps, or a lawyer. She couldn’t quite tell.

Cautiously, Atta tiptoed toward the back and took the steps down to the cellar in twos, nearly tripping and breaking her neck.

“Hello, you,” she murmured to the cadaver awaiting her in the supply closet-turned-laboratory.

She’d chosen this one for herself because of his eyes. The veins in them had gone grey, and it intrigued her. It was something she hadn’t noticed in another Infected before.

Atta flicked on her overhead light, the hum of the fluorescent bulb filling the small space, then slipped on her head light. It was an ugly thing, but how else was she to see in such a dank space?

The body, prostrate before her, looked innocuous upon first inspection with its chalky pallor and vacant eyes. But she knew underneath the flesh, there would be more signs of decay from the Plague. She lifted her scalpel and set it just below the clavicle, slicing to the man’s sternum, a thin incision immediately tracing her movement. Atta paused, leaning in closer. . .

There was something on his neck.

“My god,” she breathed.

His veins had gone black, just a little, spidering out near his jugular, like fungal mycelium. It made sense that the veins would appear black considering the blood darkened, but she’d never seen it visible through the skin before. In fact, the skin was almost translucent in some areas.

Her heart pounded with the idea that she was on the cusp of a major discovery. She moved the scalpel to the other shoulder, slicing toward the first incision, then sliced with careful precision, dragging the blade down toward the pelvis.

“Atta!” Siobhan’s voice echoed down to the cellar and Atta’s scalpel slipped. “Are you down there, hun?”

“Yep!” Atta skittered out of her hideout like a frightened arachnid. “I’m here!”

“Phone for you! I think it’s that twat you live with.”

Atta coughed a laugh. Perhaps she’d been a bit too open with her employers. She wiped the black blood off her hands as best she could, but it was caked under her nails. Not wearing gloves was foolish, but there hadn’t been any cases of transference from an Infected corpse to a live host a couple of days after death, so she wasn’t worried about that. However, she should probably be more concerned with the cleanliness aspect or—possibly—the illegal dealings she was hiding under her employers’ morgue.

Sometimes the lines of laws and normality needed to be smudged a little—with black blood, evidently.

“Hello?” she breathed into the telephone when she made it upstairs. “Imogen?”

“Colin.”

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