Page 60 of The Exorcism of Faeries

He pulled a floor-to-ceiling ladder on a track across the rows of books. “I’m not much of a kidder,a stór.”

Her attention snapped to him with the endearment he’d taken to calling her. “Do you need a live-in librarian?”

Sonder laughed, a full, deep laugh and she thought her heart might explode.

They spent the next hour pulling down stacks of books to show one another and discuss them. It wasn’t until a grandfather clock in the corner tolled 1:00 that Atta realised how hungry she was. She was about to mention they should find sustenance when a glass case of baubles caught her eye.

No, they were little filigreed glass vials in various shapes, colours, and sizes, danging off the end of dainty chains.

“What about this one?” she heard Sonder’s voice from across the room, then his shoes on the wood floor as he approached from behind. “The Celtic Twilight.”

“On my shelf in Briseis,” she said over her shoulder.

“Ah.” His voice was nearly at her ear. “My mother’s collection.”

“What are they?” Atta ran her finger over the wooden edge of the wide, velvet-lined case.

“Lachrymatories.”

Atta looked at him. “Mourner’s tear bottles?”

“Clever woman. Yes, my mother said they were not only a way to remember the dead but a great form of protection. She set about collecting these over the years. Here.” He gently opened the lid to the case and selected one of the bottles, a deep amber one with filigreed vines crawling up from the bottom all the way to the ornate cap. The beautiful bottle swayed on its chain. “Turn around.”

Too stunned to argue, she put her back to him, moving her hair over her shoulder when he unfastened the clasp. His arms came around her, his proximity, the cloying scent of him and his chest so close to her back making her head spin. Gently, he fastened the necklace, his knuckles grazing the nape of the neck, and Atta had never been so grateful she hadn’t worn a turtleneck in all her life.

“There,” he said and softly touched her shoulders to spin her around. “It suits you.” She looked up at him, at a loss for words, and he cleared his throat. “Well, I’d better show you why I brought you here, hm? We’ll need our coats.”

“Did your mother stay in the green room at Briseis House?” she asked as they walked back through the manor.

“Yes, she did. My parents both stayed at Briseis, as did I. My family has a long history in that building and the Society.”

He didn’t ask her how she knew, or why she asked, and Atta was grateful.

Bundled up and huddled in their scarves against the cold Irish wind misting them with rain, they made their way across the grounds. The garden and grove were shrouded in a great deal of fog, too difficult to make out much, but off in the distance rose a massive, old hawthorn tree. Its branches bore no leaves, jutting like jagged arms into the mist, its trunk a mass of twisted wood, a hole gouged out of the centre like an open chest cavity.

“The hawthorn,” she said, voice raised against the wind.

Sonder looked to where she pointed, adjusting his scarf over his ears. “Ah, that one is the oldest on the grounds, but it’s not the one I brought you here to see.”

A moment later, Atta was stunned speechless again. A structure of frosted glass and intricate black metalwork towered above them, nearly as tall as the manor itself. He opened the door that was truly a work of art itself and Atta spotted . . . plants. So many plants.

“Is this a greenhouse?” she asked in disbelief.

“It is, indeed. Have a look.” He held open the door, and she stepped inside, forgetting the cold in the unnatural warmth, in the presence of wild flora she’d never seen. A veritable jungle of it. Vascular plants similar to ferns clustered on the ground, several different types of creeping plants crawled along the walls and glass roof, florals in inhuman colours dotted the beautiful chaos, and there, at the end of an overgrown path of stones, was the barest hint of a tree trunk visible, and a skeletal arm, held aloft by vines.

Atta

“What is this place?” Atta said on an exhale, her pulse loud in her ears. She tore her eyes from the scene and looked to Sonder.

“Ah.” He’d removed his coat and stood with his hands in his trouser pockets, looking more nervous than when he’d taken her into the shadows and said he wanted to show her something. “Well, some would say this is the last vestige of my sanity unfurling.” Sonder ran a hand through his hair, a grin tipping up the corners of his lips. “But I call it research.”

Gingerly pushing back overzealous vines, Sonder ushered her toward the tree trunk, another twisted hawthorn she noticed as they approached it. Two sets of bones were held there, nearly invisible for the flora, but a sliver could be seen here and there, the skeletons side by side like lovers entombed in vines.

“This is the epicentre,” he explained. “It all seems to originate from this body, all these vines and flora. When you wrote that paper on mycelium and its connectivity to the rest of the whole, to other plants, I began to think perhaps that’s what this place is.”

Atta reached out to brush her fingers along a dark violet bud, its stem entwined around the radius bone of the corpse Sonder was referencing.

This time, the migraine began at the crest of her skull, blooming like a flower, making her sway on her feet. She tore her hand away before Sonder could notice, but not before she saw the woman from her room. The one in bed, in agony, her veins turning black. The one from the giant portrait in Sonder’s sitting room.

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