Page 64 of The Exorcism of Faeries

“Fine.” She crossed her arms, turning her chin away, and he tried to remain irritated with her, but couldn’t with the way she looked in his coat.

“That might take some time. We know the signs of the Plague, but not until it’s too late.”

Atta shivered, and he took off his coat, wrapping it around her shoulders until she was drowning in two coats too large for her. “Let’s get closer to the fire,” he suggested.

“Too many people. Can we just head back?”

Sonder felt a pang of disappointment. He knew it was cold and late, but he wasn’t ready to say goodnight yet. “Sure.”

Back in the Capri, he blasted the heater until she stopped shivering, and she went back to their conversation. “I know the signs are typical until it’s too late, but what if we can speak with an Infected person before they pass? Take notes.Trysomething to save them?”

Sonder gripped the steering wheel tighter. “I do have notes I took in my mother’s last days, and I can compile all my notes from research at Achilles House as well. If we look at all that with what I’ve written studying in the hawthorn atrium and your research. . .”

“We could be well on our way to fitting the pieces together. But I still think we need a live patient.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

He pulled into the car park. Atta reached for the door handle and offered him a wry smile. “You don’t have to watch me walk in. I don’t think anyone else has plans to kidnap me but you.”

Sonder snorted. “And yet that eases none of my worries for your safety. Oh.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a flick knife and handed it to her. “Here. In case that bastard Dohmnall comes near you again.”

“These are illegal,” she said, but took it nonetheless.

“So is raping women, but the fuckers still try it.”

She frowned at him but slid it into her—his—jacket pocket. “Goodnight, Sonder.”

“Sweet dreams, Atta.”

Atta

They needed a live patient. That was the missing link.

Atta sat back from her microscope, the mycelium pressed between two pieces of glass. She’d been staring at it all day, trying to compile as much as she could to compare it with Sonder’s research. He’d thought the hawthorn atrium was the missing puzzle piece, and perhaps he was right, but after seeing his mother’s heart still intact, only changed, she knew their only hope was to also study a live Infected patient.

What if they’re not Infected, Sonder had said. But then what?

It made sense, but she couldn’t see the connection, the end, the common denominator. It had been a week since she’d gone to his house, since they’d agreed on their next steps, but they’d both been too busy, her with midterms and him with ridiculous errands for the Society. She hoped one of those errands would lead them to a live patient.

Exams were through, but Atta had a shift at the morgue tonight. If there wasn’t a cadaver there that was at least a Stage 3, they were going to have to head back to the Trinity Cemetery and lift one somehow. All of their previous bodies were rotting despite Sonder’s special embalming fluid.

Turning away from her botany notes, Atta strode to her bookshelf and pulled down her books on folklore and ancient religions. Somehow, all of this had to connect to her visions—it had to. For years, since that first migraine hallucination, she’d written them off as just that—hallucinations. But after Lauren Kennedy had perished the exact way Atta saw, and she’d seen into the past to watch Olivia Murdoch die, she couldn’t deny there was something more to it all.

Atta felt foolish flipping through the pages of fairytales and religious nonsense, and yet, she knew it all stemmed from somewhere, some kernel of truth. Finding the kernels was the difficult part.

Frustrated, she tossed W.B. Yeats’sIrish Folklore and Fairy Talesonto her bed and picked upReligious Tales of Woeby Rupert Rosenthall, thumbing through the pages, using the book like a damn Magic 8 Ball. “Give me something,” she whispered, remembering an old fairytale rhyme. “Pure in heart, keep a stayed mind. Seekers find what’s lost o’ mine.” She’d just selected a page at random when Emmy’s voice rang out in the sitting area, followed by their front door slamming shut.

“Attaaaa,” she sang. “Oh, Ariatne, dearest!” Emmy’s head popped in Atta’s doorway, her face set in theatrical despair. “The rain is absolutely gushing from the clouds. If I go to the library to study on my own, I’ll die. Please join me.”

Atta laughed, already grabbing her satchel and shoving books into it. “All right, give me two minutes.”

“Thank you! My saviour, my gloomy little cloud. I’ll be your sunshine if you’ll be my rain.”

“You’re a disaster, Em.”

Emmy laughed. “I think I’m more suited for sunny Venice than I am dreary Dublin.”

“Dublin isn’t dreary, she’s melancholic. Her sunshine is in her people.” Atta tapped Emmy on the nose. “Like you.”

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