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She felt her insides squirm, her heart stutter—something unwelcome rooted there.

“I can agree to that. I’m very persuasive,” Emmy preened.

They climbed the stairs up to the kitchen and locked the cellar door. Everyone was scattered across the manor, Sonder just in from a lecture. He was worn as ragged as she was, struggling to keep up his professor duties. There’d been some backlash after they’d removed their masks, news cameras parked in front of the manor, and Trinity students seeking him out, but no one with the power to excommunicate Sonder from Trinity or Agamemnon seemed to find the will to do so.

Emmy managed to gather the fatigued crew on the back porch, claiming the full moon was a sight to behold.

Sonder brought out an entire set of beautiful antique absinthe spoons with a matching dish of sugar cubes, while Gibbs carried out behind him a tray of decorative glasses filled with ice.

It was cold and the drink was cloying, the conversation as warm as the blankets and the fire Sonder lit.

But the old, twisted hawthorn kept signing her name. Beckoning her into the mist.

And Atta couldn’t shake the feeling that the clock was running out all too soon.

Tick, flick, tick. . .

Atta

19 January 1994

Atta’s hand slid toward Sonder in the dark, but he wasn’t there, his side of the bed cold.

Something felt eerily wrong. Like doom awaiting an invitation to seep in.

She rose and shoved her arms into one of Sonder’s discarded collared shirts. She was still buttoning it as she searched the top floor, headed toward the glow—flickering light bleeding out from his study into the hall.

“Sonder,” she said gently when she entered. Still, her voice startled him where he sat hunched over his desk, looking half-crazed.

“You should be asleep.”

“So should you,” Atta countered. “What are you doing?”

“Youforgot, Atta.” His voice hitched and her heart sank.

“I’m only tired.”

Sonder stood, his chest rising and falling quickly. “An entire conversation we had. A very important one. You forgot it.”

Atta rounded the desk and put a hand against his breastbone. He’d been out of his mind for days since she’d forgotten a pass of words between them. Though they both knew it was nothing so simple as that.

“Sonder, you know how tired I’ve been. Dead on my feet.” He flinched, and she withdrew her hand. Poor,poorchoice of words. “Bits are coming back to me. I was only tired.”

Liar, Liar, trapped in briar, sliced by thorns and thrown in the fire.

“We need to find a way to know the possession has begun earlier. We have to— to—” He ran his hand through his hair, and Atta closed the distance between them again.

“Those two things are not related, my forgetting our conversation and some of the Inhabited losing short-term memory.”

Sonder looked at her lips, his eyes glossy. “I need to know,a stór.”

“I’m fine, my heart, my soul.” She stood on her tiptoes to kiss his lips. “Cut me open, and you’ll see.”

That made the corner of his mouth twitch, but she’d never know his response because the night was rent by screaming.

They shared a terrified look and tore down the corridor, Atta clipping her shoulder going around a corner too quickly.

“It’s Imogen!” Gibbs met them in the hall past the library, his glasses askew and fear shining in his eyes.