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A little moth took flight in her abdomen, an aftershock of a migraine sprouting in her skull. “A friend gave them to me.”

Sonder chuckled. Low. Deep. Velvety.

Atta froze.

Oh fuck. She knew with absolute certainty where she’d heard that toe-curling laugh before.

“Have a nice evening, Atta.” He shoved his hands in his trouser pockets and strolled further into the shadows.

Mycelium: the vegetative structure of fungi, comprised ofhyphae——tiny branching cells.

Microscopic threads called mycelium, in nature, create an underground communication network with other plants, exchanging nutrients, water, and even warning signals with each other. This same principle is at work within the specimens infected by the Irish Plague. The original spore manifests in the heart or lungs, sprouting into a mushroom, then uses mycelium to command the growth of flora throughout the body.

-Excerpt fromThe Plague Treatise of Ariatne Morrow, circa 1993

Atta

Atta was late to the pub.

By the time she arrived, the gang was on their third round of drinks. Emmy was getting giggly and Dony was flirting with Imogen. Gibbs was looking sombre about the whole thing, trying not to glance at Imogen every time the conversation between him and Lucas, one of Dony’s mates, lulled.

She felt bad for the lad and picked the seat next to him after ordering a gin and tonic at the bar.

“Hi, everyone,” she said, slipping off her coat and scarf to drape them over the chair.

“Are you wearing makeup?” Imogen asked without saying hello, her face screwed up like she’d sucked a lemon.

“Em, yeah.” Atta fidgeted. “Are you?”

Emmy sniggered into her pint and Imogen scoffed, flipping her hair because she obviously had on loads of makeup. The lads were clueless.

As the evening progressed, the looser Atta’s shoulders became. Eventually, the conversation turned to her being grilled by the others about Sonder.

“I heard he has a belfry at his mansion filled with bats,” Imogen burst in.

“I heard he dabbles in necromancy,” Lucas offered.

Emmy flopped a hand around like a dead fish. “Atta says he’s broody but a normy.”

Atta had not said any such thing and found she didn’t believe he was anything of the sort. She did, however, feel a strange, burning need to protect him, so she left it at that.

The conversation shifted back to exams, who was seeing whom, and other meaningless topics.

“Speak of the devil, if it isn’t the dark lord himself,” Dony slurred suddenly.

Emmy whistled low and long, and Atta whipped her head toward the direction they were staring. “I’ve never seen him in all black.Jesus.” Emmy gaped openly, and Atta had to struggle not to do the same.

If Sonder Murdoch was the dark lord, her soul was begging to be burned to ash. He sauntered his way through the pub, dressed head to toe in black and looking like a wraith. Like the masked man she willingly committed dark deeds with.

It couldn’t be. There was no wayProfessor Murdoch,in all his rigidity, was the same man breaking into graveyards and showing her around a skull and bones secret society.But that laugh. . . The one that crawled up her chest and left her breathless. It was thesame, she was sure of it.

Gibbs looked down into his drink, offering Atta a much-needed distraction from the heat coursing through her body. She was about to ask him if he was all right when Sonder spotted her, moving toward their table like there was a magnetic pull between the two of them, causing her heart to go into a fit of palpitations.

“Oy!” Dohmnall shouted, waving his arm around like a buffoon. “Dr Frankenstein!”

Emmy shoved him in the shoulder while Gibbs barked at him to shut his mouth.

“Jesus. . .” Imogen’s mouth fell open as she stared at the professor, to the point Atta worried she’d drool on herself.