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That was his problem for now. Atta chose the hawthorn atrium to eat, mostly out of curiosity. They’d had copious amounts of alcohol, tea, and coffee near the organisms but never food. Presumably, the flora itself wouldn’t react to human food, but what sort of scientist would she be if she didn’t test things out?

While she ate, Atta placed bits of food here and there and recorded where she’d put them. Then, she forced herself to sit still and finish eating without working at the same time.

Her brain, however, never shut down. She sat munching, staring at the hawthorn, contemplating the way she could sometimes see Olivia Murdoch’s heart still there, still beating, when it was long since lost to faerie growth. It still didn’t sit right. It didn’t makesense.

Her appetite sated enough, Atta discarded the majority of her food to the side and wove her way through the overgrown vines and flora masking the hawthorn—the bodies—from view.

It was dark enough outside and the flora so thick that she couldn’t quite see clearly beneath the plants, like being under a willow tree at dusk, but Atta didn’t need her eyes for this particular curiosity.

With a deep inhale, she gently moved the creeping plant winding around Olivia Murdoch’s ribs and placed her hand on her moss-covered sternum.

The pain was so great it snatched her breath away and made her knees quake.

But then she was gone. Out of her body. Locked in her mind. Only for a second before she waselsewhere.

An enchanted forest spread out before her, all emerald trees and lush florals glowing in the mist and moonlight. The moss beneath her feet looked soft as down, like the euphoria of spring grass between her toes, but Atta couldn’t feel it. And she was not alone.

A woman in a white nightgown with long, flowing hair wandered through the trees, brushing her fingertips along their twisted trunks. She was barefoot, too, her nightgown blowing in a breeze Atta couldn’t feel. The woman was young, maybe a handful of years younger than her, but she could only make out the gentle curves of a young woman’s body and her profile, nothing more.

A twig snapped under Atta’s feet and the woman turned around, her wonder turning to fear in her wide, hazel eyes.

Sonder’s eyes. Olivia Murdoch’s eyes.

Atta froze in place, at least she assumed she did, because the trees stopped moving past her and Olivia turned back around, headed deeper into the fog. Atta followed Olivia again, all the way to a hollowed-out trunk, where she reached inside and withdrew the most beautiful book Atta had ever seen. A tome of the deepest olive green, its lettering gilded and gleaming.

Olivia turned around, looked from the book to Atta and said in a sing-song voice, “Welcome to the Faerie Wood.”

With a gasp so deep she nearly retched, Atta was back in the atrium, her ice-cold hand pulling away from Olivia’s sternum.

No, she hadn’t yanked it back. It was almost like it had beenpushedback.

Rattled, shaking, Atta stumbled her way from the flora and out of the greenhouse, back to the main manor.

“There you are,” Gibbs met her in the hall to her room. “I have a few more calls to make, but most of the Inhabited patients we received calls for are lower stages, so there is some time to stagger them out.” He looked down at his calendar instead of at her, and she was grateful. “The first appointment will be tomorrow at 10 a.m. That’s a Stage 3. There will be two tomorrow. The second is at 3 p.m., and that Inhabited is a Stage 2.”

“Right. Yes, that’s perfect.” She brushed past him, stumbling a little.

“Are you all right?”

“Fine. I think I just need to shower like you said and go to bed.”

Gibbs checked his watch. “I’d better make those last few calls and head out.”

“See you, Gibbs.”

She didn’t recall much from her shower, or changing into a nightgown and slipping into bed.

Sleep claimed her the moment her head hit the pillow, dreams pulling her under. There, in the hazy world of sleep, Atta moved through the mist, something calling to her. She soon found herself in a wood unlike any she’d seen before. The grass was lush beneath her bare toes, lusher even than she’d expected. Trees bent and swayed in a gentle breeze, stunning flora dotting the ground, the vines, the bushes. But sometimes, in this dream, when she would blink, the forest would fall away to reveal a wood of bramble and decay. Of twisted hawthorns and sharp teeth. Always, there was a beating of wings, but the creatures moved so quickly she couldn’t make them out.

Somewhere off in the distance, a woman sang.

Tik, flick, tick

The clock keeps time with the candle

Until they all get sick

Wax slides down the gilded stick