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T hey needed a live patient. That was the missing link.

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 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, 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 saw, and she’d seen into the past to watch Olivia Murdoch die, she couldn’t deny there was something more to it all.

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’s Irish Folklore and Fairy Tales onto her bed and picked up Religious Tales of Woe by 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.

“aaa,” she sang. “Oh, Ariatne, dearest!” Emmy’s head popped in ’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.”

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.” tapped Emmy on the nose. “Like you.”

“Yes, yes, I’m amazing.” Emmy started helping gather her study materials, throwing a couple of pens into the satchel while put on her shoes. “Do you need this one?” Emmy pointed a finger toward the book had just opened, then bent in to look, her face twisting in horror. “Christ, that’s ghastly.”

tied the laces of her Oxfords and stood from the bed to see what had bothered Emmy. “Oh.” She marked the page with a dried sprig of lavender and closed it. “That’s a chapter on possession.”

Emmy wrinkled her nose. “Cute.”

They left the lads a note to meet them at The Buttery for a bite to eat before afternoon classes and headed for the library, where suggested a certain row and a certain desk where she’d unknowingly first laid eyes on a certain professor nearly a decade earlier.

Emmy complained about the rain ruining her hair for at least three minutes before someone from the next row stomped over, told her to hush, and she finally pulled out her study materials, both of them sinking themselves into their work.

went directly to the page she’d marked after her fanciful fairytale poem quotation, discovering it was a chapter on possession she recalled from undergrad but hadn’t paid much attention to other than what was needed for her exams.

The photo that had disturbed Emmy was a painting depicting Sister Palmerín, a nun who was possessed after Urbain Grandier, a Catholic priest, made a pact with the devil. The poor nun was prostrate on a small bed, terrified, while a winged demon floated above, only visible to her.

read on, stopping to look over the images of the alleged pact between Grandier, Satan, Leviathan, Astaroth, and several other minor demons.

The next page had her blood running cold the moment she set her eyes on it.

In the painting, a woman was on the floor, her back arched, her eyes rolling back. A priest stood before her, a shining icon of Mother Mary illuminating a burst of small, winged demons that had erupted from the woman’s chest. held the page to the light, noticing for the first time that the woman’s veins were black, crawling up her neck like vines. Her chest was split open where the beasts had flown out, and her heart was not an anatomically correct organ at all but a bloody rose.

Adrenaline flooding her veins with ice, crouched closer to look at the demons. They almost looked like little trooping faeries, only they had horns.

She let out a gasp. What if they weren’t demons at all?

“I have to go.” She grabbed all of her things in one sweeping motion, holding them close as she rushed out of the library, Emmy calling after her.

Everything was soaked by the time she made it to Sonder’s office, and she rushed in, dripping all over the floor.

He stood from his chair so quickly that his coffee cup fell to the floor and shattered. “What is it? Are you hurt?”

She didn’t answer. Breathing hard, she slammed his door shut with her foot and dropped everything to the floor, crouching on her knees and spreading it all out.

Sonder joined her on the floor. “, what’s going on?”

She still didn’t answer. Instead, she flipped to the painting. Pointed at the beasts. Looked at him.

“, what is it ?”

“What if they’re not demons but faeries?”

“You’re not making any sense. . .”

“What if the Plague is not an infection but a possession? What if they’re not Infected, but Inhabited?” His brows pinched, but she ploughed forward. “Think about it. The strange coins, the flora. . . Where is it from ?”

Sonder’s mouth dropped open. He looked from to the painting, lifting the book so he could better see it. “The veins in her neck. . .”

“Look at her heart.”

“Holy hell.” He sat back on his heels. “, this is madness.”

“But you think I’m right.”

“I–” Shock was writ across his features in harsh lines. “Yes, I do.”

“We need a live patient, Sonder. A live Inhabited.”

“First we need to understand why . What they could possibly want with us and how they select us. We need another cadaver, too.”

“Sonder.”

He looked at her, his surprise and awe dripping down into confusion when he saw her face. “What is it?”

“It’s something I didn’t tell you. About your mother’s heart. And?—”

She looked away, but he took her chin in his fingers and gently pulled her back to meet his eyes. “It’s all right.”

“It’s about my migraines. I think— I think I saw Lauren Kennedy die before it happened. And I saw your mother in my room, laughing. Then, I saw her dying.”

A thousand emotions passed over his face. Fear, anger, astonishment. “I don’t understand. Like a— Like a medium?”

She hadn’t considered the word for it. Hadn’t had time to even think of what the connection was. “I don’t know.” She scrubbed at her eyes. “A faerie medium?” A wild laugh popped out of her. “Maybe.”

“What about my mother’s heart?” Sonder ventured, switching gears.

“I see it still intact, only blackened.”

Sonder’s eyes went vacant, then there was a flash of something she couldn’t decipher. “That’s impossible.”