Page 43

“A tta!” He started calling her name from the moment he closed the front door. “Atta!”

Christ, it felt good to come home to another human. To her. He dropped the grocery bags in the entry and went searching for her.

She wasn’t in the kitchen, or her room, not even the library, but there was evidence of her everywhere. A glass of water in his study, a discarded jumper in the sitting room, half a muffin on the counter in the kitchen, and four new stacks of books piled on the table in the library.

Of course she would have her nose buried in her research.

rushed outside and flung open the atrium door, startling her.

“Jesus, !” She scrambled to catch the shears she was using before they hit the stone pathway.

“I’ve found someone.”

Her eyes widened. “You found someone.”

“A newly Infected?—”

“Inhabited.”

“Inhabited,” he amended, “patient. Her name is Pam McDonough and we can go visit her in the morning.”

Atta squealed, dropping her shears to the stones anyway, and rushed him. She jumped with such force that she knocked him back a step. Wrapping his arms tightly around her waist, he laughed, steadying her, and she clasped her hands behind his neck.

Time froze as she pulled back, neither of them releasing their hold, neither of them laughing any longer. His gaze dropped from her eyes to her lips, and he watched as they parted, her breath hot and sweet like honey. He had to blink to clear his vision, his head. She felt so good pressed against his chest. In his hands. Her lips so near to his.

Despite what he’d told her the night before, he was still a professor whose position was in jeopardy. She’d never be able to return to Trinity if he took their relationship further.

Her breasts were rising and falling quickly against his chest, and his body was reacting to every part of her he could feel. He needed to break the spell. Put her down. Take an ice bath.

Atta unclasped her hands and slid down his front, not helping matters as far as all that was concerned. She stepped back, looked away.

“We have a lot of work to do tonight, then,” she said quietly.

cleared his throat. “Right. I stopped by Dunnes on my way. Let’s get some sustenance and begin. Shall we?”

They took an array of foods into his study, and Atta wheeled in a little antique cart she’d found and stuffed with items she’d been looking into all day. lit a fire, poured them each a glass of cabernet sauvignon he’d picked up in France in ’84, and they set to work.

One by one, she pulled out each item and explained why she thought it would work to dispel the spirit of a faerie, and they both tried not to feel like they were going mental.

“The sample you brought from the woman with a substance under her nails—” She held up a little glass jar. “It was mugwort, a common herb used for many things such as headaches and promoting regular menstruation cycles.”

plucked a grape from a vine on the platter. “I did see signs of menstruation, but I didn’t mention it because I didn’t want any outside information to influence your determination.”

Placing the jar of mugwort back on the cart she seemed very fond of, Atta agreed with him. “I would say she was probably using it for that purpose, at least. It’s vastly outdated, but some people just prefer the old ways, I suppose. However, mugwort was also used to keep evil spirits at bay, especially on Samhain.”

“Intriguing.”

“Very.” She turned theatrically to her cart of curiosities and back again, holding a?—

“What, pray tell, is that thing?”

“This is a smudge stick. Watch.” She produced a prickly sort of potted plant in a violent shade of fuschia. “I detangled this from the main mycelium, but it seems to be growing its own network since I’ve done that. I’ve been documenting its progress all day, but note what happens when I do this. . .” She held the smudge stick out and wiggled it. “Light, please.”

hid a smirk and produced a box of matches from his pocket, dong as the lady requested. Soon, the space between them filled with a long, steady stream of earth-scented smoke. After a moment, she held the plant close to the stream of smoke floating up toward the ceiling and the plant visibly shrank away.

“What in hell?”

“Keep watching.” Atta forced the plant closer, and it shrivelled up, just as the other plant had when the Tears of the Grieved spilt on it.

“This is a huge breakthrough, Atta.”

She gave a little pleased smile and set the plant to the side. “It will grow back. These plants are far too evolved not to, but the mugwort apparently worked on the newly Inhabited woman you took the sample from. She may not have known what was going on, but it worked.”

“But she still died,” he considered aloud, taking a sharp bite of an apple.

Atta’s shoulders slumped as she chewed on her bottom lip. Jesus, that was distracting.

“The mugwort must not stop the Inhabitation, but slows it down.”

“So we need a way to— What?” He couldn’t help being a teacher to his bones. “What happens in a classic exorcism in Catholicism? The priest uses what to hold the demon?"

“Usually holy water or salt.”

“All right. And then what is used to drive it away? To officially exorcize it?”

Atta was slower to answer this time. “It’s a series of things. That is exactly the train of logic I’ve been following, but they’re not demons. I have some ideas, but I don’t think we’ll know for certain in this case until we have a test subject.”

“And we need to know how to contain it—the faerie—or it could very well just find someone else. That might be what’s happening when the human host dies, the faerie is simply finding a new, suitable host.”

“That makes the most sense.” She looked down at her hands, her dark nail polish chipped. “But why has the hawthorn atrium ecosystem thrived?”

“Perhaps because I gave it the shelter it needed,” he ventured.

Atta stood from the floor, where he always seemed to find her working rather than at a desk or a table. He adored that about her.

“I don’t think that’s it. I think—” She broke off, contemplating. “I think it thrived because it had two hosts. One Inhabited prior to death?—”

sat up straight. “And one after.”

Atta nodded, looking sombre. He didn’t want her to feel like she couldn’t venture where she needed to because those cadavers were his parents, but he also couldn’t be completely honest about them. “Go on,” he encouraged her. “Say what it is you’re thinking.”

“I don’t know what I’m thinking yet, but it’s significant, the pair of them. Don’t you think?”

nodded and Atta sat back down, talking about how plants thrive and what they need from the soil. After a while, he missed everything she said because, with the glow in her eyes from the fire, the wine suppressing his inhibitions, and her —Ariatne Morrow—sitting cross-legged on the floor of the room he’d worked, laughed, wept, lived in his entire life in a jumper of his she’d found on his desk chair, speaking of everything with such passion and brilliance, he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he would sacrifice anything, everything for her.

“Are you even listening to me?” he finally heard her say sharply. She popped a cube of cheese in her mouth. “Are you drunk?”

“Only on you.” The words were out before he could stop them.

She pouted, her brows furrowed with skepticism. “Go to bed, Murdoch.”