Page 44

“M aybe this was a bad idea.”

A terrible, horrible, foolish idea.

and Sonder stood looking up at a run-down apartment building with cracked walls and a door lilting off its hinges. Inside flat C6 was a woman in her mid-forties. Sonder’s sources said she was fine one day, then not the next, and the deterioration had been swift after that.

Truth be told, neither of them was certain what they would face. They weren’t sure anything they’d done to protect themselves, or the supplies they’d brought with them would work. It was highly likely they’d be laughed out of the flat and have to go into hiding somewhere off the Amalfi Coast. Actually, that didn’t sound half-bad. Sonder in only swim trunks, lying on the beach, sipping cocktails.

Stop it.

“This isn’t a bad idea,” he reassured her. “We do what academics do. We go in there, test our theories, and we learn. There is no failure here today, no matter the outcome. Understood?”

“Yes, Professor Murdoch,” she droned in her most irreverent tone.

“You might want to watch that smart mouth, Miss Morrow.”

Heat licked up her neck, despite that it was hardly the appropriate time for such things. “Or what?”

Sonder opened his mouth and damn her, she wanted to know what he was going to say, but the front door buzzed and a voice came over the intercom.

“Come on up.”

Plague Doctor masks firmly in place, they strode into Sunny Hills Complex—which was neither sunny nor remotely near a hill—and rode the lift up to the third floor. A baby wailed inside one of the flats and a couple was in a shouting match in another. Flat C4 had a very distinct odour wafting from it, and C5 sounded like they were shooting a porno inside.

“Classy place,” Sonder muttered through his mask. They’d taken other precautions besides the masks, electing to wear vials of Tears of the Grieved around their necks, pure iron rings—because faeries notoriously hate iron—and ornate crucifixes on iron chains around their waists. They had no scientific data to prove the crucifixes would be effective protection, but Sonder thought it gave them credibility. thought it looked ridiculous. She’d told him at least five times that they looked like creepy priests in plain clothes, but he didn’t listen. In fact, he seemed to find it amusing.

Sonder knocked on the door to C6, and a young man answered. would have pegged him around eighteen or nineteen. “I was told by some lady at the hotline that you’d be by in masks.” He looked them up and down with a grimace.

Sonder nodded. “Yes. May we come in?”

“Not so fast. She told me you’d pay.”

This had not been mentioned to , but Sonder pulled out a wad of pounds and handed it to the lad. “Now may we come in?”

He stepped out of the way, counting the money. “Have at it. She’s as good as dead if it’s really the Plague.”

“You don’t seem too broken up about it,” observed and the lad pulled a face, shrugging.

“She’s not exactly been the best mam, you know? This Plague is doing me a favour.”

Sonder went rigid, but was still collecting data. “I’m sorry to hear she wasn’t there for you in the way you hoped. Can you tell me what sort of person she is?”

“I told ya’, she’s no good. I’m not exactly a fecken saint, but I wouldn’t choose fuck buddies over my kid his whole life.”

stored the fresh data in her tired, tired brain. “I’m sorry. That’s not fair. Would you mind directing us to where she is?”

He threw a thumb over his shoulder. “Second door on the left. See yourselves out when you’re done.” And he walked out the way they’d come in, leaving them alone with an Inhabited woman.

“All good?” Sonder asked her softly.

“Yes.”

He led the way to the room they’d been pointed to and knocked. No one answered, so Sonder slowly turned the knob and went in.

The stench hit her first, square in the stomach. Like foul soil and crops gone bad, the sickly sweet of turned meat.

“Jesus,” Sonder whispered under his breath.

The woman was on her back in a filthy bed, needle tracks up and down both arms, the veins collapsed. The doctor in Sonder kicked in, and he pulled gloves from his coat, slipping them on quickly. “She needs naloxone. An IV.”

“We have to face the Inhabitation first. Then we can get her help.”

Sonder nodded and let her arm fall. “Her veins are black. She’s at least Stage 2. Maybe you should—” He gestured toward the woman and was grateful he didn’t finish the sentence. She already knew what she should do.

Slowly, and with trembling hands, approached the woman, whispering soothing nonsense, a faerie poem she’d heard as a child. The woman didn’t stir, but something in the air did.

“Light the black candles,” she said over her shoulder.

Sonder did as she requested and stepped back.

“Get the smudge sticks ready, but don’t light them until I say.” With a deep breath, let her fingertips touch the woman’s bare wrist.

The pain wasn’t as deep this time, but it began at her temples, slipping behind her eyes. A woman, young and beautiful but selfish. There were flashes of skin and hands and carnal pleasures, each sweat-slick body tangled with hers different from the last, the cries of a child off in the distance, alone, on his own. Just as he’d said.

ripped off her mask and forced the images to the back of her mind, focusing on maintaining contact, but willing her mouth to form the words she’d prepared. A variation of an exorcism prayer limned in fairytales and folklore.

“As smoke alights on the Fae,

so are they driven away;

as wax melts before the flame,

so the wicked perish;

gone in light of day?—”

She felt the woman arch her back and opened her eyes. The Inhabited patient was nearly floating off the bed, arms splayed at her sides, her mouth set in a silent, horrible scream could feel in the marrow of her bones. “Light a smudge stick,” she whispered.

“Keep going,” Sonder urged, doing as she instructed him.

moved her hands to the woman’s chest, keeping her pinned to the mattress.

“We drive you from this place,

whatever you may be,

unclean sprite,

all the wicked Fae,

all infernal invaders,

all to leave this day.”

She heard Sonder gasp and her eyes flew open again, just as the woman dropped back down to the bed with a thud, limp as a corpse. There was a terrible screech, so loud and vicious had to cover her ears. Sonder stood eerily still, his eyes wide, but appearing unaffected by the sound. At some point, he’d removed his mask as well, and his face was locked in horror and astonishment. Trembling, she followed his line of sight.

Her hands dropped to her sides as she took in the scene.

The Inhabited woman was leaking black blood from her nose, her eyes, and from her mouth crawled a being. Small, no larger than ’s palm. Devoid of flesh, made up of bone and gossamer wings, it clawed its way over the woman’s lips, its bones clacking against her teeth.

“Palo Santo,” whispered, afraid to move, for the creature had its sightless eye sockets trained on her, head cocked to one side.

She heard Sonder strike a match behind her. Smelt the citrus and smoke. Then he was pressing something burning into her hand. The creature—the faerie, she realised with a roiling in her gut—rose unsteadily to its feet upon the woman’s breast, on her nightgown soaked through with sweat. Its wet wings unfurled, trembled like a moth drenched in water.

In one swift movement, lifted the burning Palo Santo stick in front of the creature. It screamed and thrashed. The stick was burning fast, too fast.

“Trap it!” she screamed at Sonder, but he was already there, a carved-out lantern in hand they’d brought for this very hope, as small as it had been when they prepared it.

The creature clawed at the woman, its sharp talon fingers slicing her abdomen open, but the blood was red. Beautiful, glorious, crimson red as it spurted on . She jumped onto the bed, swinging the palo santo stick, connecting with the faerie’s back, sending it flying into the lantern. Sonder closed and locked the door, the creature hissing and flailing in the black salt at the floor of the lantern—its cage.

“Will it hold?” Sonder urged, sweat trickling down his temple.

“I don’t know!”

She hadn’t thought any of it would work, not in truth. She’d thought they would fail. Be back at the manor licking their wounds. Now they’d trapped a goddamn faerie that crawled out of a woman’s throat.

Sonder thrust the lantern in her hand. “You can do this.” Then he was dashing toward the bed, throwing off his coat and rolling up his sleeves so quickly he popped the buttons off his cuffs. They bounced across the floor toward her feet and just stood there, thinking how strange that the two buttons were all she could see.

She didn’t understand what was happening, the chaos paralysing her. But then she saw the woman convulsing, Sonder using all his medical training to save her. He was talking to her, pulling her toward him to lay on her side as she vomited black bile all over the bed, the floor.

The lantern, too pretty to hold such a monster, swayed in ’s hand, pulling her out of her stupor. The thing—the faerie—was clawing its way up the side of the glass toward the vents in the ornate roof. It hissed and bared its sharp teeth and stepped back, but she was still the one holding the lantern, so the creature came with her. Then it started to flicker, the entire creature. It began to smoke, turn into some sort of vapour.

gasped, fumbling for the black salt in her pocket, managing only a dusting in her grasp, but it was enough. She threw it through the vents onto the faerie and it went solid again. dropped to her knees, rifling through the bag they’d brought, pulling out the binding rope. She wasn’t sure it would work, but her research had led her to this moment, and she had to try.

Working as quickly as her shaking fingers could manage, she set to tying a Celtic knot around the cage, across the latch. She could hear Sonder talking to someone urgently, then the slam of a phone down on the receiver.

“Hurry, . We need to be out of here before the medics arrive.”

“I only need one more, across the top.”

He looked over his shoulder at the unconscious woman, then rushed to kneel next to . He removed the other binding rope and deftly began tying another Celtic knot around the top of the cage. “Will this hold?” His breath was hot on her cheek.

“It should bind it in place, but I don’t know for how long. I should have spent more time?—”

“Now is not the time for regrets.” He took the lantern and pulled her up. “That woman is still breathing and free from possession because of you.”

She looked up at him, her bottom lip wobbling. His face fell and he hauled her roughly against him with one arm and kissed the top of her head. “We have to go.”