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S he fumbled with a clean blouse, trying to gather her wits. All could think about was Sonder’s fingers dancing along her skin. His mouth on her body, his hands gripping her hips. . .

But she pushed it all away as best she could and straightened her skirt.

It was good they were interrupted. There were more important things happening than the attraction that had been slowly building between them for months.

Stopping first at a mirror in the hall, she smoothed her hair and inspected her bandaged arm before heading back downstairs to see who had arrived.

“ Gibbs ?” She wasn’t even off the stairs before she jumped in the middle of whatever it was they were discussing. “What in hell are you doing here?”

Gibbs stood from the sofa looking like a disappointed father. “I could ask you the same thing. Are you fucking the professor?”

“ Jesus ,” hissed at the same moment Sonder jumped up from his chair and said, “All right. Time to go, Gibbs.”

“No. Wait.” He put his hands out. “I’m sorry. I really do have something important to say.” He looked at then at Sonder, and she saw Sonder nod once. “She knows everything, then?”

“Just about.”

Just about? scoffed. Crossed her arms. “I’d love to be caught up.”

“Of course,” Sonder directed the words at her. “Let’s just hear what the lad has to say first.”

“I think Lynch has tapped my phone.”

“Wait.” put two fingers to her temple. “ Lynch ?”

Sonder turned to , “Lynch is in Agamemnon. Along with Vasilios, Kelleher, and”—he gestured toward Gibbs—“this fecker here, which you knew.”

“Hang on. Does that mean Dony and Emmy. . .”

“No,” Gibbs jumped in. “I think Emmy is suspicious of Vasilios, but I don’t believe she knows for certain. Dony?—”

“Is an eejit.”

Gibbs shrugged and agreed with Sonder.

“Now you’re caught up.”

“I don’t believe you,” she accused Sonder.

She watched his jaw tense. “, let the lad say his piece and we can fill in the missing bits after.”

“Ye’, this is sort of important. “What time is it?”

Sonder glanced at his watch. “7:03.”

“It’s already started! Hurry, turn on the news.”

“I don’t have a telly.”

“Christ in a cradle,” muttered. “My room has one.”

“It does?”

“This is your house, isn’t it?”

She caught him shrugging out of the corner of her eye.

The telly was closed in one of the two armoires in her room and she opened the oak doors to reveal it.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Sonder muttered.

Gibbs took the remote offered him and flicked it on. A few staticky channels flitted by until Gibbs stopped on a wide shot of a newswoman gripping a microphone.

“That’s the flat building from today,” Sonder observed, looking at , then Gibbs.

He was right. It was dark out and the building looked less dingy under the cover of night, but it was unmistakably the same place.

“Yes, thank you, Adam. I’m here in front of Sunny Hills Apartment Complex, here to speak with a man who claims his mother was cured of the Plague this morning by two masked individuals.”

“Oh fuck,” and Sonder said in unison.

The camera panned to the lad from that morning, standing there looking nervous in the same clothes he’d had on earlier, but he’d taken off the cap and combed his hair.

“Lisle McDonough, in your own words, tell us what happened today.”

“Thanks, Katie. Always wanted to meet you. You’re so pretty on the telly. Better in person.”

Katie laughed uncomfortably. “That’s so sweet of you. So tell us what happened with your mam today.”

“Ye’, so, my mam has been sick. Ya’ know, coughin’ and snot ‘n all that for a few days. But then it started gettin’ worse. She couldn’t remember a thing. Started sleepin’ all day, then the wee veins in her arms started goin’ black. So I called the hotline, ya’ know, the one they tell us on the news to call if ya’ think it’s the Plague.” Katie the newsreader nodded along patiently. “Next thing I know, I get a call from a woman who says she’s sendin’ someone out to help me. That he’s. . . em— Gonna pay me to do a special sorta research or somethin’.”

Sonder glanced at , but she couldn’t look away from the telly.

“So this man came, and then what?” Katie said into her microphone before holding it back in front of Lisle’s face.

“He came, dressed like he was headed to mass, ya’ know, in his nice clothes. Except he had a mask on.” Lisle gestured in a way that anyone else would think he was miming an elephant trunk, but knew it was the leather beak of a plague doctor mask. “One o’ those old scary lookin’ ones with the big goggles and bird beak.”

Katie looked genuinely interested for the first time. “Like an old plague doctor’s mask?”

“Ye’! Just like that. Only he wasn’t alone. He had a girl with him. She had a mask too, so I couldn’t see nothin’ of her face but the rest of her was—” He mimed several vertical waves with his hands that took to mean her curves and she blushed. “Kind o’ girl ya’ won’t soon forget, ya’ know?”

Katie laughed awkwardly on screen and Sonder smirked at .

“What happened after that?”

“Well, I don’t know. They paid me, I left, and when I came back the medics were there haulin’ my mam away, but she didn’t have the Plague anymore.”

Katie pointed the mic back to herself. “And you have no idea what they did? How she was cured?”

“Not at all, neither did the docs. She had to stay in hospital for a few hours, she’s em. . . Had a rough go in life. But then a doc from college came and put my mam up in a rehab facility. Paid for it himself.”

“Really now?” Katie was saying, astonished, but was turning her head slowly toward Sonder, her eyes wide and accusing. He winced.

“Well, you had a load of anonymous heroes today, didn’t you!” Katie turned back to the camera. “You heard it here first. The Plague can be cured and we are doing our best to find these masked heroes and coax them out of hiding so we can eradicate this Plague once and for all.”

Gibbs shut off the telly, and they all stood there looking at one another.

“The hotline has been flooded,” Gibbs finally said. “What in hell did you two do?”

“We need Marguerite here,” Sonder said, ignoring Gibbs and pushing past him. They followed him out into the hall as he stalked to his study and picked up the receiver of a vintage phone had thought was only decorative.

As he dialled, Gibbs sidled up to . “Are you fucking him then?” he whispered accusatorily.

elbowed him in the ribs. “Stop talking.”

“It’s a fair question,” he spat, rubbing at his side.

Whirling on him, spat right back, “Is this why you wouldn’t fucking look at me the last few weeks? You’re part of Agamemnon?”

Gibbs looked away. “I was going to come find you. Later. Once I figured out where you were, and make sure you were all right.”

She was saved from responding when Sonder spoke into the receiver, and they were both drawn away from their whispered argument.

“Yes, Marguerite. It’s Sonder. Can?—”

He held the phone back from his ear and could make out the shrill tone on the other end.

“Marg—” He pulled the phone away again, frowning. “ Marguerite, would you stop shouting?”

He listened intently while Gibbs and looked between one another, on edge.

“Yes.” Pause. “I completely disagree.” Pause. “Fine. See you then.”

Sonder slammed down the receiver.

“Well?” prodded.

“Marguerite will be here in an hour to discuss what’s happened.”

“What does Marguerite have to do with all this?” asked, finding herself irritated.

“She’s tangled in this mess with us now, and we need her help to continue.”