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S onder had rather abruptly interrupted her shower, pressing her against the glass, one leg wrapped around his hips.

Even washed clean and dressed in sheer tights, a sensible brown skirt with a black turtleneck and an oversized tweed blazer, she was still dizzy with the way he made her feel. She’d never been especially good at compartmentalising, but she would need to be now. At least, that’s what she told herself as she tied her Oxfords and went downstairs.

Sonder was sitting at the table with Gibbs, Sonder with a newspaper open in front of him, Gibbs munching on a piece of toast. When she entered, Sonder’s eyes slid up from the paper to her, and felt her cheeks heat, remembering all the ways he’d explored her last night and locked eyes with her in the shower again this morning as she came.

“Ah. She lives,” he said with a smirk.

Gibbs looked at him, crumbs falling onto his chin as he said, “You realise you feed into the Dr Frankenstein rumours on a regular basis, right?”

Sonder chuckled, and judging by Gibbs’s brows rising to his hairline, he’d never heard Sonder laugh before. “It’s amusing you think it isn’t on purpose, Gibbs.”

“Fair.” He shrugged. “When you climbed in my window to force me into making sure was okay, I decided you couldn’t be all bad.” He slid a glance in her direction.

pushed her lips together in a frown, brow wrinkled. “I have several questions.”

“All of which I’m happy to answer”—Sonder folded the newspaper and set it on the table—“but we really do need to get to work.” He gestured to a plate of food. “Eat up and let’s get busy.”

sat and dug into the colcannon and fried eggs. “Did you make all this?” she asked Gibbs with her mouth full.

He bit into another piece of marmalade toast. “I made the eggs and the toast.” He pointed his toast at Sonder who was looking at them both with some measure of distaste. “He made the colcannon.”

Sonder brushed crumbs off his newspaper with disgust. “Would it be possible for the pair of you to chew and swallow prior to speaking?”

laughed, shovelling in a bite of the most amazing colcannon she’d ever tasted. “This is what we get for having breakfast with a grumpy old man, Gibbs.”

“All right, have your fun. I’m going to the study.” He stopped to fill a cup with steaming hot tea and left.

“So,” Gibbs started, “you and the prof, huh? You can’t deny it anymore.”

“I didn’t deny it. I just said it was none of your business.”

He nodded a little solemnly and fiddled with his fork. “This is all pretty mad, isn’t it?” He wiggled his fork in the air in a circle. “All this Fae Plague stuff. I’m still not sure I believe it.”

“Fae Plague,” mused, her appetite diminished. “That’s a good name for it.”

“I calculated your probability of success today.”

straightened. “Do tell.”

“I already talked to Murdoch about it, but he’s optimistic.” Gibbs pulled one of his ever-present flip notebooks from his pocket. “The Infected?—”

“Inhabited,” she corrected and Gibbs looked at her. “You need to be all in or all out.”

He nodded skeptically and pushed his glasses up his nose. “I’m trying, but I need facts. To see things with my own eyes.”

could understand that, but she didn’t agree. “The most incredible and inexplicable things in life can’t be seen, Gibbs.”

The sigh he heaved aged him. “I trust both you and the prof. I’m just?—”

He looked out the window and followed his gaze to the foggy Hawthorn Grove. For a split second, a glimmer came out of the mist, making the twisted hawthorns look full and vibrant, lush like spring.

“I just need some time,” Gibbs said, pulling ’s attention back.

“That’s understandable. What’s there in your notebook?”

“Oh.” He looked down at his scribbled notes. “Projections. Your probability of success today with the . . . Inhabited.” He flipped a page, looking more like a detective than a scholar. “The patient is a Stage 2, but I looked at Murdoch’s notes last night and I think he’ll be at Stage 3 by the time you arrive. Most don’t live past Stage 3 for long.”

nodded her agreement, filling a teacup.

“I placed your probability of success, based on the factors of a newly Stage 3 patient and the results from your prior. . .” He trailed off with a grimace.

It took a second to decipher why. “Sonder told you we called it an exorcism, didn’t he?”

Gibbs scrunched his nose. “He did. Showed me the giant crucifixes, too, and a pair of monk robes he wants to convince you to wear.”

baulked. “No fucking way. No.”

“I think it was a joke.”

“Thank goodness.” sagged against the back of her chair. “The crucifixes were ridiculous enough. When did you two have time for all of this?”

“You take really long showers. Frankly, there’s a lot more hot water in the suite now that you’ve moved out.”

“ Rude .”

Gibbs smiled for the first time all morning. “We do miss you, though. Especially Emmy.”

fiddled with the handle of her teacup. “I need to call her.”

“Well,” Gibbs shifted the subject back, “I’ve pegged your probability of success at between 53 and 56%.”

“But we still have time to raise that probability.” Not that lived by probabilities . Where was the whim and wonder in that? “I already have some methods I was studying that I believe will give us more success.”

“Like?” Gibbs prompted, not convinced.

“We learned that the faeries, at least the kind we encountered, can dissipate into vapour—that’s how they’re Inhabiting people. Therefore, they have to be contained in something air-tight. Stage 3s are more dangerous, of course, but I think Black Tourmaline mixed with Wormwood will do the trick.”

Gibbs blew out a disbelieving breath. “You act like this is a fairytale, .”

She ground her molars together, trying to be patient with his doubt. “All of Folklore is grounded in some truth, Gibbs. You need to expand your realm of thinking. What if we are the myth in their world, hm?”

Something burned in her chest, her fingertips. Her teeth hurt, felt pointed against her tongue.

“What if there are other realms or worlds out there, and the Fae are dying? They’ve heard tales all their lives of a world where humans walk around destroying their planet, destroying each other, and the Fae decided the humans didn’t deserve this place. That they would take it for their own?”

The burning left as suddenly as it had come, her fingers feeling like they’d fallen asleep. She tasted copper in her mouth, on her tongue, and a wave of dizziness hit her.

“Woah. Are you all right?”

She reached across the table for the cup of water Sonder had left behind and took a sip. “I’m fine.”

“That was, em. . . Some speech.”

“It’s just a theory,” she said shakily. “Let me show you what I mean about the Black Tourmaline and Wormwood.”

They rose together and Gibbs followed her to the back all-season porch. “Where are we going?”

“Have you been to the greenhouse?”

“No. I’ve only been here a handful of times and Murdoch was always crotchety about it, kicking me out as soon as I gave him whatever it was he needed dropped off.”

She stopped, considering Sonder may not want Gibbs anywhere near his parents or even their research. “Perhaps we should bring Sonder along for this. I’ll go get him.”

Gibbs plopped down on a lounge chair and pulled out his notebook. “I’ll be here.”

opened the door to the kitchen and Gibbs said, “Hey,” so she turned back. “He looks different when you walk into a room.”

“Different?” She cocked her head to the side. “Different how?”

“Happy.”

didn’t know what to make of Gibbs’s comment. It made her feel a thousand different things she didn’t fully comprehend and had no time to ponder.

Sonder was bent over his sketchbook in the study. “ Stór ,” he said when she appeared in the doorway. “Come look at this.”

He pushed back from the desk and let her have his chair. As she looked at his remarkable anatomical sketch of the faerie they’d caught, he lit a cigarillo and perched on the edge of the desk. “I had to do it by memory, and I don’t know what their organs are like.”

“It’s all assumption at this point, but this sketch looks exactly as I remember the faerie.” ran her finger over the wings Sonder had drawn to look like they were in motion.

He puffed on the cigarillo, blowing the smoke out slowly. “Where is Gibbs?”

stood and rounded the desk, Sonder pulling her between his legs. He slung an arm around her lower back and her heart did a somersault. “Waiting for us. I wanted to show him the Black Tourmaline and Wormwood effect on a plant in the atrium.”

Sonder licked his lips. “I don’t want anyone but you in there.” He said the words gently, but she knew his stance was firm. Sonder Murdoch was not a man who wavered.

She reached up and pushed the hair from his face, relishing the feel of it between her fingers. “That’s why I came to ask. I’ll pot a sample and bring it here.” She wiggled free of his arm but he grabbed her wrist and pulled her back, kissing her hard. She could taste the spice and smoke on his tongue, feel his grip on her waist and the softness of his knit jumper beneath her palms, but resisted the urge to melt into him. “We have work to do, Professor.”

“Ní mhaireann solas na maidine don lá.” ? *

swallowed hard. She loved way too much when he spoke Irish to her in that tone. “Yes, and that is exactly why we need to get moving,” she said, putting space between them. “There are lives at stake.”

Sonder’s brow quirked up. “You’re quite right.” He put his cigarillo in an ashtray to burn out. “You are also quite distracting. I’ll be better behaved, on my honour.”

“Thank you. Now, you occupy Gibbs while I pot a specimen.”

* ? ( Nee war-in sul-is nah mawd-in-ye gun law) No morning’s sun lasts all day; an Irish Gaelic saying meaning: life is finite, enjoy it while you can