Page 55

S he was too pissed at Sonder to play assistant.

To his credit, he hadn’t asked her to, but if they were going to attempt another exorcism before it was too late to do so, the faxes Vasilios sent over needed to be sorted and a plan put in place.

sifted through the gathered stack and sorted them into piles on the long table in the library. Inhabited , Media Requests , and Misc . Then, she sat back in the stiff wooden chair and blew the hair out of her eyes.

“I do not have time for this.”

She phoned Gibbs instead. He loved organisational tasks. An hour later, he was at Murdoch Manor with takeaway and a scowl. “You realise I’m not your assistant, right? Or Murdoch’s, technically ? I have fucking Lynch breathing down my neck, and that’s who I work for.”

took a bag of food from him and pulled out a chip. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

“The disrespect, I swear.” But he stomped in and slammed the door shut. Once he’d deposited the food on a shelf in the library that had relieved of its books days earlier, Gibbs looked around at her piles. “Eat and shower. I’ll handle all this.”

“Bless you, Bernard Fitzgibbon.”

“Ye’, ye’. Go away. You stink.”

“I do not!”

“Yes, you do. You smell like death and cigars. Murdoch’s signature scent,” Gibbs groused, shoving a chip in his mouth and fussing with the faxes.

couldn’t help but smile, even if she was peeved at Sonder. She took her food and left Gibbs to his work, but she heard him shout, “What the hell am I supposed to do without any damned call-back numbers!”

That was his problem for now. chose the hawthorn atrium to eat, mostly out of curiosity. They’d had copious amounts of alcohol, tea, and coffee near the organisms but never food. Presumably, the flora itself wouldn’t react to human food, but what sort of scientist would she be if she didn’t test things out?

While she ate, placed bits of food here and there and recorded where she’d put them. Then, she forced herself to sit still and finish eating without working at the same time.

Her brain, however, never shut down. She sat munching, staring at the hawthorn, contemplating the way she could sometimes see Olivia Murdoch’s heart still there, still beating, when it was long since lost to faerie growth. It still didn’t sit right. It didn’t make sense .

Her appetite sated enough, discarded the majority of her food to the side and wove her way through the overgrown vines and flora masking the hawthorn—the bodies—from view.

It was dark enough outside and the flora so thick that she couldn’t quite see clearly beneath the plants, like being under a willow tree at dusk, but didn’t need her eyes for this particular curiosity.

With a deep inhale, she gently moved the creeping plant winding around Olivia Murdoch’s ribs and placed her hand on her moss-covered sternum.

The pain was so great it snatched her breath away and made her knees quake.

But then she was gone. Out of her body. Locked in her mind. Only for a second before she was elsewhere .

An enchanted forest spread out before her, all emerald trees and lush florals glowing in the mist and moonlight. The moss beneath her feet looked soft as down, like the euphoria of spring grass between her toes, but couldn’t feel it. And she was not alone.

A woman in a white nightgown with long, flowing hair wandered through the trees, brushing her fingertips along their twisted trunks. She was barefoot, too, her nightgown blowing in a breeze couldn’t feel. The woman was young, maybe a handful of years younger than her, but she could only make out the gentle curves of a young woman’s body and her profile, nothing more.

A twig snapped under ’s feet and the woman turned around, her wonder turning to fear in her wide, hazel eyes.

Sonder’s eyes. Olivia Murdoch’s eyes.

froze in place, at least she assumed she did, because the trees stopped moving past her and Olivia turned back around, headed deeper into the fog. followed Olivia again, all the way to a hollowed-out trunk, where she reached inside and withdrew the most beautiful book had ever seen. A tome of the deepest olive green, its lettering gilded and gleaming.

Olivia turned around, looked from the book to and said in a sing-song voice, “Welcome to the Faerie Wood.”

With a gasp so deep she nearly retched, was back in the atrium, her ice-cold hand pulling away from Olivia’s sternum.

No, she hadn’t yanked it back. It was almost like it had been pushed back.

Rattled, shaking, stumbled her way from the flora and out of the greenhouse, back to the main manor.

“There you are,” Gibbs met her in the hall to her room. “I have a few more calls to make, but most of the Inhabited patients we received calls for are lower stages, so there is some time to stagger them out.” He looked down at his calendar instead of at her, and she was grateful. “The first appointment will be tomorrow at 10 a.m. That’s a Stage 3. There will be two tomorrow. The second is at 3 p.m., and that Inhabited is a Stage 2.”

“Right. Yes, that’s perfect.” She brushed past him, stumbling a little.

“Are you all right?”

“Fine. I think I just need to shower like you said and go to bed.”

Gibbs checked his watch. “I’d better make those last few calls and head out.”

“See you, Gibbs.”

She didn’t recall much from her shower, or changing into a nightgown and slipping into bed.

Sleep claimed her the moment her head hit the pillow, dreams pulling her under. There, in the hazy world of sleep, moved through the mist, something calling to her. She soon found herself in a wood unlike any she’d seen before. The grass was lush beneath her bare toes, lusher even than she’d expected. Trees bent and swayed in a gentle breeze, stunning flora dotting the ground, the vines, the bushes. But sometimes, in this dream, when she would blink, the forest would fall away to reveal a wood of bramble and decay. Of twisted hawthorns and sharp teeth. Always, there was a beating of wings, but the creatures moved so quickly she couldn’t make them out.

Somewhere off in the distance, a woman sang.

Tik, flick, tick

The clock keeps time with the candle

Until they all get sick

Wax slides down the gilded stick

And the Fae invade with bramble

followed the voice, led by the moonlight through the treetops and a jumble of lights bobbing through the branches.

Ghost lights.

Wills-o-the wisp .

The woman’s voice faded away on the last word, dissipating into the mist and fog. had made it to a clearing of moss and mushrooms, a lovely tea set laid out on a stone. Without thinking, she approached the teacup and felt its side, though she needn’t have done so because a tendril of steam curled into the crisp night air from the tea.

“Hello?” she called out, but she was only met with a chorus of giggles, a chorus of hisses.

She spun in a circle, enjoying the wood, the moss beneath her feet and the twirl of her nightgown. It was then that she saw the old, twisted hawthorn, the one visible from the bay window in the kitchen of Murdoch Manor. The one that whispered for her to come closer.

Here she was, and she answered the call, walking forward to press her palm against its trunk, the bark rough against her palm.

There in a hollow, where creatures had surely burrowed to protect their young, she felt a hum, deep in her bones.

Reaching into the hollow, the forest flickered, going barren, dark, and so very cold.

started, but with a blink, it was the mystical grove once more. All she felt in the hollow was dirt, bramble, and the bones of small animals.

Dig, o’ child of the wood.

Dig, and bring us what she thought she could.

So dug. She dug in the hollow until one of her nails broke, until her fingers hit leather, old and cracked. Standing on tiptoe, she reached down as far as she could and pulled out a tome. Forest green like the trees at night, pages limned in gold, and a spine cracked from use. She ran her filthy fingers over the title. Into the Faerie Wood.

She lifted the cover, the leather protesting, and the forest fell away again. blinked, but it did not correct itself this time. Dark clouds blocked out the moon, the Wills-o-the-wisp blinking out. She moved away from the hawthorn, back toward home. Where was home? Fear licked up her spine as something flew past her face, gnashing its teeth. The tree branches bent, reaching for her, grasping at her nightgown, her hair.

ran, her breath loud in her ears, the book clutched to her chest.

She tripped, landing with a thud in the dirt, banging her knee on a rock.

Something grabbed at her arm, talons scraping, fangs biting. Thousands of wings surrounded her until they felt like a gale of wind. The book was nearly tugged from her grip, but she wrenched it free, falling back into the dirt and sharp bramble. Her necklace, the bottle of Tears of the Grieved, clanked against her teeth, the pain reverberating up into her skull.

The tears.

ripped the necklace free from her body and smashed it on a rock.

Hissing, steam, then silence.

And ran.

Hard and fast.