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I mogen wouldn’t get out of the car.

“What am I supposed to do?” Gibbs shouted.

Emmy had her arms crossed over her chest, and she bent to look into the window, her face twisted. “Did you abduct her or something?”

“I didn’t abduct her,” Gibbs groused.

Marguerite rapped on the window with her knuckles. “Dear, it’s quite brisk out here. You can’t stay in there all day.”

Imogen flipped her off.

Marguerite frowned and delicately crossed the broken cobbles in her designer heels. “Isn’t she a delight?”

Imogen shouted something, but her voice was too muffled by the car. approached with little patience. Despite the vision seared into her brain of Imogen succumbing to a Stage 4 Inhabitation, the girl before her was as infuriating as ever.

“What?” she questioned with as much congeniality as she could muster. “We can’t hear you.”

“This place is creepy!” Imogen pointed through the window at Murdoch Manor.

“This is Professor Murdoch’s place,” raised her voice so Imogen could hear.

As expected, Imogen wound down the window a crack, unable to resist that juicy detail. “Why are you all at the spooky, sexy professor’s house?”

“It’s a lot to explain. Would you come inside and we’ll do our best?”

Reluctantly, and with quite a lot more coaxing, Imogen made it inside.

Explaining she was a target for the Plague, however, did not go well. could only imagine how it would go to explain it wasn’t even a sickness but a faerie that wanted to possess her.

Gibbs was sweeping up three broken glasses Imogen had smashed against the wall before she tuckered herself out with her fit when the phone rang.

Resigned, went to answer it.

“?” A familiar voice came over the line, but she couldn’t quite place it.

“Who is this?”

“Mariana O’Sullivan, dear.”

Her advisor? What could she want? “How can I help you, Mrs O’Sullivan?”

“You’re going to need to come to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral immediately. The Agamemnon Council needs to speak with you.”

She didn’t know where Sonder was and wished she didn’t want him there with her as Emmy drove her to Saint Patrick’s.

“You look green,” Emmy observed.

didn’t want to talk about it. “Where did you get this car?” she asked instead.

“Oh, the uh guy I’m seeing. It’s his mam’s.”

Emmy pulled into the crowded car park and nimbly got out. “Hey, it’s going to be okay.”

bent to look at her friend’s attempt at an encouraging smile. “I’ve missed you.”

Emmy’s smile was true that time. “Go tell ‘em to fuck off.”

She’d told Sonder time and again that it didn’t matter if the council called on her, that she wouldn’t side with them, didn’t care, but she was swallowing back too many emotions to count as she approached the side door she’d used with him when they were there in the fall to collect samples from Lauren Kennedy.

“.”

The voice came from behind her as she reached for the door handle, and it instantly soothed her frayed nerves.

“Sonder? What are you doing here?” So this was where he’d been all day. Her heart sank, but he pulled her around the back of the cathedral.

“I can't just let your name be raked through the mud.”

She looked up at him, a little halo of sun peeking out from the clouds behind his head. “Yours is.”

“I don’t care about mine, but I do care about yours. They want you to join Agamemnon. If you do, they’ll let you back into Trinity. Let us continue the exorcisms without interference.” A humourless laugh escaped him and he ran his hand through his hair, then threw an arm out toward the church, rigid. “You deserve for them to know what you’re really doing for Dublin. For Ireland . For the whole of the fucking world probably. I told them as much, not kindly, I’ll admit.”

“Did it help?”

His face dropped.

“I’m sorry, Sonder.”

He placed his palm on her cheek, his fingers at the nape of her neck. “You, a stór , are everything that is right with the world. My world. With all the worlds. And don’t you dare apologise for it.”

“Let’s go home.”

“You’re not going to go in?”

“No, I’m not.”

A weak smile curved his lips. “I’ll face whatever music there is with you.”

Emmy said she needed to get the car back to its owner. and Sonder followed, their fingers intertwined, and gave Emmy a lift back to the manor.

“So,” Emmy said when she slid into the backseat, “faeries, huh?”

Sonder squeezed ’s hand. “How mental do you think us?”

“Just mental enough, mate.” She laughed and it dispelled some of the tension. “That ancient council shite didn’t take long.”

“I didn’t go in.”

couldn’t see Emmy’s face, but she pictured her wincing. “What now?”

“We take off the masks,” Sonder answered. “We keep going on our own. Do you agree?” He looked across the car at .

“I do.”

She didn’t hear the rest of the conversation. There were overlapping lullabies on rotation in her head, but not the kind that lull to sleep, the kind that usher in nightmares.