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S onder and Gibbs made everyone a hearty meal of salad, shrimp, lamb, and roasted potatoes.

could tell he was thrilled to have the house full, but she also knew that excitement would wear off soon, and he’d wish they were alone again as recluses. They all gathered around the massive, polished oak table in Murdoch Manor’s formal dining room and came up with their next steps.

To say Imogen wasn’t convinced would be an understatement, but they couldn’t very well have her wandering about the manor and stumble upon something, or walk on eggshells in their discussions because they’d left her in the dark.

After a dessert of espresso and madeleines, Gibbs handed everyone detailed schedules as Sonder spoke. “Emmy and Gibbs will take all Stage 1s and the stray Stage 2s. Marguerite will handle Stage 2s as long as there is someone to accompany her. and I will do so on a rotation. We will also be handling all Stage 3s and Stage 4s.”

He looked pointedly at Imogen. “You will remain in this house.” She opened her mouth, but he held up a hand. “Call foul, abduction, whatever you’d like all you want but you’ll be dead inside a week if you choose to be an eejit.”

Imogen’s eyes went from slits to saucers. “I should call the Garda on the whole psycho lot of you.”

Done with her attitude over the last two days and her one attempted escape, Sonder rose and stomped off, returning with the kitchen telephone he’d apparently ripped from the wall if the outlet cover and bits of plasterboard dangling from the telephone jack were any indication. He slammed it down on the table. “Be my fucking guest. It’s your death, not mine.”

Imogen gaped up at him, a madeleine still between her fingers. “No, thank you,” she said meekly.

Sonder ignored her and returned to his seat. “Next schedule, please, Gibbs.” Another paper landed in front of each of them, save for Imogen. “This is the schedule for who has the great honour of watching over Imogen and at what times during the night. Nighttime is when we most suspect an Inhabitation attempt.”

Imogen snatched a schedule from Gibbs next to her and scoffed. Emmy was looking at the other paper, her nose scrunched. “I’m not so sure I’m ready for this. It says our first exorcism is tomorrow. I literally just started learning two days ago.”

“It isn’t as complicated as it seems,” reassured her. “I could ward the cellar and let one of the faeries out as a trial run if you’d like.”

She could tell by Sonder’s face that he didn’t like the idea, but he didn’t fight her on it.

“Sure.” Emmy nodded and looked at Gibbs. “It’s a good idea.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“We’ll head down in a few, then,” decided.

“I have papers to mark tonight.” Marguerite stood, wiping her mouth delicately with a cloth napkin and laying it on the table. “I’ll meet you at the first appointment in the morning, Sonder.”

Gibbs began clearing the plates, but Sonder waved him off. “Go with them to the cellar, I’ll clean all this up.”

“Am I free to watch the telly,” Imogen sniped with her arms crossed, “or do prisoners not get the privilege?”

Sonder pinched the bridge of his nose. “Someone else please deal with her. I need a cigar.”

Gibbs got Imogen settled in her guestroom for the evening and met Emmy and down in the cellar.

When they weren’t studying the creatures, they kept them locked away there with a plethora of wards that, coupled with their various levels of embalming fluids, had thus far been successful.

Emmy approached the third they’d trapped alive, using a specially prepared dose of one part Sonder’s embalming fluid, and two parts Yarrow, Rue, St John’s Wort, iron, and moonwater mixture. It left the creature suspended in mid-flight, but its heart beat and its eyes blinked. Every so often, it managed to gnash its pointed teeth.

Emmy moved down the line to one of only two faeries they’d left almost untouched. “Why do you keep them? It seems dangerous.”

“It is,” confirmed. “But we need to understand them. I told you our theory for why they’re Inhabiting humans, but we still aren’t quite sure where they’re coming from.

Liar, Liar, trapped in briar, sliced by thorns and thrown in the fire.

The faerie slammed against the glass of its enclosure, startling Emmy. swore the creature laughed. She could hear it clanging around in her skull.

“Can we not let that one loose?” Emmy asked in a squeak.

agreed, electing the quietest of the three live faeries. The one that had sat stoically as Sonder sketched its sinuous body. As documented its sleep schedule. They’d been unsure what to feed the creatures for some time to keep them alive but had eventually found mild success with root vegetables and small rodents. The aftermath of the enclosures had not been pretty and knew they would soon have to embalm these three.

The one who had stoically allowed itself to be studied, eaten with decorum despite obvious distaste, and had yet to make a sound, watched her carefully as she approached. There was something elegant about it. Dignified. ’s theories oscillated between thinking it was an evolved form of faerie or higher-up in some social ranking system amongst the Fae. Perhaps it was both. They’d exorcized it from their sixth Stage 4 patient, clamping off its near success.

The faerie stood still in its glass cage, and watched in wonder as it clasped its tiny hands together, awaiting her approach.

“Prepare yourselves,” she instructed Emmy and Gibbs. “Black salt, Palo Santo, and your Wormwood and Tourmaline serum.”

She heard rustling and the clinking of vials behind her as they set up, but she did not take her eyes off the faerie, its too-wide mouth had curved in a smile.

Hello, daughter of many worlds.

staggered back a step. No. That was in her imagination. She was exhausted, that was all. But a laugh echoed within her, vibrating in her marrow.

“How do you coax it out of the body?” asked them.

“One of the Faerie Songs,” Gibbs answered.

“Good.”

“All right,” Emmy said. “Let’s get this bastard recontained.”

Inhaling deeply through her nose and pushing it out through her mouth, wiped away the chalk ward on the door of the enclosure, lifted the latch, and stepped back.

“Bless you,” echoed across her thoughts before the faerie shot forward, pushing the door open and flying out into the dank cellar.

“Be quick,” commanded as it flitted about, trapped within the centre of the room where the wards were drawn on the concrete. “This one is subdued, already trapped. You can’t slow down in a normal exorcism,” she instructed. “What do you use to subdue it to this point?”

“The salt,” Gibbs answered, his knees bent, ready.

“Then the Palo Santo,” Emmy said as she lit a smudge stick, the smoke and earth scent wafting to the ceiling, the faerie already hissing.

“Good,” encouraged. “Next?”

But Emmy was already there, her syringe dripping. “Embalming.”

“Wait.” held up a hand. “Which version?”

Emmy paused, her brow furrowed. The faerie somersaulted in the air, hissing, steaming, but could feel its laugh in her blood.

“This was a Stage 4,” Gibbs recited, “but it’s subdued by the Level 4 embalming fluid, making it. . .” He thought for a second. “Stage 3. Level 3!” he declared to Emmy, who traded out her syringe with trembling fingers.

Her hand was still shaking when she encroached upon the chalk circle, close to the living, breathing faerie fluttering angrily at her eye level. ’s heart was pounding in her chest, and she knew her friends’ were too.

“Jar!” Emmy commanded Gibbs and felt a bolt of pride shoot through her.

Gibbs was already there with a specimen jar filled with black salt, waiting.

Emmy darted forward and missed. The faerie chomped its teeth at her and she pulled her hand back, but then she growled and came forward again, shoving the needle in its abdomen. “Bastard,” she hissed.

Gibbs darted forward and scooped the falling faerie out of the air, slamming the lid on.

Emmy let out a little cheer and jumped. “We did it!”

“Wonderful!” clapped her palms together once. “Now, you need to transport it into a warded enclosure.”

Gibbs nodded too many times and approached the cage with Emmy. She drew the ward quite well and Gibbs said, “All right. On three.”

“One. . .”

“Two. . .”

“Three!” they said in unison. Gibbs removed the lid and pumped it forward until the faerie tumbled out, spasming on the bottom of the cage, and Emmy slammed the door shut, locking the latch.

“Ah!” she screamed, giving a little hop. “We did it!”

laughed as she hugged her and Gibbs. “You’ll be just fine. Only remember that some might have moved to Stage 3 by the time you arrive, and you’ll need to be prepared to cover your ears or look away from the faerie if need be.”

“Got it, boss.” Emmy saluted.

“Whew. I need a drink,” Gibbs sagged.

“I second that.”

couldn’t argue.

Sonder was on Imogen duty until midnight, so she went and checked on the grump before going out on the all-season porch with Emmy and Gibbs with two bottles of wine. They sat talking and laughing, looking out over the damp Hawthorn Grove until it was Gibbs’s turn to be with Imogen, and Sonder carried upstairs.

“Would you lie with me?” she asked him sleepily when he tucked her into his bed.

He smiled at her, her favourite sight in all the worlds. “Of course.”

Sonder removed his trousers and shirt, climbing in bed with her, and nestled into the place between his shoulder and chest where her head fit perfectly. After a moment of him silently stroking her hair, she sat up and kissed him. He was intoxicating, more than the wine, more than anything. Not only his mouth but everything about him. His grumpiness, his stoicism with everyone but her, his mind, his dreams, the way he could command a room, the way being a professor was in his very bones, his soul.

His hands were on the small of her back and she could feel her arousal rising low in her belly. She loved those hands, too. What they could do to her, the way they sketched every stray thought he had, the way he used them as he spoke, the way he flipped the pages of a book.

She reached for the dip of his pelvis and Sonder chuckled against her lips, but he gently grabbed her wrist and moved her hand to his chest. “You’re too drunk for that, a stór .”

sighed and relaxed her cheek against his chest. “You know I’m in love with you too, right?” she said quietly, drawing small symbols on his abdomen. Wards, she realised drunkenly.

Sonder kissed the top of her head. “I hoped so.”

Silence enveloped them, sweet and thick. The kind when you know the second the moment ends, the world will be waiting to devour you once more.

“I’m not going back to Trinity.”

Sonder shifted her so he could look down into her eyes, his features hard to make out in the dark. “No, darling. You’re not. But I do believe you’re saving the world.”

closed her eyes, breathing in deeply the scent of Sonder, the beauty of their love. If he were to die, she’d envy the soil that cradled him in its arms, the flora that sprouted from his bones.

He swooped the pad of his finger down the bridge of her nose tenderly until she fell fast asleep to dreams of faeries calling her name.