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H er mood had soured considerably by the time she made it to Achilles House.

Hauling her doctor’s bag out of the passenger seat, she stalked up to the back door and banged the gargoyle knocker against it with the full force of her ire.

A curtain twitched from somewhere up on the second floor and her attention shot to it just in time to see someone scurry back into the shadows.

The door groaned open and scowled up at the Black Stitch Mask who greeted her.

“Here.” She shoved the bag of tools into his chest with enough force that he grunted. “I want that bag back. And there’s a body in the boot of my car.”

The Black Stitch said nothing, only turned and went inside. waited on the front step with her arms crossed, looking up at that window where someone had been spying on her. It was late and she was cold and wished they’d just hurry up.

A few moments later, the silent Black Stitch came back out and unceremoniously handed her the bag. She popped the boot open and tossed her grandfather’s old medical bag into the passenger seat while the Society bloke hauled the body out and dropped it onto a gurney he’d dragged out the side door behind him. It made a racket on the gravel and wondered what the passerby might think—bodies coming in and out at all hours—if the back of the House hadn’t been tucked up in a copse of trees unseen from Merrion Square.

leaned against the bonnet of her car, ankles crossed and her coat pulled tight around her while she waited anxiously for her payment, hoping the Gold Stitch prick wouldn’t tell her never to come back after bringing two opened bodies. It wasn’t like she’d removed any vital organs or anything. She’d done them a favour, really, getting the process going.

The White Stitch gangly lad came out then, handing her an envelope.

She opened it quickly and thumbed through it. “This is half what I should be paid,” she called to his retreating form.

He turned around and shrugged. “It was cut open and tampered with. That’s not the deal.”

“The deal is I bring you cadavers.”

He shrugged again and walked wordlessly back inside, slamming the door shut.

Grinding her teeth together, shoved the cash into the pocket of her blazer and made to open the door. A movement over the bonnet of the car made her jump. It was Gold Stitch, looking menacing in all black and his plague mask.

“ Jesus ,” she muttered, clutching her chest.

“You’re the girl who seems to enjoy bringing me open bodies,” he said.

“I’m the woman who helps you further science.” Arsehat .

He stepped around the front of the car toward her, and backed up, holding her keys in her hand the way her father taught her, pointy ends out between her fingers.

She watched him slide his hands into his pockets, and the mask tipped down like he’d noticed her makeshift weapon. Then he chuckled, a low rumble like the roll of distant thunder. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

That was exactly what a psycho would say. “What do you want?” she bit out.

“I need a body.”

scoffed. “I just dropped one off. You obviously saw that from where you were lurking in the trees like a murderer.”

He laughed again and the sound of it licked up her neck. “I need another.”

“I didn’t even get paid enough for that one. You’ll get another when you get another.”

“You cut them open.”

He didn’t formulate it as a question, so she didn’t answer.

“Sloppily,” he went on, “but you open them.”

“My technique is none of your damn business.” She took another step back when he took another forward.

“I’ll pay you handsomely.”

She hated that her face probably betrayed how much she needed the money. How much she wanted to say no, not give into coercion, but there was still the rest of her tuition to consider, and what if the TA position didn’t work out?

“What’s the catch?”

He shrugged. He had nice, broad shoulders, and she shook that thought loose. “No catch.”

“I don’t believe you.” She raised her chin and got the distinct feeling he was grinning at her behind that mask like a wolf.

“Fine. I need another corpse like the one you brought in yesterday. One with signs of flora.”

’s pulse beat loud in her ears because she’d only heard one thing: she was no longer expendable.

“Then I want my instruments back.”

Beneath the glow of the Society’s gaslights, she watched the small V of exposed flesh at his shirt collar and his throat as he swallowed, as he spoke. “Bring me what I need and I’ll give you the best tools money can buy.”

* * *

God, she was exhausted. And she hadn’t even studied or actually begun her TA job.

Had she even eaten today? Maybe some cereal crumbs, but she honestly couldn’t remember if that was yesterday or today and she had to meet her new professor-employer in less than ten hours.

pulled into the car park and groaned. Maybe Imogen had some leftovers she could bum off her.

Leaving the empty doctor’s bag on the floorboard, she hauled her heavy satchel onto her shoulder and began the climb of three flights to her suite.

Halfway up, she realised she was going to have to move now. Locate boxes and pack amidst all the other things she had to do and leave her beautiful, picturesque view of the campus. dropped her satchel to the stairs and hung her head.

“Deep breaths.”

She ascended the rest of the steps, her bag thunking along behind her because she was too tired to carry it any further.

Two guys in band t-shirts sandwiched a pretty, punk-looking girl—an obvious Kurt Cobain fan—as they watched a horror movie in the common room. One of them waved at , but she ignored it. He’d asked her out twice since the start of term and she couldn’t even recall his name. Chad or Brad or something. As much as she, too, loved Nirvana, the lad’s grunge obsession and hairless face did nothing for her. She’d never really been attracted to men her own age, let alone one who’d hardly been considered an adult save for a handful of years.

When she unlocked the door of her suite and went in, found Imogen sitting at the tiny island between the kitchenette and the living area, munching on cheese and crackers.

“Did you have dinner?” asked, leaving her bag by the door along with her Oxfords and the umbrella she’d stolen from her roommate that morning.

Imogen gestured to the poor-grad-student version of a charcuterie. “All I’ve got. Colin conned some poor girl into making him spaghetti. Leftovers are in the fridge if you’re willing to face the wrath.”

reached for a cracker and popped it into her mouth. “No, thanks. I’ve had enough Colin for a lifetime already.”

Imogen giggled and pinched a piece of cheap cheddar between her fingers.

“Hey, what do you know about a Professor Murdoch?”

Imogen tipped the last of her wine into her mouth, her lips purple when she finally responded. “Dr Frankenstein?”

pulled down a clean wineglass, the fancy kind Colin’s parents bought for him before they wrote him off. “Is that what you call him?”

Snatching the wine bottle straight out of ’s hands, Imogen poured another glass for herself. “That’s what everyone calls him, babe.”

“Why is that?”

“He’s just so. . .” Imogen visibly shivered. “Spooky.”

watched her roommate warily, reclaiming the bottle and pouring the last of it—which wasn’t much—into her own glass.

“Did you know he’s the youngest professor to have so many accolades in the history of Trinity? He’s only been here a few years, I guess right after your undergrad days, but he”—she flipped her hand around like a dead fish—“came up with some thing to do with postmortem stuff, and the board was beside themselves.”

“Postmortem thing ?”

“Yeah, he’s the professor of some grotesque study area.”

chewed on her bottom lip, one hip against the counter, wondering how Imogen received scholarships for graduate studies, and she was about to be working her fingers to the bone for her tuition. “You’re going to have to give me more than that.”

Imogen scoffed and eyed with disgust, all their camaraderie used up. “I don’t know all that gross stuff. That’s your area of expertise, not mine.”

She couldn’t think why Trinity would have her TA for someone not in her area of study after the whole grant denial occurred because of it, but it did not behoove her to scoff in the face of serendipity or good fortune. The only kind of fortune she knew: dumb luck.

“Anyway,” Imogen went on, smacking on a piece of Coolia cheese and adding a dried fig to the jumble in her mouth, “I guess all that renowned stuff the prof did was before the Plague. He’s a doctor of some kind, but he actually gets really pissed if you call him that.”

“Call him what? Dr Frankenstein?”

Imogen chewed her bite of food so grossly that wanted to slap it out of her mouth. “No, as in pissed if you call him doctor at all.”

“Strange,” mumbled. “It’s usually the other way around. Doctors love to have their arses kissed.”

Imogen shrugged. “I dunno. Now he lives in a huge creepy house on the outskirts of Dublin, Murdoch Manor, like a total Boo Radley.”

had to give her roommate credit for even knowing who that was.

“And he’s so mysterious and broody and completely fuckable in the most scholarly way, but no one will go near him.” Imogen shivered again. “Not like that, anyway. He’s too. . .”

“Spooky?” finished for her sarcastically. But the tone went right over Imogen’s head and she pointed a pink fingernail at her as if it was the first time the adjective had come up to describe the prof.

“Yeah. Spooky .”

made a mental note to scrounge up her course catalogues and see if she could learn more about this Professor Murdoch before she was expected to meet up with him in the morning. It had already been a long, insane day and she still had assignments to finish. “I’m headed for bed.”

“Sweet nightmares, you freak.”

didn’t care to respond. Imogen wasn’t really that far off.

Taking another bite of sharp Coolia and a bushel of grapes for the ever-so-long trip down the hall to her room, she saluted her roommate and left the kitchen.

Before beginning on her studies, pulled out the little piece of wilted flora from her desk and found her course catalogue at the back of the desk’s bottom drawer. She twirled the broken stem of the foreign lungflower, relieved it wasn’t giving her another migraine as she sprawled out on her bed and flipped through the glossary of professors.

There he was:

Dr. Sonder Murdoch, PhD

Imogen was right. Professor Murdoch was horribly attractive, in a scholarly way as she had put it, with piercing eyes, a cut, stubbled jaw, and brown hair so artfully careless it was begging to have fingers run through it. There was something strange and mysterious about him, as Imogen also mentioned, and Mrs O’Sullivan alluded to as well, come to think of it. But found it alarmingly alluring, more than anything.

Shaking off those unhelpful and inappropriate thoughts, she read the rest of the description under his photo:

Doctor of Medicine, specialisation in Pathology

TCD Class of 1977 Morbid Anatomy and Greek Studies;

1983 Discipline of Histopathology and Morbid Anatomy

Professor of Morbid Anatomy, Pathology, Autopsy

didn’t know much about pathology aside from what she’d taught herself out of curiosity about the Plague, but it was hopefully enough to help grade papers or file things and make copies—whatever it was TAs did.