Page 106 of The Exorcism of Faeries

“Go!” Atta shouted at Gibbs. “I’ll explain when she arrives.”

Gibbs stood so quickly that his chair toppled over and he ran out of the room.

“You’re scaring me,” Emmy said in a small voice so unlike her.

Marguerite bustled in with the water and Atta took a gulp. “I think Gibbs has been sleeping with Imogen secretly. And I don’t get migraines, I get visions.”

Emmy’s mouth fell open, and Marguerite winced. “For fuck’s sake,” she muttered. “If Sonder hadn’t shown me that jar collection of fucking faeries, I would think this was grounds for a nice, long asylum stay for you all.”

“I know.” Atta stood, unable to sit still anymore. “I used to think it was all hallucinations, but then Lauren Kennedy died.”

“The girl from Trinity?” Emmy asked.

Atta nodded. “Yes. I bumped into her one day before class and got a splitting headache. I saw strange visions of her being consumed by ivy.”

Marguerite sank into the chair Atta had vacated.

“And Imogen?” Emmy ventured, her features set in an obvious show of fear of the answer.

“We just need to get her here where we can monitor her. Stop it before it starts. I have wards on the house, and I think they’re holding.”

“And ‘it’is. . .” Emmy cut herself off, but Marguerite answered.

“Possession.”

Atta nodded grimly.

Sonder

The Agamemnon Council berated him for the better part of an hour.

After that, it became an amusing match of members defending him and others all but hanging him.

“You wore the mask of this society alongside someone who does not even belong in our ranks,” Lynch began his closing remarks. “You defied our protocols by stepping out on your own with some disastrous results.”

Some, but not all, Sonder thought.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” Lynch demanded.

All eyes in the chamber beneath Saint Patrick’s were on him, and Sonder stood. “All I have done is what my arm of Agamemnon set out to do. Most often, there is no time for red tape and bureaucratic processes. Lives are being saved because of the work of Achilles. Yes, I formed a small, covert unit within, but the results are the same. Lives are being saved, the Plague is losing ground, and Agamemnon maintains its reputation—has kept its promise.”

Murmurs went up around the room. Most of the argument had revolved around whether Agamemnon was being credited with the mounting success or not. The public knew so little about the Society that ran as an undercurrent to the city, but they knew enough, and that meant many members had argued in Sonder and Atta’s favour that the masks they wore pointed people to the Society.

It irked Sonder that the effect on Inhabited patients had never come up, save for the mention of their failures—the ones they’d lost.

“I do not stand before you today,” Sonder went on, his voice ringing out in the room of marble and bone, “with any desire to claim glory for the success of what’s happening. When I lobbied to have Achilles House opened, it was with one goal in mind. The goal of eradicating the Plague has remained my only aim, and I will not stop now. Take all the credit you’d like.” He looked each of the eight council members in the eye, then turned to sweep his attention over the Society members gathered for the spectacle. “I only wish to end this nightmare.”

Lynch, his face as mottled as ever, stood from his seat, nearly toppling it over. “Then report your goddamn findings! Your process!”

“That I will not do,” Sonder responded simply, firmly. “You let me and my team do as we are doing without interference, or we take off the masks. Take off the Society.”

“This is an outrage!” Sonder watched the spittle fly from Lynch’s mouth, his jowls wobbling.

“Enough!” Trinity Provost Nial Rochford stood, speaking for the first time since the council convened. Even Lynch had to sit down and listen to him.

The Rochford family had led Agamemnon since its inception. Many had been better leaders than Nial, but many had been far worse.

“We cannot stake our reputation on your processes we know nothing about, Dr Murdoch. Your conduct with a student, no less, has coloured your once rosy academic and Societal character in grey. Tell us your methods, or wewillinterfere, beginning first with your position at TCD.”

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