Page 19 of The Exorcism of Faeries

“Oh, this one’s mine.” Gibbs smiled and bopped over to open his door. It had taupe walls, a little brown desk and not much else that she could see. “I’m not here often,” he explained bashfully. “And I’ve never been one forstuff.”

“I respect that.” Atta set down her box by her door and looked at the grain of the dark wood for a moment.

“You okay?” Gibbs asked from behind her.

“Have you ever felt like your life is about to change all of a sudden? If you do one little thing?”

“Like open a door?”

“Yeah. Just like that.” She looked over her shoulder at her new roommate.

“Atta, I think your life changed when you said yes to assisting Dr Frankentstein.”

She definitely liked this lad. “I think we’re going to get along just fine, Gibbs.”

“Good.” He smiled. “I’ll head down and bring up more of your boxes. You settle in.”

Gibbs bustled off with more energy than Atta had dreamed of having since before she was that age.

With a deep breath, she took the brass knob in her hand. Azingwent off behind her eyes, and she almost doubled over. She was no longer herself for an instant, but a beautiful, stunning young woman with flowing auburn curls down to her waist, laughing as she opened this very door. The hallucination jumped, like a bad movie edit and the woman was older, shrouded in white, her veins black and pulsing as she lay on a bed. Atta sucked in a breath and it was all gone, dissipated into fog.

“Jesus.” She pressed her palm against her breastbone and willed away the anxiety that inevitably came with the migraines. Lips in a thin line, Atta reached for the doorknob again and twisted.

Her headache was immediately forgotten. The room was painted in a wrought-iron green, like a misty Fae Forest at dusk. One wall was solid bookshelves as loved and worn as the dark oak floors they matched. In the far corner was a small bed, naked save for a standard-issue mattress. Next to it, a window overlooked the Rose Garden and the Medical Building. There were just enough trees bordering her view that it would certainly give her old window-view a run for its money once the leaves changed. Perhaps there simply were no bad views at Trinity.

Atta ran her fingers over the desk situated under the window sill, imagining all the studying and sketching she would do there. It almost made her want to let her job at the morgue go—to throw herself, finally, fully into her studies. But she’d agreed to too much, needed too much, had too much darkness in her heart to be a proper academic.

Gibbs came bumbling back in carrying another box and a bag of clothes dragging behind him. “I couldn’t find your friend.” He looked around her room. “Where do you want these?”

“There’s fine.” She pointed to a cobwebbed corner. “I think it’s safe to say we’ve lost Imogen’s help.”

Gibbs set the boxes down and dusted his hands together. “You don’t have much stuff. What say we knock it out and I’ve got a couple of things to take care of after my next class, but then I’ll take you to meet Emmy and Dohmnall. They always go to the pub off Poolbeg on Wednesday nights. Vasilios and Kelleher usually have them working their arses off the first half of the week.”

“Sure,” Atta smiled. “That sounds great.”

Sonder

Aknock sounded on Sonder’s office door and he looked up from marking papers.

“Lynch asked me to bring you these,” Gibbs walked in wielding a sealed brown folder.

“Just put it over there,” he gestured with the end of his pen toward a stack of things he didn’t care to look at.

The lad stood there staring at him, so he reluctantly leaned back in his chair, the rich leather protesting. “What is it?”

“Your new TA.”

“Use complete sentences,” he prodded impatiently. Gibbs scuffed his runner across the carpet before fiddling with Sonder’s blown glass whiskey decanter. “Stop touching that.”

He only moved his ironically idle hands to the polished mahogany of Sonder’s bookshelves. He took off his glasses and watched the lad. “Gibbs. Why are you still here?”

His grubby hands moved toward a vintage, leather-bound copy ofThe Iliad,and Sonder jumped up. “Stop touching things!” he boomed. Gibbs’s hand shot back like he’d been burned, his eyes wide. “What do youwant?”

“Th–the girl. The one who—” His words broke off and he glanced at the open office door, his voice lower when he continued. “The one who sells us cadavers. She’s your new TA.”

“Jesus Christ.” Sonder pinched the bridge of his nose. “Tell me, do you smoke?”

“Em. At the pub, I guess.”

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