Page 5 of The Exorcism of Faeries

“Just me,” Imogen’s voice sang.

Atta scrubbed shampoo into her long, chestnut locks, attempting to keep her irritation at bay. “You’re up early,” she commented rather stupidly. On principle, Imogen didn’t rise before 10 a.m. and probably hadn’t had a class before 11 a.m. since she was able to choose her own schedule.

“Up late.” Imogen’s words were a tad slurred. Probably had been since late last night.

“Ah.”

Atta could tell by the lack of sink and drawer commotion that Imogen was likely undressing. Or taking a piss. She sighed. Having roommates wasn’t her cup of tea. Granted, between undergrad and moving back home, she’d never lived alone before, but she didn’t need to experience it to know it was preferable to sharing a bathroom.

A cold burst of air made her squeal as the shower curtain was yanked back. “Imogen!”

“Can you see this?” She ignored Atta’s protests, pointing to a very visible lip-shaped spot on her neck that was mottled purple.

“Clear as day.” Atta shut the shower curtain and huddled under the hot water, but not before she’d noticed what her roommate was wearing. “You really shouldn’t be going to parties, Imogen.”

“Blah, blah. There aren’t any restrictions againstparties.”

Atta turned off the water and grabbed her towel, wrapping it around her body and stepping out onto the plush bath mat she purchased herself after one of Colin’s buddies puked on the old one. She often asked herself why her roommates were pursuing a postgraduate degree at all.

Colin, she surmised, was trying to get back into his father’s good graces—and bank account. Imogen, she wasn’t sure about. Scared of going out into the real world, maybe.

Atta had been outside the collegiate bubble for six years after undergrad and could confirm it was not all it was cracked up to be, Plague or not.

Imogen was studying the hickey in her reflection. “Could I borrow one of your frumpy turtlenecks to cover this?” She looked at Atta in the mirror, golden hair still perfect but her makeup clearly in disarray after a night of doing things Atta didn’t care to consider.

“My turtlenecks are not frumpy.”

“Em, okay,” Imogen snorted.

Atta let it go, pushing at the more serious matter Imogen had skated right past. “There may not be anyrulesagainst gatherings, but it’s still unwise to spend your time out at night with loads of people until we understand more about the Plague.”

“You’re such a buzzkill. They say that’s not even how it spreads.” Imogen rolled her eyes and began removing her shirt with enough difficulty that it was clear she was still sloshed.

She wasn’t wrong, though. The Health Protection Surveillance Centre had deployed several arms of their organisation, such as Achilles House, to study the Plague after the first patient succumbed to the strange disease. Many of those arms of the HPSC are quiet shadow organisations the general populace knows nothing about—it’s a wonder Atta even heard about Achilles House at all—but all findings are reported to HPSC. Though they have certain precautions advised in Dublin, they have made it clear the Plague does not pass to individuals as a communicable disease does.

In the last six years, that’s about all the HPSC has announced.

If they discovered the flora, she suspected that could all change very soon.

“Imogen,” Atta pressed, looking away from her roommate’s bare breasts in the mirror. “This Plague is only going to get worse. You can’t just keep putting all of us at risk. No, it doesn’t spread like a virus, but it’s too much of a risk to be swapping bodily fluids with people and coming home to drink out of the milk carton.” Attaloathedthat Imogen did that, like a child.

She wrinkled her nose at Atta in the mirror. “How do you know it’s going to get worse?”

Atta thought of the foreign flora hidden away in her desk drawer, a melody singing in her blood, calling her to study it with her lenses. “Just stop going to parties all the time. You’re here to learn, anyway.”

Imogen groaned and turned around to face her, where she was dripping on the mat. “Were you more fun in undergrad? When you were young?” She made one of those idiotic faces reserved for D4 girls and girls drunk on Daddy’s money. Which was amusing because Imogen only pretended to be either one of those things. Sometimes both.

“Oh, look,” Atta droned, “you made it nearly twenty-four hours without referring to my elderly age.”

Imogen giggled, and Atta left before she had to watch her roommate undress any more than she already had.

At least she hadn’t been forced to share a room with anyone since her second year. Even still, she’d learned the hard way to take the extra second and spin the lock on the knob. The first night the three of them had spent in the suite, Colin came home from someWelcome Backparty and walked in on Atta changing. She still wasn’t quite sure if he’d been that hammered, thought it was his room, or assumed he could fall back on either of those as an excuse if need be. Atta, in nothing but a bra and black stockings—ironically her current state of dress again—had kneed Colin in the groin and toppled him howling into the hall. The lock became her new best friend and Colin had just started speaking to her again a week ago. Not that he provided her with any titillating conversation she’d been missing out on.

Her insolent roommates were worth the headache in regards to the view living with them afforded her. Slipping on a brown and taupe plaid skirt, Atta fastened the tortoise buttons as she looked past the trees toward Front Square, with its Gothic stone buildings and proud bell tower. She remembered walking through the arch of Campanile ceremoniously upon her first graduation from Trinity in 1987, her father’s bright smile and the click and whir of her mother’s camera.

That was before her father’s accident. Before the Plague. Before they needed her back in Galway.

Atta shook her thoughts loose and dropped her attention from the view beyond down to the half-written essay on her desk and several crumpled attempts at a re-write. She didn’t have to think about that until after classes and her shift at Gallaghers’. The essay wasn’t going well, but she’d compiled a lovely botanical journal in the process, and ran her fingers fondly over a purple blossom pressed flat and forever beautifully dead in wax paper, a scrawled description below it.

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