Page 57 of The Exorcism of Faeries

“Ah. I’ll have to learn your winter order as well then, won’t I?”

“It’s just black coffee the rest of the year. Dark as it’ll come.”

“Much easier.”

“Thank you,” she smiled, lifting her cup.

“But of course.” He mocked a ridiculous bow and she laughed.

They climbed in the Capri and Sonder reached over her to open the glove compartment. Another laugh popped out of Atta. “You have an entire stash of teacups!” She fished around in them. “Three fancy and two plain.”

He handed her the one he’d just used. “Three and three to make six. Uneven numbers are appalling.”

Atta looked at him in astonishment, then back at the glove compartment. “It’s the only thing you have in here. What if you’re mugged? Pulled over? Where’s your torch?”

“I live in rotation between college, my home, Achilles House, and back. Onoccasion,the pub or the theatre. I haven’t much use for any of those items to be in my car because I don’t find myself in those situations. A useful cup, however, has proved invaluable in my daily life.” He opened the compartment between their seats to produce a flask and a cigar case. “Along with these.”

Atta laughed. “You are so strange.”

“Says the woman who got in the car with a masked man in the middle of the night and went to a graveyard. On more than one occasion.” He set his face in a comical frown and shrugged, pointing between them. “Pot, kettle.”

“All right, all right,” she waved him off, closing the glove compartment of drinking vessels. “You’ve made your point. Now, where are we going?”

“You, darling, will find out when we get there.”

She wasn’t sure why he’d begun calling her that. Perhaps it was only something he typically said to his friends, but it made Atta’s knees weak every time. When he’d said it to her in Gaelic. . . She’d almost swooned.

The drive was long, and somewhere after Marlay Park, the city dropped away, the autumn trees shrouded in fog and mist. The road turned winding, and Atta felt as if she were leaving the world as she knew it behind.

Eventually, they pulled onto a long gravel drive and drove through an ornate, wrought iron gate with a filigreed ‘M’ there in the middle.

Atta had her fingers curled on the door, knuckles and nose pressed to the glass. Just about everything was dying, prepared to protect itself for winter, but the misty grounds were astounding.

She heard Sonder chuckle at her astonishment.

“Hawthorn trees,” she said, her breath fogging the glass. “A whole grove of them.” They were vibrant with dying leaves and blood-red berries.

“Yes,” Sonder said as the gravel turned to cobblestones. “They’ve been on these grounds since before the house. My grandmother didn’t believe in cutting down a hawthorn, nor did my mother after her. She said it was bad luck. That the?—”

“Faeries would be angry,” Atta finished for him.

“Yes.” He was looking at her strangely. She could see his reflection in the window and she turned to face him. “I thought my matriarchs were just superstitious.”

“Superstitions and fairytales all originate from somewhere. Did you know that most supposed fairytales can be found in ancient civilisations that had no contact with one another and the tales have only minor variations?” She shrugged. “Same with religious stories.”

Sonder stopped the car. “I did know that. Again, from my mother. How did you know that?”

Atta looked at her thumbnails. “My undergraduate studies were in Folklore and Religion. I did my thesis on the overlap between the two.” He looked surprised and she wasn’t sure why. “Didn’t you have that in my file?”

“I never read your file. It seemed an impersonal, gross oversight of a person’s character to shove highlights and lowlights in a folder and call it fact. I would, however, give my left arm to read that thesis.”

She heard his words, but they flitted away in the gloomy fog because she finally looked through the windscreen to see where they had stopped.

“Home, sweet home,” Sonder said, opening his door.

Atta climbed out, eyes trained on the most stunning house she’d ever seen. A Gothic manor befitting a Brontë or Radcliffe novel, all dark, bloody stone and black spires. There was even a turret and a stone balcony. She could envision Emily St. Aubert leaning over the side to catch a glimpse of her beloved Valancourt. Any moment, Heathcliff would stomp through the hawthorns, materialising in the fog and calling out to Cathy.

“It’s a bit vintage,” Sonder broke into her thoughts, “but it’s home.”

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