Page 87 of The Exorcism of Faeries

“Rude.”

Gibbs smiled for the first time all morning. “We do miss you, though. Especially Emmy.”

Atta fiddled with the handle of her teacup. “I need to call her.”

“Well,” Gibbs shifted the subject back, “I’ve pegged your probability of success at between 53 and 56%.”

“But we still have time to raise that probability.” Not that Atta lived byprobabilities. Where was the whim and wonder in that? “I already have some methods I was studying that I believe will give us more success.”

“Like?” Gibbs prompted, not convinced.

“We learned that the faeries, at least the kind we encountered, can dissipate into vapour—that’s how they’re Inhabiting people. Therefore, they have to be contained in something air-tight. Stage 3s are more dangerous, of course, but I think Black Tourmaline mixed with Wormwood will do the trick.”

Gibbs blew out a disbelieving breath. “You act like this is a fairytale, Atta.”

She ground her molars together, trying to be patient with his doubt. “All of Folklore is grounded in some truth, Gibbs. You need to expand your realm of thinking. What if we are the myth in their world, hm?”

Something burned in her chest, her fingertips. Her teeth hurt, felt pointed against her tongue.

“What if there are other realms or worlds out there, and the Fae are dying? They’ve heard tales all their lives of a world where humans walk around destroying their planet, destroying each other, and the Fae decided the humans didn’t deserve this place. That they would take it for their own?”

The burning left as suddenly as it had come, her fingers feeling like they’d fallen asleep. She tasted copper in her mouth, on her tongue, and a wave of dizziness hit her.

“Woah. Are you all right?”

She reached across the table for the cup of water Sonder had left behind and took a sip. “I’m fine.”

“That was, em. . . Some speech.”

“It’s just a theory,” she said shakily. “Let me show you what I mean about the Black Tourmaline and Wormwood.”

They rose together and Gibbs followed her to the back all-season porch. “Where are we going?”

“Have you been to the greenhouse?”

“No. I’ve only been here a handful of times and Murdoch was always crotchety about it, kicking me out as soon as I gave him whatever it was he needed dropped off.”

She stopped, considering Sonder may not want Gibbs anywhere near his parents or even their research. “Perhaps we should bring Sonder along for this. I’ll go get him.”

Gibbs plopped down on a lounge chair and pulled out his notebook. “I’ll be here.”

Atta opened the door to the kitchen and Gibbs said, “Hey,” so she turned back. “He looks different when you walk into a room.”

“Different?” She cocked her head to the side. “Different how?”

“Happy.”

Atta didn’t know what to make of Gibbs’s comment. It made her feel a thousand different things she didn’t fully comprehend and had no time to ponder.

Sonder was bent over his sketchbook in the study. “Stór,” he said when she appeared in the doorway. “Come look at this.”

He pushed back from the desk and let her have his chair. As she looked at his remarkable anatomical sketch of the faerie they’d caught, he lit a cigarillo and perched on the edge of the desk. “I had to do it by memory, and I don’t know what their organs are like.”

“It’s all assumption at this point, but this sketch looks exactly as I remember the faerie.” Atta ran her finger over the wings Sonder had drawn to look like they were in motion.

He puffed on the cigarillo, blowing the smoke out slowly. “Where is Gibbs?”

Atta stood and rounded the desk, Sonder pulling her between his legs. He slung an arm around her lower back and her heart did a somersault. “Waiting for us. I wanted to show him the Black Tourmaline and Wormwood effect on a plant in the atrium.”

---