The Exorcism of Faeries (Morbid Realities, #1)

by J.L. Vampa

Murdoch shook his head, a dark curl falling across his forehead. “If we were never challenged, Atta, we would never grow.”

“How am I supposed to know if there are signs of flora if I don’t open them, Sherlock?”

“I’m vintage, darling.”

“You forgot your damned lantern. You make a terrible criminal.”

“Most people don’t climb in other people’s windows like creeps,” Gibbs shot back.

“Sometimes fear cleanses the soul, Atta. It reminds us to look at the important things we took for granted while at peace.”

“If you so much as look at her the wrong way, I’m the one who will make you wish you were dead. That’s who the fuck I am.”

“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.”

“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?”

With Sonder standing there in his childhood home, looking at her, she knew in her bones they were both hamartia embodied. The main ingredient for a tragic end.

“There’s darkness found in hearth tales and the Church, but they all know that part already. They’ve seen it in the eyes of their dead. But there is also whimsy found in fairytales and hope found in the spiritual.”

Atta lifted her chin in challenge. “Requiem in D Minor, K. 626.”

Sonder’s grin turned wicked and wolfish before he spun back to face the piano. His fingers moved over the piano effortlessly, the haunting notes a balm to her very soul. It felt like magic, like one of those ethereal moments that makes one feel simultaneously filled to the brim with joy and drowning in despair because you know there will never be a moment exactly like it ever again.

“One thousand books constitutes an official library. We have three.”

Her attention snapped to him with the endearment he’d taken to calling her. “Do you need a live-in librarian?”

Her heart broke for him. For his parents. For all the beauty their deaths caused. Because it was nothing but Juliet’s kiss, Macbeth’s decapitation, the murder of Desdemona. Achilles mourning Patroclus. “Sonder, I’m so sorry.”

“She always said she wanted no wake. Only to be buried under the old, twisted hawthorn. So that’s what I did. I buried them side by side. Two lovers in one grave to feed the grove.”

“That’s what you’re going to say, isn’t it? Something along those lines? Because you might be brooding and mysterious to the rest of the world, but not to me. Not anymore. And this is bigger than us. Do you really think revolutions don’t begin with one person? One act? Do you really think change can’t be accomplished by two people? According to some, one man saved the entire world, past, present, and future. According to some, the Storming of the Bastille began the French Revolution, Shakespeare changed the English language, and the Beetles altered music irrevocably. Things would be different if people weren’t so fucking scared all the time but let their fear propel them instead of paralyse them.”

“What if the Plague is not an infection but a possession? What if they’re not Infected, but Inhabited?” His brows pinched, but she ploughed forward. “Think about it. The strange coins, the flora. . . Where is it from?”

“Of course I’m curious, but you’ll tell me when you’re ready. I’m not one to pry.”

After a puff of the cigar, he said, “I’ll wait all night if it means you’ll stay.”

“Are you even listening to me?” he finally heard her say sharply. She popped a cube of cheese in her mouth. “Are you drunk?” “Only on you.” The words were out before he could stop them.

“Atta.” His voice had gone low, gravelly. Hungry. And hers had gone breathy. “Yes?” Her breasts were rising and falling rapidly beneath her thin blouse. “I’m going to kiss you now.” Her gaze dropped to his mouth again. “All right.”

But then he began a rhythm that felt so familiar it was as if they’d done this countless times. Loved each other countless times in countless other lives, other realities.

“I’m terrified of this world, Sonder. But I don’t fear facing it with you.”

I want to drown in this love, darling, he’d told her one morning when she apologised for hogging the bed.