Chapter 2
London, England, Present Day—
The coffee had gone cold an hour ago. Elodie Hart didn’t notice.
She was too busy triple-checking her citation formatting for the third time, her reading glasses sliding down her nose as she hunched over her laptop in the cramped office she shared with two other research fellows—neither of whom were present, which suited her fine.
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead with a buzzing that seemed designed to induce migraines, and somewhere in the building, a pipe was making a sound like a dying whale.
She loved academia. She really did. Even the dying whale sounds.
“Okay,” she muttered to herself, scrolling through the PowerPoint presentation.
“Slide fourteen. Provenance analysis. Clear, concise, conservative.” She’d used the word conservative approximately forty-seven times in the last draft.
It had become a kind of talisman. See? I’m sensible.
I’m rigorous. I don’t believe in fairies.
Not anymore, anyway.
Her phone buzzed with a text. Jennifer’s name flashed on the screen with a string of emojis—a fairy, a question mark, and what appeared to be a tiny castle.
Conference prep going okay? Remember to breathe.
Breathing is for people who haven’t rewritten their methodology section six times.
That bad?
Wiggam is on the panel.
Three dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again.
Ah. The one who called your fae paper “charming but fundamentally unserious”?
Elodie winced. She didn’t need the reminder.
The memory lived rent-free in her head, popping up at inopportune moments like a particularly persistent ghost. Five years ago, fresh from her doctorate and still na?ve enough to believe that original thinking was rewarded in academia, she’d published a paper that had effectively ended her career before it began.
The Archaeology of Enchantment: Material Evidence for Fairy Belief in Medieval Britain.
It had been rigorous. It had been interdisciplinary.
And it had connected archaeological evidence—ritual deposits, unusual site formations, the deliberate placement of objects at liminal spaces—to documented folklore in ways no one had attempted before.
She’d argued that understanding why medieval people believed in the fair folk could illuminate both their material culture and their inner lives.
The academic establishment had not been impressed.
Whimsical, they’d called it. Imaginative—and not as a compliment.
Perhaps Dr. Hart would be better suited to writing children’s books.
That last one had come from Wiggam himself, delivered with a patronizing smile at a conference three years ago while she stood there holding a glass of wine she suddenly wanted to throw in his face.
She hadn’t, of course. She’d smiled, nodded, and spent the next two hours hiding in a bathroom stall, stress-eating the emergency chocolate bar from her bag.
The Fae Paper followed her everywhere now.
Every grant application, every job interview, someone brought it up.
Sometimes subtly, I see you have an interest in folk belief systems, and sometimes not.
Aren’t you the fairy girl? She’d learned to keep her head down.
To write safe papers about safe topics. To never, ever let anyone see the part of her that still believed the world might contain wonders.
Another text.
You’ll be brilliant. And if Wiggam says anything, just remember he’s a miserable old goat who hasn’t published anything interesting since 1987.
Elodie smiled despite herself.
How do you always know what to say?
It’s a gift. Now go eat something. Preferably not the chocolate bar you’ve been carrying in your bag for six months.
“It’s only been four months,” Elodie said aloud, then realized she was talking to an empty room. Excellent. Very professional. Very not-weird-at-all.
A knock on the door made her jump so violently she nearly sent her cold coffee flying. “Yes? Come in? I’m here?”
Dr. David Morrow poked his silver-haired head through the gap. He looked exactly like what he was, a distinguished, conventional medievalist who wore bow ties without irony and genuinely could not understand why Elodie’s fae paper had been anything other than an embarrassing mistake.
“Ah, Elodie. Working late again?”
“Just finishing up the conference presentation.” She turned her phone over before he could see Sarah’s texts. “Was there something you needed?”
He stepped into the office, his expression settling into what she’d come to recognize as his I’m about to ask you to do something tedious face. “I have an opportunity for you. A professional assessment, cataloging work. Nothing too demanding.”
Her heart sank. Cataloging work. Academic code for grunt work we can’t be bothered with. “Oh?”
“Baldridge Manor, out in the countryside. Lady Baldridge has a collection of medieval artifacts she’d like properly documented before her May Day celebration. It’s rather beneath your qualifications, of course, but—” He paused, tugging at his bow tie. “Well. You know how it is.”
She did know. She knew that her grant funding ran out in three months. Just as she knew that every job application she’d submitted had resulted in polite rejections. Elodie knew that the fairy girl had become a punchline, and punchlines didn’t get tenure-track positions.
“When would you need me there?”
“This Friday, if possible. Just for the weekend. Lady Baldridge is quite keen to have everything sorted before the party.”
Elodie looked at her laptop screen, then at the presentation she’d been perfecting for weeks, at the word conservative staring back at her like an accusation.
“I’ll do it,” she said. “Thank you for thinking of me.”
Dr. Morrow looked relieved. “Excellent. I’ll send you the details.
Lady Baldridge is a bit... eccentric, but perfectly harmless.
Try to enjoy yourself.” He hovered in the doorway, clearly wanting to say something else.
“The countryside air might do you good. You’ve been looking rather peaked lately. ”
After he left, Elodie sat in silence for a long moment. Then she saved her presentation, closed her laptop, and started gathering her things.
Her phone buzzed again with another text. Her best friend was wonderfully nosy.
Well?
Got assigned to catalog some old lady’s artifact collection this weekend. Very glamorous. Very definitely what six years of graduate school prepared me for.
Where?
Baldridge Manor. Somewhere in the countryside.
Wait, isn’t that near those castle ruins? The haunted ones?
Elodie frowned, typing back.
What castle ruins?
Greywatch Castle! I did a photography project there years ago. Super creepy. Locals say you can hear battle sounds when the moon is full.
You’re making that up.
Google it!
Elodie rolled her eyes but typed Greywatch Castle into her search bar.
A handful of results appeared—mostly amateur ghost-hunting forums and a single Wikipedia stub that offered little more than a name and an approximate location.
12th century fortification, significant ruins, local folklore suggests paranormal activity.
She closed the browser tab. The last thing she needed was to show up at Baldridge Manor babbling about ghost stories. She was trying to be taken seriously.
Still, as she packed her bag and headed for the door, she couldn’t quite shake the strange shiver that ran down her spine.
Promise me you’ll at least wear something festive.
Jennifer texted as Elodie stepped out into the London evening.
When’s the last time you had any fun?
Elodie thought about it. Really thought. The answer was depressing enough that she didn’t bother typing it out.
I’ll try.
The May Day party. Right. Dr. Morrow said she’d be expected to stay for the festivities, which included the costume party. She’d need to find something to wear. Something that wasn’t a shapeless cardigan or her interview blazer with the coffee stain on the cuff she kept hoping no one would notice.
The tube station swallowed her into its depths, and Elodie let herself be carried along by the crowd, already mentally packing for a weekend of dusty artifacts and eccentric aristocrats.
No matter what awaited her at Baldridge Manor, it was better than another week of being reserved, disciplined, and pretending she didn’t believe in magic.