"A spell?" Doctor Turner asks. He furrows his eyebrows further, his hand still between her shoulder blades. The heat of his palm seeps into her habit, through her slip, and warms her clammy skin.

"An enchantment," Sister Bernadette agrees. Her lungs and throat feel as if someone has been at them with a cheese grater. She wipes her mouth with the back of her left hand. With her right, she does her utmost best to keep hold of the spell that crawled its way up from some unknown place inside of her. It is slick and slippery, and she has to dig her nails into its twisting body to make sure it doesn't slither to the ground.

What does this mean? Part of her thinks she must be dreaming. There is no such thing as magic, and there certainly isn't any inside of her. But her mother told her stories every night before she died, and those stories were chockfull of the Wee Folk spitting spells into being, of spinning them from spit and words and need.

"Sister, you are unwell," Doctor Turner says. His words snap her out of her reverie and back into the present.

"I feel better already," she whispers. It isn't a complete lie; the need to cough up her lungs has ceased.

"There's no such thing as spells outside of fairy tales. I don't know what it is you've coughed up, but we must take you to hospital right away. I think it must be some kind of worm, some kind of parasite, or a bit of tissue…"

Normally she'd tremble at the concern that laces his voice, but now his refusal to listen to her makes her angry. She's already exasperated with him, but mainly with herself. Her voice doesn't sound like her own when she snaps, "It's a spell, I've told you!" She takes out a handkerchief and spits saliva and blood into it. The taste of it makes her want to gag.

He opens his mouth, and for one moment, she thinks he'll wag his finger at her and tell her she's not in her right mind, running a temperature and all that, but he does nothing of the sort. Instead he says, "No matter what it is, it can't be good." He increases the pressure of his hand between her shoulders to try and get her to move, but she is rooted to the spot, her heart beating so hard it feels like a battering ram assaulting her ribs.

"I don't need to go to hospital," she says.

His hand travels to her lower back as he tries to steer her towards his car. A shiver runs along her spine, and her hand twitches open involuntarily, causing the red ribbon-like enchantment to fall to the ground. She cries out and reaches for it, but it is damnably fast, and slithers out of reach.

"Don't let it get away!" Doctor Turner shouts, and falls to his knees with a grunt, the rip he mended in his trousers tearing and gaping open, the torn stitches like teeth. The bit of leg she can see is dusted with dark hair, too. She wonders just how much of him is covered with that sensuous black hair, then chastises herself for thinking such a lurid thing.

"Don't touch it!" Sister Bernadette says, and tries to bat his hand away whilst simultaneously trying to grab the spell dancing between their fingers. It glistens with her drying saliva and blood like a snake. It's fast as a serpent, too. She can't let it touch Doctor Turner, no matter what happens. She doesn't know what kind of spell it is, never mind that she seems to have cast it, and she can't possibly predict the effect it might have on him were it to touch him. No, she should wind it around her hand and pull it taut till it frays and ultimately snaps. This is one of the few ways she knows of breaking a spell.

Or a kiss, she thinks. But though the Anglican church condones physical contact between nuns and laymen when necessary in a professional capacity, she doesn't think they would be very happy with contact of this kind.

Especially not since it would be more than an innocent kiss to make him better.

She makes a mad dash for the spell and manages to catch it between two fingers, but the thing gives a smart twist and slithers from her grip. It curls past Doctor Turner's crushed Henley, between the loop of his shoelaces.

"Don't let it touch you!" Sister Bernadette cries out. Her lungs burn from exertion, making every breath agony. She pushes her own hurt down, takes a deep breath, and lunges for the enchantment, batting it away from his shoe. The spell twists around her hand and launches itself at the doctor. He instinctively raises his hands. The spell hits just above his wrist. Before he can wriggle his finger underneath and flick it off, it sinks inside his skin.

"No!" Sister Bernadette whimpers. She feels sick in every fibre of her being, her stomach having shrunken to the size of a walnut.

He pats his wrist frantically, raking his skin with his fingernails, leaving white lines that turn pink. When it becomes clear there is nothing he can do, he lets his hand fall to his side. He looks up till he meets Sister Bernadette's eyes.

"So what do we do now?" he asks.