Nocticadia

In the present day, Lilia Vespertine cooks for her sick mother, Francesca, who’s taken to eating rare meat. Lilia’s stepfather, Conner, hasn’t worked recently, leaving them with little money. She asks her 12-year-old half-sister, Beatrix, or Bee, to check on their mother. Francesca experiences fits where she says that “evil men” and “monsters” are coming for Lillia (14).

A man knocks at the door asking for Conner, but Lilia soon hears a scream and finds Francesca trying to drown Bee in the bathtub, claiming that Bee is a spy for the monsters. Lilia locks Bee in her bedroom and fights Francesca, who repeatedly tries to drown both herself and Lilia. Eventually, her mother weakens, and dozens of black parasitic worms exit from her mouth and nose. They escape down the tub drain, and Lilia faints.

Four years later, Lilia becomes distracted while cleaning a sink at her job. A scent triggers memories of her mother’s death, which she recalls vividly. Lilia dreams of working in medical research, but she struggles to complete her schooling while also working as a cleaner at a local hospital.

After her coworker Jayda leaves the room, Lilia notices a despondent patient in one of the stalls: her mother. The black worms escape from her body and down the floor drain. Jayda rushes in but finds nobody in the stall. Instead, a dead rat floats in the toilet. Jayda leaves to call maintenance. Lilia struggles to suppress a panic attack and reflects on how jittery she is nowadays: The hallucination wasn’t her first.

Lilia ponders the official story of her mother’s death. After she passed out, Bee called Conner, who came home to find Francesca’s wrists cut. The coroner corroborated this. Lilia doesn’t recall this happening, however, and doubts this narrative.

She carries a rosary with a vial of her mother’s ashes and a pocketknife. On the subway home, she’s frightened of a stranger who follows her onto the platform. She flashes the knife at him, but he’s merely returning her bag.

Lilia returns home and overhears Conner talking with his seedy business partner, Angelo. They claim to sell scrap metal but likely participate in organized crime. Conner is the only thing that kept Lilia and Bee from being sent to foster care after their mother’s death, but they don’t get along.

Lilia and Angelo insult each other. Conner leaves to fix a neighbor’s sink, as he is an unofficial handyman for the apartment block, leaving Lilia with Angelo. He makes sexual comments about her and then grabs her and threatens to assault her. However, she can’t have him arrested because his criminal activities help pay for her tuition and Bee’s boarding school, where she receives mental health treatment for the impacts of her mother’s death. Angelo eventually leaves, but Lilia feels helpless and frustrated.

In her room, she thinks about a microbiology class assignment where she wrote about a fictional disease called blackworm syndrome. It detailed her mother’s illness anonymously, and she has a meeting with her professor in the morning. She restrains herself to the bed, as she sleepwalks.

Lilia meets with her microbiology professor, Dr. Wilkins. He asks about her assignment, intuiting that she cared for a person with the affliction, and informs her that the disease is real. Research on the affliction is secret, operating through a privately owned organization, Dracadia University.

In response to her paper, Wilkins gives her a letter from Dracadia’s school dean, offering her a full scholarship—it’s only for the fall semester, but it has the potential for renewal.

Wilkins tells Lilia that the black worms are called Noctisoma and primarily exist on the island of Dracadia. Lilia will help perform research on the parasites under the tutelage of Professor Bramwell. Lilia asks for time to think about the offer, but the deadline to accept is soon.

Lilia wants to attend Dracadia University, but she knows that the loss of her contribution to the rent and Bee’s tuition will lead to Bee’s withdrawal from boarding school. Lilia researches the school and the study of Noctisoma, finding a recent news story of a woman on Dracadia who attempted to murder the university provost, accusing him of putting worms in her belly. This echoes something that Francesca said to Lilia.

Conner enters and says that they need money, so he wants to rent out Francesca’s old room to Angelo. They argue about Angelo’s morals and Bee’s safety around him, with Conner dismissing Lilia’s accusation toward Angelo. The next day, Jayda tells Lilia to accept the university’s offer.

In a cathedral outside Dracadia University, the secretive Seven Rook Society—or the Rooks—try a member of their society who’s been accused of stealing research. They wear robes and plague doctor masks.

The “Accused,” Paul Darrows, admits to his crime: stealing research from Devryck Bramwell and selling it to a pharmaceutical mogul. He begs for clemency, which Devryck finds amusing. The Rooks are described as one of the most powerful secret societies in the world.

The members find Paul guilty and sentence him to death. The executioner mechanically lowers a tank over Paul that fills with gas, which the Rooks wear masks to protect against. Paul dies and is moved to a lower floor to be incinerated.

Lilia’s anxiety about her mother has grown worse with the validation of the worms. Conner has given up the notion of Angelo moving in, but Lilia still doesn’t see Dracadia University as a possibility. However, Jayda gives her a card with money pooled together by the staff, covering Lilia’s cut of Bee’s tuition.

She goes home to pack her things, hoping to leave before Conner returns, but Angelo is there and harasses her. When Conner arrives, Angelo exposes Lilia’s plans. However, Lilia asks Conner to be the man her mother once loved, so he accepts her attending Dracadia so long as she contributes to the bills.

Devryck walks through Emberwick, the French gothic village outside Dracadia University, thinking about his passionless affair with entomology professor Loretta Gilchrist. He dislikes physical touch and abhors that she stroked his arm during sex that day.

Devryck claims to be hunting a man, Mr. Barletta, who beat his wife and child and fled to Dracadia under the false promise of passage out of the country. After suffering an acute headache, a symptom of his rare illness, Devryck finds the man drunk and unconscious.

He brings Barletta to the university’s Emeric Tower, a former 1700s prison, and locks him in a cell. When the prisoner wakes, Devryck offers him expensive whiskey. He then says that the whiskey was filled with small parasitic worm eggs and that Barletta will be his next test subject in his research.

Barletta tries to attack Devryck through the bars, but Devryck implies that there is a connection between them. Suffering another headache, he leaves.

Jayda drops Lilia off at a derelict train station, where she’s to meet someone from the university. Eventually, a luxury train called the Dracadia Express arrives. Inside, the passengers are all ostensibly wealthier than Lilia. She worries about the responsibilities ahead, including the need to immediately find a job to continue saving for Bee’s schooling. Eventually, she falls asleep.

Devryck performs an autopsy on a woman who is under suspicion of having been killed by the Noctisoma. She shows fracturing in the bones, a strange fluid throughout the body, and a severely affected liver, tell-tale signs.

He suddenly finds a foot-long live worm. It bites him through his glove, revealing that they’ve now developed teeth, before escaping through a drain on the floor. Concerned with the worm’s evolution, he hopes that the autopsy and his overall research might lead to a cure.

Later, in his office, Provost Lippincott visits. He tells Devryck that Dean Langmore has offered Lilia a spot in Devryck’s advanced class. Lippincott dislikes Langmore and asks Devryck to keep an eye on Lilia, seeking out any sign that Langmore acted wrongly in fast-tracking her spot and scholarship.

Lippincott admits that the woman he had Devryck perform an autopsy on was the woman Lilia had read about; the woman attacked Lippincott with an axe. She was part of a study performed 20 years ago by Devryck’s father, Warren Bramwell, and funded by Lippincott. Six women died by suicide and two went missing during the study. Devryck wasn’t made aware of this until after he accepted the findings of his father’s research.

Lippincott says that he isn’t sure how the woman became infected and wants her autopsy report altered to strike the evidence of parasites from Devryck’s findings. Devryck is upset, but Lippincott reminds him that he has paid to cover up both Devryck’s and Warren’s mistakes. Two years ago, Devryck was erroneously accused of killing a missing student, and someone threw acid on him, permanently scarring him.

Devryck requests that the cameras set up in his lab in the aftermath of the scandal be removed in exchange for altering the autopsy report. Lippincott begrudgingly agrees. They discuss the Rooks and upcoming quarterly evaluations. Devryck’s ancestor was a founder, offering him security after his father’s crimes, but Lippincott is newly rich. Investors want results, and Lippincott wants to be the new university president.

Lilia arrives at the seaside, where a ferry will soon take her to Dracadia. She meets a sophomore, Briceson Williams. They pass a memorial statue of Commodore Adderly on their way to the ferry.

On the boat, they discuss the ghost stories surrounding Dracadia. Briceson, despite studying chemistry, has become superstitious since attending. They land, and Lilia is stunned by the old, gothic aesthetic. They exchange numbers before Lilia is fetched by Dr. Langmore’s assistant, Kendall.

In the administrative building, she waits outside Langmore’s office and catches a glimpse of Devryck in a different room. Langmore invites her in. He explains how Lilia was put in Devryck’s class without completing the prerequisite because of the expertise shown in her essay, and the entomology professor Dr. Gilchrist has also requested that she be placed in her class.