Page 10 of A Lady’s Guide to Werewolves

Chapter Three

Sorcha traded her white silk capelet for a red cloak.

She kept one in an abandoned cottage out by the edge of town. The cloak was woven with a spell that would keep her unseen. A blur where her face was, something that the eye skipped over. No telltale red hair, or the Beauregard freckles. Just a witch in a red cloak.

She also kept a plain, serviceable wool dress and leather boots rolled up in the bundle she pulled from inside the cracked fireplace. She stuffed her pockets with salt, rowanberries, iron nails, a dagger. A pouch of more mundane supplies hung from her belt: bandages, healing ointments, scissors, needle and thread for sutures.

And a very old wolf’s tooth, marked with a Lycan sigil she had not seen before.

She might give it back.

Eventually. If the Winterwells treated their son better.

The paper birds hovered around her, wings fluttering impatiently. She had made them wait too long already and there was the danger they would fall to the ground, magic spent, before they led her to where she needed to be. Her crow familiar soared higher above, outlined against the moon being rapidly eaten by storm clouds. The air crackled expectantly.

This was the work she was meant for. Not vengeful thievery, which was lovely, and not searing kisses in the dark of a rose grotto.

This.

Disappointment lingered, like the taste of small, hard, unripe apples when she recalled how Aidan had looked through her. But it was irrelevant.

Especially now.

The birds led Sorcha over the hills and across a rickety bridge to the ruins of a castle. She had been here before.

That was not a good sign.

It meant they were getting comfortable. Usually the Cauldron moved with every demonstration. But never so close to one of the towns. They weren’t just getting comfortable—they were getting bold.

It was entirely too dangerous to enter alone. Or with an armed escort. A militia, the entire navy.

None of which she had at her beck and call. Not that it had stopped her before.

And it certainly would not stop her now.

Even with the not-distant-enough rattle of chains, the shouting, the thick scent of mud and blood and magic gone wrong. Scorched fennel seeds, salt, lemon balm. All marks of a warlock. Or several witches with a penchant for baneful magic. The lily-draped mansion full of dancing aristocrats seemed very far away.

She might not have an army of her own, but she had a dagger, a monstrous spectral dog of a Black Shuck straight from nightmares who would answer her whistle—theoretically. She had been feeding the monster raw, bloody meat for weeks now. And playing fetch with him, which required an entire birch sapling for a stick. She liked to think they were friends.

But she would never take anyone else into the fighting pits of the Cauldron, regardless. Especially not a magnificently monstrous beast she had named Shadow. Briar claimed she was terrible at naming things, but her crow went by the name Elderberry, and he did not mind at all. He had only requested the addition of his title when she was twelve years old and studying her Debrett’s because her mother made her recite the lineages of aristocratic families at every breakfast. He had become Sir Elderberry. He liked to peck Aesop to make him bow with the appropriate flourishes. Since Aesop was as gentle as Elderberry was decidedly not, he always complied.

But regardless, the very few witches, familiars, or monsters who could hold their own could not afford to be caught here. And though Sorcha had friends down in the villages—Briar tending the enchanted rowan trees for the Iron Witches in Holdfast, and Pippa in Hallow, wandering the libraries of the magical universities—they were not near enough to summon, not with magic birds, not with the wind, or the echo of the sea in a shell.

Worse, they would answer a summons immediately and without question, and then they might be hurt. Would most certainly be hurt.

Better that Sorcha do this alone. She had done so before and she would do so again.

She watched the paper birds as they kept to the shadows, the overhanging branches, the edges of the parapet. A gargoyle at the top of a crumbling tower shifted, wings extending. Bits of rock stone tumbled down, rattling like seeds in a cup—or the teeth of some magical beast spat out onto the floor of the fighting rings, which was a more apt comparison, unfortunately. They would fetch almost as high a price as the fight that had them scattering.

At any rate, no one was likely to be much concerned with the gargoyle. There were guards, and they were watchful enough, but the gargoyles had been set there more than two hundred years ago. They might snap at wayward magic, but witches had not lived here in over a century. And bits of wayward magic, beneficial or baneful, were hardly rare in this place tonight.

And this was still better than a ballroom glittering with beeswax candles and jewels and polished shoes. Even if she was currently crouched behind a blackberry hedge, trying unsuccessfully to avoid the thorns and hoping the rain would hold off.

It did not.

The first drop hit her right on the tip of the nose.

Never mind Winterwell House—she could have been drinking hot tea and eating raspberry scones in Haven, or swimming with mermaids off the boardwalk. Perusing bookshops and museums in Hallow, while avoiding professors and curators intent on correcting the historical provenance of some amulet or another.