Page 26 of A Lady’s Guide to Werewolves

Chapter Seven

On her way home, Sorcha thought she saw a gray wolf in the distance.

And then much closer.

He kept pace, eyes glinting. But he came no closer, even when she pulled a hunk of braided sesame bread from her reticule and waved it at him. She assumed a wolf would prefer a meaty bone of some sort, but even she did not carry raw meat around. No matter how she tried to coax him closer, he would not approach.

He would not leave, either.

Until a howl sounded, shivering over the green and gold hills. His head snapped toward the sound and he bounded away. The howl was sharp, but thin. Haunting.

Sorcha was nearly home when the first paper bird found her.

She could not help a loud groan. “Now what?”

She hadn’t thought any would have survived after last night’s rain. Not to mention the fire, the ogre. The general violence. But here was one lone bird, soft, pleated paper folded into wings, ink for eyes. Magic made them blink at her.

But the spell was fading, and though the bird led her to the blackberry hedge along the road, there was nothing but berries and thorns. Nothing hid in the shadows, waiting for her help. There was not even a single beetle trapped in a puddle of water.

Disoriented, the paper bird made another dizzy circle around her before disintegrating, fire eating away at it until it was nothing but ashes dusting the wild white roses.

Not a good sign.

She stood there for a moment as the clouds chased each other overhead, shadows moving over the long grass. She rubbed at the spot where her neck met her shoulder, where Aidan, of all people, had dragged his teeth and tongue. Had awakened a sharp desperation inside her that she could not have predicted, not with a thousand tarot cards, not without a thousand tea leaves. Not even with the soothsayer from Haven who sang his prophecies entirely unbidden, and mostly unwelcome. People spent a lot of time hiding in bushes or up trees when they saw him coming down the street.

She did not need his gifts of prophecy to know something was not right.

The feeling of Aidan crowding his big body against hers, the gentle drag of his nose, and the warmth of his breath had all been delicious. Those shivers had made her want to stretch like a cat in a beam of sunlight.

This frisson was nothing like that. It did not tickle; it prickled. It did not tease; it warned.

She hurried toward Nettlestone and was not at all comforted when not a single pigeon waited for her at the gatehouse where she left them crumbs daily.

But today the courtyard was empty, gleaming with sunlight. Quiet.

It raised another prickle across her skin.

Nettlestone Hall was many things: slightly run-down, messy, welcoming. Filled with baking bread. But never quiet.

Not unless something loomed, something threatened.

There ought to have been the barking of the rescued hunting hounds, the mewing of kittens, the screech of the phoenix who liked to perch near the gargoyles on the tower and preen his red feathers. Sometimes he attacked the blacksmith’s boy from Haven whom Sorcha had hired to deliver bread, just for his own entertainment. Opal, the donkey with iridescent feathers, unfortunate recipient of a little boy’s spell to turn her into a Pegasus, ought to have been braying. Even the Black Shuck was not snarling from the hills, demanding raw meat and scratches to his haunches.

Her only other warning was the flash of lavender eyes from a window above. Hecuba. She did not linger, as it was not safe, not with her understandable aversion to sunlight.

Definitely a warning.

But unfortunately, too late to do Sorcha any good. They really had to devise some new system.

Too late now.

It was some consolation that everyone else was already in hiding. Especially when a large man with flat, dead eyes came out of the shadows behind her. He was not as large as the Minotaur, but it was a close thing. And he was definitely meaner. It was there in the turn of his mouth, the dead flatness to his eyes. Aesop cradled kittens and fed wild sparrows. This man would use their bones as toothpicks.

It did not signify.

Sorcha had no intention of giving way.

Even if she was running hot and cold all over. The cut on her arm stung. As if in response, the mark on her throat throbbed.