She jerked up to meet the threat, teeth bared, and froze. Her legs were long and smooth. Her claws were round, flat little moons.
Human. They were human legs. And the smell, the not-fox smell—it was her. Emma. Human. Not fox.
“Can you hear me, girl?”
Two faces loomed above her. Tired faces with silvery pelts.Hair,she reminded herself. The speaker, a woman, had one eye covered with a patch. The man beside her had a dandelion’s head of white hair and a faraway smile.
Emma pushed herself up to face the strangers. Cool air brushed her gums. Her lips had curled back, baring her teeth. A growl tunneled up from her throat.
“Very nice. But as I’ve no use for flummery, I’d rather you stopped making a fuss in the street.”
Emma’s growl faltered and died in her throat.
The cold, hard surface beneath her was indeed a cobbled street. She looked up from it to a row of crooked cottages. The door of one stood open, and the glow from inside spilled onto the street. Warmth. Emma unconsciously stretched for it. Her skin was almost numb, she realized. The air around them was sharp with cold.
“You’re half-frozen, girl, and no wonder,” the woman said gruffly. “Dressed like that. Come in, we’ll get you properly clothed.”
Emma ran her hands down her arms. Her sleeves were a tapestry of rips and mildew.This must have once been a pretty dress,she thought. Soft and black and clinging. Now it was a mess of threads, as though someone had been crawling through dirty streets in it for a long time. It seemed familiar, but she had no memory of putting it on. Icy air lanced through the rips in the fabric, and shivers shook her. Warm. She needed to get warm. Perhaps then she might remember.
Emma lurched to her strange, unclawed feet. The moment she rested her weight on them, she pitched forward. Her face collided with a domed stomach in a waistcoat. Knotted hands set her on her feet and held her until she could stand. Those hands. She knew them. Her mind flooded with memories.
“You’re—” Her voice emerged from her chest in a creaky whisper, like a rake through leaves. She tried again.
“You,” she said carefully. “You work at the Library.”
The old man nodded.
Emma continued, more confident with every word. “You were the librarian who helped me that day. You gave me—a drawing. Of an eye. You warned me about…”
But her memory became hazy at that point—what was it hehad warned her about?—so Emma switched hurriedly to the old woman. Her eye patch was familiar.
“And you… work at reception in the Library. You came over once to tell me to be quiet.”
“You were right, Henry.” The woman’s voice was grim. “Come, we must get her inside. There may still be time.”
The old man gestured to the house with the open door. Emma followed him, stumbling on the cobbles. Her feet were bare and blanched with cold.
Inside, a fire crackled merrily in the grate. Everywhere else, from the whitewashed walls to the battered rug, was given over to books. A thread of open floor wound through the maze of footstools and hardbacks.
The woman shut the door behind them. She inspected Emma. “You’re pale, girl. Henry, some brandy, if you please. We’ve much to tell her and no time for fainting fits.”
Emma sank onto a footstool, fingers tangling around a glass of brandy she didn’t want.
“Drink up. My brother’s brandy collection is well worth the while, you know.”
The old man chuckled assent.
“Your brother?” Emma coughed, brandy burning a trail down her throat.
“Yes. He is the Librarian. I am his sister. Have you a name?”
“It’s Emma.” There had been a second part, surely. She almost had it, it was—“Curran. I am Emma Curran.”
Of course she was. She was Emma Curran. That wasn’t the kind of thing a person forgot.
Except she had.
A storm broke in her head. What was she doing there? Why couldn’t she remember? Tangling her mind, the strange dream that she had been—not human. Emma began to tremble. She still felt, at every nerve ending, strange impulses she was sure hadn’t been there before. A second self, a beast, a—
