Page 11 of A Lady’s Guide to Werewolves

Avoiding one curator in particular.

She could have been warm and dry in her own home.

Instead, thorns and mud and her familiar growing increasingly more anxious as he circled over her, feathers glowing fitfully, which was concerning. Elderberry was not the anxious sort.

The rain, though it tickled as it dripped off her nose and was already squelching underfoot, was helpful. It would cover the sounds of her running, the clang of chains hopefully being broken. But it also tattered her paper birds and tore them into pieces. A tiny gargoyle launched off the tower and gobbled up the errant magic that remained. His little stone belly instantly bloated, round as a plum.

But the spell had done its work. The birds had led her here, the temporary location of the fighting pits. They had never led her astray. She had used them to find countless animals, abandoned baby deer, a wounded fox, a donkey kept tied up outside in a storm. A Minotaur, a Black Shuck, a unicorn.

And now: the fighting pits of the Cauldron.

She did not know exactly what she would find there. She never did.

Elderberry gave a single, sharp cry: Get moving.

Sorcha got moving. When your familiar gave such an order, you followed it even if you had not obeyed an order of any kind in some years. She kept low, darting from the hedges to a wind-worn oak tree with wide branches curving over what remained of an outer wall, choked with white roses. This had been a rather grand castle once, with a courtyard large enough for a variety of outbuildings: blacksmith, brewhouse, bakehouse, chapel, stables. The bones remained, rotting wood, broken roof tiles, posts. And on one side, the main castle keep, where the sounds of the fights slipped through the arrow-slit windows. Grunts of pain, raucous cheering. Torchlight flickered under the rain.

Sorcha clambered over the broken portion of the wall where Elderberry had led her, the stones mossy and slick. She wrenched her knee slightly when she landed, but it was nothing she was not used to. She pulled up the hood of her cloak to shadow her face and cast the spell. There was a guard, but he was leaning in the archway into the keep, more interested in the fight going on inside. No one was mad enough to sneak up on the pits.

She knew exactly what he was looking at: magical ropes portioning off the fighting area, sigils painted on the ground to keep the monsters in—or out, as the case may be. The real monsters were the bookmakers who accepted wagers, the trainers who captured the animals and magical creatures forced to fight. The Collector who oversaw it all.

Sorcha stayed low, crossing the uneven ground of the courtyard toward the stables. Mud spattered up her legs. She shimmied up the sturdiest post she could find, splinters digging into her hands. The roof, once thickly thatched, was pockmarked with holes, which suited her purpose, if also making her progress slow. And dangerous. She slipped, her elbow smashing down into a rotting crossbeam. It creaked, sending bits of thatch and rain down into the stables. “What the bloody hell?” someone barked below her.

She froze, rain running into her mouth.

When no one stabbed a pitchfork up through the roof or sent their familiar to investigate, she inched forward. Familiars were as unpredictable as the witches they served. Served was the wrong word, at least for Elderberry. Assisted, maybe. A connection to and a representation of your magic. And a partner in crime, definitely.

Sorcha finally found what she was searching for: a hole large enough to wiggle through. With a little help, it would also be large enough to fit a Minotaur or a wolf shifter or a bear. She really had no idea who or what was down there. Competitors did not survive long in these matches. Aesop’s missing eye and Simon’s leg were proof enough of that.

She tore at the thatch, breaking her nails, scratching her skin even with the help of the dagger at her belt. It was foolish enough to come alone, so she had tried to arm herself as best as she could. Despite the opinions of certain people in her life. And her grandmother’s sartorial advice.

Someone stirred below her and looked up, a large, green, otherworldly eye fixing on her. She pressed her finger to her lips. It blinked at her. Since there was no cry of alarm to give her away, she took it as a good sign. Still, best not to linger.

Magic tingled through the witch knot of her scraped hand. But as communication with birds and winged creatures was Sorcha’s natural magic, her current work did not affect it much. Just a reminder that nothing was free, not even magic.

But the extra spell to keep her balance on walls and rooftops, on the other hand, made her taste boiled turnips on the back of her tongue.

She hated boiled turnips.

Come out now, if you please. She sent the request to the wasps sleeping in the corner of the stables. There were always wasp nests in abandoned stables. I’ve brought you some lovely sweetwater, she added. It seemed only fair. A little sugar in water or a spoonful of honey was a small price for their cooperation.

There was a yelp when the wasps agreed to Sorcha’s plan. A very strangled yelp.

The sound of scuffling, buzzing, another yelp.

And then the door burst open and the stable master, for lack of a better term, charged out of the stables. He was a very large man, with no hair at all and muscles the size of ham hocks. He was rather brutal looking. Or he might have been if there weren’t currently a swarm of wasps surrounding him like a black cloud. They stung his head, his hands, his backside. There was little more unnerving than a sudden, calculated swarm of wasps. It worked every time.

He kept running, shouting, eyes wide. He did not see her flattened on the roof, would not have thought to look up. He batted at himself as blood stained his shirt. Sorcha heard one of the wasps make a sound in her head that could only be described as a laugh. She waited one more breath to make sure he would not run back in her direction, watching him tear into the darkness before she lowered herself down through the roof.

She landed in a pile of hay that smelled questionable.

It could have been so much worse. She had once landed in a river that belonged to a Shellycoat. Shellycoats enjoyed eating berries, skipping stones, and murdering uninvited guests by ripping them apart with their horselike teeth. Or by drowning. In varying orders. Sorcha had lost a boot, the hem of her dress, and the end of her braid. But she had managed to climb back onto the shore, shouting obscenities all the while. She hadn’t taken it personally. A Shellycoat was a Shellycoat and did what Shellycoats did by nature. There was no use expecting them to act like a spoiled house pet who napped in the kitchen window.

But what the witches here did to the animals and magical beings they trapped was not natural.

And so Sorcha held a grudge. A violent one.

And she was not sorry about it, despite a great many lectures on the virtues of forgiveness from a great many vicars and governesses throughout her childhood.