Page 20 of A Lady’s Guide to Werewolves

Sweet tooth or no, Pippa had atrocious taste in candy. “Vile.” Sorcha stuck out her tongue. “And never mind Aidan—a very nice, giant wolf saved my life just a few hours later. I suppose I ought to focus on that?”

Pippa frowned. “Sorcha Beauregard, not again.”

Sorcha lifted her chin stubbornly. “I had to. You know what the Cauldron is like. And now I need every book you have on the Lycan. In case I want to resurrect my neglected penmanship and send a thank-you note.”

Pippa raised an eyebrow. “There’s an entire wing dedicated to the Lycan. Three thousand and seventeen books at last count.”

“Oh.”

“Seven hundred and three chapbooks.”

“I see.”

“And a truly staggering number of poems. Some of them quite atrocious.”

“You’ve made your point.”

“Give me every book on the Lycan,” Pippa muttered, indignant.

Sorcha scratched at her arm absently. The cut was still red. Had the ogre gotten her? An accidental crow swipe? It might have been a kitten, for all she knew. Kitten scratches were the devil. “Ouch.”

“I’ve chamomile and comfrey ointment for that,” Pippa said, passing her a small amber jar. “Briar made it. It works wonders on paper cuts and knife slips from sharpening pen nibs.”

“Don’t you have apprentices for that?”

“Yes, but…”

“You’re better at it.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I suppose.”

“And the hoity-toity professors refuse to be served by anyone else.”

“Oh, hush.”

“I knew it. You are entirely too kind. I rescued a snake last week from a shop that was not caring for her properly.”

“Stole a snake, you mean.”

“Pish. I could lend her to you. She’s very gentle, but she does have those fangs.”

“No, thank you,” Pippa replied firmly.

“Think of how disgusted Professor Marwick would be to find a snake in his desk.” The professor had been making Pippa miserable for years, from nearly the first day she had set foot on campus as a student.

“Tempting, but no.”

As if summoned, three assistant professors rang the bell at the desk, where it hung from a gilded tree branch. “Hello?” one of them called impatiently.

With gargoyles watching your every step and ivy tendrils plucking at your clothes if you were too careless with the books, the Library represented everything that was Hallow. Study, diligence, wisdom. But also impatience, ego, a certainty that if you did not have the answers, you at least had the only questions worth asking.

The Library was a thing of beauty in a town already known for its devotion to art and architecture and witching history. Ogma, inventor of the Celtic script ogham, welcomed visitors out in the courtyard.

To walk over the threshold was to walk into the kind of sacred silence usually found in old churches and ancient stone circles. It was healing. Vehemently protected.

There was no one more vicious than a witch librarian of Hallow.

They were known to turn disrespectful patrons into toads. A coat rack. A particularly ugly brass statue of a duck. There was rumor that an entire family lineage was rendered mute when one refused to lower his voice in the quiet area. He had frightened a book on hexes. The book had not responded well. Which had annoyed the librarians.