Page 64 of A Lady’s Guide to Werewolves

“He’s a beast.” Granny sniffed.

“A sad beast.”

“Hmph. Sad beasts are cheaper to feed, I am sure.”

“Granny!”

“Oh, very well. Sell the jade snuffbox there instead. Lady Winthorpe has always coveted it. And if you tell her Lord Gorse wants it, she’ll double the price.”

“Thank you, Granny.”

Granny vanished with a decidedly cantankerous “Hmph.”

“Does that happen a lot?” Aidan asked quietly, taking the jade-inlaid snuffbox from her and adding it to his pack.

“What? Haggling with Granny? Daily.”

“Selling off your family heirlooms to feed your wee beasties.”

“Mostly I sell bread.” He raised an eyebrow. She wrinkled her nose. “Very well, yes, and the occasional heirloom. Of which there are few. Do you know what unicorns eat?”

He grunted. “Anything.”

“That may be true for the other unicorns, but Nimue is very particular.”

“She’s clever, you mean. Wrapping you around her iron hoof.”

“She has nightmares and is afraid of the dark,” Sorcha said softly. “That’s why we keep the oil lamps burning in the courtyard, and the firefly lights. Those cost a fortune too.”

“I see.”

“What do you see?”

He half smiled that serious and faintly amused smile he seemed to reserve for her. “You.”

Aidan wandered toward the window where the view showed the hills, the road down to Hallow, the gray rooftops, and the sea churning beyond. A glass bottle with cut daisies caught the sunlight. He let his gaze soften, his senses wake. The threads of old spells glittered throughout the room: a charm to keep guests from pilfering the silver, a spell to attract a suitor, magic to keep the crack in the upper corner of the window from growing. A few were over a hundred years old, barely gleaming. One of them smelled like pepper.

He found one that was promising and followed it to a sewing basket by the settee. He plucked a small silver hand mirror decorated with seashells from under packets of sewing thread.

“I’d forgotten that was there,” Sorcha said. “Granny hid it there when my grandfather’s brother insisted on visiting. He snooped through everything.”

It sparkled with threads of magic. “It’s been charmed to let you speak to a mermaid.”

“Yes, my grandfather was obsessed. And he hated that this house came to Granny and he couldn’t touch it. She liked to hide his favorite things, and his brother knew it.”

Aidan made a note to remember that the women of Sorcha’s family believed in their own forms of justice.

He followed another glimmer to a large opal shaped like an egg. “This one is a spell to talk to the pigeons.”

Sorcha smiled. “Granny did not like being left out of conversations.”

“The spell might fetch something, but the opal itself would feed a family for several months.”

She brightened. “Will it, really?”

“Not a Lycan family, mind,” he added. Something else glimmered, calling him from upstairs. The thread was green as ivy leaves. It smelled like spring, like new leaves and lilac petals and wild strawberries. With a hint of wolfsbane and holly berry. Curious.

He stalked after the thread, past a tapestry from the time of Queen Elizabeth and edged with bewitched silver beads, past a marble-topped table with lion’s feet, past silk brocade wallpaper frayed by kitten claws. He turned left and pushed open a heavy oak door.