Page 79 of A Lady’s Guide to Werewolves

“Then why?”

There was no one around, only the watchful gargoyles and a rat scurrying past, whiskers twitching a hello, but Sorcha lowered her voice. “You’re searching for wolf teeth, aren’t you?”

“Among other things, yes.”

“And have you tried searching the Museum of Teeth?”

He halted, truly horrified. “There’s a Museum of Teeth?”

“There’s a museum of everything. Shoes, spoons. Evil-eye charms. Dolls.”

He shuddered. “Dolls?”

“Yes,” she replied cheerfully. “It’s extraordinarily creepy.”

The Museum of Teeth was both as disturbing as it sounded and somehow also stunningly mundane. It was set in the upper level of a narrow building, also home to a shop that sold pasties stuffed with potatoes and onions. The stairwell smelled like damp and fennel from a hundred small charms. A moth fluttered wearily, trapped inside the oil lamp in the hall. When it emerged and crawled onto Sorcha’s knuckle, she noticed its wing, papery and thin.

“Poor thing—you can’t fly well, can you?” she whispered. “I’ll take you home. You can rest by the lights in the barn. Nimue likes moths.” She settled it gently on her hair, where it sat in a twist at her nape. “You just sit there for a bit.”

Aidan watched her with an amused half-smile.

“It’s injured,” she explained. What must he think of her, wearing insects like hairpins. Ah well, it was unlikely to be the oddest thing she did that day. That hour, even. She was taking him to a Museum of Teeth, after all.

The front part of the museum was remarkably well cared for, with sparkling glass-fronted cabinets where teeth sat on velvet boxes with descriptions in faded brown ink: tooth of a rabbit, tooth belonging to a kelpie. There was even a tooth taller than her, purporting to have once belonged to a kraken. It still looked sharp. The deeper one dared to venture into the museum, the more cluttered the exhibits, and the dustier. There were a surprisingly great many teeth on display, most with magical properties as well as historical or natural significance.

And, equally surprising, Sorcha and Aidan were not the only patrons.

The equinox brought magical tourists from all over England as well as the local island witches looking for a holiday. And teeth were apparently deeply interesting to a little girl, barely seven years old, currently marching through the aisles, her face pinched in serious contemplation. She spotted Sorcha and Aidan. “Did you know that mermaids have twice as many teeth as wolves?”

Aidan smiled, hiding his own wolf teeth. “I did not know that, actually. Thank you.”

She nodded, like a small, solemn professor meeting a peer in the halls of the University. “Papa, may I have a strawberry tart? The ones with the teeth made from frosting?”

“Another one?” her father asked.

“I like to bite it before it can bite me. Since you said I wasn’t allowed to bite anyone anymore,” she grumbled, stomping away. The pink ribbons on the back of her dress fluttered. Her father chuckled, looking only a little bemused.

“Is she a wolf?” Sorcha whispered to Aidan.

“No, but she ought to be,” he whispered back. “And she was right about the mermaids.”

“Welcome,” a heavyset older gentleman said, emerging from between two cabinets.

“Good afternoon,” Sorcha returned.

“I’m Barnabus, the proprietor of this fine establishment.”

Sorcha was fascinated by the fluid and immediate change in Aidan’s demeanor. He was still taller and more muscled than anyone in the vicinity, still tattooed and scarred. But he was also contemplative, a furrow of serious thought between his brows, with a sort of befuddled amiability. The light glinted off his spectacles, the tousled brown curls. And he was suddenly holding a book bound in old leather, faded and clasped with brass hinges. And a pencil. Where had it even come from?

“You have a very unique collection,” he said to Barnabus.

“Museums don’t have to be stuffy old things, now do they?”

“Certainly not,” Sorcha agreed. Aidan, she noted, did not.

It wasn’t a museum so much as a carnival exhibit that stayed still instead of moving from fair to fair. Along with the exhibits and the bakery treats, there were trinkets and gifts for purchase. A row of small paintings showed the trapped images of krakens and spectral dogs, clacking their formidable teeth together. There was an imp in a scrolled birdcage, blue skinned and black eyed, with leathery wings that sparkled. Next to him, a framed notice: Imp bites cure impotence. One guinea per bite.

She frowned and sent him a question. She received several images and slightly sinister cackling: he had the key—fresh apples in the morning, wine in the evenings. And he liked to bite people.