Page 17 of A Lady’s Guide to Werewolves

He watched her all the way up the path, turning to bound away only after she took the fork that led into Hallow. Even as she walked home, she thought she saw his shadow.

She decided she deserved a pot of chocolate. Or a bottle of wine. Both.

One day…one day she would burn the pits to the ground entirely, not just its stables.

But not tonight. Tonight she limped home, with a sore shoulder and a wrenched knee, stinking of smoke.

And it was worth it.

It wasn’t until she reached Nettlestone that she realized there was blood dripping down her fingers from a deep scratch on her arm. It immediately began to sting when she noticed it.

“You smell…unpleasant,” Hecuba informed her as she detached from the shadows. She was medium height, medium build, medium everything. The camouflage of a truly ancient predator. She might have been quite forgettable if it weren’t for the gleam of lavender eyes, the ostentatious embroidery of her dress, all magenta lilies and leaping white deer. The tumble of pale, pale hair.

Oh, and the fact that she was a vampire.

“Thanks very much.” Sorcha made a face. Hecuba had moved into the house last year when Sorcha found her hiding under a dolmen, nearly skeletal with hunger. She had never said what or who had driven her there. When she’d tried to glamour Sorcha into offering her neck, Sorcha sent a hawk diving at her eyeballs. And thus a friendship was born.

“Where have you been?” Hecuba demanded, fangs flashing. She had never fully regained the reliable use of her knee, and there were still scars across her collarbones. Scarring a vampire was a very difficult thing to do.

“Dancing a quadrille,” Sorcha replied drily.

“In a gutter?”

“Something like that.”

Hecuba lifted a lace handkerchief to her nose. She was the most fastidious vampire Sorcha had ever met. “Well, you’re safe from me. Even the smell of your blood is not enough to tempt me through the mud and sweat and wet dog? And…is that fish scales?”

Sorcha shrugged wearily. “Very possibly.”

Hecuba gagged dramatically. “Have someone clean you up properly, crumpet. I’ll never get to sleep with that odor wafting through the manor.”

“You once drank from Jenny Greenteeth.” Jenny Greenteeth was a swamp spirit who smelled exactly as one would imagine a swamp spirit to smell. Which was: not good.

“She was perfectly willing.” Hecuba shuddered. “But now you truly understand how noxious you smell.”

“I thought you were a fine lady,” Aesop chided softly as he met them in the hall. There was a kitten curled up asleep on one massive shoulder. He was carrying a bowl of warm water and clean cloths. Clearly he had smelled Sorcha’s approach as well.

Hecuba snorted, unrepentant. “Yes, but I am a fine lady who also happens to possess a functional nose.”