Page 31 of Master Wolf
Muir had paused outside one of the doors, and as he waited for them to reach his side, he sent Drew a brief disapproving look before turning to Marguerite and saying staunchly, “Madame, your feminine sensibilities do you much credit. No one would think any the less of you if you decided not to step inside this room. Indeed, if I may speak plainly, it would relieve my own mind if you decided not to do so. This is not, I think, a sight for feminine eyes.”
“You are very kind, Monsieur Muir,” Marguerite breathed, her voice husky with promise. “But I ’ave not come all this way to wait outside the door. It is reassuring though, to know you will understand if I—well, if I am a little overcome.”
“Of course, madame,” Muir assured her fervently. “The moment you need to leave, just say the word.”
“Merci,” she whispered, dark eyes wide with trepidation. Muir was practically a puddle on the floor.
He drew out a ring of keys, undoing two separate locks before turning to look gravely at Marguerite again. “Are you ready?” he asked gently.
“Of course we are,” Drew said with brisk impatience, while Marguerite nodded and set her shoulders with apparent determination.
“Very well, follow me.”
Muir opened the door slowly and carefully, revealing a small, crowded room, littered with boxes and chests and with one very large item in the middle of it—a table draped in a heavy grey cloth, the shape beneath it suggesting a human figure. For the first time since they’d arrived, Drew felt a genuine sense of unease. There was something—someone—under that cloth he’d never thought to see again. Or the remains of someone at least. A ruined man. One who had tried his best to kill Drew all those years ago.
Beside him, Marguerite let out a little whimper and clung to his arm, reminding him of the part he was to play. In turn, Drew urged her forward, his hand firm on her waist. “Come on, my dear,” he said his voice coaxing but impatient. “You didinsiston coming with me today, did you not?”
“All right, all right,” she said, letting some petulance creep into her tone. “But that’s because I ’ate it when you leave me alone at ’ome! You know that.”
Drew glanced at Muir and rolled his eyes, then said in a more indulgent tone. “I know, my darling. But now that wearehere, you understand that I want to have a proper look, don’t you? I can hardly acquire this exhibit without examining at it properly.”
She gazed at him with huge, accusing eyes before whispering tragically, “Oui, je comprends.”
“Good girl,” Drew said approvingly, patting her hand. “You can stand behind me if you prefer.” He noticed Muir surreptitiously watching them as Drew firmly disengaged Marguerite’s clinging fingers from his arm and stepped away from her to approach the table.
“Come on then, Muir,” Drew said, injecting a note of eager impatience into his voice. “Let’s see it.”
“But your wife…” Muir began hesitantly.
“My wife will be perfectly all right,” Drew said firmly. “Please proceed.”
Muir frowned unhappily but he pressed his lips together and reached for an edge of the cloth. Then, with a sweeping gesture, he pulled it off and it lifted like a sail caught by the wind, a brief curving billow before it dropped away, revealing what lay beneath.
At first all Drew saw was an old pile of bones.
They were brown, like fallen branches, damp and rotting. Drew stared, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, and then all at once he remembered what had happened to Cruikshank that night.
His memory was patchy—he’d already been dazed from a beating by the time Cruikshank transformed—but there were some pictures that had stuck in his memory. The awful, snarling, wreckedthingthat Cruikshank had turned into. A half-shifted monster, with a lopsided snout and a gruesome collection of ramshackle fangs. His eyes—his human eyes—bulging and panicked in that mangled canine skull.
Within minutes of his partial shift, Cruikshank had been dead. Within hours his body had been lying at the bottom of the Nor’loch, wrapped in a Turkish carpet.
Until now.
“What do you think?” Muir asked. “Have you ever seen anything like it before?”
“No, never,” Drew echoed weakly. In his mind’s eye, he saw Cruikshank launching himself forward, jaws snapping wildly, drool running down the sides of his obscenely stretched lips.
“My God!” Marguerite cried out behind them. “Whatisit? It’s ’orrible!”
Drew heard Muir going to her, murmuring words of explanation. He kept his own eyes fixed on those gruesome remains.
Again, his mind returned to the night of Cruikshank’s death—to Lindsay smashing Cruikshank’s misshapen skull against the polished wooden desk, over and over. Blood and brain spraying out from the violence of the attack.
That was the moment Drew had known Lindsay was trulyother. Even before the silver collar holding Lindsay’s beast trapped had been broken and Lindsay’s wolf had emerged in a single astonishing instant.
Behind Drew, Muir said, “Madame Niven needs to sit down. I shall take her into my office if that’s all right?”
Drew glanced over his shoulder. Marguerite was clinging to the young man’s arm. He had learned on the way over here that this was a favourite ruse used by Marguerite and Francis. Splitting them up—and splitting the attention of their companion—provided a useful opportunity to snoop. That Muir’s office was next door was serendipitous.