Page 72 of Master Wolf

Alys made a guttural noise and Marguerite’s face softened briefly, then hardened again when she returned her gaze to Bainbridge.

She said, “I told you that I am my husband’s right hand, did I not?”

Bainbridge’s eyes were wide. “Yes,” he whispered.

She cocked her head to one side. “I lied.” A quick, mirthless smile. “He is not my husband. And I am not his right hand. He is mine. But some things I like to do myself.”

Drew saw the intention harden in her eyes.

“Mim, wait,” he said quickly, breaking the unsaid rule that he did not use that name. “You said—”

“That does not matter now,” Marguerite said. “For what he has done he will die. Now. No mercy. No time. No reprieve.”

She moved towards Bainbridge and he stepped back, stumbling over the tattered blanket he’d thrown so carelessly to the floor earlier

“Wait—” he stammered. “P-please!”

“You like to watch wolves change?” Marguerite asked, her voice dangerously pleasant. “Watch this. One last time.”

And with that, she shifted, leaping forwards in the same instant, one moment a woman, the next a wolf, roaring into her beast as she knocked Bainbridge to the stone floor and tore into his throat.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Bainbridge’s bodysprawled on the floor, like a puppet with its strings cut. His colourless eyes stared unseeingly at the damp stone ceiling. His red throat gaped.

Marguerite had already lost interest in him—she was padding across the cellar floor to Alys, who was now fully transformed and lying on her side, panting with exhaustion. Even as a wolf she was a poor-looking thing, a small, thin creature with bald patches and sores on her grey-brown coat. Marguerite was not a large wolf, but beside Alys she appeared big and sleek and dangerous, her white coat splattered with Bainbridge’s scarlet blood.

Settling down beside the smaller wolf, Marguerite gave a soft rumbling growl and Drew glanced away, feeling like an intruder. He glanced at Wynne, who was watching the two wolves with a strange expression, part wonder, part sadness.

“She found her,” he said softly. “She finally found Alys.”

The enormity of what had just happened began to dawn on Drew then. He had known about Alys, in an abstract sort of way, for a long time. Known that Marguerite was searching for her. But somehow he had never really considered what her circumstances might be. And Christ, they’d been wretched. In captivity for over two centuries, tormented and horribly abused. When he thought of how he’d have felt if it was Lindsay…

Christ.

“She’s in a terrible state,” Wynne said, interrupting his thoughts and Drew glanced at the two wolves again.

“Will she recover?” he asked softly.

“I have no idea,” Wynne said. “Though I could scry I supp—” He broke off, frowning and shook his head, as though trying to dislodge something.

“What is it?”

Wynne closed his eyes tightly, then opened them again. “I need—” He stopped, taking a deep breath and began again. “I feel a vision coming—you must find me a looking glass, Drew. Can you do that?”

Was Wynne about to have a vision about Alys?

Drew cast his mind back to when they first entered the house—he could not remember seeing a mirror, but surely there would be one somewhere. “Come upstairs,” he said. “I will find one and bring it to you.”

They mounted the cellar stairs together, leaving Marguerite and Alys—neither of whom spared them a glance—alone. When they reached the kitchen, Drew pressed Wynne into a chair at the big oak table. “Wait here.”

Wynne complied, nodding. His expression remained oddly distant as though his attention was fixed elsewhere.

Drew hurried back out into the hall where the corpse of a man lay sprawled. It wasn’t the manservant he’d seen earlier—he was presumably lying in a similar state somewhere upstairs—so it must be the second man Bainbridge had mentioned.

Ignoring the dead man, Drew began searching the house, going from room to room until he finally found a mirror hanging above the fireplace in a dusty, unused-looking dining room. Snatching it from the wall, he returned to the kitchen and set the glass down on the table in front of Wynne.

Wynne already seemed to be in a trancelike state, his gaze fixed on something that Drew could not see.