Page 11 of Isabel and the Werewolf Beast

I hauled in a breath. At least her hands didn’t disappear through her body. “Will that happen to me?”

“Only one way to find out.” A hint of fang peeked through her lips as a small smile graced her face.

Even with the implied threat of death, I still said, “I think I’ll stay out here.”

She tilted her head to the side. “I didn’t take you for a coward.”

I bared my teeth, showing her I wasn’t as placid and helpless as she kept treating me. Dammit, I was a werewolf. “I’m no coward.”

“Right.” She turned and walked, no, glided up the stairs of the castle. “I guess you don’t want to see the castle and all the hidden treasures?”

“What sort of treasures?”

I tilted forward on my toes, my head almost passing through the doorway, but the fear of turning into a ghost kept me outside. I’d already turned into a werewolf. Now there was the possibility of becoming an apparition. What would that mean?

“This and that. Imagine what an old vampire can collect…” Her teasing voice trailed off as she disappeared on the first-floor landing.

I glanced back over my shoulder. My neck strained as the tension radiating through me increased tenfold. I’d explore the castle grounds, as I hadn’t turned into a ghost out here. Surely that meant it was safe. There were sure to be hidden treasures outside too, but the vampire lured me to her with her words and her body. Not to mention her sultry voice. And the beast inside me longed to follow her.

A door creaked open somewhere inside the castle. Where did she go? What was she doing? The temptation to know was too much. Curiosity was always my weakness. My undoing. I hauled in a breath, my chest expanding even more in my beastly form. I held my breath. Should I? Shouldn’t I? I walked into the castle. Pausing inside the entryway, I lifted my hands and held them in front of my face. My body was still solid and not translucent like Isabel’s. Curiouser and curiouser. Why would whatever turned her into a ghost not turn me into a ghost? I walked across the parquetry flooring, which once would have shone in a way it didn’t now. A layer of dust coated the floor, but Isabel’s footprints weren’t in the dust. A tall column rose from the bottom of the staircase. I walked up the first step and then turned back around. My footprints lined the dust. Whatever this curse was, it didn’t seem to affect me like it had Isabel.

Taking each step at a time, I checked for footprints in the dust, and sure enough, I still left them. I ran a finger over the banister and examined the layer of grime on my fingertip. How long had Isabel been stuck in this curse? A long time going by the thickness of the dust. I approached the landing and paused, listening forany sounds of movement. When none arose, I walked along the hallway. Each door was closed, an ornate doorhandle the focal point in the carved wood, but I’d heard Isabel open a door and not close it so she wasn’t in any of these rooms and I had the innate desire to ask her more questions.

Questions she probably wouldn’t answer yet again, but the hunger, the longing to learn everything about this place, about her, pounded inside my head. Perhaps it was the way our parents left us when we were young, the unanswered questions they’d left me with, why they’d left us that made me this way.

I found an open doorway, the heavy white wooden door splayed open to the room inside. My footsteps carried me inside. My heart pounded with excitement.

“Interesting,” Isabel said, gliding to my side in her ghostly, ethereal way. “Your heart is beating fast suddenly. Why?”

My gaze couldn’t stay still. It scanned every white wall, trying to take in all the leather-bound books on the white timber bookshelves. The ceiling was so high that there was a wrought-iron black ladder on a rail to the bookshelves. In my werewolf form, I’d climb those shelves, but that would be sacrilege to damage them.

“This library,” I said, a small amount of drool built in my mouth like I was a starving animal and hungry for the feast before me.

“You like?”

“Love.” I wandered over to the closest shelf and tilted my head to read the titles on the spines.

Vampire Lore. The World of Witchcraft. Sorcery and Scandal. Werewolves and Mayhem. Careful of my claws, I slid that one from the shelf. Knowledge, so much knowledge at the tips of my fingers waiting for me to find the answers to so many questions in my mind.

“Where did you get all these?”

“Various places. Some were gifts. Others I stole.”

I flicked open the book, the yellow pages crackled as I thumbed them open, the ink of the words a tad faded as though many years had passed since the book was written. “Stole? You couldn’t buy them?”

She laughed. “Oh, to be so young and innocent. Books like these, one does not buy.”

“I’m not young.” I scowled, dragging my gaze away from the book with a reluctance to let it go.

Her eyebrow quirked in question as she asked, “Tell me then, how old are you?”

“I’m thirty.”

“How many of those long thirty years have you spent as a werewolf?” she drawled.

“Two,” I admitted. Two long years of being this beast. After two years of struggling to accept this new version of myself, but then I’d never really accepted who I was before Asher bit me and turned me into this beastly version of myself.

“See, young. You’ve been immortal for two years. It’s baby terms.” Her voice was light and airy, but there was a heaviness to it that made me want to know how long she’d been a vampire.

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