Page 29 of His Whispered Witch

Siobhan led her back down the hallway toward the front of the house and turned into the library. Penn felt a stirring of disappointment. She’d been in this room before. Aside from the Griffin grimoire in a locked case—a collection of written family spells now completely useless without a full coven—it looked like a fairly standard library.

Siobhan lay one finger aside her nose and winked as she put her hands around a silver carved statue of a wolf that, moments before, Penn thought was just a bookend.

The bookshelf swung toward them, and she leaped back. She didn’t know whether to be amused or afraid as they stepped through the door, and it swung seamlessly home, the bottom whispering over the carpet of the library.

This room was even smaller than the main library. It was stuffed with industrial metal shelves and nowhere to sit. Opposite the door, the shelves were all filled with books. They weren’t in nice, neat rows but piled on top of one another. The piles included looseleaf papers and even a couple of scrolls.

She turned in a circle and jumped when she saw the shelves next to the door, full of a variety of weapons.

“Holy shit,” she murmured.

“There’s not a safer house in the state,” Siobhan said seriously and caressed a metal spiked pole that looked like something out of the Middle Ages.

Penn turned away from the weapons and examined the rest of the shelves around the room. There was some kind of dark fabric piled on one of the side shelves, as well as other beakers and glass jars with waxed stoppers and illegible labels.

None of that was going to be useful to her. She didn’t want tohurthim. With fading hope, she turned back to the bookshelves. There were maybe a hundred titles. It wasn’t an immensecollection. It was only huge if you considered the topic and how much time it must have taken to collect all these.

“Can I look through these? Would that be okay?”

“Of course, my dear. It is just so great to see someone taking an interest! None of the next generation has shown any desire, or frankly, aptitude.”

Penn pulled a book off the shelves that looked vaguely old, which was confirmed by the nearly unreadable language. She opened the first chapter:Thou must immobilise Thy Beast before Thou appliest the hot oil.

She shut the book.

The next one she picked up was an instruction manual for some of the implements behind her, including the spike, which should be driven through the muzzle at a right angle.

She put that down too. She wanted Siobhan to leave, but the old woman just stood there looking vaguely pleased, and Penn didn’t dare ask her.

She picked up a new book on the nature of wolves, judging by the binding. She flipped to the front page and found a copyright from the 1850s. The title wasWerewolf Anatomy.

She flipped through it to reveal black and white printed drawings of various bits of wolf anatomy and how human anatomy interacted with it. That was fascinating to think about. How did they transform a hand into a paw?

She traced strings labeled “divine threads” that hooked from one elbow joint to the other. They weren’t actually that different. She sighed; Penn didn’t think divine threads were involved. She shut it when she found an entire chapter on their glowing red eyes.

She’d only glimpsed Asher’s wolf, but she was fairly sure she’d remember glowing eyes. He’d looked like a completely normal wolf to her, just big. Granted, she’d only seen a wolf ina zoo when she was a child, but she’d seen a ton of dogs in her time.

She remembered the alien presence within him and put the book back on the shelf. She turned to Siobhan. “You haven’t heard of a wolf and a snake together? Is that something that is recorded somewhere?”

The smile fell off Siobhan’s face, and Penn turned back to the bookshelf, trying to pass it off as idle curiosity.

“That is an abomination. Where did you hear of such a thing?”

“I didn’t. I just wondered why it’s all wolves all the time?”

She picked up another hand-bound book and immediately felt her magic tingle. She frowned down at the cover and gasped. They had another coven’sgrimoirecasually stuffed on their werewolf shelf. It couldn’t have been the Griffin grimoire. There was only one per family, and that was in the regular library.

Her hands went cold. Were they the kind of coven who had taken over someone else’s? She took a deep breath. No. There was no subjugated family in town. There were just random one-off witches, mostly found as children and taken in. Maybe one of them had come with their grimoire? But why put it in the werewolf room?

She kept her movements casual as she flipped it open, and Siobhan took a huge breath. “Those are the dire wolves.”

Penn’s heart stuttered, and she met Siobhan’s eyes.

“They are to be killed immediately. That evil unleashed on the world should never have happened.”

“Evil?”

“How do you even know about them? They’re extinct. What have you brought to our door?”

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