A laugh barked out of her. When a nearby man frowned at her, she covered her mouth to muffle the noise. When she could speak again, she said, “No, I didn’t know.”

“You don’t have werewolves in the States, do you?”

Lifting one shoulder, she replied, “I don’t know, we might. I don’t know of any. If we do, they aren’t prevalent enough to reach the news. The only wolves I know of are Wyr shapeshifters, which isn’t the same thing.” She paused, frowning. “I guess I shouldn’t take anything for granted. What do you mean when you say ‘werewolf’? Are we talking about the same thing?”

“I mean lycanthropy, a virus. It was why I was so worried about your being bitten. A victim who has been bitten has only a short window of time to get treatment before the virus becomes irreversible.” He shifted closer to her and said in a low voice, “Those weren’t just normal werewolves that attacked the pub.”

That was another unwelcome set of concepts. There was such a thing as normal werewolves? And abnormal ones?

Sophie watched his mouth as he shaped his words. Really, he had the sexiest mouth she had ever seen.

Fascinated and feeling as if she had stepped into a strange dream, she murmured, “How could you tell?”

“Werewolves by law are required to register with the National Health Service and cage themselves during the full moon. There are public cages available for those who don’t have the ability to build one for themselves. Those that don’t cage themselves run wild. They’re undisciplined and chaotic, like rabid dogs, and they hunt down animals to feed on—rabbits, deer, unwary humans. They don’t break into houses to attack people.” He set his mug beside hers. “The ones that broke into the pub here did so for a reason. They were acting under orders, which means they were the Queen’s Hounds.”

Under the blanket, the monkey was shivering. She put her head in her hands and said telepathically, Isabeau has a legion of werewolves?

Yes, but her werewolves don’t need the full moon in order to change. They can change at will, and they band together and strategize. Gawain believes they can telepathize even in their bestial form. He paused. That means either her Hounds were searching for Robin, or they were searching for me. Since we killed all of them, we can hope that nobody else has become aware of your presence yet. Switching to verbal speech, he said softly, “You still have time to back out and go home.”

“LA isn’t my home,” she muttered. “It’s just a place where I stayed for a while.”

Lifting the edge of the blanket, she looked at the creature nestled inside. Large dark eyes watched her from the deep shadow. The filmy cloudiness had vanished, and he watched her with sharp intelligence. She noticed his skewed eye had straightened. If that could heal, it must have been damage he sustained in captivity.

With a gentle finger, she urged him to open his mouth, and he did so obligingly. A new bud of flesh had appeared at the stump at the base of his mouth. He was regrowing his tongue. He was still too thin, and he needed a series of meals to correct that, but he was healing. Maybe as he recovered he would begin to speak again.

Watching her, Nikolas said, “You’re not going to leave, are you?”

“Nope,” she said. “Although I’m going to leave here.”

Setting the monkey on the ground, she pushed stiffly to her feet. Now that the battle was over, she was beginning to feel every bruise and ache. Sharp pain radiated out from her weak side, and somehow her shoulder had gotten wrenched. She wrapped her arm around her torso protectively.

The tea had given her a small boost of energy, but heavy exhaustion dragged at her, and she knew she had a limited amount of time before she had to go horizontal.

Nikolas had straightened to his full height when she had, and he was watching her sharply. He took a step closer until she could sense his body heat along one side of her body. “You said you weren’t bitten, but you were hurt, weren’t you?”

“Soft tissue stuff,” she said in brief reply. “I strained old injuries. I’ll be okay, but I need your help. Would you carry my luggage down to the car? I can’t stay here.”

“Of course you can’t. Let’s go get your things.”

The police had the front of the building cordoned off, so they walked together around to the back entrance. Maggie broke away from her husband and a cluster of neighbors to hurry over to them. “I can’t thank you enough for what you did,” she said to them. She looked at Sophie. “You risked your life to save mine.”

Guilt gnawed at Sophie, much like the corrosive spell. If she and Robin hadn’t been at the pub to begin with, the attack would never have happened. She met Nikolas’s eyes and saw a dark understanding. Then she turned to Maggie. “I’m glad there was something I could do. I can’t stay here tonight, so I’ll get my things.”

“Of course you can’t, love, but where will you go at this time of night?”

“I’ll go ahead and go to the cottage.”

Maggie’s expression creased. “It’ll be cold, and the bed will be unmade, and you won’t have any supplies with you. And I don’t like how isolated that old moldy place is.”

“It’s all right,” Sophie told her. “It doesn’t matter. I like isolation. It’ll be a roof over my head, and I can get groceries in the morning.”

“I’ll stay with her,” Nikolas told the other woman. “She won’t be alone.”