Page 6 of Hungry Like the Wolf

“Same time next week?” he asked. She hesitated for only a moment before remembering that Geoff was a much more pleasant meal than some of the random visitors who booked with her. She had no reason to refuse.

And so she didn’t, marking him down on her calendar simply as “Geoff,” wondering for the first time if that wasn’t his real name either.

“Have a good week, Donna,” he said before the screen went dark. Nadja flopped back in her own chair. She closed her eyes and let that almost full feeling wash over her before she stood and put on her ratty St. Ailbe University sweatshirt. She’d been wearing polar bear pajama pants on the bottom the entire time.

Curling up in her chair, Nadja opened the patronage app on her phone and clicked to RomanticallyRoberto’s profile, delighted to see that he had uploaded a new chapter of Sleepless in St. Giles, the story of a young man from the rookery who finds out that he’s the heir to an earldom and decides to find and marry his childhood sweetheart, who is working in a brothel.

She settled deeper into the chair and hit play.

CHAPTER 3

The bell above the door jingled as Robbie Cain stepped into The Siren’s Song, a local vintage shop owned by his friend, Jory. Esther MacLaren stood behind the counter, leaning on her forearms and staring at her phone with one hand while sipping what was undoubtedly an iced coffee through a metal straw.

He stood on the opposite side of the counter, enjoying how quiet the store was, how good it smelled. Jory had worked with a local candlemaker to develop a signature scent for The Siren’s Song.

“Hang on,” Esther said, not looking up. “I’m almost done with this level, and then we can get started.”

Esther and Robbie were taking care of the shop while Jory gallivanted around Scotland with her husband, Callum, Robbie’s best friend and roommate. The cabin had been so quiet, and Robbie missed him. It was hard to resent them for taking a long vacation, though. Not when they’d found each other after nearly nine hundred years apart.

Time was a weird thing when you were friends with vampires and selkies.

Robbie fished into his hoodie pocket and pulled out a tiny, canary yellow creature that looked very much like a dandelion head. His name was Walter, and he was a Brightling Beetle, a species that Robbie would never have believed existed until he was attacked by one. Walter belonged to Magda Nutter, an older woman in town who was, at the very least, a powerful witch and, more likely, some sort of minor goddess. That was one mystery he’d accepted he’d probably never solve.

Magda had asked Robbie to keep Walter for her for a few weeks while she “worked on some projects,” whatever that meant, and hadn’t given him any room to refuse. It wasn’t a hard job, but Robbie couldn’t help but feel like Walter was keeping tabs on him for Magda.

Walter bumbled off of Robbie’s hand and landed on Esther’s wrist, rubbing his tiny face against the thick cable knit of her sweater sleeve.

“Almost done,” Esther said, her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth in concentration. “Almost… Almost… Almost… Okay, done.” She dropped her phone to the counter and looked up. “Fuck. You got bangs.”

Robbie rubbed his hand over his newly shaved head.

“What?”

She tipped her chin at the top of his head and took a long drag from her straw. In her syrupy thick southern accent, she said, “Well, sometimes when a girl is having an emotional crisis and doesn’t have a good group chat, she’ll go get bangs thinking they’ll solve the problem.”

“And do they?” he asked, feeling a blush rising up his neck.

Her laugh was a rifle shot in the otherwise quiet store, the pre-dawn light filtering through the front windows and the antique green glass lamp on the register counter burnishing Esther’s curls to an otherworldly red. “Never.”

She was right, of course. He’d shaved it the night before in a moment of genius that had felt so very inspired. But it hadn’t made him feel any less anxious than any of the other things he’d tried over the past few weeks. He’d done yoga—or attempted it, anyway. He’d meditated, done breathing exercises, counted, and “practiced mindfulness,” whatever that meant. He’d walked. He’d masturbated. He’d abstained. He’d masturbated some more. He’d even tried crocheting when their friend, Niamh, had suggested that keeping his hands busy might keep his mind busy, too.

It hadn’t worked. He was still anxious but now also in possession of a too-long scarf in a color he hated.

Esther stared at him in that uncanny way of hers.

“What?” he asked, feeling like a bug under a microscope.

She bit her lip and reached for the tarot deck she kept below the counter.

“Don’t,” he blurted.

“But—”

“I don’t wanna know,” he said, dropping to his forearms on the counter and hanging his head.

Esther rubbed her hand over the shaved back of his head. “So soft!”

He smiled in spite of himself. Walter landed clumsily next to Robbie’s hand and nuzzled him. He sighed.