Chapter 2

Pippa's POV

I go straight home. Ignoring the beautifully paved path that leads to the rectory, and from there to my flat, I take a shortcut through the woods that I know better than my own body. I don’t even have to look where I’m going. I’ve worn out my own path over the years and can find it blindfolded in the middle of the night.

I run out of the woods, and into Father Joseph who is out for a morning stroll. I don’t like him very much. He’s kind of cold and uppity, but his presence does reassure me. “Morning, girl,” he grumbles. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“I am sick, Father,” I say. “I will go back after Mass.”

He looks me up and down. “You do look a little feverish. Don’t come to the rectory if you’re just going to spread your germs around, you hear?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Go home, rest, eat some chicken soup.”

“Yes, Father.” I look over my shoulder into the woods, but can’t see anything in the shadows. “Have a good walk, Father,” I say and jog past him to my flat.

The church grounds are expansive, more so than most. We have an orphanage, where I grew up, a small school, a convent, a massive rectory where all our priests live, a park where we host picnics and such for the parishioners, a charity shop, and a food bank. The whole town is built around the church, and there are always people coming and going.

But not today. Today, the bad weather is keeping everyone inside. For the first time in my life, I wish there were more people around. I feel totally alone and completely exposed until I reach my flat. I take one last look around, then go up the short walk to my ground-floor apartment.

There are only three other flats, and just the one directly above mine is currently occupied. It belongs to Owen, the custodian, and he’s never home. He leaves early and comes home late. I only see him at church once or twice a month.

I lock the door behind me and slide down it to the floor. I run the conversation between the two men in the cemetery over and over in my head. Werewolves. Werewolves can’t go into human churches.

No. I shake my head. Either I misheard, misunderstood, or they are on drugs. There are no such things as werewolves, if there were, someone would have found them by now.

Putting the incident out of my mind, I finally get back to my feet and go to my tiny kitchen to make myself a cup of tea and a sandwich.

By the time the church bells signal the end of the afternoon Mass, I’ve all but forgotten about the Neanderthal twins and werewolves.

I just want to get this day behind me. Finish up my work, come back home and relax with a good book. I decide to take the shortcut through the woods again. I’m already out the door and jogging through the forest before I realise that I’m really trying to get back to Father Adrian, not the church.

That’s not a good thing.

Maybe I should just leave it and go home.

But I still need to clean up and lock the church for the night.

As always, I slip in through the side door. I stop to inhale the comforting scent of incense, wood, and body odour.

I quietly move through the church, wiping down the pews and returning the hymnals to their rightful place. “You’re back,” Father Adrian says as I start to clean the last row of benches.

How does he do that? How does he manage to sneak up on me like that?

I am too afraid to look up at him. Looking at him is like staring into the sun. It’s beautiful, painful, terrifying, and freeing all at the same time.

And it confuses the hell out of me.

“Pippa,” he says, his voice taking on a strange kind of urgency. “I saw you running away from two men. Did they say something to you? Do something?”

“No,” I say, still fervently wiping down the seats. “I imagine danger sometimes-” I tap the side of my head -“I’m not well.”

In a flash, he’s next to me, his fingers curling around my wrist. “Stop,” he commands softly. My hands still all by themselves as if I have no control over them. “I am worried about you.”

“Why? You don’t even know me.”

“I’m a priest. I worry about everyone. Do you want to give confession?”

I wish I could answer him, but that strange electricity is running through me again, stirring my head around, and turning my hormones upside down. “I-I- I only confess to Father Abraham,” I answer, trying my best to ignore the urgent throbbing surging through my body. “But thank you.”

He smiles and lets me go. Immediately, my head clears and I can think again. “I’ll be around for a few hours if you change your mind.”

“I won’t.”

“Hm,” he grunts and walks away, in the direction of the administration offices.

I finish my work in the church, ending the afternoon by vacuuming the carpets. Tomorrow is Saturday, and we have a wedding scheduled, which means extra work for me. It’s better to get the cleaning done now than to get up early and rush to do it in the morning.

Early tomorrow I have to be back to let the decorators in, and I’m the one who has to clean up when they’re done. Sometimes this job sucks, but I’m grateful for it. The church is all I know, and no one ever taught me anything about being an adult. I’m not sure I can survive on my own.

Exhausted after a too long day with too much excitement, I turn off the lights and go to the donation drop-off. Since I wasn’t there to receive the contributions, everyone just left it outside the door. “You look tired,” Father Adrian says out of nowhere.

I gasp and drop the box of canned goods I was trying to lift. “Stop doing that.”

“What?”

“Stop sneaking up on me like that.”

“I’m not sneaking…I’m just walking.”

“What are you even doing here?” I ask a little irritated. “I thought you left.”

I don’t usually talk to priests that way, but he makes me so nervous that I have lost the ability to control my mouth.

He just smiles patiently. “I wanted to make sure you’re okay. Do you need help with that?” He points at the boxes and bags of donations.

“No. Thank you, Father.”

He gives me an exasperated look and grabs the nearest box. It’s filled with canned goods, every parishioner’s favourite food bank donation, and extremely heavy, but he makes it look like he’s carrying a box of feathers. “Go on, open up…this stuff is heavy,” he says.

Shaking my head, I unlock the door and start to bring the donations inside with the priest’s help. Tomorrow, during the wedding, I’ll sort through it. Everything that’s still in good condition, including clothes, will go to the charity shop. The food, if it’s not expired, goes to the food bank, and clothes that are still usable, but not good enough to sell, will go to the orphanage, and homeless shelter on the other side of town.

Father Adrian starts to unpack the box of canned goods. “I swear, I know they think they’re doing the Christian thing, but people can be truly disgusting. Expired peas. Do they think the poor don’t deserve anything better?”

“Yes,” I say, and throw the last bag of clothes on the pile. “That’s exactly what they think.”

He looks up, his eyes soft. “You grew up in the orphanage, right?”

I nod. “My parents died when I was a year old. Apparently, I was an impossible child…they passed me from foster home to foster home until they gave up and put me in Miss Loretta’s care.”

“Miss Loretta? The one the church fired last year for abuse?”

“She was harsh, but she wasn’t abusive.”

“I read the reports. I assure you she was.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter now,” I say and stand back to watch the priest work.

Even that is unbearably attractive - the way he rolls the cans of food between his long fingers, the disapproving frown when he notices yet another expired product. “What do you do with the expired food?” he asks.

“We feed it to the priests,” I joke without thinking.

His head snaps up and a devilish grin spreads across his face. “Craptastic. That definitely explains why last night’s dinner tasted like a cat’s ass. I suppose I’ll just have to eat at your place tonight. How does seven sound?”

My face catches on fire. Even if he’s joking, it doesn’t feel like he is. “Uhm…” I mumble. “I don’t think that’s allowed.”

“Why not?”

“You’re a priest.”

“So? I’m just asking for food, not sex. I took a vow of celibacy, not a vow of starvation.”

“I mean…I am not the best cook…I can, I can-”

Adrian chuckles. “Pippa, Pippa, relax, I’m joking. Priests do have a sense of humour, you know, just like everyone else.”

“I know,” I mutter.

“It’s just…” he starts, then looks at me, shakes his head and goes in a completely different direction. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have joked like that…it was inappropriate. I grew up with…well, let’s just say non-religious people, and I sometimes forget myself.”

Oh. I let out a long sigh of relief. So that’s why he acts so differently. Good to know. As always, I imagined things. “It’s okay. I won’t tell if you won’t,” I say.

He nods and puts the can down. “It’s late. I have to say my evening prayers, and you need to get home.”

“I need to lock up the church.”

“Do you want me to wait?”

“Why?”

“To keep you safe,” he says with a smile.

“From what?”

He leans in so close that I can feel his body heat radiating through me. “The big bad wolf,” he says.

I can barely breathe.

Werewolves.

“Are you okay?” Father Adrian asks.

“Yes.”

“You’ve gone a little…pale.”

“I’m just tired.”

He doesn’t push me for more information, though I can tell he knows I’m lying. He briefly squeezes my shoulder, but this time I don’t feel any of those weird sparks. They only seem to happen when our bare skin touches. “Get some rest.”

I wait until I’m sure he’s gone before I leave. I walk around the church, checking all the doors by the fading light of the day before I set off home.

The night is cool, but it’s still cloudy. For a brief moment, I consider running home through the woods, but it will be pitch black in there already, and as much as I find comfort in the woods, it scares me tonight. Anyone could be hiding in the darkness, waiting for me.

I jog down the path, eager to get home before the rain starts again. Ahead of me is a dark figure, tall and broad. At first, I think that I just caught up with Father Adrian, but as I get closer, I realise this man is a fair bit shorter, and he has long black hair.

He stops abruptly and spins around to look at me. His eyes flash brightly in the dark and stare straight through me.

Werewolf.

I freeze in fear.

“Do you know Father Adrian?” the man asks in a gravelly voice. “This tall-” he holds his hand above his head -“brownish hair, green eyes.”

Something, I don’t know what it is, some ancient, inborn instinct perhaps, tells me to lie. “Nuh- no, Sir.”

“Are you lying to me, little girl?”

“N-No.”

A low, deep rumble echoes in his chest. My blood turns to ice and my legs to jelly. I can’t move.

I have to move!

A howl shatters through the night. I jerk at the unearthly sound, and when I blink, the stranger is gone.