The Honey Mummy (Folley & Mallory Adventure Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

the days than the man did. The wolf wanted to roll over and sleep while the man needed to get moving, bathed and dressed for the day ahead.
    He pushed himself to standing and leaned into Eleanor’s door, pressing his forehead against the mahogany to listen. Her breathing was soft, but he picked it easily from of the morning’s silence, discerning from it that she slept on. If past evenings spent as wolf and jackal spoke to future performance, she would continue to sleep like the dead, the transformation to and from exhausting her beyond her present means to deal with it.
    Those days were far behind him, but he recalled them well even so. The terror of his first transformation was always close to hand, the helplessness that had swallowed him. It was still a curious thing, to have Eleanor Folley as partner in transformation lessons, work concerns, and romantic pursuits. He had never imagined such a partnership, yet here he was in the midst of one. He pressed his hands to her door, as if to embrace her through the wood, then moved down the hallway, and the elevator that carried him to his own rooms.
    Though the rooms had not changed either their views of Paris or their furnishings, they were less dismal than only a month prior. Something about the space was different, better, and Virgil supposed it was he who had changed. Caroline and her parents had been put to good rest, and with them the ghosts of too many years.
    His hands still shook as he filled a bath, as he pulled a straight razor across cheeks and jaw. Even as he dressed, his hands were weak, as if not fully his own. This, he had been warned, was a symptom of opium withdrawal. He would be anxious, the doctors told him; insomnia might well plague his nights—thus, dozing outside Eleanor’s door was little burden. His bed was both too narrow and too wide; he wanted to bundle Eleanor into it and keep her long past the sunrise that broke the day wide open.
    Virgil closed his hands into fists and attempted to knot his tie once more, but as ever, he failed at this simple thing. The wolf in him disliked ties entirely, but in the work environment, he had vowed to attempt them, determined to look like a gentleman if he could not actually be one. He could not deny that he enjoyed the way Eleanor smiled when she noticed the improperly tied cloth around his neck, nor that he enjoyed the way she sometimes smoothed it flat or retied it entirely.
    When he finished his morning routine, the desire to wake Eleanor was too powerful to resist, but there came a knock at his door, and he breathed a low murmur of thanks to whomever it was, knowing it would grant him a distraction he sorely needed. He did not want to be dependent on Eleanor for any stage of his recovery—he feared replacing one addiction with another was all too easily done, knowing he could also find escape in the wolf. Running from one to the other to avoid the very thought of opium would likely do him no good in the end.
    He opened the door to find Auberon, no longer wearing the dust and cobwebs of the night before. Virgil stepped aside to allow him entry, discovering he had brought coffee—enough for three—with him, along with a sheaf of paper tucked beneath one arm. Auberon leaned in and Virgil plucked the papers free.
    “Eleanor is not yet awake,” Virgil said, following him to the sitting area. It was stark and unadorned, the velveteen of his couch worn in patches, a fire not yet lit in the grate. The room carried a chill Virgil hardly noticed, the wolf in him keeping him warmer than most others could claim.
    “How was the park last evening?” Auberon asked. He sat, rather than moving toward the fireplace; Virgil knew Auberon would never voice a complaint about the rooms being too cold, nor would he presume to start a fire. Auberon poured coffee for them both, however, the liquid steaming into the white china cups.
    Virgil glanced at the papers he held, then found himself frowning as he looked back up at