A Date with a Werewolf Read online

  A DATE WITH A WEREWOLF

  Written by

  Kate William

  Created by

  FRANCINE PASCAL

  Copyright © 2015, Francine Pascal

  In memory of Kelly Weil

  "She's dead! Jessica is dead!" Jessica Wakefield's identical twin sister, Elizabeth, sobbed wildly into the coarse knit of Luke Shepherd's sweater. Her new boyfriend's arms felt warm and safe around her—but Elizabeth could not be comforted. Behind her, on the bed of Jessica's room at Pembroke Manor, a body lay facedown on blood-soaked sheets—a girl with golden hair, exactly the same shade as Elizabeth's.

  The sixteen-year-old twins had traveled to London for a summer internship at the London Journal. Not a week had gone by before Jessica's new boyfriend, Robert Pembroke, had invited them to spend a long weekend at his family's country manor. Jessica, of course, had been thrilled about the invitation, but Elizabeth had had misgivings from the start. And now, as Elizabeth stared at the blond-haired body on the bed she wished they had never even left California.

  "I knew Jessica was in danger!" Elizabeth cried, pounding her fists against Luke's hard chest. "I should have warned her. I should have warned her."

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 1

  "She's dead! Jessica is dead!" Jessica Wakefield's identical twin sister, Elizabeth, sobbed wildly into the coarse knit of Luke Shepherd's sweater. Her new boyfriend's arms felt warm and safe around her—as they had the day before, when Luke had kissed her seriously for the first time. But Elizabeth could not be comforted. Behind her, on the bed of Jessica's room at Pembroke Manor, a body lay facedown on blood-soaked sheets—a girl with golden hair, exactly the same shade as Elizabeth's.

  The sixteen-year-old twins had traveled to London for a summer internship at the London Journal. Not a week had gone by before Jessica's new boyfriend, Robert Pembroke, had invited them to spend a long weekend at his family's country manor. Jessica, of course, had been thrilled about the invitation, but Elizabeth had had misgivings from the start. And now, as Elizabeth stared at the blond-haired body on the bed she wished they had never even left California.

  "I knew Jessica was in danger!" Elizabeth cried, pounding her fists against Luke's hard chest. "I should have warned her. I should have warned her."

  "Warned me about what?" said a familiar, sleepy voice. Elizabeth whirled, blue-green eyes wide. Jessica was standing in the doorway, yawning. Her hair was disheveled, and her eyes looked tired, and her satiny pink nightgown was wrinkled from sleep, but besides being unaccustomed to getting up at dawn on a Saturday, Jessica seemed like a perfectly healthy teenager.

  "You're not dead!" Elizabeth cried, almost knocking her sister over with a bear hug.

  "Then who is?" asked Luke.

  "Dead? Why did you think I was—" Elizabeth felt her sister's body freeze as Jessica saw the bloody girl on the bed. "Oh, my—"

  Before Jessica could react further, Andrew Thatcher, London's chief of police and another weekend guest at Pembroke Manor, pushed past the twins into the room. Behind him was Lord Pembroke himself, accompanied by Lady Pembroke, their son Robert, and several servants.

  "We heard screams," Robert said, staring wildly at Jessica, his eyes full of concern. "Are you all right?"

  The chief of police reached for the dead girl's shoulder and gently turned the body over. Then he cried out and stepped back, shaken. The murdered girl was Joy Singleton, his fiancée.

  And her throat had been ripped open . . . as if by a wild beast.

  The words roared into Elizabeth's mind, unbidden. She had first heard them on Monday morning, the twins' first day of work at the London Journal. As high-school interns, they would never have been allowed to cover such a grisly murder. But, wanting to be where the excitement was, Jessica and Elizabeth had rushed through their seemingly trivial missing-Yorkie assignment, sneaking off to the Essex Street murder scene.

  Elizabeth would never forget the sight of Dr. Cameron Neville's body, lying facedown in a pool of blood that was slowly soaking into the floral-patterned carpet. And Elizabeth would never forget the clear, dispassionate voice of Lucy Friday, the London Journal crime desk editor: "The victim's throat has been ripped open, as if by a wild beast."

  The doctor's murder wasn't the first one in London recently to fit that pattern. Elizabeth, Jessica, and Luke—an intern with the arts and literature section of the newspaper—had been doing some sleuthing into the bizarre incidents. And Luke, at least, was seriously convinced that they were the work of a werewolf.

  And as if to add credence to the werewolf theory, some of the Pembrokes' sheep had been found with their throats ripped open—just hours before Joy's murder.

  Elizabeth shuddered, remembering the flowering wolfsbane Luke had pointed out to her in a nearby grove Friday afternoon. According to Luke, who was an expert on werewolves, medieval legend said the wolfsbane bloomed only when a werewolf was hunting prey.

  She reached beneath the collar of her flannel nightgown to finger the silver pendant that hung around her neck. Luke had given it to her. "It will protect you," he had said, clasping the chain around her neck. The pendant showed a five-pointed star—a pentagram—in a circle, with the image of a wolf in its center.

  Normally, Elizabeth would have laughed at the notion of needing protection from werewolves. She had always been considered the rational, responsible twin, unlike her more impulsive sister, Jessica. But ideas that would have sounded ridiculous to Elizabeth under the bright California sun somehow seemed more reasonable when voiced through an English fog—especially when voiced by sensitive, handsome Luke. Elizabeth had known Luke for less than a week but she was falling fast for him, despite her feelings for her boyfriend, Todd Wilkins, back in California.

  Besides, the evidence from the other victims did point to a murderer who was not quite . . . human.

  Now, pleasant, if a little vapid, pretty Joy had been murdered in the same way. Elizabeth felt unsteady and was grateful for Luke's steadying hand on her elbow. Her mind was racing. Joy had been murdered in Jessica's room, she thought wildly, in Jessica's bed. In the dark, it would have been impossible for the murderer to tell one sleeping blonde from another. Could Jessica have been the real target?

  Thatcher, visibly trying to collect himself, seemed to be thinking along similar lines. "Jessica," he asked in a strained voice, "Joy's room was across the hall from yours. Why was she sleeping in here instead?"

  For once, Elizabeth noted, her sister didn't seem at all concerned about what she looked like. Tears streamed down Jessica's face, and her golden hair was tangled. Jessica had known Joy for only one day, but Elizabeth knew she had liked Thatcher's pretty, young fiancée. And the sight of that bloody bed would scare anyone.

  Except for Robert Pembroke, Jr., it seemed. He was as disagreeable as ever, Elizabeth noticed. She scowled as the younger Lord Pembroke turned to two of the servants and began barking out orders.

  "Alistair," he said to tall, thin Alistair Crane. "Call the constable right away. Set up extra chairs in the parlor, and be prepared to serve tea." He turned to the pretty, brown-haired cook. "Maria, put the water on, and assemble the other servants."

  Then he placed a protective arm around Jessica's trembling shoulders, and Elizabeth pursed her lips at the sight. She couldn't stand Robert's arrogance and his aristocratic airs, and she hated the fact that he and Jessica had become
so close. But Jessica gazed gratefully at him through her tears.

  "Joy knocked on my door in the middle of the night," Jessica explained haltingly to the chief of police. "She asked me to switch rooms with her. She said she couldn't sleep with the full moon shining in her window."

  Beware the full moon. The words came to Elizabeth's mind out of nowhere, and she remembered the scary old lady hissing them at Jessica the day the twins had arrived at their London dormitory—HIS, or Housing for International Students. A few days later, a gypsy fortune-teller had given Jessica the same warning. Beware the full moon.

  Jessica seemed calmer now, but as Elizabeth stared at her twin, she felt a wave of terror. Jessica is in horrible danger.

  Emily Cartwright picked up Saturday mornings edition of the London Journal. "Here's another princess story!" she exclaimed to her friends Lina Smith and Portia Albert. "But that's a frightfully bad little photograph with it. All you can see is a blur of blond hair."

  The three girls were huddled around the table in the kitchen of HIS. Breakfast wouldn't be served officially for another hour, but Emily and Lina were up early for a day of sight-seeing, and Portia had an early rehearsal for A Common Man, the play in which she was making her London stage debut. The girls were fixing themselves an early breakfast of toast and orange marmalade.

  "I suppose it's because I'm Australian," Emily said, gesturing with the newspaper, "but I do not understand this all-consuming passion you Brits have for gossip about the royal family. I was addicted to it when I first got here, but now even I'm getting tired of it."

  "Sometimes I don't understand it myself," Lina remarked, running her fingers through her short brown hair. "So, Portia, what time is your play rehears—"

  "Listen to this mornings bit," Emily interrupted, pointing to a banner headline across the front page of the newspaper. " 'Witnesses Spot Princess in Tokyo! Two London residents were on holiday Thursday in Japan, where they claim to have seen Princess Eliana, missing since last week, in a Tokyo bathhouse.' "

  "That's preposterous!" Portia exclaimed. "What would the youngest daughter of the Queen of England be doing in Tokyo?"

  "Taking a bath, apparently," Lina said dryly.

  "Does the article cite any evidence?" Portia asked in her elegant, cultured accent.

  "No, that's the odd part," said Emily. "The article goes on to quote the police as saying the witnesses were probably mistaken. There's no proof at all! My internship may be with BBC television instead of a newspaper, but I know enough about newspapers to know this is shoddy journalism. What were the editors thinking, to run such a dicey story on page one?"

  "I suppose they were thinking, 'This article will sell a lot of newspapers,' " Portia remarked.

  Lina reached for the Journal and ruffled through it. "Here's an advertisement for your play, Portia!" she exclaimed in her charming Liverpudlian accent. "Listen to this: 'Young Penelope Abbott, playing the part of Isabelle, is the most exciting thing to hit the London stage since Felicity Kendall.' That's just super, Portia! I'm sorry I couldn't go with everyone on Thursday night. I can't wait to see it."

  Emily laughed. "I'm not surprised about your rave reviews. You practiced the part of stuck-up Isabelle Huntington so diligently, twenty-four hours a day, that we all believed you were an insufferable snob! I've heard of dedication, but even an actress has to be at leisure now and then."

  "Once again, I do apologize," Portia said, with a formal bow. "I don't know how you all ever forgave me. I really got carried away."

  Lina laughed. "We're just thankful you weren't rehearsing for the part of Jack the Ripper!"

  "It's too bad you can't use your real name in the cast," Emily said. "Have you called your father in Scotland yet to tell him that you landed a role? I would think he'd be pleased that you want to follow in his footsteps. Maybe someday, you'll be as famous an actor as he is."

  "No, I haven't told him," Portia said. "And I'm not sure I will. I told you—the venerable Sir Montford Albert disapproves of my ambition to be an actress. He claims it's too hard a life, and he's not certain I have the talent to make a go of it. That's why I haven't told him I got this role, and why I'm using the stage name Penelope Abbott. I had to learn what I'm capable of, on my own. I couldn't let my father's name influence people's reactions to my work."

  "Sometimes you have to get away from your past before you can find out who you really are," Lina said thoughtfully. Emily stared at her curiously. She liked Lina a lot, but sometimes the girl from Liverpool said the oddest things.

  Portia didn't seem to think it was odd. "Then I guess I've learned that I am an actress," she said. "I still don't know if I've any real talent, but I do know that it's all I've ever wanted to do. Now that I know what it's like to be onstage in a professional production, I want to act more than ever. I just hope I can someday convince my father and make him proud of me."

  "You will," Lina said staunchly.

  "Well, speaking of being an actress," Portia said, rising from her chair, "I have to get to rehearsal."

  "Break a leg," Emily called as she left the room. "That is the expression, isn't it?"

  Emily had plenty of faith in Portia's talent. But she thought the conversation had become much too serious. "I miss the American twins," she said suddenly. "This place was much jollier with them around."

  Lina smiled. "Yes, it certainly was."

  Emily sighed jealously. "It's bad enough that Jess and Liz are gorgeous and nice. But within a few days of arriving in the country, Jessica snagged a real English nobleman! It's not fair!"

  "Robert Pembroke is one of the most eligible guys in London," Lina admitted.

  "And Elizabeth hooked up with that cute, sensitive Luke, from the Journal—not to mention the torch that Rene Glize is carrying for her! The best-looking boy at HIS! Who could have guessed that he knew the twins from their trip to France? And now he's here working for the French Embassy!

  "Face it, Lina," she concluded, "coincidences like that only happen to people like Jessica and Elizabeth. They obviously lead charmed lives—unlike normal, everyday blokes like you and me."

  Lina smiled enigmatically.

  "Of course," Emily continued in her characteristic nonstop fashion, "it's a shame that Rene is jealous of Luke and has been giving Liz the cold shoulder all week."

  "I know," Lina said. "Liz just wants to be friends with Rene, so he won't even talk to her."

  Emily sighed. "Until Rene gets over Liz, he's no good as potential boyfriend material. So—except for Gabriello Moretti, who already has a girlfriend—it seems that the twins, between them, have tied up all the good-looking guys around!"

  "Not all of them," Lina pointed out.

  Emily smiled. "David Bartholomew, right?"

  "Am I that transparent?" Lina blushed.

  "You're so honest, Lina, that you couldn't keep a secret if your life depended on it. Everybody at HIS knows that you and David are crazy about each other. We're ready to take wagers on when you'll finally give in to all that passion and go out on a date. So when's it going to be?"

  Lina blushed again. "Tonight," she said. "Liz finally convinced me that I should, as the Americans say, go for it."

  "Liz would know," Emily says. "Look where she and her sister are right now—guests of Pembroke Manor! I bet they're having a fantastic time. . . ."

  A half hour after Joy's body was found, Jessica sat next to Robert on an overstuffed sofa in the Pembrokes' parlor, drinking a cup of tea. Now that she was away from the bedroom and those bloody sheets, the murder hardly seemed real. She leaned against Robert's shoulder and put the gory scene out of her mind, concentrating instead on the excitement of being in the middle of a real English murder mystery—just like in an Agatha Christie book.

  The sumptuous furnishings and aristocratic people around her were pretty exciting, too. Jessica thought of Lila Fowler, her best friend back home in California. Lila was the daughter of a millionaire, but even Lila wasn't related to royalty, like the Pembrokes
. She would be green with envy when she heard about the people Jessica was hanging out with.

  The Pembroke family, their staff, and the weekend guests were assembled in the parlor for questioning by the local authorities. Thin, regal Lady Pembroke was sitting, ramrod straight, on the edge of an upholstered chair. Even at this hour of the morning, Jessica marveled, she was perfectly coiffed and made up. Lord Pembroke was nervously pacing back and forth across the thick oriental carpeting.

  But it was their son Robert to whom Jessica's thoughts kept returning. She loved his classy, English clothing and his handsome face. But she was even more impressed by his confident manner, and how he took command of every situation. At the murder scene earlier today, the others had stared at the body in shock. But Robert had known exactly what to do. He had set the servants in motion and instructed everyone to meet down here to wait for the authorities. Now she snuggled against his strong body, feeling safe and secure.

  Elizabeth and Luke huddled together on a sofa that faced the one Jessica sat on. Elizabeth, as usual, held a small notebook in her hand. Leave it to my twin, Jessica thought. She never can give those reporter's instincts a rest. Elizabeth was scribbling wildly in her notebook, stopping only when she noticed the police constable's unfriendly glare.

  Constable Sheila Atherton, a small, dark-haired woman in her mid-thirties, stood near the sofa, looming over Elizabeth in a way that made her look much larger than her short stature.

  "You say that you and your sister are from a village called Sweet Valley, California?" she asked in a no-nonsense voice. Thunder crashed outside the window, punctuating the constables question and whipping the light morning drizzle into a downpour.

  Village? Jessica thought. How very English. Frequently, she found herself annoyed and mystified by the unfamiliar words she'd been hearing in England. British English and American English were very different languages, she was learning. But in this setting—the parlor of a British manor house—words like "village" seemed absolutely right. She would have to get Robert to teach her how to talk that way.