CHAPTER SEVENTY TWO – THE FAMILY CURSE

But it wasn't just a dry, scholarly genealogical record. Penciled notations crammed the margins, furious scribbles and question marks sprouting like weeds around certain prominent ancestors and their biographical notes. Pages were flagged with scraps of paper, and loose newspaper clippings spilled from between the ancient book's bindings, even as Cassie handled it with the utmost delicacy. She paused on one dogeared section whose header read "The Curse of Von Verdludern." The accompanying paragraphs delved into what appeared to be a superstitious folktale of some sort - an account of a shadowed branch of the family spanning back to the late 1600s. A disgraced scion, so the tome claimed, was stricken with lycanthropia - a mythical affliction of "wolfish transformation" - after defying the noble house's ancient pact and sacred honor codes. That very word - "lycanthropy" - jumped out at Cassie like a wolfbane barb. It shimmered up from the reams of notes and papers scattered across the