Read Online Bewitched, Blooded and Bewildered by Robyn Bachar - Free Book Online

out to my sister-in-law, and she took it. She dutifully recited streets and roads and landmarks, and I had no idea how she managed it. Marie was new to the area, and she knew it better than I did. Then again, I don’t come out this way very often—more now that I had access to a car again, but not enough to know what streets go where in which suburb. Maybe guardians have a natural sense for directions. Or maybe the poor girl stayed up late studying maps of the Chicagoland area.
    “They’ll be here in about forty-five minutes,” Marie said after she ended the call and handed me the phone. “We’ll keep looking around in the meantime.”
    “Do you think the hunters might come back?” I asked.
    “Probably not. They’ve been hitting each place only once,” Lex said.
    “But how long will they keep that up? Sooner or later they’ll figure out to stay and catch the investigators too. Or plant bugs. You don’t think there are tiny hunter microphones around here, do you?” I glanced around the room, looking for pinhole cameras or suspicious places to hide a microphone.
    “Well, if you two will get out of my hair, I’ll check,” Marie said.
    She shooed us out of the room, and I took one last glance at the body of the poor librarian mother. She’d died defending her child, to no avail. As Lex and I walked down the hallway to return to the kitchen, I paused and looked at the family photos mounted on the wall. It was all disturbingly normal—a boy, a girl, the parents, grandparents, and now pictures of the new baby. Birthday parties, weddings, even a first communion. Christian magicians were rare, but not unheard of. Magicians were almost all some flavor of pagan, worshipping some aspect of the Lord and Lady.
    “Are you okay?” Lex asked, his voice low.
    “No. Not at all,” I said. “Look at this. Even if they live, they’ll never be the same. You don’t get over something like this.” He didn’t reply, and instead he drew me close to him and hugged me. Closing my eyes, I leaned into his comfort. “How are we supposed to fight them? They’re picking us off left and right.”
    “We’ll figure something out. These aren’t the first hunters we’ve faced.”
    “They’ve got the best guns though.”
    The last time I knew of where we were being hunted on such a large scale was during the Burning Times, when witch hunting was popular for a few centuries. The straights killed anyone who looked at them funny—including a boatload of innocent people who had no magic whatsoever. They even printed wacky guides to finding and identifying witches, like the Malleus Maleficarum. I’d like to think that humanity had come a long way since then.
    Guess I was wrong.
    Emily arrived with her husband Michael in tow. As I understood it, Mr. and Mrs. Michael Black had been married for over a century. (If fifty was the golden anniversary, I wondered what one hundred was? Mithril?) They were both dressed impeccably in what I’d consider formal attire—though I’m the sort who wears “good” jeans to holiday events—and I wondered if they were perfect all the time. An eternity of being neatly pressed and freshly washed.
    “I feel I must warn you that I’m not certain how much I will be able to find. My abilities can be very fickle,” Emily apologized.
    “That’s fine. We’re grateful for your help,” I assured her. Well, I was grateful. I assumed Lex and Marie were as well. Marie seemed to play well with others, so I was fairly certain she wouldn’t go all territorial on us and start spouting things about “chain of command” or “jurisdiction”.
    “I don’t believe we have met this family. Have we, darling?” Emily asked Michael.
    “No, we haven’t,” he confirmed.
    She nodded, her carefully styled bun bobbing up and down. Emily handed her handbag to her husband, and then she slowly walked into the living room. She held her hands out to her sides as though wading through the air itself. Shaking her