Hexed

body from the amulet, she gasped when the binding was complete and energized, since the threads flashed and shimmered briefly with white light before fading back to a soft green.
    » All right, that’s finished. You’re protected from line-of-sight magical attacks only. If someone gets hold of your hair or blood, this won’t do you a lick of good, because they can then cast a spell that attacks you from within, underneath this shell of protection. «
    » You mean the kind of stuff Laksha can do. «
    » Precisely. And the coven living on the floor above you. Now watch what happens when you remove the amulet from around your neck—can you take off that necklace using my eyes? «
    » I think so. Hold on. « She reached behind her neck and loosed the clasp of the chain, removing the amulet and holding it in her right hand, which she dropped to her side. The gossamer threads of my binding sloughed off, retracting like a tape measure into the amulet in her hand.
    » See that? « I said. » If you don’t wear it, it’s useless. «
    » So I have to wear it all the time? «
    » That would be safest, but you can remove it when you know you’re secure in a warded room. Your condo counts, because I’ve warded it. «
    » So if I looked at my door through your sight, I would see the wards you’ve put there? «
    » Yep. You can see the wards on my house here if you’d like. I can lead you outside to check them out. «
    » How bitchin’ would that—I mean, you honor me, sensei. «
    I chuckled. » Put the amulet back on first, and watch yourself armor up. « She did so, and it was a serendipitous bit of caution. Hands on my shoulders, she followed me out front to the edge of my lawn, commenting as she went on the network of bindings all across the porch and the grass and the mesquite tree that had helped me fight off the wheel bug demon. Then, as we were about to turn around to appreciate the wards on the house itself, I heard a sharp thumping noise behind me, as though someone had slapped their hand down onto the cushion of a couch. Granuaile grunted, and I felt her fingers clutch desperately at my shoulders before they tore away. I whirled around to see her falling backward onto the lawn. Before I could discern what had happened or even ask her if she was all right, my amulet punched me in the chest, knocking me backward until I was staggering into the street. I realized this had happened to me before, but it had been during World War II in the southwest of France. And between one awkward step back and the next, I had one of those singular moments of gestalt, where the synapses of several memories and the clues lying idle in my subconscious connected and delivered a single word to my frontal lobe, loaded with anger and revulsion and a bitter kernel of vengeance long denied: them .
    A flicker of movement in my peripheral vision drew my head to the right, and I caught a glimpse of a slim woman drenched in hellish juju fleeing around the corner toward Mitchell Park. If I hadn’t been using my faerie specs, I wouldn’t have seen her at all; she was probably cloaked or camouflaged in the normal spectrum, and she was definitely one of them —and now I had a name for an old enemy that I’d longed to meet again since the early 1940s. There was not a doubt in my mind that the witches who’d attacked me and my charges during World War II were the same ones attacking me now, and they called themselves die Töchter des dritten Hauses .

Chapter 18
    There was no time to waste. I released the binding on Granuaile’s vision, restoring her own sight, and shouted to her as I ran down the street, » Get back in the house and stay there! « She’d be safe inside from further attacks. I lengthened my stride and sprinted, hoping I’d be able to catch up to the witch who had just tried to assassinate me and my apprentice.
    As I came around the corner of 11th to Judd Street, I spied her turning right onto 10th Street. That would take her in short order to Mitchell Drive, where I imagined she would turn north and head for the park—or possibly University Drive—in a bid to escape. Yet when I arrived at Mitchell Drive, the sound of her soles clapping on the asphalt drew my gaze to the south instead. I was in time to see her disappear around the corner of 10th Place, a brief afterthought of a road with absolutely no residential frontage. It was an outlet that would take her to Roosevelt Street, where again I presumed she would turn