T*Witches: The Witch Hunters Read Online Free PDF Page B

wasn’t until he brought you to me,” Dave said, reaching across the table and gently taking Cam’s hand, “that he spoke of warlocks and witches. But by then it was too late. I’d taken one look at you and knew, instantly, there was no turning back.”
    Alex heard, though she’d tried not to, the conversation between Dave and Cam. It made her feel empty at first, whistled through her like a cold wind. These were the times she felt most alone. The Barnes family had taken her in, done everything they could to make her feel included — but there was no way she’d ever be as connected to Dave and Emily as Cam was.
    She’d had her own Protector, Sara Fielding. She wondered now whether Sara also had given up her witchy gifts to take care of her. And … if she’d kept them, would she have been able to save herself? Could shehave cheated death, beaten cancer, somehow gotten better …?
    Alex wished she’d had more time with her mother. Correction, as Cam would say: with her
Protector.
With Sara. She wished she could ask, like Cam just had, what Sara’s life had been like before she’d met Karsh — how he’d found her and why he’d chosen her.
    Most of all, Alex wanted to know whether she herself could have cast a spell, used herbs and crystals, willed the cancer cells to leave Sara’s ravaged lungs the way she’d willed the weapon to leave the Witch Hunter’s hand.
    “So, where is he?” Dylan’s voice punctured her ballooning sadness.
    “What?” She spun on the desk chair, turning away from the computer to face him. Had Dylan, Emily and Dave’s only bio-child, just read her mind? For a stunning moment Alex stared at Cam’s blond brother, blinking in wonder.
    “The French connection.” Dylan hit a chord on his guitar. “The Paris … defection.” He strummed again. “Cade’s, um, direction —”
    Cade! He meant Cade. Of course. She’d been about to check her e-mail when her head got all into the downstairs dialogue between Cam and Dave.
    Alex relaxed, laughed. “Yo, Mr. Sass. You may be from Mass,” she shot back at Dylan, “but give it up, bro. You ain’t no Thoreau.”
    “Word up, woman,” Dylan responded, grinning wide. “So what’s Cade say? When’s he getting here? Like, where is he now?”
    “In England,” Alex answered, as Dylan moseyed over casually and checked out her computer screen. She didn’t add: “I think.” Because it was more than that.…
    Cade was in England. In London, to be exact. In a hotel room …
    Alex
sensed
it. Knew it.
    It was as if Dylan’s question had flipped a switch. The moment she tried to answer it, this totally weird thing had happened behind her eyelids. Continents had scrawled by in a blur. Anonymous places and people. Their noise, at first a jumble of sounds, languages, and accents, slowed. Then the scrawling, which had been accompanied by a rising ticking noise, suddenly stopped. She couldn’t see anything. She just knew.
    “He’s on his way,” she told Dylan, both shocked and excited.
    It was Dylan’s turn to blink. “You didn’t open your e-mail yet. How do you know that?”
    Alex looked at the screen. Dyl was right. The screen saver was still on.
    She took a breath, sucking air for time. “’Cause I’m a witch,” she teased.
    He frowned at her, not liking or buying the answer.
    “It was in his last e-mail,” she lied.
    “Better watch out, witchy sistah, the Witch Hunter’s gonna get ya.” Dylan struck another chord, then set down his guitar. “If you’re so witchy-girl cool, why don’t you track that maniac who attacked Brice Stanley the other night?”
    Lightbulb. Track. The word popped out of Dyl’s sarcastic challenge. Tracker, Alex thought. Dave was talking about Sensitives and Protectors. But Karsh had been a tracker. The highest level a warlock or witch could attain.
    Another word came to her. This one Dylan hadn’t spoken. Didn’t know.
    Artemis. It was her birth name. What she’d been called as an infant, what