Free Any Witch Way She Can by Christine Warren

the room. She couldn’t see what Michael was doing or whether he needed her help. All she could do was listen and pray that he had ducked as quickly as she had.
    â€œRandy!” His voice made her scramble to her knees and peer cautiously around the side of her barricade. The coffee table and a couple of armchairs obscured her view, but she could still make out that Michael remained in one piece and that Harold appeared to be gearing up for another attempt to change that. “Smash the bug!”
    The bug? She was afraid for his life, and he wanted her to swat flies? Had he sustained some kind of a head wound?
    â€œNo!”
    It was Harold’s cry of protest that jogged her memory. In a rush of motion, she stood and lunged for the small, abstract glass sculpture beside Adele’s phone. Even before she touched it, she felt the energy that pulsed off of it, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Harold turn abruptly and throw himself at her with a screech of protest.
    Her hands closed over the cool glass and lifted high above her head. Later, she would think it would have been much more satisfying if she’d planned it this way, but what happened was frankly a total accident.
    She intended to hurl the sculpture to the bare wooden floor beside the desk and let it shatter into a million pieces, but Harold’s thick skull just got in the way. Instead of throwing the sculpture to the floor, she bashed it hard against the man’s skull and felt it come apart in her hand. Harold’s cry died in mid-utterance, and he collapsed into a heap at the side of the desk.
    Michael actually stepped on him in his haste to get to Randy.
    â€œAre you all right?” he demanded.
    â€œI think—” She looked down at her hand and broke off. “Oh, shit.”
    Her hand looked like it had gone through a paper shredder. She had blood and bits of glass everywhere and even as she looked at it, the hand began to tremble.
    Michael’s curse was much pithier.
    The door flew open and banged into the wall behind it. A crowd of onlookers gathered in the entryway.
    â€œWhat’s going on in here?” Adele demanded, pretending to be shocked at the sight in front of her. “What’s happened to Harold?”
    At least, Randy assumed she had started off pretending, but when her gaze fixed on her granddaughter’s bloody hand, the shock turned genuine.
    â€œTo hell with Harold,” Michael growled, not bothering to look in Adele’s direction. He’d already begun stripping off his shirt, and he used the cloth to wrap around Randy’s hand in a makeshift bandage. “He’s not hurt, just unconscious. But Randy is bleeding. We need to get her to the emergency room. She should have stitches.”
    â€œI don’t need stitches,” Randy protested, knowing it was probably a lie, but she also knew from the quivering sound of her voice that she was probably going into mild shock.
    â€œLet me look at that,” a woman said, pushing forward and striding briskly to Michael’s side. She had curly, sand-colored hair that had been cut short, a decided air of competence, and freckles on what looked like every inch of her skin.
    Randy didn’t think she’d ever seen the woman before, but when Michael glanced at her, his expression shifted into distinct relief.
    â€œBetsey,” he practically sighed. “Thank god you’re here. Do you think you can do something with this?”
    Randy frowned as he passed her hand over to the stranger. “Do something? Like what? Finger painting?”
    Betsey chuckled. “I’m sure you could do that yourself, hon, but Michael here was asking if I could fix it.” She unwrapped the shirt from Randy’s hand with great care. “I’m a witch, too. Healing work is my specialty.”
    Randy tried not to look skeptical. “Abraca-Bacitracin?”
    â€œNot quite, but I like that one. Mind if I use it in the