Free T*Witches: The Witch Hunters by Randi Reisfeld, H.B. Gilmour

convention. He found himself searching the crowd for Elfman. It wasn’t just a hunch he had that the old man would be there, it was a desire, an unexplainable need to see him.
    “I have something for you,” was the way the old warlock announced his presence. He took the hunter’s arm and led him through the crowded aisles. There weredozens of exhibitors in the convention hall. A tiny Chinese woman, Lady Fan, Elfman called her, was manning the Herbal Health and Healing booth. She swept back a curtain at the rear of the cubicle and he and Elfman entered.
    They talked for some time. But all he recalled of the conversation was that it began and ended similarly with the words, “A child needs you.”
    The child was a baby girl. An infant witch, Elfman said, who had been put up for adoption by her family. Before the astonished hunter could echo “an infant witch?” Elfman hurried on. Why would parents do such a thing? Because the child, at fourteen months, had proved … well, Elfman hemmed and hawed … precocious.
    Precocious?
    She seemed bright beyond her age, able to … well… do things a normal fourteen-month-old would be incapable of doing … things that even, say, a baby witch would not dream of doing.
    There it was again. Tossed in as if it were nothing. Witch.
    Elfman was vague as to exactly what precocious things the baby was able to do. But her parents, he continued, had grown nervous and uneasy around the tyke, he supposed. They had worried that they would not beable to take care of such a … such an advanced child. They had asked Elfman if he could find a better home for her.
    That was, the warlock explained, shortly before they died. In a fire. From which the child was rescued. Well, actually, had Elfman mentioned that the child was … precocious?
    Proof: She had crawled out of the house moments before it had collapsed.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
    A FRIEND IS WAITING
    She didn’t want to open the bag. It was all she could do to tear her clammy hands off it. Cam’s palms were all pins and needles, vibrating painfully. She stood up. Her head was reeling with the awful dream, the nightmare that seemed to have seeped through the canvas. All she wanted to do was scrub her hands. Wash them clean of the Witch Hunter’s story, and get home as fast as she could.
    But something held her there, staring at the satchel. What was it holding, what was it hiding, that had released the twisted tale?
    She unzipped the bag with trembling fingers. And there they were: a black robe and, in two pieces, theblade and the handle — the scythe the maniac had gripped at the premiere.
    The Witch Hunter’s hooded cloak and menacing weapon had been hidden in her school, in Mr. Golem’s closet!
    Shaken, Cam raced out of the building. On the school steps, she paused to gulp night air into her depleted lungs and thought she heard Alex calling to her.
    Oh, please, Cam, please. Get home soon.
    Oh, please? That didn’t sound like her sister, Cam thought, wiping her hands on her boot-leg jeans as she rushed along the dusk-dark streets. A block from home, she heard it again.
Hurry. Please.
This time she recognized the voice.
    Dave was in the hallway, carrying a cup of coffee, when Cam raced through the door. “Whoa,” he called, protecting his cup, clutching it with two hands. “You have a visitor. In the den.”
    Before he asked the question, Cam answered it. “I’m okay. I’m fine. When did Sukari show up?”
    Dave blinked at her, then shook his head. “Naw,” he said, “I’m not even gonna go there. Yes, it’s Sukari. And she got here about five minutes ago. I told her you were out. She said she’d wait. Said you wouldn’t be long. I assumed you two had spoken.”
    Cam didn’t bother to deny it. In a manner of speaking, she thought, they had “spoken.” She had been able to hear her distressed friend’s call.
    Things really were changing; her powers were on the rise. It was a good thing, too, she thought. After her eerie