Page 28 of A Lady’s Guide to Werewolves

“Granny,” Sorcha murmured, “maybe you should go inside.”

“Certainly not.” Her grandmother sniffed. “And leave you alone with this lout? What would the neighbors say?”

“We have no neighbors, and I don’t think there’s any threat of having to marry him.”

“Not on my watch.”

Sorcha had no doubt her grandmother could take on a legion of villains and triumph. But this man looked the type who might have a weapon that would work against a ghost, next to his daggers and axe. He might have a spirit bottle or spell to trap her grandmother. To banish her.

He definitely had a glint to his glare that put her back up. It was seething, but more than that, desperate.

Sorcha rushed him without another thought.

The advantage was that she had given no warning. Only an absolute madwoman would attack someone like him.

The disadvantage was that she had not grown any stronger or any taller in the last three seconds, nor had she acquired a sword or a pistol or a spelled object of any kind. She was still a witch who talked to pigeons.

But she did catch him unaware enough to crack his nose with the end of her broom. He grunted in pain, blood blossoming over his mouth. It turned to icicles that jabbed into him when her grandmother added a blast of ghostly power. Sorcha was quite sure the man had never been so bewildered in all his life.

It would not save her, unfortunately.

She tried to hit him again. He caught the broom and yanked her forward, off her feet. He wrenched her makeshift weapon and tossed it aside like it was nothing. She careened into a garden urn with a grunt as all the air left her lungs. An icy wind whipped around them, howling, biting, slashing.

He swore again, frost forming in his nostrils, furring his eyelashes. The cold witching power of a ghost was unlike anything else. The darkest midnight of the coldest winter solstice could not compare. But it did not stop him, not for long. Even as he choked to get air into his freezing lungs, he pulled a charm from his pocket.

Her grandmother was a whirlwind of burning ice and flashing dagger eyes and hissing snake familiar, and then…nothing.

He had tossed an iron nail wrapped in red thread at her feet.

The sudden vortex of her grandmother vanishing and the cold magic going with her rang in the ears. Sorcha felt it in her teeth. And only the knowledge that iron would send her grandmother back to the place where she died and not banish her entirely kept her from panicking.

The man grabbed the back of her dress. He spat blood, his eyes gleaming with violence. “Got you now. And you’ll tell me where my daughter is or I’ll eat your entrails.”

He was only here for her. He was not here for anyone else.

Which was why she did not begin to fight in earnest until he had crossed out of the courtyard, away from her dogs, her chickens, her recalcitrant unicorn, and Hecuba, who could only pound on the window glass.

And then it was too late.