Emma frowned disapprovingly at Morgan’s departing back. Now was not the time for rash action. It was a time for action though. The girl was her first priority. Emma slid a silver bangle from her wrist and slipped it over the young girls wrist.

[b]“Keep this on her,”[/b] she instructed, [b]“It will prevent any further attacks.”[/b] More accurately, it would redirect the attack to Emmaline herself, which would mean a quick death for her assailant. Emma had learned to defend herself from psychic attack in a hard school. Growing up in a household with three, older, magically talented sisters and a mother who viewed inter sibling magical attacks as educational, hadn’t always been pleasant, but as her mother said, it was useful. With Amanda thus protected she stood up and looked around the room.

Magic, like any physical force, left traces that were visible to those who knew how to look. To Emmaline’s eyes the room shimmered with magical energies, some, familiar, were her own workings but there were others, darker and more malignant. Morgan had been right, it was Inocian, although with some sort of meta-syntax she wasn’t familiar with. Maybe Gaelic or Old Frizian.

[b]“Did you learn this from a book?”[/b] she mused. It wasn’t sophisticated work, not a Hexen certainly.

With a nod she strode to her desk and pulled open one of the draws. Carefully, she withdrew a walnut box and containing a fountain pen. It was hand crafted, inlaid with onyx and silver threading in an intricate design. It was an athamae, crafted specifically for her by master artisans. The Morgansterns had done business with the house of Ungern-Sternberg for generations. This particular piece had been ordered the day of her birth. 

She fixed her eyes on the tracery of energy. She had a starting point, the office, and she could see could work back along the line the spell had came. The problem was that the spell caster could be anywhere along the metaphysical line. What she needed was a third point so that she could triangulate the other spell casters position. Frustration welled up within her and she sat down on her chair. Her eyes fell on Amanda’s desk. Amanda Staten. Amanda the Cat Sidhe.
Emma shot to her feet and strode across the room. Without ceremony she stuck her head into the conference room.

[b]“Amanda, can you do something for me? Focus on the office, as it appears to you, think on what is significant about it to you personally.”[/b]

Closing her eyes she raised her athame. She didn’t chant, chanting was a dated technique. Converting a chant to a mathematical function enabled a suitably trained mind to condense what would be hours of repetitive ritual into moments. The numbers spun in her head like sparkling stars. She forced them to her will, first grasping the office in her own mind, then reaching out along the skein of energy that linked it to the spell caster. Finally she reached out for Amanda’s mind. It was strange, tainted with alien perspectives that Emma couldn’t begin to guess at. Amanda wasn’t entirely human, and that made her view of the office sufficiently different to provide Emma with her third point. Sweat rolled off her brow, she really should have written this out, rather than try to keep track of so many variables at once. With a final surge of will she bound the equation into the waiting blankness of her athame. The pen rose a fraction of an inch from her palm and pivoted, pointing slightly south east.

[b]“Got you,”[/b] she breathed in German.