I blinked sweat from my eyes, cursing as I ran across my boyfriend’s backyard like I had a tornado chasing my ass. Mainly because a tornado was chasing my ass.
“Knock it down,” Keir Quinn, my soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend, yelled unhelpfully.
“If I could knock it down, I wouldn’t be running away,” I shouted back. Luckily, the tornado was small, only about six feet high, but I’d been tossed around like those flying cows in the movie Twister enough to know that I didn’t want to take another hit. “Do something!”
Keir ran in my direction and fell in step next to me. “You created it,” he said. “Only you can dismantle it.”
Again, not helpful. Two weeks earlier, while telling my son about tru-craft and what it meant for him and our family, I’d accidentally activated aero-craft, aka air magic, by blowing on my family’s grimoire, and I’d been trying to figure it out ever since. It turned out that learning magic had two basic outcomes, you either became one with the element, or it killed you. I was partial to living, so finding balance with the element was the only option I was willing to entertain.
Keir Quinn, my soul’s companion who had been born two hours before me, had told me about tru-craft. He’d also told me that he’d felt my birth the instant I drew air. He’d been born into a druidic family, and he’d devoted most of his adult years to preparing himself to walk life’s path with me. His words, not mine. We’d become intimate after I’d taken on a fire god name Volres and smote his ass, and our magical bond had strengthened as a result.
“Just collapse it,” Keir told me as if I hadn’t been trying to collapse the damn thing for fifteen minutes.
I sent up a prayer of gratitude for my sister Rose, whose cross-fit training had given me some stamina, and another prayer of thanks for my terra-craft for making me hard to kill, thanks to a protection spell that had made my skin as tough as ironbark.
“Just concentrate, Iris,” he instructed. “You have the power.”
“I’m not She-Ra, princess of power. I’m just a girl, running from a tornado, asking it to stop!” I came to a halt, turned around and flung my hands up. “Stop!” I yelled at the treacherous swirling wind. “Just sto—”
The tornado picked me up off the ground and threw me into Keir’s waterfall. “Son of a bitch,” I sputtered. The wet, icy chill made my ovaries shrink. “Not cool, dude.”
Keir high-stepped his way across the small pool of water and helped me to my feet. The corner of his mouth lifted in a half-smile.
“I will cut you,” I told him.
“Sorry,” he said. “You’re really cute right now.”
I quirked a brow at him. “You like the drowned rat look?”
“On you? Yes.” He chuckled, then twirled his finger. “We better get this wrapped up if we want to make Michael’s game tonight.”
It was early afternoon, and the football game didn’t start until seven. It was Michael’s first game of the season, and since it was his senior year, it was his last first game. This year would be a series of last firsts, and it made my heart squeeze. My kid was nearly grown, and in less than a year, he’d be off to college.
My ex-husband Evan Callahan and his partner Adam Hauser had recently moved to St. Louis. Adam, who used to be Michael’s coach, had taken a job at a private high school. The happy couple was still settling into their new house, so Evan had dropped the bomb earlier in the week that he wasn’t going to be able to make it down for Michael’s game. Michael didn’t say a thing, but I could tell it hurt that his dad wouldn’t be there. Evan had never missed a game before.
Which meant I couldn’t miss it. Come hell or high wind, I would be there tonight to cheer him and the team on.
I looked at Keir. “I’m open to suggestions.”
Keir shrugged. “Try to stay out of the water.”
“Har har.” I thought about how funny it would be if Keir was the one getting dunked by the tornado.
That’s when the base of the cone shifted its target away from me and barreled itself into the smirking druid.
It proceeded to knock him down, and he fell into the water with a great splash.
The look of pure shock and disbelief as he sputtered to the surface tickled me to my core, so I laughed. And laughed and laughed.
Until the foul wind, once again, turned on me.
“Plug your nose,” Keir shouted.
I screamed as he lunged at me and dragged us both under the water. I held my breath, eyes wide and fighting the urge to struggle.
Keir blinked at me, then pointed up.
The tornado circled above us, looking for a target. Its deadly swirls slowed, and it started to shrink.
The water around us began to swirl. Bubbles trickled out my nose as my eyes widened. The tornado had breached the surface and was creating a whirlpool.
I damn near drowned when I tried to scream as the watery vortex of death yanked me from Keir’s grasp and threw me out of the pool and onto the grass.
Coughing and wheezing, I rolled onto my hands and knees. The freaking tornado spanked my ass, knocking me face down into a puddle.
“Enough!” I ordered the ill-wind.
The ill wind ignored me and smacked me in the shoulder, sending me spinning.
“Iris!” Keir shouted. “Look out!”
I loved the fact—not—that he thought I wasn’t doing my very best to avoid getting pummeled. “Trying to,” I yelled as I spat out a clump of grass, got to my feet, and took off in a sprint with the tornado on my heels. “This thing won’t stop.”
“You have to relax,” he instructed.
“When should I relax? When I’m getting knocked to the ground? Or when I’m getting tossed like a rag doll?” I was huffing and puffing now. I couldn’t believe I’d conjured my own demise. “This thing isn’t going to stop until it kills me.”
“Not on my watch,” Keir said. His scary black eyes peered at me as he used superhuman speed to swoop me off my feet to outrace the swirling death.
Don’t get me wrong. Keir was fast. Really fast. Unfortunately, the tornado was faster.
“Oh, shit,” he growled out as we both went flying.
I grunted as Keir turned us so that I landed on top of him. Partially transformed into a pooka, his hips were bonier, so it wasn’t a soft touchdown. Still better than having him land on top of me.
He groaned. “This isn’t how I thought I would die,” he said.
“Preaching to the choir,” I told him. The tornado had circled around for another run at me. “Son of a bitch.” I wrapped my arms around Keir, buried my face into his chest, and braced for the next blow…
…that never came.
There was a sharp “I-eeeeeee-yaaaa,” followed by a “Scheisse!”
I opened my eyes in time to see Linda the Gnome shoot up from the ground and through the tornado’s eye. “Fire,” she demanded. “Hit it with heat, Kleinkind!”
I’d been around Linda long enough to know that she usually knew what she was talking about, so I rolled off Keir and got up on one knee. Since my encounter with the fire creature Volres, I’d had the ability to call fire whenever I wanted without casting a spell. I could pull the flames from my blood at a whim. It had frightened me at first, but now I embraced the magic as if I were Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, going up against Doctor Doom.
I held my hands out at the oncoming cyclone and yelled, “Flame on!” Fire flowed from my palms and off my fingers, creating a massive wave of heat that burned so bright it sucked the oxygen from the air.
The tornado evaporated.
I shook the flames creeping up my arms and was thankful my shirt was wet, or I’d have turned the sleeves to ash. “Ta-dah,” I said with zero enthusiasm. I glanced over at Linda.
The stern gnome had her arms crossed over her chest. “Stupid, Kleinkind,” she muttered. “Whose bright idea was it to make der Tornado?”
Keir’s eyes had reverted to their normal gray color. “I didn’t exactly ask her to—”
I raised a brow at him. “Are you really going to throw me under the bus?”
Keir grinned at me. “It was one hundred percent my fault.”
Linda rewarded his honesty by pelting him in the head with a rock.
“Ow.” He rubbed his forehead. “How did you know the heat would work?”
“Oh, I know,” I said. “Because fire eats air, right?” A rock nailed me above my left eye. I gave the sadistic gnome a dirty look. “That freaking hurts, Linda.”
“That’s how you know it’s working.” She pointed her tiny, pudgy finger at me. “You shouldn’t play with things until you understand them.” She frowned. “Der Tornado is made when cold air collides with warm air, but if you warm the cold air up, warm air and warm air….” She flattened her palms. “Poof.”
“No tornado,” I said.
“Ja.” She nodded. “Korrekt.”
“Thank you for your timely arrival,” Keir said. “It was getting pretty dire.”
I snapped him a look of betrayal but then softened my expression. He wasn’t wrong. I just hated admitting that I’d almost killed us with my terrible grasp of aero-craft.
“Iris needs to be rescued a lot. I am used to it.” She tapped her winklepickers on the grass. “I think you should study wind patterns, cyclones, hurricanes, and how they are created before you try any more air magic. Next time, you might take out a house. Or the town.”
That’s why I’d decided to practice at the top of the mountain. “Did you just show up to nag me?” I asked.
“I showed up to save your life.” She raised her hands, palms up. “I thought we established that already.”
Keir chuckled.
“Are you sure you want to go there?” I asked him, my brow arched high.
He shook his head, but he couldn’t quite get rid of his smirk.
Linda tsked. “If you would only consult your grimoire, it will help guide you in your aero-craft.”
She meant its cryptic, scary messages in the form of bad, rhyming poetry. On top of that, the damn thing kept changing me in frightening ways that were going to get me killed. “Nope,” I told her. “Aero-craft is the last element I’m dealing with. I’m not touching that grimoire ever again.”
After the grimoire had activated air magic in me, I’d wrapped the leather-bound albatross in a newspaper, tied it up with twine, and used my earth magic to turn the bindings to steel before tossing it as far into the attic crawlspace as I could. Good riddance. As far as I was concerned, I was done with all the tru-craft elements trapping me in dangerous situations, not only putting myself in harm’s way but also my family. Not touching it, looking at it, or breathing in its direction was the only way I could see to prevent any more tru-craft trouble. Still, I’d spent a couple weeks playing with aero-craft, and while I hadn’t quite mastered it, like at all, nothing horrible had happened. Maybe my bad luck was over.
“That is a mistake, Kleinkind,” she cautioned. “Your grim is your guide.”
Hah! More like the bane of my existence. However, I wasn’t going to get sucked into this argument again. The gnome might throw more rocks to make her points. “Thank you, Linda, for your intervention.” I pressed my hands together and gave the gnome a bow. “I appreciate the assist, but I think I’ve got it from here.”
She scoffed. “I’ve seen nothing so far that gives me confidence that you’ve got anything.”
“You can go home,” I told her. “Don’t you have a bench to stare at?” Linda, when in her stone form, liked to position herself facing the garden bench. It used to creep me out. Still did a little bit, if I was being honest.
“Can’t go home,” she said. “My home is gone.”
“What?” I couldn’t keep the alarm out of my voice as my mind went to all the dark places. “Did something happen to my house?”
“Your home is fine. It’s mine that’s been demolished.”
“The garden?”
Linda nodded. “It’s too horrible, Iris.”
Oh, God. She used my given name. That was never a good sign. “Pestilence?”
“Of a magical variety,” she said.
I gasped. “Supernatural aphids? Is that a thing?”
Linda harrumphed. “Not aphids.”
“You’re killing me, Smalls,” I told her. “Just tell me what we’re dealing with, so we can fix it.”
“There is no fixing this, stupid Kleinkind,” she snapped. “Once they infest your garden, there is no getting rid of them.”
A horrifying thought jumped into my head. “Snakes?” I resisted the urge to crawl up Keir to get off the ground. “Please tell me it’s not paranormal snakes.”
“Not snakes,” Linda said blandly.
“Spiders?” Keir asked.
“Don’t even joke about that.” I rubbed my arms to get rid of the goosebumps. “I would relocate to the top of Mount Everest if magical spiders moved in.”
“Stop guessing,” Linda ordered.
“Then spit it out already.” I was wet, windblown, exhausted, and in no mood for whatever Linda was pussyfooting around.
“Heimchen,” she said without any fanfare.
Keir made a grunt of surprise.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Pixies,” Linda explained. “A troupe of them.”
“Wow.” Keir winced. “A whole troupe?”
Linda nodded. “They have taken over the entire garden.”
“And why is this bad?” Pixies didn’t sound dangerous. “Aren’t they just tiny little fairies with wings?”
“There are hundreds of them. All violent.” Linda gave me a piteous stare. “So, if you like your blood on the inside, I wouldn’t call them that to their faces.”
“They aren’t generally a warring species,” Keir disagreed. “But they do hate being compared to fairies. They’re small, but the two races have little else in common.”
“Got it. Pixies are assholes, not fairies.” I rubbed my lower lip nervously. “So, why do you think they’re here, and how do we get rid of them?”
“You’re the reason they are here, Kleinkind,” Linda accused. “And the only way to get rid of them is to destroy them down to the last one.”
“Whoa.” The idea of destroying a pack of tiny pixies, however brutal they might be, seemed extreme and a bit too much like genocide. We needed a less mass-murder-y plan. I shook my head. “Harsh, Linda. Way harsh. What’s option number two?”