Several rosemary bushes had been uprooted, along with my peonies and a few other flowering plants. Linda, along with four other gnomes, was filling in the craters left behind by the fight. Fair Konig and his troupe were repairing my fence and gate. Keir had a cut on his cheek, a fat lip, and his soft curls were tussled. Whatever had happened here, he’d been in the thick of it.
I walked over to him and reached up to touch his cheek until I remembered my dirt-made hand and let my arm drop to my side. “Is everyone okay?” I asked him.
He put his arms around me. “No one was hurt.”
“What happened?”
“A duo of bugganes burrowed in,” he said. “They were on us fast.”
“Yuck,” Luanne remarked. “Bugganes are nasty buggers.”
I’d never heard of a buggane before, so I had no idea what they were talking about. “Talk to me like I’m stupid.”
Linda, who was nearby, said, “That’s how I always talk to you.”
I stuck my tongue out at her. There was a gnome dressed in a yellow shirt and pants, green winklepickers, and a green hat standing near my crotchety earth guardian. Its beard was longer than Linda’s, and it winked at me.
Since male and female gnomes both had beards, I wasn’t sure which it was, so I kept my greeting neutral. “Hi, there.”
“Hello, Iris Everlee,” it said formally. “I’m Morlanshanksawsbein.”
“That’s a mouthful.”
“Morlan is my husband,” Linda said. “He and a few others have agreed to help protect the pixies until their brood has matured.”
I raised both brows. “That’s mighty generous of you, Linda.” Especially considering she’d been planning to pack up her donsy and leave the mountain the day before.
She beaned me with a pebble. Morlan snickered.
I tipped my head to Morlan and the other gnomes. “Thank you for your help. It’s much appreciated.” After, I returned my focus to Keir. “What’s a buggane?”
“They’re shapeshifters who are kin to ogres, and they are covered in long, thick black hair from head to toe,” he replied. “And they are extremely fast.”
Luanne nodded. “Think Cousin It from the Addam’s Family, only a lot bigger.”
I made a yeeesh face. “That definitely paints a picture.”
“About five minutes after I got back, one came up under the gate, the other in the garden.” Keir scanned the garden. “They’re tough to kill because their hair acts like a shield.”
I’d seen him tear up creatures that were made of stone in his pooka form. I couldn’t imagine anything tougher than his claws. “Even with your black diamond nails?”
He nodded. “They have a very thick underfur. I couldn’t stab or slice through it.” He touched his lip. “They got in a few good licks on me.”
“How did you defeat them?”
The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Zev fried them bald. It was easy work after that.”
I looked around for the ifrit but didn’t see him. “Where’s Zev now?”
“He’s getting rid of the bodies.”
“We’re going to owe him big time.”
“Probably,” Keir said. The corners of his eyes were tense as he examined me. “It has spread.”
I nodded. “The wraith followed me to Jordan’s house.”
Zev would’ve told him where Lu and I had gone, so he didn’t look surprised, but his voice was alarmed. “You encountered the wraith again?”
I winced. “Yeah, it was awful.”
He wrapped his arms around me again, and I leaned into his embrace.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Jordan was able to destroy it.”
“The sorcerer?” He leaned back so he could meet my gaze. His voice was calm, but I could hear the edge of wariness it held. “You can’t trust him.”
“He’s a demi-god. He’s not here to harm Michael or me,” I said. “I’m pretty sure he is who he says he is. If it hadn’t been for Jordan, I’m not sure I would’ve made it through the encounter. The wraith had sent me into a severe depression spiral.”
“What if the reason he could destroy it is that he summoned the damn thing?” Anger simmered in Keir’s gray eyes and made his words sound hard. “Did you think of that?”
“It wasn’t him,” Luanne said, backing me up. “He saved me when he captured the wraith. The damn thing had pinned me down. It cost him a lot to hold it. If he’d wanted to kill Iris or me, he could’ve let the wraith finish its work.”
Keir shook his head, doubt plain in his expression. “It didn’t show up in Southill and target Iris on its own.”
“It was Bogmall.” I put my hand on Keir’s arm.
“No, I thought….” He looked at his sister. “What were you doing in Nevada if you weren’t following Bogmall?”
“You weren’t supposed to know about that,” she said. “I was told to treat it as top secret, even from you.”
“I’m not an idiot. As soon as the Iron Grove stopped giving me reports, I figured it out. So, if you followed her to Nevada, how did she end up here?”
“I followed her trail,” Lu admitted. “But I came up empty. The last sighting was in the Mojave desert, and that’s when it went cold. Or hot, as it turned out. The desert was a hundred and twenty degrees in the shade.”
“Why would she go there only to turn around and come back to Southill Village?” he asked.
I remembered the spicy and nutty scents on the wraith. “I think she’s learned fire magic,” I said. “She must’ve found an ignis-craft witch to sacrifice the way she’d tried to do with me.”
“What makes you think that?” Lu asked.
“The wraith. She’d used ingredients that are specific to fire magic to conjure it. I could smell it on the creature. Allspice and amaranth.” I stepped out of Keir’s arms. “Unless that’s what a wraith normally smells like.”
“I haven’t heard of them having any particular aroma.” Keir looked at Lu. “Did any witches go missing in Nevada?”
She shook her head. “I met with a coven who lived in the Mojave. They had nothing suspicious to report. I didn’t have any more leads. If you hadn’t called me back here, I would have started my journey back here the next day.”
I felt sick as I thought about the poor witch Bogmall had stolen power from. The ex-druid was single-minded in her grab for power. “She’s back in Southill. She’s not going to stop. And if the wraith has been following me for a few weeks, which I’m pretty sure it has, then Bogmall knows about the pixies. They’re in as much danger as the rest of us.”
“Was Thomas able to help you craft a spell to put up a barrier?” Keir asked.
“No, but he gave me another idea that I think might work even better.”
Luanne leaned in. “Well, let’s hear it.”
“I can possibly use an air spell he taught me that prevents sound from escaping a space.”
“That sounds like it could work, Kleinkind.” Linda had popped up between us. I looked down at her. “We should get started right away.”
“There’s one little problem,” I said.
“Just one?” Keir asked.
“Well, six to be exact.” I sighed. “I need a coven to pull off the spell. At least six others aside from me.”
“Of tru-craft witches?” Lu scoffed. “There’s no way we can make that happen.”
“What if we call the Grove. They have a directory of tru-crafters. If there are any close by….”
“Thomas said it had to be people I had a bond with. They don’t necessarily have to be witches.”
“My donsy and I will stand with you, Liebling,” Linda said.
“That’s really sweet,” I told her. “But I don’t have a bond with them. Only you. It has to be six people I love. With you, Keir, and Lu, I would still need three more.”
“What about Zev?”
I shook my head and frowned. “I’m super fond of him, but I don’t know if I’d go as far as love. And while he’s been great in a pinch, I’m not sure I trust him. It feels like he has an agenda most of the time.”
Lu glanced around us. “Zev is solid,” she said. “But he’s a djinn. His loyalty is always going to be to himself first.”
“As I suspected. Which means Zev is out. Any other ideas?” I looked at Keir, then Lu, then down to Linda. The gnome was frozen in place. I looked at the other gnomes in her donsy, and they’d stopped moving as well.
“What the heck happened here?” Marigold said as she came into the garden. “Did another satyr attack?” She saw the gnomes in various positions. She picked up the nearest one wearing yellow clothes with a green hat. I groaned when she said, “Oh, how cute. You got Linda some friends.”
I was totally paying for this. “That’s her husband, Mar. Put him down. He’s not a toy.”
“Ooops, sorry.” She carefully set the gnome down. “My bad. So, what did I miss?”
Luanne gave me a look I couldn’t decipher, and when I didn’t pick up what she was laying down, she held up her four fingers. “Marigold makes four.”
“Uhm, nope.” I glanced down at Linda. “If Marigold is in the fold, then Linda is out.”
“Oh, yeah, right,” Lu said. “Well, damn.”
“Out of what?” Marigold asked.
I wasn’t thrilled to yank my sister deeper into my world, but I had promised to make an effort for honesty. “I need a coven. It doesn’t have to be witches. Just people I have a bond with. People I can trust.”
“How many?” she asked.
“A minimum of six. No matter how I slice it, though, I only come up with three.”
Marigold shook her head as she dug her phone out of her bag purse.
“Who are you calling?”
She held up a finger as she put the phone to her ear. “Hey, Rose,” she said. “Yeah, I’m over at Iris’s now. I need you to call Dahlia and Rowan, and the three of you need to get your butts over here as soon as possible.”
“No,” I said. But Marigold put her finger over my lips to shush me. I knocked her hand away and tried to take the phone.
She danced back a few feet, nodded a few times, and then said, “Great. See you in ten minutes.” My sister disconnected the call and then met my gaze. “One coven on the way.”
Luanne let out a yip of triumph, then she high-fived Marigold. She frowned. “Wait, Rose and everyone knows about your magic?”
I nodded. “I told them this morning. Even so, it’s a bad idea to bring in non-magical peeps. This won’t work,” I said.
“I think it will,” Lu disagreed. “And with your other three siblings, you won’t need Linda.”
I cast a horrified look at my gnome. “I’ll always need Linda.”
Lu rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”
I turned to Keir. “This could work, couldn’t it?”
He nodded. “I think so.”
“They could get hurt if we get attacked.”
“We’ll protect them,” Luanne said. “Zev will be back soon. He’ll help as well.”
Marigold shuffled from foot to foot, her excitement palpable.
“This isn’t going to be fun,” I told her.
She arched a brow at me and smirked. “Says you. What could go wrong?”
This was a bad idea. My family had just found out about me this morning. I wasn’t even sure they believed me, even with proof. What could go wrong?
Everything.