Page 11 of Homesick, Lovesick
Ronan winked and stood, venturing back to the tables yet again and returning with a heaping serving of strawberry shortcake for Match and a slice of chocolate cheesecake for him.
"So how long have you two been together?"Lynwood asked.
Another woman said, "Aren't you on the same Guard?"
"No rules against it," Match said idly."If there were, lots of Guards would lose people. Is your fiancée a guard?"
Bill shook his head."No, but she works in the office part time, doing accounting and stuff.Mostly she's at home with our little girl.Born last year, she turns one next month."
"And you're stuck out here?"Match asked, horrified."You should be home for her first birthday!"
Diamond, clearly clinically incapable of keeping her damn mouth shut, waved her ring-laden hand in the air."The baby won't remember it, and protecting our community is far more important.Billy knows that.He's happy to be part of the project, and leading one of the groups even."
Bill's polite smile didn't look very happy at all, but Ronan didn't think saying so would help anything.
"I see," Match said in that level way of his that people often took for defeat or acceptance but which really meantyou are now enemy number one.
Maybe an orange diamond had been the right call after all.Ugh, he was going to drive himself crazy.
The door flew open, and a whole new group of people walked in, and the introductions began again, though at least this new group was all the people who should have shown up last night.Two of them seemed pretty cozy with Lynwood, but the others shared looks that expressed many of Ronan's opinions on the little bastard, so that was heartening.
He tried to remember all the names, but there was just too damn much going on for them to really register.Ah, well, he'd try again later when things got quieter.God knew there'd be plenty of time to learn names while they were hiking through the woods.Ugh.
Too full to eat, though the cheesecake tempted him to a second slice, he settled for sipping on water while he continued to watch damn near everyone simp over his boyfriend.A few people cast him curious looks, a couple even made small talk, but it was clear they considered him barely one step above the furniture.
When they'd all finally finished eating, the group dragged Match outside, leaving Ronan to trail behind them, still invisible as ever.A large wooden table had been set up, along with all manner of familiar tools and components.
A different woman spoke now, from the late-arrival group.She was handsome, with gray threaded through her orangey-red hair, wearing a flowy green dress and lots of bright-colored wooden jewelry, a classic hippie vibe if ever Ronan had seen one, but she was the kind of woman who made the look reallywork.Unlike stupid Diamond, whatever the hell her real name was, who looked somewhat out of place.Like a city person on the farm for the first time.Why was she a witch when the job fit her like a wrong-sized jacket?
Whatever, not his problem.
The new woman smiled from the head of the table as the other witches present gathered around it, Minerva to her right, Diamond to her left."I thought as a bonding exercise, we could make each other protection charms.I've put names in this bowl.The name you draw is the one you make the charm for.Half of us will carry our charms as we travel the woods over the next month, and the rest will have them as they cover our duties."
Nowthispiqued Ronan's interest.He'd only ever seen Match and his mother work—well, and one other witch one time when he was a kid, but he barely remembered it.
Normally when he did this kind of thing, Match brought out his nifty plastic box with all the little compartments that he'd gotten at a craft store, filled with the most common herbs and other plants he used on a daily basis.
This time, though, he worked with what was on the table.Ronan recognized some of them: lavender, rosemary, thyme, fennel, geraniums…but plenty of others were a complete mystery.
All the other witches stripped the leaves and petals in brisk, familiar movements, clearly something done so often they could do it in their sleep, then threw them in a mortar before taking up pestles and setting to work reducing the contents to paste.Huh.That wasnothinglike the way Match did it.
Match didn't bother to strip anything, for one.He cut small bits of branch or whatever, and gently removed only a few petals from a bright pink geranium, and tucked everything gently into a mesh bag so much like the one that hung from the mirror of Ronan's car and were tucked around their room, though this one was plain white, and Match preferred colorful ones.
Once everything was in the bag, he piled up scraps from around the table, a couple more petals, and piled them neatly into the mortar he'd ignored until that point.From the pocket of his jeans he took out his ubiquitous box of matches, struck it, and set the contents of the mortar on fire.Then, as always, he extinguished the match and stuck the burnt end in his mouth.
Ronan had watched him do that more times than he could ever count.Match always tasted faintly of his namesake whenever they kissed, salty and faintly burnt, a taste that should probably be terrible but which he definitely would never be able to live without.It wasMatch, wood and sulfur and a burst of brilliant, sunny orange in the dead of night.
After everything in the mortar had burned, he tipped the ashes into the bag, closed it securely, and shook the contents about so the ash coated it all.Usually, he made the ashes from the used up remains of the previous protection, had once explained it strengthened the spell, carrying all the previous spell had left over to make the new one all the stronger.The longer the chain, the greater the protection.If someone ever tried to bespell Ronan's car, it would take way more energy than was worth expending to make the magic stick.
He shifted his attention to everyone else, who were taking the pastes they'd made and pressing them into wax that they then closed up into a ball.Then the ball was gently molded into a disk, the size of a really hefty coin, like a gold doubloon in a bad pirate film.The 'coins' were then dropped in the same kind of mesh bag, followed by little gems, though the type and color was different for each witch.
"Why the rocks?"he asked.
Diamond said rather snottily, "Gems, not rocks."
Ronan stifled a sigh."No shit, lady.But why use them?Match never does anything like that."
"What do you mean?"She frowned and shifted her gaze to Match, as did the other nearby witches, all of them looking at his protection spell for the first time."You need crystals for a proper protection."
