Page 6 of Homesick, Lovesick (Harper Valley Witch #3)

"So dear, why did you settle on matches, of all things?"

Ronan bristled, because it was one thing for someone to ask 'why are you called Match,' and quite another to ask a witch why their conduit was what it was. She may as well ask so why did you choose to be bisexual.

Match, true to form, ignored her.

"Is there dessert? The sandwiches were great, but I'm really jonesing for something sweet."

"Yeah, lots,"

Ronan said.

"You want chocolate, fruity, other?"

"Fruity."

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 meant you 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 really work.

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."

Now this piqued 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 was nothing like 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 was Match, 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."

"Nah, not if you use the ashes of the previous spell. Which, granted, I didn't have this time as this is the first one I'm making, but using the leavings abandoned on the table by other protection spells is a good start. When I don't have even that, there's usually something around that will make do as a booster. Burning is purifying, so even if it's not ideal, reducing it to ash will usually cleanse the impurities and make it suitable."

At the head of the table, even the hippie woman had taken notice.

"In all my years, I've never heard of doing it that way. May I see?"

Match handed off his spell, which got passed around the table, everyone examining the damn thing like they might find diamonds or something inside.

Ronan felt kind of stupid he hadn't known Match's way of doing things was unique. Surely he should have known that about his own boyfriend.

"What compelled you to try doing it this way?"

Hippie asked, and beside her, Minerva was examining the spell intently. Forget diamonds, she seemed to be looking for the meaning of life. What in the world?

Match shrugged.

"No one thing, really. I've always liked fire. It answers to my magic. Also, I grew up really poor. A lot of magic components can get expensive fast when bought in the quantities we need. So I learned to make do with what I had, and herbs, flowers, and other plants are plentiful and cheap when you can forage and grow them. Our entire yard growing up was given over to gardens. You can get pretty far with a pile of herbs and a box of 300 matches that cost a dollar."

He picked up a piece of blue quartz that had rolled into his station, turning it over and over in his fingers before setting it down.

"I find stone cold. It doesn't work for me."

He smiled faintly and looked up.

"My mom always used bones instead of stone. Her cats hunted the rodents that tried to decimate the gardens, brought her the ones they didn't eat. She'd keep the bones, break up the bigger ones into small pieces, and used them in place of stone in her workings. She thought stone was cold too. She said bone was earthy and warm, full of the life it had lived. She also brushed her cats and used their fur.

"My grandmother always used rose petals, no matter what she did. She had fifty different rose bushes by the end, every color, shape, and size you can imagine. Every single one died the same day she did.

"It's just what my family has always done. Gems and all clearly work fine for other witches, but they never called to my family."

"I see,"

Minerva said softly, and the hippie woman beside her seemed equally…quiet and almost reverent.

"Most impressive, Match. I knew you were good, obviously, but still I missed how good."

Even Diamond seemed to experience humbling for the first time in her life.

Ronan should probably figure out her actual name, even if he didn't particularly want to.

The bag was returned to Match, finally, and then they went about exchanging bags.

Of course, of course it was Diamond who got his.

Ronan hated everything.

Any lesson the woman had almost learned just five minutes ago was quickly forgotten as she preened over being the recipient of Match's protection.

After that, they decided to go into the woods to commune with nature or whatever.

Ronan loved Match, but he was not going to sit on the ground meditating and becoming one with nature.

He'd had to do that shit during training.

Sit beneath a dumbass fake waterfall in somebody's backyard and everything.

He'd practically heard the training montage music playing in the background.

One of the best days of his life was the day he'd completed his training and never had to do any of that dumbass shit every again.

One of the ways he and Benny had first connected was by commiserating over the ridiculousness of their training regimens, vowing ardently to not inflict it on their own kids should they ever have them.

Benny of course was up to three kids.

Ronan was hoping maybe that future was not so distant anymore, though he and Match hadn't talked much about it past agreeing they did want kids.

If only somebody would actually just fucking propose already with the ring he'd had for two months now and stop being a chickenshit.

Maybe he should go meditate under a waterfall.

Someone tapped him firmly on the shoulder, and Ronan turned to see he was not quite surrounded by Lynwood and two other paladins, another guy and a woman who looked like she could bench press all of them at the same time and find it too easy.

She smiled in greeting.

"I'm Agatha, this is my cousin George. You wanna spar with us while the witches hug trees?"

"I would pay an injudicious sum of money to see them actually, literally hugging trees,"

Ronan replied.

"Yes, I'd love to spar."

Not with Lynwood, but he could play nice. "Ronan."

"Heard a lot about you,"

Agatha said as they walked off toward presumably a sparring ring or field or whatever this place provided. She glanced at his arm, but the tattoo was currently covered by his sleeve.

George said, "Surprised you'd do all this."

Ronan's brow furrowed.

"Why wouldn't I?"

Lynwood sneered.

"Given what your parents say—"

Oh, Ronan saw what this was about now.

"You mean the parents I'm damn near no-contact with? The ones I stopped living with right before I started high school? The last time I talked to them was several months ago, like last year, I don't even remember exactly when. So I have no idea what shitty thing they're doing now. My family is my uncles, Match, and my teammates."

"That sucks, must be rough,"

Agatha said.

"I told them you weren't like your family."

Ronan gave a terse nod. "Thanks."

They came to a stop in an area that looked like it was meant for volleyball and such when the camp was open, but the nets had been taken down and stored somewhere, leaving only a large dirt square. Perfect for sparring.

"Four corners?"

Lynwood asked.

Ronan grinned.

"My favorite. One minute?"

"Sounds good,"

Agatha said.

They dispersed to what was called the 'cardinal points,' even though they rarely if ever actually aligned with them, forming a diamond.

Lynwood had set up a fancy timer, exactly the brand and style his parents had favored, meant for this sort of thing.

After it started, it would chime every minute, then ring differently when the total time was up.

Base Four Corners was twelve minutes, but as they were all pretty veteran, they'd likely go twenty-four minutes.

After he'd started living with his uncles, Ronan had bought himself a far less fancy but much more practical timer for his training exercises.

Benny had one that damn near took a degree to use, but only because that was just Benny. The man had six cast iron pans and a set of French cookware that Ronan couldn't pronounce.

Ronan stripped off his hoodie and long-sleeved shirt, leaving just his tank top.

On his right arm was his sword, and on the left arm was his armor.

Thankfully, he almost never had to use armor.

When the armor came out, things were bad bad.

On his upper right arm was the only other magic permanently imbedded in him—a protection spell meant to be used for things like sparring.

It could also be called up for actual fights, but mostly that wasn't necessary because Match could do infinitely better with little effort.

This was just a minor thing meant for sparring and other practice, so dumbass paladins didn't hurt each other while showing off.

He activated the protection spell and then drew his sword, spinning it easily in his hand, an old habit for settling into 'paladin mode'.

Four Corners sparring was, obviously, four people, one at each point.

North and East started, sparring for one minute.

Then it was East and South, then South and West, then West and North, then North and South, East and West, then it started over.

For basic warm-ups, or newbies, two full cycles was more than enough.

The longest he'd ever been forced to go was forty-eight minutes, which was fucking brutal.

He had not enjoyed that day at all.

"How long we going?"

he asked, rolling his shoulders and stretched his neck.

"Twenty-four?"

Agatha suggested.

Ronan gave a thumbs up, as did the other two.

She set the timer, and it chimed a countdown to give everyone a chance to position.

As he was the west point, he got to wait a couple of minutes.

General rules were no going for the face, no crotch shots, no dirty moves.

Four Corners wasn't really about causing damage, anyway.

It was a training exercise for learning how to move, and done for fun amongst paladins otherwise.

Some asshole trainers had ways of making it about damage, but none of Ronan's had tolerated that nonsense.

There were better training exercises for that.