Page 21 of Twisting Twilight (Homesteader Hearth Witch #9)

Had that comment come from anyone else, it would’ve sound patronizing.

I gave her a small smile and tried again.

I didn’t want to have to rely on external stimulus or emotional distress to summon fire, or any other element, for that matter.

I wanted it like my green magic—effortless and instinctual.

Which meant practice, practice, practice.

It was like I was six again. The Hawthorne in me bristled at that, but the temperance of the witch I had become since arriving in Redbud overruled my former self.

Shannon was right about the magic here. It was everywhere , and with all that potential, there was the very real possibility I could summon a wildfire when all I wanted was a spark. So, control, down to the molecule.

A strong foundation would make even the smallest magics more powerful. Brandi was proof of that.

Another arc of fire passed from thumb to forefinger, then another, and on the fourth try it didn’t disappear right away. I seized the sensation of it licking against my finger and fed it some more magic.

Too much.

The flame burst apart and I sighed, propping my elbows on my drawn-in knees and dropping my forehead onto the shelf of my arms. Another sigh escaped me. At least I hadn’t set the prairie on fire.

“Don’t give up, miss,” Emmett said from where he stretched out on one of the bedrolls, a pack propping up his head. The gleam of his spectacles was just visible over the mound of his potbelly. “Quit now, and you’ll never master light. Now that would be somethin’ indeed.”

I’d never considered refining fire into light before, but the idea delighted me.

I straightened up and tried again, the pricking sensation of fire familiar and easier to recognize.

It was important now not to get impatient, like an athlete post injury who had to rebuild muscle that had atrophied.

Of course she knew she was capable of squatting double her body weight— once.

But it was humbling, incremental steps that would now return her to peak condition.

Closing my eyes, I focused on the friction between my rubbing fingers.

The burst of heat when they snapped. I remembered the true nature of fire, felt it in the air radiating from the earth, from where it lingered in the sky in the final rays of the sun.

Refinement, purity of purpose, ambition, passion.

Drawing in a breath, I snapped my fingers and conjured flame.

Gently, I fed it a little more magic, and the little flame doubled in size.

Now that it was intent made manifest, I could manipulate it more easily.

I had the little flame dancing from fingertip to fingertip, jumping from one hand to another like a frog.

Daphne clapped her hands in delight. “You did it!”

Grinning, I marveled at the little magic.

Everything I’d summoned so far had been for protection, even destruction, not…

delight. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d performed magic simply for the joy of it.

Certainly not since I’d been a child at the manor.

After that it’d been combat training and defensive spells and making plants grow, not for fun, but for food or medicine.

Laughing softly, I caught that flame frog between my palms, and when I opened them, not even smoke remained.

The impatient, proud Hawthorne in me wanted to belittle this victory—it should not have taken me this long to conjure a little fire frog.

I told her she could suck on a pound of peach pits, emptied my mind of all expectation, and eagerly tried again.

“Incoming!” Flora cried.

Hat in hand, the garden gnome bounded into camp on the back of a jackrabbit the size of a spaniel.

“Jehoshaphat!” Cody cried, scrambling to his feet and reaching for his walking staff. “Ya see the teeth on this thing?”

Whooping and swinging her hat, Flora fisted the skin at the back of the jackrabbit’s neck as the beast bucked furiously.

Its large brown eyes were ringed in white, more in anger than in fear, and the nails on its massive back feet tore through the grass as it twisted violently to rid itself of its unwelcome rider.

“This is better than prairie dog rodeoing!” the garden gnome cried. “Giddyap, hop-along. Yahoo!”

In one swift movement, Kian plucked the gnome from the jackrabbit’s back. The harassed creature gave one final buck and darted into the grass.

“Hey!” Her little feet kicked nothing but air. “I rode that bunny in here for supper and you’re letting it get away!”

“You never hunt down a jackrabbit from the Summerland Prairies unless?—”

From above came an ear-splitting screech.

It was twilight now, when the vestiges of light played tricks on your eyes and shadows seemed to come alive and move.

Something resembling a peacock with a slender bill for sipping nectar flapped overhead, gold talons and wing claws slashing as the creature screamed again.

“Unless its éan sídhe friend has been dealt with first,” Kian cried, dropping the gnome to shield his head. “They’ll go for your eyes!”

The enraged fairy bird tucked its wings and dove after Flora. The garden gnome, who had fallen on her face after Kian had dropped her, shoved herself upright and promptly fell again, her legs tangled in the doll costume Agnes had dressed her in.

“Go on, git, you oversized turkey!” Cody said, swinging his walking staff.

The éan sídhe masterfully evaded the carpenter’s attacks, twisting midair and catching the staff with strong talons.

It plucked it from Cody’s surprised fingers with startling strength and hurled it aside.

The fairy bird swooped back into the sky, hovering out of range of Emmett’s staff as the tips of its feathers began to glow.

“Can they summon magic?” I shouted, alarmed. The earth beneath me heaved, launching me to my feet as green magic burst from my hands.

Kian emerged from his shield of his arms just long enough for an incredulous reply. “Of course it can! It’s sídhe , a fairy.”

“Stand down, cider witch!” Flora seized the hem of her dress and ripped a tear all the way to her hip. She did the same on the other side, and her strong legs showed from the rents as she bent her knees into a fighting crouch. “This one’s mine.”

Shari finally came awake at the sound of ripping fabric—an affront to any crafter’s ears—and yelped at the sight of the fairy bird blazing like a blue-green star above us. Daphne hunched over her like Kian did with Fiachna.

With a crack of its wings, the éan sídhe released a powerful shock wave. It would’ve flattened us to the ground had my glittering shield not deflected its strike and sent it hurtling off into the night.

That would’ve been an excellent time to use your air magic , a voice nagged. You could’ve caught it and redirected it back at the bird!

Now’s not the time for practice! I snapped back.

Even so, I dropped my shield and mentally prepared myself for such an opportunity.

The fairy bird dove once again for Flora, and the garden gnome leapt to meet her foe with a high-pitched battle cry.

Golden claws thrust forward to impale her little body, but Flora wasn’t just any old garden gnome.

There was a reason Ossian’s magic had turned her into a honey badger.

Flora slipped between its claws and delivered a magic-laced uppercut straight on the bird’s bill.

The éan sídhe’s head snapped back with a crack, and the fairy bird pulled out its attack with a shriek. It swooped back into the sky and screamed at us, but it didn’t attack again.

“You want some more?” Flora shouted. The green glow of her fists brightened.

No, it did not, and with another cry, it flapped away. In the distance, a jackrabbit leapt out of the tall grass in the same direction of the fairy bird.

My adrenaline still high, I realized someone in our party was missing. “Saw—Stripes!” No sooner had his name left my lips then I searched for him through our bond. He was close, unharmed, and headed our way.

“ I’m coming, I’m coming ,” he said through the bond, his voice faint from the distance.

Thistle thorns, I hoped he didn’t have a jackrabbit’s neck in his jaws.

I shoved my palm in the direction he was returning, and a sickle of air parted the tall grass.

In my panic, the magic came easy, summoned and gone before I had a chance to think.

At the end of the long channel was my cat, amber eyes slitted against the wind.

With a wave of my hand, a grassland helper rose from the ground.

The stalky scarecrow ran down the channel and retrieved the cat.

With the same rustling gait, it returned to camp and deposited my familiar and his catch before dissolving into a heap of chaff and seeds.

Sawyer had caught some kind of blister beetle, but unlike the variety that wandered the meadows and ditches of Redbud, this one was without the toxic secretions. And about a thousand times bigger. Its abdomen was as big as a basketball.

The Redbudians looked down at the beetle with a mixture of dismay and curiosity.

“Well,” Daphne ventured, “crickets are eaten in many different parts of the world without ill effect. This can’t be too different.”

“I’ve eaten weirder roadkill.” Cody gave the beetle a tentative nudge with the butt of his reclaimed walking staff.

Emmett rolled his eyes. “Of course you have.”

“When you’re in charge of feeding bear cubs, sometimes you gotta make do with whatcha got!”

“Look, Fiachna, an ink bulb beetle,” Kian said, ruffling the opossum’s scruff. “One of your favorites.”

We turned as one to the seated fae male, the junior scholar oblivious to the attention he’d just earned.

“I don’t suppose you know how to cook this?” Emmett asked.

Kian looked up and faltered at the intense gleam in seven pairs of eyes. “I-I, uh”—his throat bobbed with a nervous swallow—“know in theory how it’s prepared, but?—”

“Time to put theory into practice,” Cody said, jabbing the fae male with his walking staff. “Get up.”

“I’m not a cook, I’m a scholar! These hands are for recording history, unraveling forgotten secrets?—”

“Ugh, it can’t be that hard to figure out.

” Flora grabbed the beetle’s massive head and was just about to twist it off like a cork from a rum bottle when Kian cried, “Wait! You’ll disrupt the ink sac and contaminate the meat.

Not to mention release a stink that will attract every predator within three leagues of here. ”

“But I thought you didn’t want to cook.” The garden gnome braced her foot against the beetle’s thorax and gave the head another tug. “And we gotta gut it before we?—”

“ Stop .”

The junior scholar hoisted Fiachna onto his head and shifted forward onto his knees, a stern glint in his beautiful eyes.

With careful movements, he unbuttoned his overcoat and folded it up neatly to protect the books inside.

Rolling up the sleeves of his linen tunic, he revealed surprisingly muscled forearms. The Crafting Circle ladies all exchanged a look.

Our junior scholar was a nerd and a gym rat, it seemed.

“You are not ruining my chance to finish my master’s thesis by getting us eaten alive before we even reach the Fire Grove,” Kian told the garden gnome. “Get away from it. This is precision work. Fiachna, my quill knife, if you please.”

Flora lifted her hands in surrender and backed away from the beetle. “Whatever you say, Book Boy.” She gave us a sly wink. “Have it your way.”