Page 30 of Twisting Twilight (Homesteader Hearth Witch #9)

“Oh.” Ruben looked simultaneously relieved and crestfallen. And more relaxed around me. “That is good for the gnome. Sorry, my sweet.”

Lori leaned over the bar and stroked a hand down the side of his face. She was average build for a middle-aged human woman, but her hand appeared child-sized against the lesser fae’s face. “It’s alright, handsome. Thanks for thinking of me.”

With aching tenderness, Ruben puckered his lips so his vestigial tusks wouldn’t hurt Lori and gave her a gentle kiss. “You deserve everything.” Apparently a half-ogre’s whisper was still very loud.

She smiled up at him adoringly. “Maybe after table four gets its refill.”

“Alright.” The half-ogre bustled behind the bar, drew four tankards of amber-colored beer from the tap, and marched off with the tray. “Be back for you,” he told us.

The second he was gone, Shari blurted, “You’re human!”

Lori tensed, eyes flicked down the line at us. To her perception, we appeared high fae. “If you make that a problem, you’ll be Ruben’s problem.”

“No! It’s just we are t?—”

Daphne’s hand shot out and pinched down on Shari’s shoulder. Shari flushed furiously at her near mistake.

“I’m a changeling, actually,” Lori said guardedly. “So if it’s anyone’s fault why I’m in Elfame, it’s your kind’s.”

Daphne’s soothing voice wasn’t patronizing.

“Your identity is no problem to any of us. We are simply pleasantly surprised. You owe us no explanation, but if I may ask, what are you doing here?” She indicated the tavern at large.

“And established, too, and with a male who clearly thinks you sweat vanilla ice cream.”

As if surprised by her own revelation, Lori gasped, “I remember ice cream!”

“When were you taken?” I blurted out, same as Shari. Ruben had made mention of a storybook, and human babes when snatched out of their cradles by the fae to live as pets in the immortal realm rarely came with such things. And no babes remembered ice cream.

Her raptor-like gaze turned to me, her walls going back up, and the smoke she exhaled from her latest puff was a swarm of green hornets.

“I was three. A little late for an exchange, I know. I was taken from the cottage garden while I was reading a book of fairy tales. Well, looking at the pictures, I suppose.” She released a single flat chuckle. “Who knew you were real?”

“Is that your dog on the tavern sign?” Shari asked. “The one with the honey-brown eyes?”

“Y-yes. How did you know that?”

Shari just gave her rare, close-lipped smile… which seemed to becoming less and less rare the more time we spent in Elfame. I bet she could tell anyone interested in listening just how many whiskers Ame had and how many were white or black.

Then, suddenly, Shari leaned forward and plucked up the candlestick near the ledger. She held it out straight towards Lori, mindful not to spill the wax. “It’s about to go out.”

It took us all a moment to realize what she meant, then Lori leaned forward to reignite the blunt. “Thank you.”

“I thought the fae couldn’t forcibly take anything that was in a mortal’s possession,” Shari continued, surprisingly chatty. Surprisingly willing to connect.

“Children aren’t possessions. They have autonomy from their first breath. And their innocence makes them highly attractive, I’ve learned,” she added darkly.

“You and Ruben seem very happy,” Daphne observed, moving the conversation back to an easier topic.

Smoky leaves twisted upon the wind of Lori’s exhale. “He paid for my freedom, restored my name, and brought me here,” she murmured quietly. “Gave me a job, a place to stay, respect. Then, I saw him and he saw me.” Smiling softly, she fiddled with the ring on her finger.

I knew fae marriages did not include the exchange of rings and wondered if this was a detail Ruben had gleaned from her storybook. A sense of normalcy for her in this strange land.

“What do you mean, ‘restored your name?’” I asked.

She cast us all a quizzical look, brow scrunching, and I realized I’d asked something very commonplace, something all fae would know.

“All human changelings are given a Faerish name, their mortal name forgotten. It’s just one more way we’re treated as property. I remembered my name from my life before and Ruben told me he would use no other to address me. Why don’t you know th?—”

“My sweet?” Ruben set down a tray of empty glass tankards. “Are Kian’s friends bothering you?”

Thank the Green Mother for timely interruptions!

“Kian?” she exclaimed. “So this is your cousin?”

Kian hunched his shoulders and flipped up the collar of his overcoat, hiding most of his face like a turtle in its shell. A handful of wrinkles appeared on Lori’s brow before smoothing away as she returned her attention to the half-ogre.

“And no, handsome. They’re just full of questions.”

“Like how you, as a human, can do that .” I pointed to the smoky minnows swimming towards the ceiling. “You’re not a witch, are you?” Thistle thorns, I couldn’t help myself.

She shook her head with a little shrug. “Elfame changes you if you stay here long enough. I suppose if I’d been born a witch, my quirks would be even stranger.”

The Crafting Circle ladies exchanged a glance under lowered lashes.

Simultaneously, we remembered Daphne’s taming of the baby luachra and the flocking hummingbirds.

We turned our attention to Shari, wondering if she’d experienced any changes.

If she had, they were certainly subtle. Maybe even suppressed. She fidgeted, fussing with her sleeves.

“You must all be apprentice scholars like my cousin,” Ruben said proudly. “Always wanting to know this and that. I don’t see any ravens. Do you keep vermin as bookish companions too?”

Fiachna growled and hunched closer to Kian’s neck, but it didn’t seem like Ruben had meant any insult.

“ Junior scholar,” Kian corrected. “And no, they’re— It doesn’t matter what they are.”

“Of course. Because a bunch of junior scholars wouldn’t need my help .”

Lori flipped her ledger shut with a snap and took a big puff of the green blunt, filling the air with frolicsome puppies. “You need Ruben’s help? Now you ’ve got me as curious as a cat.”

A pang rippled through me, and I sought down the bond for Sawyer.

He was alert and jittery. Anxious or excited, I couldn’t tell.

I sent him an image of the paper birch forest and The Happy Hound.

To my shock, I received an image in reply: a small waterfall with rounded rocks protruding from its pool.

“It’s Stripes,” I exclaimed, interrupting the glare-off contest between Kian and Ruben. “Sorry. I, uh— Could I go sit down somewhere for a minute?” I needed someplace to concentrate. “You know, for my, um”—I forced a cough—“cold?”

“I’ll get the fire cider from the back,” Lori volunteered, disappearing.

“We’ll take that big table over there in the corner, if that’s alright,” Cody said, pointing. “A round of drinks and whatever’s cooking. We’ve got money.”

“Kian’s friends do not pay.” The junior scholar squirmed under the half-ogre’s judgmental gaze. “Some of us still remember how family treats each other. This way.”

The elder Redbudians clustered their walking staffs in the nook by the door while Ruben loaded up his tray.

The half-ogre led us to the corner table with footsteps that rattled the floorboards.

I took the seat in the back so I could face the door, Shari wanted the one by the window and its buttercups, Kian practically threw himself into the seat with the most shadows, and everyone else took whatever chair was closest to them.

The half-ogre set down seven tankards—a full-sized one for Flora, which was taller than she was—and slid a plate of sliced, pungent cucumber towards the candelabra in the center of the table.

The round table immediately wobbled under the weight, and wax rained down from the shaken candles.

The old carpenter scooted back his chair to examine the source of the wobble.

“Ogre beer,” Ruben supplied. “Make you big and strong. Or knock you on your ass.” He guffawed then, slapping a hand down on Kian’s shoulder and squeezing until the bones popped and the junior scholar whimpered. “You came on Pot Roast Day, so that’s what you’ll have.”

“Thank you,” Emmett said, pulling his ogre beer towards him.

His bushy white eyebrows winged up after his first taste.

“Better take these off.” He removed his spectacles and slipped them under the tight cowl of his friar frock into the front pocket of his overalls.

“Ruben wasn’t joking. This beer might make you take a nap on the floor and no mistake. ”

“Fae don’t make jokes,” Kian mumbled. The coat collar still obscuring the lower half of his face muffled his sob as he gingerly poured the remains of the lorgnette onto the table in front of him.

The once impeccably shiny fire opal lenses were cloudy with greasy fingerprints.

On his shoulder, Fiachna grumbled and crawled into Kian’s overcoat to hide.

Finding the catastrophe too much to bear, the junior scholar released a wail and dropped his head onto his arms. The table wobbled violently and everyone snatched their drink.

Except Cody, who was still doubled over in his seat checking the stalk of trestle legs.

His hand appeared briefly to pull his pack off the back of his chair so he could root around for his tools.

“Besides the obvious, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to take us here,” Daphne told him.

“This place is lovely. I must say, I never thought such a place would offer us appetizers, either.” She pulled the plate of sliced cucumbers out from under the arms of the candelabra to save it from the wax and selected a slice first for Shari and then for herself.

“Your cousin Ruben seems so nice, and Lori?—”

“Stop saying that,” Kian hissed, head snapping up from his arms.

“Do that again!” Cody said, voice muffled. “I think I got this figured out.”