The one time I had considered using black earth magic, I came away with a demon mark, then got another, then managed to find myself said demon’s familiar. Lucky for me, I had kept my soul and the bargain was declared unenforceable. I was free and clear but for Big Al’s original mark, which I’d  wear along with Newt’s mark until I found a way to pay both of them back. But at least with the familiar bond broken, Al wasn’t showing up every time I tapped a line. Eyes pinched from the sun, I smeared dirt over my wrist and Al’s demon mark. The earth was cool and it hid the upraised circle-and-line scar more reliably than any charm. IT covered the red welt from the band the Weres had put on me, too. God, I had been stupid. The breeze shifted a blond stray to tickle my face, and I tucked it away, glancing past the rosebush to the back of the flower bed. My lips parted in dismay. It had been trampled. An entire section of plants had been snapped at their bases and were now sprawled and wilting. Tiny footprints gave evidence to who had done it. Outraged, I gathered a handful of broken stems, feeling in the soft pliancy their unstoppable death. Damn garden fairies. "Hey!," I shouted, lurching up to stare into the canopy of the nearby ash tree. Face warm, I stomped over and stood under it, the plants in my had like an accusation. I’d been fighting them since they’d migrated up from Mexico last week, but it was a losing battle. Fairies ate insects, not nectar, like pixies did and they didn’t care if they killed a garden in their search for food. They were like humans that way, destroying what kept them alive in the long term in search for short-term resources. There were only six of them nut they had no respect for anything. "I said hey!" I called louder, craining my neck to the wad of leaves that looked like a squirrel’s nest midway up the tree. "I told you to stay out of my garden if you couldn’t keep from wrecking it! What are you going to do about this!" As I fumed on the ground, there was a rustling and a dead leaf fluttered down. A pale fairy stuck his head out, the leader of the small bachelor clan orienting on me immediately. "It’s not your garden," he said loudly. "It’s my garden and you can take a long walk in a short ley line for all I care." My mouth dropped open. From behind me came a thump of a window closing; Ashley didn’t want anything to do with what was to follow. I didn’t blame her but it was Glen’s garden and if I didn’t drive them out it would be trashed by the time I convinced him to come back. I was a runner, damn it, if I couldn’t keep Glen’s garden intact, I didn;t deserve the title. But it was getting harder each time and they only returned the moment I went inside. "Don’t ignore me!" I shouted as the fairy disappeared inside the communal nest. "You nasty little twit!" A cry of outrage slipped from me when a tiny bare ass took the place of the pale face and shook at me from the wad of leaves.