Shortbread and Shadows

by Amy Lane

  The sewing machine, however, was whirring again, another confection of silk, velveteen, and linen transforming into clothing, seemingly without a human to guide it.

  Bartholomew fought a surge of vertigo and let himself out of the room, then grabbed Lachlan’s hand without a word and dragged him to the door. At the threshold he paused and remembered the thought of the amulets again, and decided against it.

  This situation was so far out of whack that he figured they’d need to be as specific as possible when trying to fix it. He’d leave the amulets on the table when he knew which two colors were Dante’s and Cully’s, and not before.

  “Let my friends be safe in space and time, let their hearts wait until we find a way for them to safely return, and may more magic quickly learn. Bless this house and its inhabitants, and let us fix this mess as soon as possible. So may it be.”

  “So may it be,” Lachlan dutifully echoed, and Bartholomew closed the door.

  They spent the next half hour fixing a pentagram in front of the three houses and the witch’s cottage, then putting a fifth at the narrow opening of road that allowed cars in from the cul-de-sac itself.

  Bartholomew taped a red, a white, and a black thread in the center of each pentagram and then ran the threads until they all connected, sighing when he looked inside the box.

  “What?” Alex asked.

  “Cully’s running out. We’re going to have to go to the fabric store and buy some of this stuff. I don’t think we can fix what’s going on in their house in a day.”

  Alex grunted. “Yeah. That occurred to me too. We all wronged the magic, so we all have to reverse the thing we did. Judging by the way they acted after they cast the spell—do you remember?”

  “They couldn’t look at each other,” Bartholomew said. He swallowed. “I have no idea what they said, but I’m betting they probably said each other’s name and didn’t even hear it.”

  Alex grimaced. “God, people are dumb. We’ve known for years.”

  They had—probably since their first year in college together. But knowing two of your best friends are perfect for each other and saying something when they both constantly dated a stream of completely unsuitable people were two completely different things.

  “Yeah, well, that’s years of missing each other. It’s probably not going to fix itself in one day.”

  Alex groaned. “But how are we going to live?”

  Bartholomew looked at Lachlan and shrugged unhappily. “We fix one thing at a time,” he said. “And we do as many things as possible together. Wait. Here’s Jordan.”

  They stepped out of the street to the sidewalk to let Bartholomew’s van through. As they had when Lachlan pulled up, the squirrels stopped their march and cleared a path.

  Jordan parked next to Lachlan’s truck, the two vehicles the only ones visible on the street besides the two tiny Priuses parked in the dirt driveway of the witch’s cottage—one for Jordan and one for Alex, since Bartholomew had pretty much taken over their garage. Everyone else fit their vehicles in their allotted place, and Bartholomew had to admit, surrounded by the bizarre animal zoo, he felt like his and Lachlan’s vehicles were pretty vulnerable.

  “Lachlan?” he said to his new boyfriend, who was probably exhausted and hungry again and ready for the weirdness to stop. “Is there any way you could put a pentagram on the hood of your truck? I hate to wreck the paint job, but—”

  Lachlan took the tape Alex offered and shook his head. “Tolly, after what we saw in that house, I’ll get one tattooed on my ass; just say the word.”

  Bartholomew squeezed his hand and gave him his best sickly smile. “You’re amazing. You’re… I mean, I’m freaking out, but you’re holding us together. So good. Put one on everybody’s car. Shoot, I’ve got to stop them—”

  “I’ll take mine and Jordan’s,” Alex said. “Go talk.”

  Bartholomew looked up to where Jordan was stepping out of the car and called out, “No! Wait! Don’t get out of the van!” He trotted across the street as fast as he could, gratified and grateful when Jordan, Josh, and Kate all froze, each of them in the act of putting their hand on the inside latches of the vehicle.

  “Here,” he panted slightly, motioning Jordan to roll down the window. “Here, you guys, each of you pick a color. Make sure it’s your color, that’s important, but you need this for protection, and then we have to do a spell on the cul-de-sac. And then we have to go inside, and we’ve got to talk, and I’ve got to bake.”

  “And someone’s got to order some food!” Kate demanded from the back of the van, and Jordan and Josh seconded her. Bartholomew couldn’t blame them, so he gave them a tight smile.

  “God, yes. Pizza sounds great,” he said. “But take the amulets first.”

  They all took one and slid it over their heads, and even though the late afternoon was giving way to a chilly Folsom evening, the light around the neighborhood seemed to have brightened. The air felt crisper and less bleak and the dark of the shadows cleaner and less shrouded in gloom.

  The turkeys remained in their positions of sentinels, but the starlings took off in a cloud. The cats kept their vigil from Jordan’s front yard, but the snakes—unnervingly enough—started to slither down the trees and across the yard. Some of them crossed the sidewalk, far away from the humans, some of them headed for the backyard, and most of them to the south of the cul-de-sac, where a couple of acres of undeveloped property sat about a block away.

  The humans waited respectfully for them all to more or less disappear before shuddering—hard—and resuming their conversation.

  Jordan was the one who said they should do a quick protection spell around the pentagram at the mouth of the cul-de-sac as the sun set. He asked Lachlan to stay by the cars and pulled the others into a circle, where they held hands, all of them looking around unhappily because they could feel the loss of Dante and Cully keenly.

  Jordan nodded in sympathy. “I’ll do it,” he said, but his lips quirked up at the corners. “Even though, Bartholomew? You should know—you’ve been spellcasting so much today, so strongly, it actually glows from your skin. I always thought I’d sort of dragged you into this, kicking and screaming, but you’ve really proved yourself a first-class witch today. Well done.”

  Bartholomew’s face heated, and he resisted the temptation to duck the compliment—and shirk the responsibility.

  “Well, it was my fault,” he said softly. “I’m the one who went baking without a… a magical safety net, I guess. I’m the one whose lie to the magic was so… paltry. The easiest lie not to tell, right? Do you care about someone? Yes. Yes, I do.”

  “He seems to like you too, if that helps,” Alex said dryly, and Kate, who was on his right side, squeezed his hand.

  “He really does,” Bartholomew said, looking over toward the driveway, where Lachlan gave a merry wave. “He’s… he’s sort of the greatest. These amulets—I think a lot of the magic was his good intentions, even if he didn’t know how to direct them. He’s… he’s a really good sport about all of this. That’s the truth.”

  Jordan nodded. “Then that’s where we’ll start. May our truth protect us. So may it be.” He nodded to Alex, on his left, who repeated the simple chant, and one by one, they vowed to tell the truth, because so much of this had started with simple, painful lies.

  As they spoke, the cone of power rose in front of them again, a sadly incomplete rainbow but still strong. Jordan had picked the blue ribbon, and the blue ray of power was the brightest before them, but Bartholomew’s intense amber was very nearly as strong.

  When had that happened?

  At the end of the chant, they all repeated the words together, ending with, “So may it be.”

  The power rose up above them and scattered like fireworks, and the last of the unholy darkness faded like cobwebs, although the ravens, squirrels, and turkeys stayed.

  They all took a deep breath, and Alex said, “Do you think the squirrels are getting tired by now?”

 
; Kate let out a hysterical giggle, and they all started moving inside. “Uh, guys?” Jordan said as they neared the door. “I… look, I think we may have to do that at sunrise too. I… Alex, how bad was it when you got here?”

  “Really super bad,” Alex said. “Lachlan, how bad was it?”

  “Scary as fuck,” Lachlan said smartly, managing to pull up to Bartholomew’s side.

  “I don’t want to talk about it out here,” Bartholomew said. The truth was, whether he’d been planning to go to the con tomorrow and sell stock or not, he would have needed to go inside and bake. His itch for comfort, for the thing he did to think, to make something that would give solace to his friends, was so strong he could practically feel that glow Jordan was talking about.

  They got inside, and it appeared that everybody else had the same idea. Kate hit her phone to order pizza, and the rest of them set up bags of flour, sugar, and vanilla on the counter.

  Lachlan disappeared for a moment through the front door as Bartholomew was giving directions, and he came back with the neat Ziploc bags full of the shortbread Bartholomew had made when he’d been spellcasting.

  “Oooh…,” Kate said, reaching her hand out as she sat at the kitchen table. “Gimme!”

  “These are good,” Lachlan said, and Bartholomew tried not to preen. “He made these when he was making the potion for the amulets. I think some of the magic seeped in. They’ll make you feel better.”

  He dished out the shortbread like a hardened cop would give out fingers of scotch, and everybody took a bite, including Bartholomew, who closed his eyes in bliss. “Wow,” he mumbled. “What kind of vanilla do you have? This tastes different than my usual shortbread.”

  Everybody else chuckled, the sound somehow heartier than they’d sounded as they arrived. “I think it was you, baby,” Lachlan said softly with a little booty bump. “I’m pretty sure you’re the secret ingredient.”

  Bartholomew gave him a mortified look, and Lachlan smiled, leaning over his back. “Now, you were doing really good bossing us around a few minutes ago—keep at it. Let’s get something in the oven, right?”

  “Yeah,” Bartholomew murmured. “Yeah, fine. Josh, you want to get out the mixers?”

  “On it, Barty.” Josh gave a yawn, and Bartholomew blinked. Oh damn.

  “Never mind, guys. Look, I’ll bake. I got a nap in. You guys rest and eat and plan. It’s… I mean, we made money this weekend. Stocking up is more for this… this feeling I’ve got. This… you know.” He looked apologetically at Alex, their skeptic. “This witchy feeling. Anyway, I feel like I need to be there on the vendors’ floor tomorrow, so I’m making stock so it looks like an ordinary day. Sit. Give it an hour. If you feel like it, come help me later.”

  “A witchy feeling?” Josh said, suddenly looking wide-awake.

  “You’ve got a witchy feeling?” Kate popped up.

  “Like, maybe there’s something you can do to make this whole thing better?” And the desperation—the true desperation—in Jordan’s voice told Bartholomew how much he was worried about Dante and Cully.

  “Yeah, guys, but, you know. Maybe just my part in it. I… I don’t have any guarantees we’ll… undo the whole enchilada. I’m only one guy.”

  “Yeah,” Jordan said thoughtfully, rubbing at a spot behind his ear, which was his tell for being nervous. “But if we all have to undo it, we need to take notes. You get started. You’re right—I for one could use a beer and ten minutes staring into space. But we’re baking again tonight. This is coven business.”

  “And oven business,” Lachlan said with a smirk.

  Bartholomew couldn’t help it. He gave Lachlan a fond look and let out a weird snort-laugh-ayuk sound worthy of a cartoon character before slapping his hand over his mouth.

  Lachlan grinned at him. “I’ll get the mixers, then,” he said. “Everybody else, take a load off. We’ll sit down when the pizza gets here.”

  “I’ll help with the mixers,” Jordan said. “They’re out in the garage. Lachlan? Follow me.”

  Commit to the Recipe

  LACHLAN’S sister usually did this part. He would get lured outside to help his parents bring something in, and Erin would jump on his girlfriend and badger her unmercifully about what her intentions were toward Lachlan. He assumed that when he brought Bartholomew home and introduced him, he’d have to warn Tolly that it might happen and threaten Erin within an inch of her life to go easy on him if Lachlan couldn’t get him out of it.

  But Bartholomew wasn’t going to bring Lachlan to his apparently toxic home and say, “Mom, Dad, here’s this guy I like and he really makes me happy!” Bartholomew would probably have a heart attack and die should that day ever occur. Lachlan was going to have to man up and take his grilling like a champ.

  And since Bartholomew’s mom and dad weren’t the ones with the filet knives and the sense of responsibility, it would be the Nordic god looming over Lachlan by a good three inches, currently assessing the shelves in Bartholomew’s specially kitted and tiled garage with blue-eyed steadiness.

  “Mixers there, right?” Lachlan said, reaching for one and pretending this wasn’t going to happen.

  “Stop right there,” Jordan said mildly. “We can both see where the mixers are. My dad helped him redesign this place at cost, you know. I think my stepdad had to offer sexual favors to the appliance store for that big walk-in refrigerator in the corner—I’m not even kidding.”

  Lachlan gave him a grin. “That’s not true,” he said with certainty. “Tolly told me you love your stepdad stupidly, and your dad sounds like a good guy. So go ahead. Do your worst.”

  Jordan arched a pale eyebrow. “Clarify.”

  “You want to make sure I don’t hurt your friend.”

  Jordan shook his head. “I want to make sure you don’t hurt my brother. You both may think I haven’t noticed, but that’s some pretty snazzy jewelry you’re both sporting there. Bartholomew has always been a lot more powerful than he believes, but those amulets and the ones he made us? I’ve been studying—he did some amazing work in the span of an afternoon. This thing with you? It has opened his heart to some really powerful emotions, do you understand me?”

  Lachlan swallowed. He really did. “Look,” he said, “I think I get you. You’re afraid… I mean, he was so quiet, right? So terrified of even talking to me. Like, we’ve known each other for two years, and I swear I’ve been in love with him for a year and a half, but I was going to give up. He was so terrified of showing me who he was, I didn’t think he liked me even a little, right?”

  Jordan let out a snort that was at least two-thirds frustration. “We are all aware.”

  Well, of course Bartholomew would tell his family. Hell, even Morty knew about Lachlan’s helpless crush on Tolly. The only reason Lachlan’s parents and Erin didn’t was that it was so damned serious. He hadn’t wanted them to fret about him, so he’d kept this one card, this one person, close to his vest.

  “So I get it,” Lachlan continued, thinking guiltily about his parents and how they didn’t know Lachlan’s one real love was a man. “I get that you’d be a little nervous of me, suddenly in on your magic, in on your coven—”

  Jordan gave him a direct look. “Nervous doesn’t cover it. The only reason, and I mean the only reason, I am not on the phone to my dad and stepdad to come over and check you out and run your finances and do a computer deep dive on you is that you totally stepped up today. You seemed like a decent guy from a distance. Fun, chatty, a little shallow—but until I saw you running after Bartholomew to keep him safe, I thought you were sort of this big bright ball of gas with no matter. But you kept him safe, you helped him cast spells, and you haven’t batted an eyelash. So you have lots of points in your favor here. But I need you to tell me right now why I should continue to trust you with my brother’s heart.”

  “Because of all the surprising shit I’ve seen today—and brother, this snazzy necklace? And the one on your neck? That was some wicked-awesome shit. But of all of
it that I’ve seen, the way he looks at me, the things he’s said about wanting me for two years, that’s the most amazing thing of all. That’s the real magic in my life. I’m not taking any of that for granted.”

  Jordan nodded, looking to the side in that way smart people did when they were mulling over possibilities and trying to come up with anything they’d missed.

  “Okay. Fair enough.” Jordan’s expression hardened. “You know those sitcoms where the wimpy brother tells the potential suitor that he’d better not be messing around and everybody laughs?”

  Lachlan nodded. “Yessir.”

  “Everybody here wants to keep Bartholomew from getting hurt. Everybody. And you might want to think about all that magic you’ve been talking about before you think about hurting him. Because if shit can go this wrong if we’re lying, imagine what it can do if we’re all pissed at someone who hurt one of our own.”

  Lachlan nodded, suitably chastened. “I’m here for him,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.” He wrinkled his nose. “But I gotta tell you, if there are snakes in my truck tomorrow, I’m going to be depending on you guys to pony up with some of that righteous ass-kicking, because I… I don’t care if they were poisonous or not, man. That was just….”

  Jordan shuddered. “Yeah. I even like snakes. I mean, I’m mostly an insect man myself, but that was no fun. Don’t worry. You keep treating Bartholomew right, we’ll do our best to keep you snake-free.”

  Lachlan nodded and blew out a relieved breath. “Okay, we’re totally solid, then. Me and Tolly, that’s for life.” He touched his amulet as he said it and was unsurprised by the tiny buzz under his fingertip and the spark of light.

  Jordan’s eyebrows went up. “You’d better mean that,” he said. “Jesus. Bartholomew must love you something fierce, because that is some serious magic in that thing.”

  “Well, you heard him,” Lachlan said steadily. “Some of it’s mine.”