Shortbread and Shadows (Dreamspun Beyond Book 41)

by Amy Lane

Bartholomew started to giggle, leaning his head against the window. “You want to know something?”

  “What?”

  “I’m starving. We didn’t even have time to eat this morning. God, I’d kill for a cup of coffee.”

  Lachlan chuckled. “That I can do. There’s a hole-in-the-wall place right in Plymouth. Breakfast and sandwiches. You’ll love it.”

  “Thank you,” Bartholomew said, yawning, eyes closing. “That sounds awesome.”

  Lachlan rooted behind the seat of the extended cab and came back with an extra hooded sweater, done in CSU Sacramento green and gold. “Here, Tolly. Use this as a pillow. It’s another half an hour at least. I’ll wake you then.”

  “Thank you again.” Bartholomew’s yawn threatened to take off the top of his head. “And not just for the sweater or the eggs or the ride or the….” Kindness or the kisses or the treating me like I’m special. He closed his eyes, thinking about all that Lachlan had done for him, not only that morning but over the last two years, and wished for more than words.

  Awakenings

  “TOLLY,” Lachlan said gently, shaking him by the arm. “Tolly, we’re here.”

  Lachlan had stopped to get gas right before they hit town, the better to let Bartholomew sleep, but they were at the little strip mall with his favorite bacon-and-egg place now, and Lachlan was getting hungry too.

  Bartholomew curled into himself like a pill bug, clutching Lachlan’s sweater to his chest. Lachlan smiled and cupped his cheek. “Bartholomew Crosby Baker,” he sang. “Aren’t you hungry?”

  Bartholomew opened one eye. “There is food?”

  “You doubt me?”

  Bartholomew closed both eyes, and Lachlan wasn’t sure if it was in thought or going back to sleep until they both popped open.

  “No,” Bartholomew said decisively. He squinted into the bright sunshine. “Is it cold, do you think?”

  Lachlan nodded. He’d been grateful for his hooded sweatshirt when he’d gotten gas. Bartholomew was wearing a T-shirt, probably having left any sweatshirt he’d meant to bring either at home or in the van. “You can wear that if you want.”

  “Thanks.” Bartholomew slid the sweater over his head and wriggled into it. It was almost two sizes too big, and Lachlan had to laugh.

  “Thin bakers and fat woodworkers—it feels like a trope.”

  “You’re not fat,” Bartholomew said, scowling. “Your waist is unbelievably small.”

  “My chest, though,” Lachlan said, because his core and chest had thickened considerably from working with wood.

  Bartholomew gave him a small, dreamy smile. “You’re just trying to get me to say you’re hot.”

  Lachlan winked. “Would you?”

  That small smile widened slowly. “Don’t know anybody else I’d kiss in a bathroom,” he said before biting his lip.

  Gah! The snarky, flirty guy hiding behind the blush and the dewy eyes. Lachlan couldn’t get enough of him.

  “C’mon, Tolly, or I’m going to forget I promised to feed you and find another bathroom.”

  Bartholomew straightened and let himself out of the truck, hunching into Lachlan’s sweater and pulling up the hood.

  “You weren’t kidding about cold,” he said, shivering. “This can’t possibly be normal.”

  Lachlan shrugged. “It is for November, but not usually this early. Why?”

  Bartholomew cast a dark look at the sky. “God, what a world when you can’t tell climate change from witchcraft. Oh!”

  Lachlan had come up behind him and grabbed his hand, twining their fingers together so naturally he could tell Bartholomew wouldn’t have thought about untangling them.

  “You, uh… I mean, this place is sort of, uh, not cosmopolitan. Are we going to find ourselves around a corner with our teeth on the ground?”

  “Yikes! No. My folks live about half an hour from my place, so I grew up around here. So far, nothing too dire. A few nasty words, a few attempts at bullying.” Lachlan shrugged. “Like you said, big chest, big biceps—not too much trouble.”

  “I think that might be you,” Bartholomew said, that shy, flirty look in his eyes again. “You’re like a big, pretty wood duck. Bad stuff just rolls off your back.”

  Lachlan frowned. “I can be hurt, Tolly. Don’t… don’t think I can’t.”

  Bartholomew nodded but didn’t look convinced. Lachlan fought the temptation to sigh. Those people who didn’t think you could be hurt were usually the ones who could hurt you.

  They made their way to a small diner in the strip mall that Lachlan had to admit didn’t look too exciting from the outside. Lettering on the window announced it to be Steak, Eggs, and Coffee, which Lachlan thought of as all the good things. Who needed marketing?

  The interior was plain white but clean, and a friendly woman in her forties with short red hair, giant green eyes, and a Seattle Seahawks jersey on under her apron smiled at them from behind a pastry counter with a register in the corner.

  “Lachlan!” she said, her voice chipper and friendly.

  “Tori!” he said, smiling. “You got a spot for me and my friend here?”

  She spotted the held hands and grinned happily. “Ooh, you settling down, sweetheart? Because it’s been a while. He looks serious.”

  Lachlan gave Bartholomew a sideways look. “It’s taken a while,” he said, nodding. “But we’ll see. Anyway, Tolly here needs breakfast, I wouldn’t mind lunch, and we both need coffee like other people need oxygen. Where can we sit?”

  “In the corner by the window,” she said smartly. “Your favorite spot.”

  Bartholomew probably wanted to keep an eye out for birds, because those starlings had scared the whole lot of them, and Lachlan had to admit he was getting a little spooked too.

  “No starlings,” Bartholomew muttered as they sat down, and Lachlan was right—he kept flicking little looks outside the entire time they were there.

  A few minutes later, they’d both ordered steak, eggs, and chips, and Tori had given them both steaming mugs of coffee with all the cream and sugar they could ask for, as well as a small pastry apiece, gratis, because Tori and Dave were just that solid.

  Bartholomew took a thoughtful bite of croissant and shuddered. “Wow. This is… this is amazing,” he said after a moment. “Damn. Who does their baking?”

  “Her husband, Dave. He’s probably in the back, napping, waiting for the afternoon crowd to clear. They run the place together, take Mondays and Tuesdays off, and for two weeks in the summer leave it completely to employees and journey anywhere they damned well please.” Lachlan took a sip of coffee. “They’ve been here since I moved up—I sort of live here sometimes, because you gotta get out of the workshop, right?”

  “That’s wonderful,” Bartholomew said. “Do you really spend all your time alone, though?”

  Lachlan shrugged. “Not on purpose. I like people—like crowds, really. I think that’s why I….” He grimaced, thinking for the first time about what a showboat he must have seemed to the shy Bartholomew. “Why I’m so… you know, gregarious on the weekends. I’m so happy to see other people, you know?”

  “I never thought of it like that,” Bartholomew said thoughtfully, ripping off another bite of croissant and then fidgeting with it until it was dust. “I… I hate my IT job so badly I think I’d be happy not to see anyone for a week. But I’d miss the coven. I guess talking to them after a week would feel like being let off a leash.”

  “Why do you hate IT so much?” Lachlan asked, curious. He’d had friends in that job—they’d been happy. He didn’t understand why it seemed to hurt Bartholomew so bad.

  “It’s that two weeks of vacation,” Bartholomew said, thinking. “It’s like a day pass out of hell. Two weeks, is that all? Business culture—it’s so… some of it is so stupid. ‘See the boss! Get seen by the boss! It’s not like you’re doing anything, but make sure the boss sees you doing it!’ There’s stupid rules for everything, and they make no sense. Guys can play on their phones duri
ng staff meetings, but girls can’t knit. Guys can wear the same suit day after day, but God help us if a woman wears a bright dress more than twice a year. And it’s not just sexism—it’s everything. Like being at your desk two minutes earlier or later is going to make a difference in the kind of productivity you’ll have. I….” He sighed and rested his chin on his fists. “I’m not making any sense, and I don’t understand the rules.”

  He straightened enough to take another bite of croissant. Lachlan knew from his own that it was sublime: buttery, flaky, with just the hint of vanilla and cinnamon. “But this? This is amazing. This is all that’s right with the world. I want to be a part of that.”

  Lachlan took another bite of his croissant and smiled, chewing happily. “Gotta say, Tolly, when you turn food into poetry like that, it does make me want to eat.” And it did.

  Bartholomew chuckled, the sound warming Lachlan’s belly. “Well, see, that at least is good, right?”

  “Oh yeah, not complaining.” Lachlan finished the croissant, and his entire aura grew sober. “So. The coven. How does it work?”

  Bartholomew fidgeted, which was something he did when he was about to talk a lot—Lachlan knew the tell now. “Well, there was this woman named Helen who lived in a teeny house with a ginormous garden at the end of our block. And one day—I was there for this—she just ran into our house, where Jordan, Alex, and I roomed, and said, ‘I need you boys to watch my stuff. Jordan, you’re in charge.’ She shoved her keys into his hand and turned around and took off on her little Ducati motorcycle, and that’s the last we’ve seen of her.”

  Lachlan couldn’t help it—he laughed, long and loud. “So literally, a witch just ran up to you and gave you her kitchen.”

  Bartholomew shrugged. “Well, yeah. She, uh, left us her nine cats.”

  “Nine?” Lachlan asked, horrified.

  “They, uh… they have a sandbox in the giant garden behind the cottage. It… it cleans itself.”

  “You’re shitting me,” Lachlan said, the laughter falling away.

  Bartholomew shook his head. “No. But… but see, we had to give Jordan up to the cottage or that spell wouldn’t work.”

  “So you and…?” Lachlan asked, still not sure who got who in the home lottery. He knew there were two more guys—both of them as gay as the sun was warm—and he found he was a little… territorial, now that he knew this coven was the only circle Bartholomew let go with.

  “Alex is my actual roommate,” Bartholomew told him. “We’re… suited. He’s very dry and understated and practical—gives me my space, you know?”

  Lachlan wrinkled his nose. “Wow, what’s that like? You guys sitting in front of the TV and not talking?”

  Bartholomew snorted. “No, we talk. We just don’t….” He waved his hands. “Drama. Cully and Dante—they drama. It’s exhausting.”

  “Where were they today?”

  Bartholomew frowned. “Well, they helped us get out the door—they needed umbrellas, to ward off the starlings—and there’s not really room in the van for everybody, so I guess they’re home. Lucky them.”

  Lachlan couldn’t suppress the smile that wanted to escape. “Hey, don’t sell yourself short. That sprint through the vendor floor was epic!”

  Oh, those little smiles were going to kill him. They were going to rip open his chest and leave his naked beating heart for the world to see.

  “Yeah.” Bartholomew nodded, like he was really proud of himself but didn’t want anybody to know. “It sort of was.”

  Lachlan chuckled and took a sip of his coffee, liking the way the sun turned Bartholomew’s sandy-brown hair gold at the ends as it streamed through the window.

  “So, how does the magic thing work?” he asked, curious in the extreme. Watching Bartholomew sing the lock open or Jedi mind-trick the girls in the bathroom had seemed so… so ordinary. Tiny moments that had let them escape the general mayhem. But he had no idea how Bartholomew had just… just said a spell to make it happen.

  Bartholomew chewed on his lower lip and ripped open three sugar packets at the same time, then poured the contents onto the table before drawing in them.

  “It’s a matter of elements,” he said, divvying up part of the sugar and pushing it to one side. “And intention,” he said, separating out another third of the sugar and shaping it to the bottom. “And direction.” And with a few more swipes of his fingers, he had a little pie chart made of sugar. Then he took his index finger and placed it in the middle, swirling out there. “Which sounds really easy—lavender for clarity and health, well, you use distilled lavender oil to make someone better, right?”

  His fingers worked deftly in the sugar—one of the tools of his trade, Lachlan figured—and he made a leaf-shaped arrow, pointing to the edge of the table.

  “Yes,” Lachlan said. “So, elements and intention and direction.”

  Bartholomew nodded. “Except lavender has very specific healing elements—anti-inflammatory, digestion, hair growth, insomnia, anxiety—right?”

  Lachlan nodded. “Yeah.”

  “So what if we wanted to help someone with anxiety who had anemia?”

  Lachlan frowned. “Well, you’d use something else, right?”

  Bartholomew shrugged. “You could. Or you could spread the lavender on someone’s heart and use your will. Flower sweet that helps us eat, ease his heart and soul. Let his blood flow whole and good, let his sleep be whole.”

  Lachlan frowned some more. “But you just made that up. I mean, it sounds good, but how do you know—”

  “Or you could make a potion with lavender and iron and put it in an amulet that they wore over their heart, asking for sweet dreams and strong blood.”

  “But how do you know?” Lachlan asked. “Wood I can feel under my hands. How do you know this will work?”

  Bartholomew shrugged. “Well, sometimes we feel a… a sort of thrumming through the blood, I guess, that tells us the magic is working. But for small stuff—those girls at the counter today, for example? We don’t. But our intentions are usually the best, and we all sort of sat down and agreed to rules before we started using the spells on other people. One is no promises, and we never tell people that their belief or lack of it makes or breaks the spell. The last thing we want is for someone who needs to go to the doctor to stay home because they think it will get in the way of something that isn’t working already. The other is to never even try to take the place of a doctor’s treatment, and definitely never tell someone that our way is better. We all got vaccinated when we were kids. It saved our lives. This doesn’t take the place of practical science.”

  “But it does help you unlock doors,” Lachlan said.

  Bartholomew looked him in the eyes. “Nobody’s life was at stake. That’s the other thing. Nothing vindictive or mean-spirited, and nothing life-threatening. I mean….” He grimaced. “If I was in a car accident and in surgery, I would definitely want my coven praying and spellcasting for my good health. And if I recovered, I would have no doubts, none at all, that they helped me out of a tight spot. But I wouldn’t have them steal my body, anoint me in oils, and pray over me while I bleed out. Jordan likes to say that common sense is the best magic of all, and I’ve got to tell you, we’ve made it our mantra.”

  Lachlan let out a breath. “So, you’re in charge of potions?”

  Bartholomew nodded. He studied his sugar again and added a few grains of salt, and then took his index finger and dripped three drops of coffee into the mixture. He stirred them all together.

  “Autumn tastes of sugar sweet, the tang of salt, the smoke of leaves. May this place of pastries neat always have peace under its eaves.”

  A wind blew through the little diner, a brisk autumn wind full of good smells and the promise of food and warmth and cheer. Lachlan closed his eyes, holding his face to that fragile moment in the heart, and when he opened them, he gasped.

  “The lettering,” he stammered. “In the windows!”

  Bartholomew looked up and
smiled. “That was unintentional,” he said winsomely. “But it’s pretty, isn’t it?”

  “Oh my,” Tori said, setting down their breakfast as Bartholomew hurriedly brushed the sugar off into his cupped hand. “It’s like someone knows Dave and I are Seahawks fans.”

  The lettering that had read Steak, Eggs, and Coffee as they’d walked in had, well, freshened up. It still said the same thing, but it was bright neon green, navy, and gray—perfect 12th Man colors, and Tori’s smile practically glowed.

  “Did you see who did that?” she asked. “I had no idea someone could get that on so quick!”

  “No, ma’am,” Lachlan said, looking at Bartholomew with troubled eyes. “We were just talking, and we realized it had changed. We thought it had happened before we got here and we just didn’t notice.”

  “Well, it’s lovely.” Tori gave them a happy smile. “Here, hon, dump the sugar in my dishrag. Don’t fret, everybody does it.”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” Bartholomew gratefully, doing as she asked. “And this looks wonderful.”

  “Dig in,” she told them and freshened their coffee before turning toward the back behind the counter and calling, “Dave! Did you pay to have the windows repainted? It looks amazing!”

  “What’s wrong?” Bartholomew asked.

  “You… you changed something about the world—unintentionally. Doesn’t that bother you?”

  Bartholomew gnawed on his lip. “It happens sometimes. Intention is only part of it, remember? The elements give direction too. In this case, I was giving a blessing, and the place I was blessing had its own ideas.” He glanced outside with a somber little smile on his face. “If my intention had been at work, the colors would have been much different.” He sobered. “But you’re right. We do have to be careful. If we don’t take intention and direction seriously, you end up with… upside-down starlings and a riot at a sci-fi convention. I need to figure out how to fix that.”

  “But wasn’t it all of you?” Lachlan asked.

  “The starlings, yes,” Bartholomew said, eyes still outside. “The riot? Mm—pretty sure that was all me.”