by Amy Lane
“Bartholomew?”
“Yes?”
“Do you have a spell that will get Lachlan here earlier?”
Bartholomew frowned. “No. What a horrible thing to ask! Fucking around with time when Dante and Cully are sort of still… drifting in nowhen. Do you have any idea of what would happen if we—”
Alex held up his hands again. “Wasn’t being literal, Barty. You’re driving me batshit. You’re going to be fine, you know that, right?”
Bartholomew looked at him over his crossed arms. “What if they don’t like me?”
Alex’s sharp face, which was so good at transmitting impatience or sarcasm, relaxed into the fondness of an older brother for a younger. “Impossible,” he said softly. “Lachlan adores you. If they’re good parents—and I realize you don’t have any experience with that sort—they’ll love you because he does.”
Bartholomew nodded and closed his eyes. “You know, if it wasn’t for the Dante and Cully thing—”
“I know.”
“That would have been a really good idea.”
Alex gave a small sigh and looked at the clock. “I know. Look, how about we eat some of those cookies you made? One each. You know I’m a sucker for them.”
Bartholomew lightened up. Nothing made him happier than someone enjoying his baking. These were lemon sugar iced, and he’d decorated them especially for Halloween. He really wanted someone to taste them before he gave them to Lachlan’s parents.
LACHLAN arrived about five minutes early, mostly because he knew Tolly would be fretful. When Tolly opened the door, Lachlan was surprised to hear Alex and Tolly laughing uproariously—that sort of emotional display was a little over-the-top for either of them, but he always enjoyed a good laugh.
“Tolly?” he said, kissing Bartholomew’s cheek. “What was so funny?”
Abruptly Bartholomew sobered, and he looked puzzled. “You know, I have no idea. Alex?”
Alex was looking just as baffled. “I’m not sure. It had something to do with something on the internet. A GIF or something.” He frowned. “Or a video? Definitely wasn’t politics.” He shook it off, looking happy and mellow, like someone would if they’d recently had a good laugh. “Either way, can’t remember now. But you guys have fun. Barty, you’re spending the night at Lachlan’s, right?”
Bartholomew nodded. “Unless you guys need me back for the morning ritual, or the night one or—”
Alex shook his head. “No. We’re almost to the point where one of us can do it. We just need to figure out the pattern of Dante and Cully appearing in their own house.” He sighed. “I miss movie nights, and you know how they just wander over when they’re trying to work and they get bored? I miss that.”
“We’ll get your friends back,” Lachlan said, hating to have been the one to break the good mood. Bartholomew and his friends seemed to need the laugh so bad. “Anyway, I’ll have him back Sunday night.”
Alex waved, and Lachlan escorted Bartholomew to his truck, giving him time to stow his knapsack and the charming gold-foil cookie tin in the extra cab before fastening his own belt.
“What’d you make for my folks?” Lachlan asked.
“Lemon iced sugar cookies,” Bartholomew said happily. “I was going to get fancy—do something like Samoas or mint chip or even rocky road, but I could cut out shapes with these, and that’s always fun.”
Lachlan chuckled. “Purple and orange icing for Halloween?”
“And witches’ hats and jack-o-lanterns and brooms,” Bartholomew said, giving that dreamy smile that told Lachlan making the cookies had put him at ease. Ease was good—they’d communicated mostly by phone this last week, and Bartholomew had gotten more and more keyed up as the time had gone on. If Lachlan hadn’t known for certain Bartholomew had been planning to bake for his parents, he would have postponed the whole meet-the-parents thing until Tolly was just a smidge less high-strung about it. Not that Lachlan could blame him, after meeting Tolly’s parents. Lachlan wouldn’t have had a full bowel movement in his entire life if he’d had to grow up with that. No wonder Bartholomew was a little on the shy and quiet side.
“Sounds like fun. My folks will love it. You know we’re just going there for pot roast and Scrabble, right?”
“You’ve said,” Bartholomew told him, and for once, he didn’t sound anxious.
“Good. It’s going to be fine.”
LACHLAN’S mother, Kristen, was beautiful. Willowy, around five feet, seven inches, with a thick ponytail of rich auburn hair, she wore no makeup to hide her laugh lines, and in jeans and a purple-and-orange sweater, she dressed well enough to tell Bartholomew she wanted to make a good impression. Her eyes were a startling blue, and her husband—who was much taller and whose thinning hair was too salt-and-pepper to guess at the original color—had eyes of deepest brown.
Together, they apparently produced Lachlan’s chestnut hair and hazel eyes, and Bartholomew approved.
Lachlan’s sister favored their mother in build, but her eyes were her father’s, and her hair might have been chestnut brown under the bright blond and blue highlights.
She wore a Halloween SpongeBob sweater and a purple sequined miniskirt, even though she looked only a couple years younger than Lachlan.
The way Lachlan widened his eyes told Bartholomew she always dressed that way—but then, he’d warned Bartholomew that his sister was, in his words, “a lot.”
But his mother wasn’t a “little” either.
“Oh my God!” she squealed as Lachlan ushered him into their small ranch-style home in El Dorado Hills. “You are so cute. Lachlan chose well.”
Bartholomew thought the whole world heard him swallow, but he still managed a smile. “Th-thank you,” he stammered, before his Adam’s apple bobbed again. “I’m really happy to meet you.”
“Come on in.” Kristen gestured. “Charlie, stop fussing over the meat! Let it rest!”
“Hasn’t done anything but sit in the oven,” Lachlan’s father said. “Doesn’t need to rest.”
“Meat’s dead, Dad. Can’t do anything but rest,” Lachlan said, face straight, only the corners of his mouth turned up to show he was messing with his dad.
Charlie Stephens chuckled. “As long as it doesn’t rest in peace,” he said, enjoying his own joke. He shook Bartholomew’s hand. “By the way, Lachlan swore up and down he’s seen you eat meat and we didn’t have to do vegetable lasagna. If we’re feeding you anything you can’t eat, feel free to speak up.”
For a moment, Bartholomew was confused, but Lachlan cleared things up almost immediately.
“He’s pagan, Dad, not vegan. He eats anything he wants.”
Oh! “Pagans are very okay with eating meat,” Bartholomew said. “I mean, some of them were even good with human sacrifice, but my coven doesn’t go that far.”
The silence was electric, and for a moment, Bartholomew wanted to die.
Then Lachlan broke that deadly quiet with a hearty guffaw. “Oh my God, Tolly—killing me! I swear, Dad, he doesn’t eat people either!”
The laugh that followed did a lot to ease the knot in Bartholomew’s stomach, and if it hadn’t, Charlie’s dreamy smile would have finished the job.
“I teach European history, Bartholomew, but our textbook is pretty outdated. How about you come help me with dinner and you tell me more about the history of Paganism. I think you could be my new favorite child!”
Bartholomew looked at Lachlan, who nodded, before handing his tin of cookies to Lachlan’s mother. “I’ve never been anybody’s favorite child before, sir. I think that sounds like fun.”
ERIN made an impatient sound as Lachlan guided her and their mother to the china hutch alongside their big open-air kitchen. They set pies or cakes there when they had desserts, and Bartholomew’s cookie tin held a place of honor.
“Lachlan!” she complained. “Why won’t you let me talk to him?”
“Because, honey,” their mother said, “he’s super shy and we don’t want to scare him
off.”
Lachlan didn’t want to tell them about how Bartholomew had stood up for him in front of his parents—not right now when it was so new. His Tolly had a core of steel to him, but Erin Stephens could be a crucible if she set her mind to it, and Lachlan didn’t want to put him through that. Not at the first meeting.
“Please,” he said, voice firm, “let Dad do the interrogation this time. Look at him!” They all shot surreptitious looks to the stove, where Charlie was dishing up the roast and putting finishing touches on the potatoes and veggies. Bartholomew was talking with a wide-eyed earnestness about how midwives had been persecuted by the Christians for understanding the mysteries of a woman’s body, and how any herbal knowledge they’d possessed had been relegated to “witchcraft.” Not exactly dining room chatter, but Lachlan’s father was eating it up with a fork.
“He seems pretty relaxed,” Kristen said.
“That’s because Dad got him started in his wheelhouse,” Lachlan said. “And that’s where we want him. Comfortable.” He gave his sister a gimlet-eyed glare. “Com. Fort. Able.”
“Fine.” Erin pouted. “Can we at least see the cookies?”
“You are twenty-seven years old,” Kristen admonished. “Do you think you can wai—ooh.”
Oh, Tolly had outdone himself this time. The cookies were perfect, golden brown with just a tint of yellow revealing the lemon within. He had a fair hand with icing, and each one was individually decorated. The witch’s hats were covered in stars and sparkles, the black cats had different expressions, and the stars were individually spectacular.
“He’s good,” Lachlan murmured. “Wait until you taste them. His shortbread could make you cry.” And not a word—not a word—about how his bespelled baked goods could make people chase after him like teenaged girls after a pop star.
“I think we’ll have to test that,” Kristen said slyly. “One cookie, but only one.” She chose a star, decorated in purple, orange, and blue, with gold sugar spangles. “Oh, it is really almost too pretty to eat.” She took a bite and handed the rest to Erin, closing her eyes ecstatically. “Almost. Oh my God—Lachlan, this is seriously heaven. Keep him. I don’t care if he’s a serial killer. Keep. Him.”
“Mm….” Erin took her own bite, and some of the frantic energy that radiated from her at the best of times eased up. The crackling, vibrating field that had driven Lachlan crazy from the moment his little sister was born suddenly faded in a palpable, almost supernatural way.
“This is… oh wow. This is like… mm. Like wine after a really long day,” Erin said. “Except it tastes like rainbows and first kisses.”
“It’s like having your feet rubbed,” his mother said, and Erin giggled.
“But not having your feet kissed.”
Kristen giggled. “Oh, speak for yourself. My feet are waxed, sanded, polished, and loved. They deserve a good kissing!”
Both women broke into a gasp of giddy laughter, and Erin held out the last bite of cookie for Lachlan to take.
“No, thanks,” he said weakly. “I, uh, have to go talk to Tolly.”
He didn’t realize his mother and sister had come with him until he got across the room. “Tolly—Tolly—dude! What did you put in the cookies?”
The whole family gasped, and Bartholomew looked puzzled and horrified.
“Butter, flour, sugar—”
Lachlan let out a sigh. “No, baby. I know you didn’t put anything in them. What did you think when you were making them?”
“He was thinking ‘I want to make Lachlan’s mother the happiest woman on earth,’” his mother said.
“And that his baby sister was the best sister on the planet,” Erin added. “Because he’s the best person you’ve brought home, hands down.”
His father turned from slicing the roast, eyebrows raised. “Are you sure it wasn’t pharmaceutical?” he asked. “And if so, may I have some?”
“No!” Bartholomew objected. “I wouldn’t do that. It’s an abomination!”
Lachlan’s mother snorted inelegantly. “Wasn’t when I was in high school, but whatever.”
Charlie Stephens raised his eyebrows at his wife, a bemused smile on his face. “Thirty-five years and that’s the first time I got her to admit she was a wild child in high school. Bartholomew, you and your magic cookies are a treasure!”
“But… but… I didn’t do anything,” Bartholomew sputtered. “I swear!”
Kristen Stephens gave a deep, sated sigh. “No, no, you didn’t,” she said, as though she’d awakened from a lovely nap. “This isn’t pharmaceutical—you can feel that. This is something much… much better.”
“It’s like… like all of the stuff in my head—it stopped moving for a blissful moment.” Erin had been diagnosed with ADHD as a kid, and Lachlan knew that even when she stopped taking medication, the condition didn’t just go away. “But not in my brain, in my heart.”
Mom smiled at Bartholomew again, stroking his hand like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Don’t look so worried, sweetheart. It’s not a bad thing. I… I can feel it fading already. No hangover. No regrets. It’s like… like I had a really good day, that’s all.”
Bartholomew’s lower lip had been about to wobble, and Lachlan felt like shit. He’d been the one supposed to protect Tolly. “We know you wouldn’t do anything mean-spirited,” he said, practically booty-bumping his mother out of the way so he could wrap his arm around Bartholomew’s shoulders. “But… Tolly. What did you do?”
“I… I wanted the cookies to make them happy,” Bartholomew said, and the miserable note to his voice about killed Lachlan.
“It worked,” Lachlan said, kissing his temple. “I’m sorry I went about that wrong.”
“You were just asking a question,” Bartholomew said, lightening up a little. “I… I didn’t mean to do anything to the cookies at all. I just made them with your family in mind and… and….”
“Blessed them,” Lachlan’s mother said, her face a warm study in wonder. “You blessed them, and we were blessed to have them. That’s a truly amazing gift.” Her face went sad, suddenly, the lines at her eyes reminding Lachlan that his mother worked in child’s services, and she had some really horrible days sometimes. “In fact, I would actually pay to have this blessing at my fingertips, Bartholomew. Lachlan says you run a business?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bartholomew told her.
“Well, after dinner, I’d love to buy some ‘happy cookies’ from you—maybe three dozen a week. I’d love to be able to give the kids I work with a cookie that would lift their worry, even for five minutes. Something to make them feel like their best day, after they’ve lived their worst. Do you think we could do that? Could you do this every time you bake a batch of cookies?”
“Make children smile?” Bartholomew’s face grew about a thousand times lighter. “Oh yeah—I’d… I mean, I could bake the hell out of those cookies.”
The family laughed, and Lachlan’s mom put everybody to work setting the big wooden table that marked the dining room from the rest of the kitchen. Lachlan pulled Bartholomew into the shadows of the living room for a moment.
“I really am sorry,” Lachlan said softly.
“I didn’t mean to drug your family,” Bartholomew told him, lips twisting.
“You didn’t. My mom had it right—she usually does. You blessed them. You gave my mom a happy evening, my sister some peace. After dinner my dad will eat about three of them and it will be like a bottle of wine with no hangover. You’ll see. You did a good thing. And to give them to children? Who are stressed and unhappy and scared? Tolly, that is some seriously amazing witchcraft right there.”
Bartholomew smiled, and it had gotten so Lachlan waited to watch him bite his lip because it did something sweet and gooey to his insides. “Then I’m glad it happened. I… I would do almost anything to make you happy, Lachlan.”
Lachlan lowered his head to kiss him, his taste, his response better than any cookie—even one of Bartholomew’
s.
THAT night turned into exactly what Lachlan had promised. Food, family, lots of laughter. The Scrabble game was fiercely fought, and finally won by the combined force of Lachlan’s history professor father and his lawyer mother, who seemed to have an unfair advantage in the word department.
The cookies were consumed with measured joy, and Lachlan’s mother made sure to save some for the next day, because you never knew when you’d need a little burst of sunshine-happy on command.
By the end of the night, Bartholomew was happy and mellow, relaxed and pleased—oh, so pleased—that Lachlan’s family was exactly like Lachlan. Quick to laugh, slow to anger, fun to know.
Only one thing troubled him, and he brought it up in the lightless drive from the parents’ place in El Dorado Hills to Lachlan’s rural house past Jackson.
“You didn’t want a cookie?” he asked plaintively as the last streetlight for miles illuminated their way.
“Nope,” Lachlan said, reaching out to squeeze his knee before putting his hand back on the wheel. “No cookies for me tonight.”
“Why not? You weren’t afraid of them, were you?”
Lachlan laughed, voice low and rumbly. “No, Tolly. Not afraid. I just… you know. Wanted to consume you tonight, and I didn’t want you thinking I needed the cookie as an excuse.”
“Oh.” Bartholomew’s face heated. “Well, I… any way I can make you happy.”
Lachlan laughed and then made a positively carnal suggestion, one that sent a tingling from Bartholomew’s nipples to his groin, weakened his thighs, and made him squeak in anticipation and shock.
“So,” Lachlan teased, his voice rich with desire. “Can you do that?”
“I can try,” Bartholomew promised breathlessly.
“Let’s see what kind of spell we can cast,” Lachlan told him, his laugh lascivious and fond.
Lachlan’s amazing house was like a mystical amphitheater when they entered it, lit only by the windows above and the skylight Lachlan had cut over the loft. As Bartholomew preceded him into the space, he felt like the night was almost too sacred for so much as a lamp.