to learn about you for a year and a half!”
Really? “I’m an IT worker,” Bartholomew told him. “How interesting can I be?”
“You’re an IT worker who wants to be a baker and apparently can’t cast a spell for shit!” The throng grew even as they watched, and someone caught a glimpse of Bartholomew from the corner of their eyes and started to turn fully around to stare. Before that happened, though, Lachlan interposed himself bodily and shoved Bartholomew behind his booth, sliding in smoothly to greet customers.
Help Me If You Can
JOSH was still in Lachlan’s booth, looking alarmed as the traffic in front of the bakery booth got more and more out of control.
“Thank God you’re here,” Josh told him. “Did Bartholomew get the stuff?”
Lachlan nodded and gestured with his chin to the space behind the booths. “He’s back there. I think he’s going to try to set the spell up on the ground in the corners of the booth—he really wants to protect you guys. I’d say the best way to protect you is to send you all away, but that….”
Boy, that crowd was a surprise.
“Yeah, I’m not sure what happened,” Josh told him. “It was like we were selling a little bit here and there, like you do, and then the first person actually opened the plastic wrap and took a bite.” He grimaced. “I’m not gifted—I mean, not like Jordan and Bartholomew and Cully. But it was like this whisper went through the crowd, and suddenly people were closing their eyes and scenting the air. And it built from there. You guys were gone, what? Half an hour? This is nuts!”
Lachlan abruptly forgave the guy for being big and buff and having pretty dark brown eyes and so much chest it shortchanged his neck. Yeah, Lachlan tended to be a little jealous of Bartholomew’s friends, because they seemed so tight, and Lachlan wanted in. But maybe if he’d been nicer to someone besides Bartholomew, he might have found the key a little easier.
Besides, they were all going to need to think to figure out how to disperse this crowd.
“How much stock do you all have?” he asked, because at this point running out could be the best thing or the worst thing for all of them.
Josh groaned. “More than I fucking remember baking last night! God, it was all so fucked-up. We… we had a… well, we—”
Lachlan rolled his eyes. “You cast a bad spell that made the starlings fly upside down and squirrels do the rumba, and then you all helped him prepare for this morning. I got that part.”
Josh gave him a sideways glance. “You got that part? Do you realize how weird that sounds? It sounds weird to me, and I was there.”
Lachlan shrugged. “Everybody’s got a little pentagram in their logo, Josh. Was the witchcraft supposed to be a secret?”
“Yeah, but half the kids on the vendor floor are wearing a pentacle. There’s a booth down there that sells nothing but Supernatural gear, and I’ve seen a shit-ton of tattoos. Not all of those people….” He shifted uncomfortably. “We built a cone of power. We’ve done it before—small ones, barely shimmery, you could write it off as the moonlight hitting the dust just right. But this one, this one was for real. This wasn’t a light effect. And then, when we were all supposed to recite our heart’s desire… it… just yanked it out of us. All the nice things I… I guess all of us were planning to say, that crumbled to ash, and what came out was….” The big man’s face went soft and a little sad. “One word.”
“What word?” Lachlan asked, fascinated.
“That depended on who said it,” Josh replied, looking away. The naked emotion on his face—wistful, yearning—made Lachlan’s heart hurt a little. Was it that hard to say the thing you really wanted? Did showing your heart really have to hurt so much?
A year and a half, an insidious voice whispered. You couldn’t have asked him out?
No. Apparently not. He’d been trying to get Bartholomew to talk to him, to seek him out, but it appeared that the thing Bartholomew was worst at in the world was reaching for the thing he really wanted.
And Lachlan was conveniently ignoring the “white-bound virgin” part of Gretel’s conversation. For… for inconvenient caveman groin-achy reasons of his own.
“So what’s the plan?” he asked Josh, not even pretending to look for customers of his own at the moment. This situation was beyond normal. He’d