Lachlan’s chest.
Lachlan took his hand as it rested on the table. “I… I like helping you, Bartholomew,” he said. “I just wish you’d… I don’t know. Ask me for help—or company, or Jesus, maybe lunch sometime, you know? When there wasn’t strange magic afoot.”
A bright crescent of crimson slashed over Bartholomew’s cheeks, and his neck grew blotchy. “I’ll remember that,” he said. “I….” And he looked away, remorse maybe, crossing his face. “I should have had some faith in you. I… you were so nice to everybody. I kept thinking maybe I was special, but I didn’t know for sure.”
“Oh, yes,” Lachlan said, squeezing his hand. “You were special. And you should have faith in me. And for my part, I’ll remember….” Bartholomew was looking at their clasped hands like they were true magic. “I’ll remember that opening your heart doesn’t come easy to you, and I should take what you do say to me seriously.”
Bartholomew looked him in the eyes then, his smile as pure as a child’s. “Okay,” he said. “That works. I’ll try to be braver, Lachlan.” He went to bite his lip again, but stopped, catching Lachlan’s eyes in apology. “You’re worth it.”
Lachlan couldn’t help the grin that followed. “We both are.”
THEY had to go backward to the supermarket right outside of Jackson, but as Lachlan pulled the truck into the parking lot, Bartholomew assured him that it was perfect.
“Give me your phone,” he said, not getting out of the truck. First, he typed in his number, which was handy, and then he pulled up the notes and started typing in a shopping list. “I need you to go to the CVS. You’re looking for Epsom salts, the kind with eucalyptus in them. You don’t need that much, so the smallest bag they have. I’ll get the flowers and the clove oil and a pot you can throw away afterward—sometimes the potions… do things to the metal in the pot, and I don’t want to ruin your cookware.”
“Don’t you need a cauldron?” Lachlan asked seriously.
Bartholomew grimaced. “We’d need to know a blacksmith,” he said. “Helen left all sorts of books on potions with directions for the perfect cauldron, but we think she took her own. We’d need to have a new one blessed and have the smith use witch hazel to temper the metal—it was either commission a cauldron or buy my piece-of-shit catering van. We went with the van and a little cauldron graveyard in the garden surrounded by angelica, arrowhead, and lavender plants. They cancel the magic of the pots. And it’s weird—they rust and disintegrate way faster than normal. I have the feeling we could use the earth from that plot of garden for something very powerful, but Jordan and I don’t want to risk it yet.”
“So a basic pot,” Lachlan said, getting it.
“Yeah, if I can find something without Teflon, that’s even better. Anyway, I’ll meet you back at the car in fifteen, deal?”
“Yes, of course.” Lachlan frowned. “Are we sure nobody’s going to… you know… follow you and get all Backstreet Boys Batshit on you?”
Bartholomew’s small smile sort of pissed him off this time.
“It’s not like it didn’t just happen, Tolly!”
“Yeah, but that’s because those people ate the goods we made last night.”
Lachlan wasn’t stupid, and Bartholomew had been more than clear. “Element, intention, or direction?” he asked.
Bartholomew’s eyes lit up, and then he looked down, abashed. “Direction,” he muttered. “But not on purpose. The thing is, you have to be careful what you’re thinking when you’re working magic. And we were all so rattled, all of that magic swirling around, I didn’t clear my head and think about my baking. I sort of baked on automatic. So what was in my head, in my heart, was sort of… I mean, vanilla, sugar, and flour—key ingredients in pretty much everything out there. They’re all about goodwill and happiness and, well, love. So I was thinking… what I was thinking, and the elements weren’t going to fight me on it, and the next thing you know—”
Lachlan narrowed his eyes. “What were you thinking, Bartholomew?”
Bartholomew still didn’t meet his narrowed gaze. “Can we—”
Lachlan took that pointed chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting Bartholomew’s gaze up to meet his own. “Come on, Tolly. Tell me the truth. You’ve been cagey about this all day.”
“We’d just cast the spell for our heart’s desire,” Bartholomew told him. “And none of us wrote down what we really wanted. And the thing we really wanted was ripped