by R. Cooper
Bartleby’s answer was a gentle hint of a sigh. “I think you’re forgetting the presence of whoever would be having them with you.”
Piotr couldn’t help a small, somewhat bitter laugh. “Right.”
There was just enough light to see most of Bartleby’s expression, but not enough to truly look into his eyes. The candlelight turned them gold and unreadable. His lips parted, but he didn’t speak.
“My mother wasn’t even interested in all this. She felt it was too much, and I think Andrei is the same.” Piotr wasn’t whining or complaining. He simply wanted Bartleby to understand. “I love it. But I can’t expect others to. Aside from my magic, there isn’t much about it to appeal to anyone, even other witches. Just me, and I’m difficult, as you and others have already pointed out. I don’t leave much for another person. What are they supposed to do? Putter around a big, empty house and love me? Hope they don’t mind when I can’t give them softness?”
Piotr shut his eyes tight and strengthened walls he hadn’t realized had eroded away. “Some of us are bound to the house, I guess, or the life. It would take a certain person to care like that, and let’s be honest, my family history has proven that a person like that does not exist.” Elysia had taken lovers to ease her loneliness. His mother had left. His grandmother had died alone, except for Pallas.
He opened his eyes at the sound of movement, and saw Bartleby curl in on himself.
“You might meet someone,” Bartleby whispered. He hid his face against his knees for a moment, then peeked over them. His voice was little. “They might be into your house, and your name. They might not mind the magic, or even like it. They could help you, maybe not with spells, or taking care of your home, but somehow, they will find where you need them and be there. They might not have thought about kids before, but maybe they aren’t against the idea.”
Piotr raised his eyebrows. “All that, and they’d have to want me too. That seems like a lot to ask of anyone, Bartleby. That’s a job as well as a husband. Why take that on, for a great big boring grouchy bear?”
Bartleby clutched at the edges of the blanket. “I’ve known you our whole lives, and I think someone could want you like that.”
“You’ve barely known me.” Piotr snorted like the bear he’d called himself.
But instead of being frightened, Bartleby lifted his head. “Ah, yes. The Piotr Russell brand of logic. He won’t let people get to know him, and then he’ll blame them for not being closer.”
Piotr raised his chin. “That isn’t true. I’m aware that I’m interested in things others aren’t.”
Bartleby straightened even more. “Hello? Which part? The witchcraft? The spells? The gardening and happy homemaking? Tons of people love all of those things! Do you even go on the internet?”
Piotr stared at him blankly, then recovered enough to cross his arms. “Internet? What’s that?” he asked in a flat voice. “Computers are witchcraft.”
Instead of laughing, Bartleby actually glared at him. “Oh, please. I know you put your great-great-great-grandfather’s home protection spell up in the coven’s forum last year when Renee bought a house. You’re very serious, about everything, Piotr, and that’s okay. It’s not a bad thing. Some people might even like it, if you let them like it.”
“I’m not—” Piotr tried.
“You’re defensive when I’m not out to hurt you.” Bartleby sighed. “I’m not, am I, babes?” He lifted his head to address the air.
Since he had no counterargument, Piotr gaped at him for a moment. Then he let his arms fall. “Don’t call my great aunt babes.”
That made Bartleby pause. “Did she hate it?”
Judging from the flaring candles, Piotr would say no. Someday, he was going to figure out how Bartleby could do these things and have Elysia’s slavish devotion. “She loved it,” he admitted at last.
Bartleby patted his hair, practically preening.
Piotr dragged himself all the way into the room and sank into an overstuffed armchair. “How are you so comfortable around her?” he wondered, frustrated and genuinely curious. “People usually avoid this room, even other witches.”
“I’m not much of a witch.” Bartleby shrugged. “But I think it’s awesome. There is a ghost in your house, all the time, not just at certain times of the year. It’s great. Or do you not remember my teenage experimentation with goth?”
Piotr had blocked it out until that moment. He put a hand over his mouth to conceal his smile. “No one will ever forget.” Fifteen-year-old Bartleby in black lipstick and terrible, terrible cheap clothes from that one store in the mall where kids tried to dress like movie vampires and witches. Piotr had thought Bartleby was being ironic, but now he wondered if Bartleby had been trying to appear like more of a witch because he hadn’t felt like one.
He stopped smiling, although Bartleby didn’t seem saddened by the memory.
“A touch dramatic, but when am I not?” Bartleby asked, in all seriousness, as if he wasn’t gentle and calm most of the time. “Poe is a great writer and all, but man, did I obsess over him. Still do a bit. The Cask of Amontillado will forever be my favorite, even if I suspect you would close me up in a wall and leave me there if you could.”
Piotr spent a few seconds trying to recall that horror story from his high school English class. He remembered the main character enclosing the silly one in a wall and leaving him to die for some perceived insult, then scowled and shook his head. “I wouldn’t do that. Not to anyone, and never to you.”
His tone made Bartleby focus on him. “Well, okay,” he conceded. “You wouldn’t go that far. You’d have to get close to me.”
It nettled, it was absolutely ridiculous how much it nettled to hear Bartleby say that he thought Piotr didn’t like him. Piotr was moody and distant, but he wasn’t a Poe villain.
He got up in sudden decision and went out to the garage, where he’d moved the cider to keep it colder. He returned with the bottle in hand and held it in front of Bartleby’s face.
There were several seconds of Bartleby’s startled silence, and then Bartleby wrapped his fingers around the bottle and pulled it to his chest. He popped the lid to release the fizzy pressure from the fermented apples, and then tilted his head back for a sip.
The pleased, soft noise he made had Piotr swallowing dryly. Bartleby took another swallow, longer this time, and then let the bottle rest against his lips as he licked the taste from them.
Piotr had been going to say something. He struggled to remember what when Bartleby tipped the bottle up for a third drink, this one deep and greedy. If there hadn’t been a ghost in the room, Piotr would have taken a moment to adjust himself.
Finally, Bartleby stopped tormenting him and opened his eyes. His expression was dreamy. “It’s even better than last year’s.”
Piotr found his words. “I don’t hate you. And I don’t think you’re lesser because you’re a familiar.”
Bartleby closed his mouth and stared at him for a long time. Then he hiccoughed. “A familiar without a witch,” he pointed out, and took another swig.
Things were possibly going to get dangerous if he kept drinking like that. But Piotr didn’t suggest he stop. “Bartleby.” It was all the argument he had.
Bartleby continued to sip his liquor. “Piotr,” he said, around the mouth of the bottle. The cider in the light of the fire was almost the same shade as his eyes. He kicked the blanket off his feet before licking his lips again.
“If we haven’t spoken, it wasn’t because I hated you, or was mad at you, or thought you were weaker than me.” There was a world in which Piotr was a respected witch, powerful enough to be avoided by many, if not feared. That world was outside of this parlor. “It was because I am this. Powerful and… dull. I’m just a persnickety fuck.”
A glassy-eyed blink answered that. “Well, there’s an image,” Bartleby remarked, and held up the bottle. Most of the cider was already gone. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Look at what you can make.”
Piotr took the bottle, only to hand it back. He’d never realized Bartleby could be this stubborn. “Bartleby, your soup was good. And so was your bread. And… and... with this power outage, I’m going to be behind in my plans. So I’ll need your help after all.”
Bartleby looked up, and let the hand holding the bottle drop to the cushion underneath him. He drew in a deep breath. “You’re asking?” He frowned, but only briefly. “You’re asking me for my help? You need me? Why aren’t I sober?” he fretted, making Piotr feel like an idiot for offering what he’d thought Bartleby had wanted.
Before Piotr could rescind the offer, Bartleby nodded eagerly. “Yes. Yes, I’d love to help you.”
“Really?” Let Elysia’s tinkling laugh follow him around the house for days, Piotr had to make sure.
Bartleby sat up and took his hand. “Let me be a part of your Hallow’s Eve, if not your Samhain. I will aid you. You won’t regret it,” he promised, quietly serious and undoubtedly tipsy.
“Have you eaten at all?” Piotr wondered, but held back the rest of his questions when Bartleby stared at him with gentle reproach. Bartleby was drunk, but he meant what he said. That was something Piotr needed to remember later when he thought of this. “Okay,” he agreed, for the hand holding his. “Okay. But there’s nothing to be done tonight.”
“We can always do what we did as kids.” Bartleby gave him a hopeful smile.
Telling fortunes was something even regular human children did on nights like this. But this time of year, with boundaries already blurring and falling away, the answers would have been definite even if Piotr hadn’t been in the room with a familiar.
Bartleby knew all that. He must have been looking for a definite answer.
Piotr’s voice was unnaturally rough when he spoke. “Trying to find out something in particular, Bartleby?”
Releasing him, Bartleby shrugged and turned his face away. He sipped lightly at the cider before he responded. “It’s the time of year for these kinds of games. Winter coming meant life and death survival for people all those centuries ago. It meant time was running out. Looking at the leaves, peeling apples to find out their destinies, were games, but they were serious too, like a lot of things in life. People needed to know before they committed themselves. Birth, death, love, marriage. They had to ask before they decided.”
Piotr sat down at the other end of the settee to puzzle over that. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Yes, I did,” Bartleby informed him with slow certainty, and raised his eyes to meet Piotr’s. “I’m not quite ready to drive home because of your lovely cider. So. What are we to do?”
He looked at Piotr in the flickering, living light, with Piotr’s cider shining on his lips, and it was easy to imagine crawling over to settle on top of him. How Bartleby would open his legs to make room and shiver a little at how big Piotr was, so much bigger than him. Piotr could see it, hear it, the wet, soft sounds Bartleby would make before he’d even kissed him, and then louder, hungry noises slipping from him if Piotr put his fingers in his mouth. Bartleby had been teasing him with that mouth for years, haunting him with the memory of how loud he’d been for his stolen kisses behind the hay bales. Piotr didn’t need the thinning of veils between worlds to see Bartleby’s naked body in his mind’s eye, to imagine his fingertips trailing over a honeysuckle vine while Bartleby moaned around his cock.
He held still. He imagined all of that was in his expression, as it always was. Piotr was very obvious where Bartleby was concerned. Everyone had always known, smiling at him, winking at him when they told him Bartleby was near. They didn’t understand this was part of the problem between them, why Piotr couldn’t let him close. This was why he couldn’t allow Bartleby to be his familiar.
He got up for Bartleby’s sake and sat in the armchair. “I can tell you your future, if you like,” he offered gruffly, hot and aroused. Pallas was in the house, quiet for once, but Piotr already knew he was a fool. He stared to the side of Bartleby, at the fire.
“No, thank you.” Bartleby was nearly a shadow too. His quiet voice was tremulous, but polite. “I don’t think I can take that, just now.” He stirred, but didn’t get up. “And perhaps you need to save your strength. Are you planning on working any spells on one of the most powerful nights of the year?”
It hurt to breathe, but Piotr made himself inhale before he spoke. “I usually try to gather energy, then put it back into the garden, the house.”
“And through them all the others you provide for,” Bartleby finished for him. ‘I’m sorry if I was tipsy and embarrassed myself, Piotr. I’d be honored to help, if you still want me to.”
“Embarrassed yourself?” Piotr shook his head sternly. “Ask me some other day, and I will tell you your future.”
“All right.” Strangely subdued for someone who had been so giddy minutes before, Bartleby stood up. “I might go get a drink of water before I leave.”
That made Piotr look over. “I’ll feed you first,” he insisted, and frowned until Bartleby nodded. “Then tomorrow you should… you should come over and help me carve some of the pumpkins. You’ll like that. And while you do that, I’ll make puree out of the others, for the cakes and bread.”
Bartleby put a hand to his chest. “Really?”
“It’ll be a long night,” Piotr warned him. “Lots of work, after being on your feet all day.”
Why that, of all things, would bring the giddy smile back to Bartleby’s face, he didn’t understand.
“Then I’ll bring more lattes,” Bartleby vowed, and gave him that uncertain look. “Unless you’ll be sick of pumpkin by then?”
“Never,” Piotr returned seriously, and flushed when Bartleby shook with a small, helpless laugh.
“There is something to be said for twilight times,” Bartleby told him, amused but somehow sad. “Even if they do mean the end of something.”
Piotr didn’t like the sound of that. He scowled as he got up to herd Bartleby down the hall so he could feed him. “Twilights are a beginning too.”
Bartleby turned to hand him the bottle with the last of the cider in it. “Yes, I know,” he murmured, too kind to be mean, and gave Piotr another bittersweet smile before he disappeared into the bathroom.
~~
Piotr didn’t sleep well after Bartleby left, although the power had come on not too long afterward, which meant he wouldn’t have to replace all the contents of his fridge. This knowledge was not as satisfying as it might once have been.
Something was wrong.
Not with the world. Not even within the house, although Elysia was upset and Pallas was being oddly considerate. No, something was wrong with Bartleby. Something might have been wrong with Bartleby for a long time, but Piotr wouldn’t have noticed, too busy keeping distance between them.
Bartleby did not speak of endings, or hadn’t, back when Piotr had talked to him on a semiregular basis. Bartleby asked questions and suggested possibilities. He didn’t close doors.
Piotr worried over it through the night, and then into the morning, where he was even more churlish than usual before his coffee. The cats and dog had returned to his porch, and Bartleby was trying to find a witch who would want him, as a familiar, and hopefully as a lover. Bartleby was leaving in search of that. That was what he’d meant.
Bartleby wanted to help Piotr this Samhain because it might be his last chance to, and no one had told Piotr. They’d mentioned Bartleby, and known, and Piotr had turned away before they’d had a chance to tell him.
He hurried through his workday, then went home to clean. He cleared off the dining room table and replaced the melted candles. He swept, and laid out newspaper to catch stray bits of pumpkin guts, and brought in the pumpkins, one by one. He put Bartleby’s two perfect pumpkins on the table, along with knives and a spoon and a bowl.
Then he gulped a glass of water and let in Pallas, who was impatiently rapping at the back door. She went from the kitchen to the dining room, where she took u
p position on a wall sconce.
“I didn’t know,” he told her, although it was no excuse. He’d pushed away all news of Bartleby.
He nervously surveyed the tabletop. If Bartleby was only going to do this once, then Piotr wanted him to enjoy it. But remembering the final note in Bartleby’s voice, the slope of his shoulders, made Piotr pace the parlor as the sky grew darker.
Bartleby might stay. He might choose a witch who lived close by, or be willing to move around here and join their coven. He would be with someone else, but he would be near. Piotr had expected that for most of his life. Now it could really happen. That shouldn’t make a difference, but it did.
Piotr walked the length of the parlor in time to distant, steady ticking, and glanced out into the street more than once, as so many of his ancestors must have done, waiting for guests who never came. Then the shadow in the corner shifted in excitement, and Piotr immediately rushed to the door, although the wind hadn’t stirred the chimes and warned him with the ringing of a bell.
He swung open the door before Bartleby could knock, and was greeted by a smile that nearly knocked him off his feet.
“I’m, um,” Bartleby said, and didn’t immediately finish his thought. He had slipped a barrette into his hair, and his lips were sparkling with gloss. The Dorchester Grocery shirt and red coat were familiar, but he had on a wool skirt and indigo tights. “I’m this me, today,” he explained at last, speaking as though breathing was a struggle. “And you are you, as always.” His gaze traveled over the old stretched sweatshirt Piotr wore for cleaning days, or, possibly, the body beneath it. He briefly pulled his shining lower lip between his teeth. “I, ah….” He held up a cardboard tray Piotr hadn’t even noticed, and then a basket. “Offerings.”
“May I help you with them?” Piotr heard himself asking with too much formality. But as though a ritual was taking place on his porch, Bartleby inclined his head and handed him the tray. Then Piotr stood out of his way to invite him inside. “Would you like to come in?”
