AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The shiver that went up Jasper’s spine was positively delicious. Smiling, Alastair pushed the front door to their town house open and?—
Smoke.
Why did he smell smoke?
Jasper sneezed loudly, scrunching his nose against the smell as they stepped inside. Alastair could barely smell it, just a hint in the air, but for a Wolf, it must be overwhelming. A quick glance around showed nothing amiss, but from the kitchen, where the smell was coming from, he could hear the sounds of someone moving around and… swearing?
“Fey?” Alastair called out, concerned, striding swiftly to the kitchen. “Are you hurt? What is that awful smell? It’s?—”
“Dinner,” Fey informed him, turning toward him with dangerously narrowed eyes. “And it’s going to be delicious.”
As she spoke, she lifted a dish from the oven, dropping it on the counter with enough force to make him wince. Goddess, she hadn’t even put down a potholder, or anything at all to protect the countertops. And that dish? The smells coming off it certainly didn’t smell like food.
“I thought you were picking up dinner tonight,” Alastair said, keeping his voice as polite as possible. Jasper appeared at his side, tactfully breathing through his mouth.
“I was going to,” Fey explained as she pulled plates from the cupboard. Alastair’s stomach rolled. “But Regina’s was closed when I went by, and we just had pizza the other night. So I thought, why don’t I cook instead?”
Goddess spare them. She wasn’t actually going to make them eat that, was she? As if in direct answer to his thoughts, Fey grabbed a knife and cut into the dish.
“Witchling, we’ve talked about this,” Alastair said gently. “Remember what happened last time you cooked?”
“Oh, please,” Fey snorted. “It was one tiny fire. Get over it.”
That “tiny fire” had required replacing the wooden doors on half his kitchen cupboards.
“What, uh… what is it?” Jasper asked, stepping forward. It was a very good question, Alastair thought. The… thing in the glass casserole dish appeared to be yellow and orange, at least the parts that weren’t burnt. Maybe some sort of cheese?
“It’s a lasagna,” Fey told them. She clutched the knife handle a little harder as she cut. “Joy gave me the recipe yesterday, and I figured I would give it a try.”
“Lasagna,” Jasper repeated, skeptically.
“I can follow a recipe, you know,” Fey spat at Alastair, heaping a slice of horrors onto a plate and thrusting it at Jasper’s chest. “It’s not that difficult.”
It shouldn’t be, no. But in the years they’d been together, Fey had only cooked a handful of times. Not one of her concoctions had been edible.
“I don’t mind cooking for us, Witchling,” Alastair assured her. “Why don’t you sit down and rest, and I’ll…”
Jasper took a bite.
Alastair watched in horror as the Wolf chewed, face perfectly blank. It seemed to take forever, like he was chewing a sponge. When he finally swallowed, he did so with a barely perceptible shudder.
“See?” Fey shot Alastair a satisfied smile. “It’s fine. He likes it.”
“There’s, uh…” Jasper swallowed hard. “What is the sweet taste?”
“Well…” Fey looked away, chewing her lip. “We didn’t have all the right ingredients, so I had to improvise. I couldn’t find any ground beef in the icebox, but there were some chicken sausages with apple bits, so I used those instead.”
“Did you make any other substitutions?” Alastair asked, terrified of the answer.
Fey shrugged. “Just a few spices. You didn’t have oregano, so I used cumin. You had plenty of that.”
Alastair thought he might faint. His stomach roiled, his nose starting to tease apart the disparate scents of the monstrous dish in front of them. No one could eat that, no one could survive that. He had to?—
Jasper took another bite.
“What the hell are you doing?” he hissed before he could stop himself.
“It’s not bad, it’s…” Jasper swallowed an obvious gag, clamping his teeth together tightly until it passed.
