"That's poison, you know," Denny said.

Gloria stopped in mid-sprinkle. "It's nutmeg."

Denny shot Leo a look. "I'm right. Tell her I'm right."

Of course, Denny was right. Denny was a walking, talking Wikipedia. After ten years of friendship and two years of living together, Leo knew better than to challenge Denny's grasp of any obscure fact, even when it came down to the spices Gloria used for pumpkin pie. Denny didn't work the reference desk at the college library for nothing.

That didn't mean Denny couldn't exaggerate.

Leo happened to know nutmeg was toxic only in extremely large amounts. Even then, nutmeg poisoning wasn't deadly, just more like a really bad hallucinogen, complete with severe anxiety and convulsions. Yuck. He'd looked it up after Denny had refused to eat Leo's mom's pumpkin pie last Christmas because she put nutmeg in it. Good thing his parents were traveling this year, since Leo's mom had threatened not to invite Denny back for Christmas dinner. Leo knew the little bit of nutmeg Gloria had added to the pumpkin mixture now wasn't going to hurt anyone.

Except maybe Denny if he didn't stop criticizing his girlfriend's cooking.

"It's. Just. Nutmeg," Gloria said. "My mom's been putting it in pumpkin pie for years. In eggnog. She probably puts it in oatmeal, for all I know."

"That explains a lot," Denny said.

Gloria shot Leo an equally determined look across the tiny breakfast bar that separated Leo and Denny's small kitchen from their even smaller dining room. "Help me out here?" she asked.

Leo waved his hands out in front of himself in a no-way, no-how gesture. "I'm not getting in the middle of this one," he said. "You two wanted to make pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving dinner. This is your project, not mine."

Gloria had lived across the hall from Leo and Denny for the last seven months. Leo liked her well enough for an across the hall neighbor. She was friendly and smart, and she didn't seem to mind the two definitely odd men who lived across the hall, one of whom was gay and the other an anal, obsessive-compulsive perfectionist. She even put up with Denny's Star Wars collectibles and watched old X-Files episodes with Leo. She confessed to Leo once that she thought Krycek was hot.

For some reason Leo had yet to fathom, since Denny was the furthest thing possible from Krycek, Gloria and Denny started dating six weeks ago. Six of the longest weeks of Leo's life, given the thin wall between the bedrooms of his and Denny's two-bedroom apartment and the fact that Leo hadn't been laid in more months than he cared to remember. Leo had taken to sleeping with his television on just to try to mask the noise.