Page 13 of A Light in the Dark

THIRTEEN

We are spoiled and cannot live without the internet.

Two hours outside of Stonecreek, within thirty minutes of where I had grown up as a child, Joel drove me deep into the woods down an unpaved path. His SUV handled the journey with grace, and I discovered the man loved getting mud on his tires and all over the rest of his vehicle. After two miles of untamed terrain, we hit a gravel road, which wound its way through an ancient wood.

The first time Joel stopped and pointed at something, I had no idea what he wanted me to spot, but then a pair of wings rustled, and I realized I beheld hundreds upon hundreds of sleeping luna moths. I gasped, and once I had spotted the first cluster of them, they no longer were able to hide from me. “Are these mundane or shifter?”

“They are mundane. These ones came out two days ago, and they rest during the day. The garden store is a bit down the way, but this is where we’re going to do our photography. There’s a waterfall, a prime picnic spot, and an excellent place to view luna moths. We’ll go to the store first, load up the SUV, and wait for the luna moths to start waking up. They become active two or three hours before sunset, so we have plenty of time to have lunch, and we can have dinner after it gets dark.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Did your garden store friend tell you they hatched?”

“No. My mom and dad did. While they have a home in Stonecreek, they have a property here. That’s how I knew the store had gotten the roses. Dad knows I want Earth roses, and he told me about it. When he told me, he also informed me about the luna moths.”

As I didn’t want to dig out my new camera yet, I rolled down the window to take pictures with my phone. “And you’ll teach me how to take photographs of them before they wake up?”

“That seems like a reasonable request, and I can do that to keep my kidnapped victim pleased.” Joel grinned at me, waited until I finished photographing the nearby luna moths, and closed my window for me. “Depending on how badly we’re seduced by roses at the garden store, lunch might be at my parents’ place. If we escape from the garden store without having to use their home as rose storage, lunch can be at the nearby restaurant, which also happens to be a steakhouse. And if we do invade my parents’ place, we’ll be swinging by the butcher to buy steaks to throw on their grill.”

I licked my lips at the thought of grilling steak. “Propane or charcoal?”

“Charcoal, but they do have a propane one as well.”

“Can we just accept we’ll be buying too much, requiring us to use a charcoal grill? Mine’s propane. It doesn’t taste as good. I might buy a good charcoal one this year.”

If the raise panned out, a charcoal grill would be high up on my list of things to get.

He chuckled. “I’m pretty sure we can manage that, even with the trailer. If you want to grill, I’m sure my parents won’t mind an invasion. And their place has a lot of luna moths. They’re probably gathering silk. Our species of mundane luna moth is actually a solid silk producer, so after the hatch, they like to gather enough silk to make thread with. Mom spins the threads for embroidery purposes, and she has a good dyeing process.”

“Do shifters produce silk?”

“Yes, they do, although not in the same fashion as mundane luna moths. Mundanes create their silk when entering the pupae stage and are creating their cocoon. Shifters make their silk as a result of digestion. Shifter silk is glossier, a bit stronger, but equally thin compared to mundane luna moth silk. The only reason my parents bother with the mundane silk is because there are so many luna moths in this area and they tend to be breeding year round except for a few weeks in winter, where it gets too cold for them. And the luna moths that do come out of their cocoons with unfortunate timing invade a local greenhouse designed just for them.”

I suspected I’d been lured to the town of luna moth shifters, and it had been right under my nose the entire time. I pointed in the direction of where I’d grown up. “You know the town that way?”

“The one with a fire station, a store that carries groceries in sad quantity, and a gas station? ”

“There’s a liquor store in the gas station!”

“You are from there, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

“We have internet here,” he informed me. “We are spoiled and cannot live without the internet.”

“This town definitely seems superior to that town. This town has luna moths and a garden store. That town has gossips, raging alcoholics, and a tendency to catch on fire.”

“We have two fire stations here. The thought of our luna moths suffering from fire is unacceptable.”

Ah-ha. “Did you start getting involved with search and rescue because your parents brought you out here and one volunteers with the fire department?”

“You are clever, my kidnapped victim. Clearly, I’m going to have to reward you with an even better steak than I anticipated. That is what happened. Dad would volunteer on his weekends, and we’d come out here. I wanted to do the fancy stuff Dad did, and he encouraged me. Once I was over the age of twelve and passed my first paramedics course, I was able to ride along with him on some jobs. I loved it.”

The idea that Joel had taken me to one of his happiest places stunned me, and I stared at the luna moths sleeping on the trees nearby. “You grew up surrounded by luna moths, then?”

“I did. You’ll get to see something magical tonight, that much I can promise. The moths should be at their most active once the sun goes down.” Joel gave me another minute or two to admire the luna moths before driving along the gravel road again. “There’s actually a paved road to get to town, but we have to go through that town to get to this one. And while I hadn’t known you are actually from there, I hate going through there. I have to gas up there instead of at the station here because it takes an hour longer. When someone who doesn’t live there stops to gas up, the gossips come out to play. If they realize I’m going home, they delay me an hour trying to get info out of me when the luna moths are most active. We don’t want them in our turf. They don’t clean up after themselves.”

No one had told me about the luna moths, and I thought about paying my parents a visit to scold them both. Then again, my parents tried to avoid the worst of the gossips, mostly keeping to themselves. “Ouch. It takes an extra hour to get here from the paved road? But why?”

He came to a halt and pointed into the woods. “There’s a big ass hill with a river and waterfall there, and the road has to take the long way around it to the bridge. The bridge is in the only safe spot for such a thing. Nobody in town wants the bridge to claim lives, and the still waters are just downstream from the bridge, which is the last rescue spot before the falls. The waterfalls are lethal. There is a chance of survival, but it’s fifty-fifty.”

“My parents are the nicest people in that town, I’m just saying. I feel I have to redeem myself somehow.”

“They’d have to be to produce someone as kind as you are.”

“Genetic mutation,” I muttered.

He snickered, shook his head, and resumed driving. “I mean, you can take me there and try to convince me it isn’t that bad.”

“Joel, their internet barely handles downloading digital books. It is that bad.”

“Maybe that’s why they keep wanting to invade us. They know we have good internet.” Joel narrowed his eyes. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to interrogate you about this, Valerie. We must be sure of their true threat level.”

“It’s pretty high. They ambush men in SUVs just for driving through. If you make the mistake of informing them that you are single, you will become prey. Until there are no single women left in town, you are nothing more than fresh meat to them. Then you are at high risk of assimilation, as they do not like letting their single women leave town.”

“How, precisely, did you escape their town?”

“Top percentile government grant,” I replied, allowing myself a smug smile. “I’m a woman with dangerous levels of intellect. I might infect them with my bookish ways.”

“We have a bookstore and a library,” he informed me.

“Well, shit, Joel, why didn’t you just come to town telling someone that? I would have found out and run through the woods for however many miles was needed.”

“Approximately thirty-five as the bird flies.”

I grunted at the distance, which would be a great deal longer when dodging trees. “It would have been worth it.”

“I suppose I better take my kidnapped victim to the bookstore. There’s just one problem with this plan, however.”

“What problem?”

“The bookstore is next to the craft store.”

I checked my phone for an internet connection, pleased to discover I had four full bars. “You weren’t joking about the internet. I seem to have reception even from here.”

“We love our internet here, and we paid good money to have cell towers installed the entire unpaved route. That was more for safety, but we can pull off and goof off on the internet if we need a hit, too. The internet is sacred , Valerie.”

After logging into my bank account, I discovered that I’d been paid, and there was an extra zero compared to what I had been expecting. Frowning, I tapped into the account to review my deposits to discover my work had paid me a thirty thousand dollar bonus on one payment and a fifteen thousand dollar bonus on a second payment the next day. Flabbergasted, I hit up my company’s online corporate directory, hunted for my boss’s cell number, and dialed.

“I see you have finally gotten around to checking your bank account,” my boss said instead of a proper greeting. “As I know you’re a stickler for enjoying your time off, as am I, I’ll give you the brief; those are your first payments for your bonus. The thirty thousand dollar bonus was the one I issued after checking your performance report and confirming our pay scale for the year. That was the standard bonus. The fifteen thousand dollar one was my boss pitching an absolute fit because there was no way your bonus was only thirty thousand for your personal contributions to the business’s prosperity. The next bonus—or bonuses—will be after he talks with the other folks at the top and in accounting to get a better feel for how much your practical contribution has been. As that bonus covers numerous years of your work, and he’s confident your profit increases for the company have been at least five times that a month since you’ve been here, he is not letting that slide. I had wanted to warn you on Friday, but the payroll hadn’t included the bonus, and I wasn’t sure if they were going to run separate transactions.”

“I’ll be damned,” I blurted, my eyes wide. “I was expecting…” Spluttering, as I had no idea how to tell him I had ex pected the removal of two zeros, I waved my free hand around in an effort to gain better control over my vocabulary.

“You were expecting maybe a thousand dollars because you do not have a degree,” Mr. Accor supplied.

“Yeah. That.”

“If you would like a degree, the company will pay all costs of tuition including overtime for the hours you spend in class. I know there’s some things that happen in accounting that confuse you.”

An accounting certification would make my job a great deal easier, as I wouldn’t have to guess about some elements of my work. “Yes, please.”

“I’ll look into your education options and put together a proposal. I recommend no more than one or two nights a week; there’s zero rush for your education. It’s clear you’re intelligent and skilled. It’s purely for your enrichment.”

I wanted to squeal, throw my phone, and clap my hands. “Since I have you here anyway, there’s a job fair coming up. Are we, as a company, going?”

“I know of it. Would you like to?”

“I think we would be able to get excellent employees who are motivated to work hard, and if we’re in a position to house them, we could really take advantage of the opportunity.”

“Can you train someone to do your exact job? That would let us open a location in Darkbend.”

Most of the time, I forgot Darkbend existed; located on the edge of Stonecreek, the small city served as the city-state’s import hub. Unlike Stonecreek, its river didn’t attempt to kill everyone yearly, and it enjoyed many of the perks of Stonecreek. However, due to its close proximity to Mountain Ridge, everyone who lived in Darkbend needed to hold either dual citizenship or dual residency.

Mountain Ridge’s border was right across the water, and the river could be easily crossed without benefit of boat or bridge.

Refugees could readily get dual citizenship.

“Yes, I can, especially if they’re anywhere near as smart as Madeline.”

“Would three people with less experience working together match one of you?”

I laughed at the absurdity of needing three people to do my job. “I would hope so!”

“I’ll make the arrangements, and I’ll plan for you to be out of the office that day. We can test Madeline solo, as I think the last thing we’d want right now is to subject her to the fair.”

I agreed with him. “Hey, can I ask an odd question?”

“Sure, go for it.”

“Is there any chance that I can take off work tomorrow? I actually went on a bit of a field trip today, and I’m expecting to go home a zombie,” I confessed.

My boss dared to laugh at me. “You have vacation days aplenty, Valerie. Take one. You’ve hardly touched your vacation or sick days. I’ll take care of registering your day off, and I’ll tell the upper management that I forced it on you, as you’ve been busting ass to get us mostly caught up. I’ll leave you to your trip, so have yourself a good time.”

Before I could say a word, he hung up on me.

For a shamefully long time, I stared at the dark screen of my phone .

“Everything okay?”

“I got a bonus!” I blurted.

He laughed. “It was probably deserved, knowing you. I’m guessing he told you that it was no problem for you to take a day off?”

I nodded.

“Well, interestingly enough, I too have spare vacation days to spend, so it would be no difficulty in the slightest to play hooky tomorrow. I believe now that I know that my kidnapped victim does not actually have to be returned until tomorrow night, we shall stay the night here, making use of my parents’ guest bedroom. How does that sound?”

“Far better than trying to drive back to Stonecreek in the middle of the night. I would have done it, but I would have been tired and cranky at work. I might have scared people after that.”

Joel snickered. “I’ll try my best to return you acceptably tired and not at all cranky. Now that I don’t have to worry about time constraints as much, where would you like to go first?”

“The craft store and the bookstore. That way, when you spend six hours trying to decide which roses to get, I can amuse myself with my plunder.”

The craft store was at least twice the size of the largest one in Stonecreek, and I wanted to cry beholding the wonders waiting in the window display. True to Joel’s word, the place stocked luna moth silk in every color imaginable in all weights, right down to single strand embroidery floss for those who didn’t like separating strands.

I resisted the urge to press my hands and face to the glass.

“I can really go in here and buy luna moth silk?”

“The shifter silk is cheaper than the mundane silk, as the mundane moths produce a great deal less than the shifter silk, but the shifters gather their silk and sell it to the spinners here. The spinners then dye it and sell it here. Most stores won’t buy it for retail because they would have to mark it up.” Joel opened the door and waited, grinning at me. “Go on. You can enter the store. They will sell you silk if you want silk.”

“That’s the problem. If I ask for it, they will sell it to me, and I’m going to blow out my entire bonus on silk.”

“You can even request silk made from specific shifters. They have samples of each shifter’s silk before and after dyeing.”

That got me to go inside, and while laughing his ass off, Joel pointed me in the direction of the silk display.

As I’d already kissed my dignity goodbye agreeing to be a kidnapping victim, I headed over to the hanks of silk available for touching, starting with the one labeled with a number one. Each shifter had a sample of their silk spun in all types, and a dry erase board listed what products were available from which shifter.

Absolutely delighted over the idea I could buy a complete floss set made from silk from one specific shifter, I checked out the labels and determined Shifter Two, Shifter Twelve, and Shifter Thirteen produced the most silk suitable for embroidery of all types. Shifter One had a little of everything but lacked sufficient volume in embroidery flosses to finish most projects. Shifter Five had sinful silk texture and a decent selection of embroidery colors while having yarns suitable for weaving, knitting, and crocheting.

Of the shifter silk available, I developed an instant love affair with Shifter Five, and without any hesitation, I sought out the hanks of yarn, reading labels until I found the correct rack.

Shifter Five had to be old or had a serious hobby of collecting silk. I could make numerous king sized blankets and never run out of material. After some consideration, I dug out my phone, located my favorite crochet pattern for blankets, and decided I would go with the blues and greens I associated with luna moths.

Shifter Five had plenty of fingering and sport weight yarns, which were my favorite of the lot to work with. I’d be crocheting for an eternity to finish my project, but I would not be leaving without sufficient silk to make a blanket.

As I had zero self-respect and a budget worth writing home about, I skipped across the store, grabbed a basket, and began my assault. After some thought, I decided to go with sport weight, and I decided I’d use six shades of blue, six shades of green, and three shades of yellowish green for my project. I would likely need sixty skeins of yarn for the size of blanket I wanted to do, but I would buy five skeins of each color to make certain I had enough.

I would make a scarf or something else with the leftovers.

Whistling a merry tune, I claimed my prizes before heading over to the crochet hooks and snagging the best one they had so I could begin the instant I had five minutes alone with my new stash .

Joel followed me, and he raised a brow. “Should I be concerned?”

“Only if you touch my basket.”

He held up his hands. “I will not touch your basket.”

“Go buy your own stash. This is mine.” To make it clear he was not stealing my precious yarn, I held the basket close. To my dismay, several skeins escaped. Cursing, I snagged them and stuffed them back on top of the pile.

“Perhaps you would like to have them hold your purchase at the counter while you do more shopping?” He pointed at a spot near the front of the store, and a young woman grinned at me, waved, and gestured to the metal table nearby.

I hauled over my stash, and I lifted it up, set it on the table, and said, “Can you protect this from him? He might steal my prizes!”

“I’m not going to steal your yarn, Valerie.”

I glared at him. “No, you might try to steal the bill for my yarn. This is mine, and I’m buying it for me.”

“I’m not going to steal your bill unless you leave it unattended. If you turn around and leave the bill unattended, you only have yourself to blame for the theft.”

“Don’t you have craft shopping to do?”

“No, because I’m going to my childhood home today, where I have my personal stash.”

I grunted, thanked the store’s employee, and began searching the internet for a cross-stitch project featuring luna moths. After a few minutes, I found one I liked, purchased it, and opened the key, checking the colors and starting with Shifter Five’s color stock for embroidery.

Luck was with me.

The pattern used common colors with a majority of blues, greens, yellows, dark blues, and black. I’d have to make a few substitutions, but Shifter Five’s embroidery collection would suffice for my needs. After emailing myself with the substitutions, I started with the few cones of thread available from his silk. Once I had chosen the appropriate cones, I worked through the spool supply before dealing with small skeins.

All-in-all, the embroidery thread would cost me several hundred, and I refused to regret it. After the floss, I went to the cloth selection, grateful the weavers had provided cloths of all types. Working on black silk would test my patience, but Shifter Five’s ridiculous production quantity meant I could buy an entire bolt of silk suitable for stitching on.

Shining my cell phone’s light into the weave indicated someone with skill had done the weaving, equally consistent compared to the commercial fabrics used by most for their projects.

Joel stared at me. “Are you buying an entire bolt of silk?”

I clutched my prize close and snarled at him. “This is mine .”

Once again, he held his hands up in surrender. “I’m not questioning your desire to have the bolt. I just know how much that bolt costs.”

“I do not care how much this bolt costs. It’s mine.”

“Maybe you should care how much the bolt costs.” Joel sighed. “If you can’t afford the bolt, may my wallet forgive me, I can. But that bolt is unholy expensive.”

“It’s specialty silk suitable for cross-stitching. By default, that means expensive.” I hauled over my new acquisitions, placed them on the table, and returned to Shifter Five’s cloth section, picking a marbled blue and green bolt suitable for cross-stitching to add to my stash.

Then, as I had zero self-restraint and a need to be able to stitch exclusively with Shifter Five’s sinful silk, I loaded up a third basket with every cone, spool, and skeins of colors I did not have. As black, white, and beige were unfortunately common in patterns, I grabbed an extra cone each of those colors.

I sniffed while passing Joel, added them to my stash, and then headed to the needles and other embroidery supplies, selecting enough to be able to work with until I got home.

Then I made the mistake of checking out their project holders, discovering that someone had made ones from the shifters’ silks. Someone had crafted a zippered holder with sections to hold bobbins, a place for my scissors, a pouch for the cloth, and pockets and doodads for anything I might need to carry my project in style.

To add to the killing blow, it featured a luna moth motif.

According to the price tag, if I wanted it, I would need to spend three thousand dollars on it.

Prepared to have to call my bank to get them to unlock my card to issue the payment, as there was no way my credit card could hold the purchase, I carried it to the counter, placed it next to the cash register, and said, “I’m going to have to call my bank to get them to unlock my debit card because my credit card isn’t big enough for these purchases.”

The woman stared at both bolts of my cloth, at me, and at the project holder I’d selected. “I have never seen someone rampage on one shifter’s stock like this before.”

“It’s so soft and silky,” I whispered, staring at her with wide eyes. “I fondled every shifter’s silk, and this one is the best. If I am spending a fortune on silk, I am buying the best silk.”

The woman laughed. “I’m partial to Shifter Twelve, but I’m married to him, so I have to be partial to Shifter Twelve.”

“You could talk me into getting enough yarn for a single scarf made from Shifter Twelve’s silk. He’s got nice silk. It’s not as nice as Shifter Five’s, but he was a contender.”

“We have a kit with his yarn for a scarf.” The woman headed over to a different section of the store, stood on her toes, and pulled down a blue box, which she carried over. “Since you seem to like blue and green, you’ll enjoy this one. The pattern is meant for beginners, and it’s his winter silk, which is a little coarser but warmer. Since it’s a little coarser, we sell the kit for three hundred.”

I patted the counter next to my project folder. “Please tell your husband I enjoyed fondling his silk today.”

She laughed and nodded. “I’ll do that, thank you. He’s going to be quite jealous over Shifter Five’s sales today, though. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone come in and buy so much before in one go.”

“I got paid a bonus, and for the first time in my life, I’m splurging on something utterly ridiculous that will make me happy for hundreds of hours to come. And Shifter Five, apologies to Shifter Twelve, has the best silk texture.”

“She really did fondle every single sample of silk, Yolana. All I did was tell her there were samples!”

“I saw.” The woman laughed and shook her head. “We have an agreement with most banks to do wire transfers, so if you hand me your debit card, I can initiate the payment. You can confirm the payment in your online banking portal, and as soon as the confirmation is sent, the payment will be ready to clear.”

I wielded my phone like the potent weapon it was. “I’m prepared to spend a shocking amount of money.”

“I’ll catch you if you faint when you find out how much a bolt of luna moth silk costs,” Joel muttered, shaking his head. “When I found how much a bolt cost, I almost fainted.”

“It’s true. He got on his knees, cried over the unfairness of it all, and acted like a child in my damned store, all because he wanted a silk suit and hadn’t priced out the yardage before coming in to buy the materials.”

“Did you buy the silk?” I asked, unable to mask my curiosity.

“I did, and I threw a fit on the floor of the store while processing the payment. With that much money spent, I feel making a public display over my anguish was appropriate.”

I narrowed my eyes. “I’m expecting ten thousand a bolt due to the price of the project holder.”

Yolana chuckled, scanned the bolts, and said, “Someone knows her way around material costs, labor costs, and rarity markups.”

“Two bolts of silk will last me a while, and I will be full of joy but short on money.”

“And with the amount of thread you bought, you won’t have to worry much about running out for a while. We can do special orders for matching silks.”

“How much for a complete color set of Shifter Five’s silk in the twenty yard spools?”

“We sell a spool for thirty a piece, and we can do four hundred different shades. ”

I would regret it, but I said, “How long for a custom order of a full set of colors?”

Yolana made a thoughtful sound, went to the computer on the other end of the counter, and tapped at the screen. “We’d have to order silk from the shifter, but we have enough undyed silk in stock to do a hundred and fifty colors. That would take six months to custom dye. We should be getting the next contracted batch of silks two months from now, and we should receive enough to do the complete set. Once we have the silk, it’ll be two months to spin it and six months to dye it. It would be around a year to have the whole set done.”

“Do I pay up front?”

“We ask for a ten percent deposit, non-refundable.”

“Bill me,” I ordered. “Also, you made a very good call to mask the identities of the shifters producing this stuff.” I realized I knew who Shifter Twelve was married to, which would make it possible to locate him. I regarded the woman with wide eyes. “I promise I won’t abuse knowing Shifter Twelve is your husband.”

Yolana cracked up laughing and waved away my concerns. “I’m Shifter One, and I spin and dye all my silk. It keeps me busy when nobody is visiting the store. It’s so specialized that I spend a lot of my day in the back and rely on the security camera to warn me if somebody is coming in.”

Oh. “Now I feel badly I didn’t buy any of yours.”

She laughed. “I’ll toss in a present of some of my silk on the house. You’ve certainly earned a gift for your patronage. I feel like I should give you something for bringing her here, Joel. ”

“I could use a bolt of Shifter Three’s silk in navy blue.”

“I will give you a hundred dollars off the bolt.”

Joel scowled. “You don’t have a bolt of navy blue. You never have a bolt of Three’s navy blue.”

“I have two bolts of navy blue, one bolt of white, and one bolt of pale blue.”

With a disheartened cry, Joel placed his backpack on the ground, threw himself down, and wailed his dismay for the world to hear.

I stared at him with wide eyes. “Is he okay?”

“Next you’re going to tell me that you have bolts of Two’s, and my life will be over.”

“Dark gray, white, and emerald green. We have four bolts of the white.”

I checked the time on my phone, and after ten minutes of Joel writhing on the floor as though the woman stabbed him through the chest, he played dead. “Maybe we should just finish paying for mine before we try to deal with him.”

“He’ll get over it.” Grinning Yolana swiped my debit card before saying, “Log into your online banking. You should have a notification in your mailbox with the invoice and a button to confirm the payment. You’ll have to do your security verification for the purchase.”

I did as told, sighed at the thirty-seven thousand dollar bill, and pressed the button, reminding myself that I deserved to buy something that wasn’t just books or bargain bin hobby supplies. After answering all three of my security questions and confirming for a second time, I glanced up from my phone with wide eyes. “Did that actually work?”

Yolana checked her register, smiled, and nodded. “The payment has been confirmed as on route. The funds will be removed from your account within the next thirty minutes, and we’ll receive the funds tomorrow, but you are as good as paid.”

I nudged Joel with my foot. “You either need to buy your silk bolts or cry your way to the SUV. We need lunch, and then we need to buy vegetables, flowers, and herbs for my garden. We’re skipping the bookstore for the moment because I need to come to terms with how much money I just spent.”

“Oh, you came to town for the Earth roses?”

I laughed and nodded. “I just recently started growing roses. I have a bunch from the local store, but Joel invited me to come to the store here because of the Earth roses. This is just a truly expensive detour.”

Yolana leaned over the counter. “How many bolts do you want to buy, Joel?”

“All of them. I want all the bolts from Two and Three.”

Yolana sighed. “Joel, you can’t buy all their bolts.”

“Why not?”

“Three has six other colors in stock on top of the four I told you about.”

“I don’t care. I want them.”

“Two has twenty.”

Joel heaved a heartbroken sigh. “In what colors?”

“Joel, you can’t buy that many bolts of silk. You have to save some silk for others.”

“No, I really don’t.”

The pair glared at each other.

Curiosity got the better of me, and I went over to Shifter Two’s rack, went through the bolts of silk, and found the ones meant for clothing. I gave the material a rub, understanding why he might want to wear the material all the time. “These are at least fifty-eight inches wide?”

“They’re seventy,” Yolana informed me.

“Joel, with this much silk, you could make fifty jackets with one bolt. You do not need fifty suit jackets.”

“The slacks have to come from the bolts, too,” he reminded me.

“At most you’d need four yards per suit. That’s twenty-five suits. That’s ridiculous, Joel. One bolt of each color is sensible.”

“But I want them all,” he complained.

“You cannot have them all. You can have one of each, and only if you can afford it without murdering your bank account.”

“I’m sure he can afford it, but he has hoarding tendencies when it comes to their silk.”

I pointed at my haul. “I cannot say a single word about that. Look what I did with Five’s. It’s just so nice .”

“I made curtains for my house with a lot of it,” Joel confessed.

“You actually used the silk?” Yolana planted her hands on her hips. “Prove it.”

Joel got off the floor, pulled out his phone, and tapped at the screen before showing her the display.

“I’ll be damned. You didn’t just sit on the bolts?”

“I need to do sheets next.”

“Ah.” Yolana sighed. “All right. If you’re actually going to use it, you can buy the silk, but I don’t want to hear any crying from you when you can’t get any bolts for a while. It takes years to get enough to weave this many bolts. ”

“I know, I know,” Joel muttered. “I’ve been waiting for navy for ten years now!”

“That’s why there’s navy. I was going to call you that I had it waiting for you, but you showed up. I just finished these bolts, and you’re making off with them already!”

“Well, tell them to produce faster.”

Yolana raised a brow. “I’ll tell them you said that, and I’ll say nice things about you at your funeral.”

“Just ring me up for everything, please,” he begged.

“I’ll even be nice and arrange for delivery to your home to spare your delicate little SUV from hauling that much silk.”

“Can you ship her stuff, too? She’s a neighbor of mine.”

“Absolutely. If you want to pick out what you want to keep with you, I can package your stuff with his. We don’t normally deliver, but he’ll whine me into submission.”

“I really will.”

I appreciated seeing the playful side of Joel, but I struggled to accept he’d actually pitched a fit on the floor. “You seemed so dignified and normal. What happened?”

“I undergo a severe transformation upon leaving the rigidity of Stonecreek.”

I bet he did, and it involved a town of luna moth shifters who sold their silk for profit. “Are you going to be okay being separated from your silk stash?”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure how I’m going to survive.”

Leaning over, I placed my hands on my knees, giggled, and said, “Why don’t we go buy some steaks for lunch, get something to eat, and visit the garden store before you show me that new lens you got? I have a camera I don’t know how to use, and there are a bazillion moths in the forest to photograph. It’s probably going to take hours to teach me how to use the camera.”

Joel reached into his pocket, dug out his wallet, and offered me the whole thing. “She knows what to do. If I watch her swipe my card, I might not make it.”

I understood that feeling. I took his wallet, handed it to Yolana, and held out my hand to Joel. “Come on. You can go visit your new bolts of silk while she rings you up. You can pat them and promise they’ll be used with love and great care. But you’ll have to wait for delivery to do anything with them.”

“Do you need any of your silk for immediate use?” Yolana asked. “I can cut your fabric and hem the edges to prevent fray if you’d like.”

I abandoned Joel, opened the pattern, and told her the stitch counts. “I can dig out a calculator if needed.”

“No need. I’ll give you a three inch margin excluding the hem zone. It’ll take ten minutes once I ring Joel up. And don’t mind him. He’ll be back to his dignified self the instant he steps out of the store.”

“You’re weird, Joel.”

“Says the woman who decided she’s in love with Shifter Five’s silk.”

I sniffed. “It had the best texture of the lot, and when spending hundreds of hours stitching on a project, the texture matters.”

“She’s got you there, Joel. She knows what she likes, and she likes soft and smooth silk.”

He sighed. “Just charge my card and laugh at me should I have to call the bank.”

The woman complied, and while she laughed, she said, “ You don’t have to call the bank this time. I think they’ve finally learned you’ll spend a great deal of money whenever you come into this store. Just try to pay it off promptly. That is not an interest bill you want.”

“No kidding.”