Page 14 of A Light in the Dark
FOURTEEN
I escaped into books and fiber.
With some help from Yolana and the purchase of some specialty bobbins, she helped me kit my cross-stitch project and pack it into my new project holder. As promised, she tossed in a bunch of defective hanks, which she swore wasn’t high enough quality to sell due to a botched dye job.
Rather than the solid blue she’d been trying for, she’d gotten something reminiscent of puffy clouds on a cold day.
It wouldn’t stitch up evenly, and she couldn’t bear the thought of ruining so much silk trying to layer in more dye.
I bet the silk would become a beautiful throw blanket, and I decided her gift would come with me along with an extra crochet hook so I could begin work when I wasn’t stitching my waterfall and luna moth scene.
Joel waited with admirable patience, and I left the store with one bag containing a few skeins of yarn, my crochet hook, and the project binder. “We’ll go get steaks, head to where I grew up, and after we eat, we’ll go to the garden store. I texted my parents and asked them to fire the grill up. I’m to bring home everything we need for dinner, too, but they’ll wait to cook until we’re back from watching the moths.”
“That’s really nice of them.”
“They’ll catch a nap while we’re out, because they’re apparently old and tired and can’t keep up with little children anymore.”
I had doubts about that, but until I had more proof regarding Joel’s probable shapeshifting nature, I’d allow him to get away with the deception.
As far as deceptions went, his commentary amused me and hurt nobody.
Fortunately for my sanity, the butcher was down the street, and I refused to relinquish my new prizes, following after Joel. In some ways, I reminded myself of a hopeful puppy in search of attention. True to Yolana’s word, once Joel was outside of the store, he returned to being the dignified man I knew from Stonecreek.
I wondered who Shifters Two and Three were and why he had such a love affair with their silk. I could understand it, however. Rampaging on Five’s put me in the same category.
“Do you know who all the shifters are?” I asked when Joel stopped outside of the butcher, investigating the selection of meats on offer.
“I only know who One, Two, Three, and Twelve are, and I only know Yolana is One because I caught her in the act a few years back. Now she’s told everyone she’s One. She told you who her husband is because she sacrifices him to be the face of the mystery shifters all the time. Not even the shifters, outside of Two and Three, know which number is theirs. Yolana keeps it a secret.”
“Oh! So, let’s say the butcher is a luna moth shifter who does the silk thing, and he…” I peeked into the store to realize the butcher was a woman wearing a floral dress and blinked. “Pardon, she, goes into the store, she could end up buying her own silk and not know it?”
“That’s correct. I only know who Two and Three are because they gave permission for their identities to be revealed to me so I could buy their stuff. I campaigned for five years to get their number so I could buy their silk.”
That pointed in the general direction of Joel’s parents being the shifters responsible for his obsession. I had no idea if he had any siblings, but I could find out the secret to that soon enough. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“I don’t. One child was more than my parents were prepared to handle, so they only had me. I told them they should thank me for sparing them from two of me. How about you?”
“I had a brother, but he died from a childhood illness,” I admitted. I’d been six when he’d passed, and I suspected I’d become the black sheep in town due to the trauma of his death. “And they weren’t backwater about treatments. Zac just didn’t get better even with the medication.”
“I’m sorry.”
I nodded. “I escaped into books and fiber.”
“I had noticed you were quite comfortable in the store of ultimate temptations.”
“I’m going to be laughed right out of work if my boss finds out I blew my entire bonus out on frivolous things.” I allowed myself a grin over the whole thing. “It was so liberating. That is the first time in my life that I had a bonus that was unexpected like that. It isn’t in my budget. I could spend it on whatever I wanted. I chose Shifter Five. Shifter Five is so soft . It’s a good thing she hides their identities. Now that I know that Shifter Five produces the ultimate silk, I might not be above stalking for a ready supply of silk.”
“Valerie, you already learned the secret to getting Shifter Five’s stuff. You put in special orders, and if she has a contract open with the shifter, she will prioritize your silk order. That’s why Two and Three are so hard to get; they were on special order for years .”
“And you weren’t the one who had the order?”
Joel sniffed and nodded. “It was terrible. I can understand. The silk was ordered for a very elaborate wedding for some shifters in Westburrow.”
One day, I wanted to go to Westburrow. Like Stonecreek, it was a mountainous region, but their primary revenue came from their mining operations rather than general trade, tourism from our menagerie, and forestry. Like Moonriver, it had a decent population of shapeshifters, with strong numbers of wolves, weasels, and other forest and mountain animals. Their lake supposedly boasted aquatic shifters, resulting in a fishing ban, one that was enforced with an iron fist. “That’s a good cause, though.”
“That’s why I limited my complaining to disheartened wails. The wedding has already happened, but it can take a while for the shifters to produce sufficient silk unless they spend a lot of time as a moth.”
“Please explain that to me. Mundane luna moths don’t have mouths, and they just run out of steam and die. How do shifters produce silk? ”
Chuckling, Joel opened the door and gestured for me to go inside. “I’ll explain after we get lunch and dinner and get back in the SUV, else we’ll loiter outside of Jolena’s place all day while she gets irritated we’re not buying her wares.”
“Damn straight,” the woman in the floral dress said, and she grinned at us. “Where’d you find a pretty little thing like her, Joel?”
“Next door,” Joel replied with a grin of his own. “She’s originally from the town of gossiping menaces along the way, but she escaped to Stonecreek and moved in down the street from me. She’s the sensible one I told you about last time I was here.”
“Oh, you’re the sweet little peacekeeper? Nice to meet you, ma’am. I’m Jolena.”
I juggled my purchases to free a hand and shook with the woman, offering a smile. “Valerie. This town has a Joel and a Jolena?”
Jolena snickered. “Joel’s one of my cousins, and he’s older than me by a year. My pappy thought Joel was the sweetest little baby and hoped I’d turn out half as sweet. It turns out Joel was actually a devil in disguise and my pappy made mistakes, because I’m just as much trouble as he is. We’re well named. Aunty called with her dinner order, and I’ve already got it ready. I hear you raided the shop?”
“They had the bolts in. I’m poor now.”
“Like hell you’re poor. You can’t lie to me, Mr. Stonecreek. Don’t you listen to his lies, Valerie. He could buy out that entire shop and not miss a penny because he’s rude.”
“Jolena,” Joel complained.
Interesting. Joel had made it rich going to Stonecreek, had he? I had suspected as much, aware of how much shoring cost. I’d gotten lucky, and I bet he had too, in more ways than one. “He is rude. He tried to stop me from buying my own camera.” I turned and showed her my pretty backpack. “Isn’t it gorgeous? The bag came with the camera. He did get a little film camera each for us. We’re going to take pictures of the moths at sunset.”
“That color is great. It looks like a canvas version of his bag. Did your new lens come in, Joel?” The butcher eyed my neighbor.
“I picked it up this morning.”
“Well, we’re never seeing Joel again. He’s going to spend the rest of his life photographing wildlife. Oh, well. At least the shifters you bought silk from will be happy with their cut. Since all hope is lost for my cousin, I guess I’ll have to work with you, Valerie. What can I do you for?”
I turned my attention to the steak, hunted for the thickest one with good marbling and a bone I could gnaw on, and pointed at it. “I want that one.”
The butcher looked at my choice, busted a gut laughing, and grabbed it from the case for me. “I love when a woman knows what she wants, and what she wants is one of my best cuts. Joel, you want the other one. It’s not quite as beautiful as this cut, but it’s still good. She’s decided she’s going big before going home to get fed properly.”
“I guess I’m getting the slightly inferior one of the same cut, then. I should probably feed Mom and Dad, so give me two similar cuts to ours but not as good.”
“Alas, their cuts will be of similar quality to yours. You will need to let these rest with salt for a minimum of thirty minutes before throwing these beauties on the grill, so don’t you be forgetting that, Joel. I know you. You’ll just toss them on without any salt. And you pat that meat dry and use a hot grill. Don’t ruin these steaks with your impatience.”
“I will take good care of the steaks, and I will mandate that they rest at least an hour with their salt rub before they go on their grill adventure,” I promised. “As he sounds like a heathen, do you sell a good salt?”
“I sure do.” After wrapping the meat, taking care to mark our names onto each package, she went and got out a small sack of salt, which she thumped onto the counter. “Aunty’ll need a whole bag by the time she’s done with the stock she just bought. Joel, tell her to just buy the damned prime next time and to stop trying to save five dollars. I did not give her what she wanted and packaged the prime.”
“Actually, can you package the lower cut? I want to do some for roasting for lunches, and I don’t want to waste a prime on that.”
“As you know an appropriate reason to buy the lesser cut, I will sell it to you, but tell Aunty she has to stop trying to save five bucks when she’s got a pretty guest.”
“Thank you for sparing me from the fight and having to come back to get the prime, Jolena.”
“You’re welcome. So, what bolts did Yolana get in?”
I narrowed my eyes and considered the woman. “Is Yolana your sister?”
Jolena clapped her hands. “She is . How did you guess?”
“Naming scheme,” I admitted. “Yolana sounds mighty similar to Jolena, which sounds mighty similar to Joel. Is she just a little younger than you?”
“Oh, Joel, you found yourself a smart one.” Jolena smiled, came around the counter, and gave my cheek a kiss. As we did the same in my neck of the woods, I returned the gesture. “Just for that, I’m going to give you a little treat for the grill. Most don’t figure it out just based on names, and my sister takes after my pappy while I take after my mammy, and Mammy doesn’t much take after Aunty because Mammy takes after Grandpappy on the one side and Aunty takes after Grandmammy on the other.”
“And Joel takes after his daddy?” I guessed.
“He sure does, and he’s a dead ringer. Handsome as they come, men on that side of the family line. His daddy is a smart one but never felt like working in Stonecreek, so Joel here ran off with ideas he surely inherited from his daddy and made them a reality.”
“He probably had to go get rich so he could afford to buy all that silk.”
“Ain’t that the truth. Seriously, Joel. You don’t have to buy all the silk stock, I swear.”
“Yolana got the navy in.”
“I know she did. We were talking about you when she confirmed the dye job had gone well and how she was going to save the best bolt of it for you, else we’d never hear the end of it. And she saved the white for you, too, knowing you’d use the whole thing up making your suit shirts. Maybe that’ll keep you busy for ten whole minutes.”
“I bought everything I could get my greedy hands on, but Valerie said I couldn’t buy everything .”
“He bought some of everything anyway, but only because he justified it through having actually used his last silk on curtains and he needed to do a bunch of sheets.” I shook my head at the insanity of it all. “He rolled around on the floor like a toddler.”
“Did he scream and cry? ”
“I think he thought about it!” I laughed over the insanity of it all, and I browsed the woman’s selection, spotted her section dedicated to wild fowl, and read the list, eyeballing two species of duck that were listed as having been dressed that morning. I pointed at them. “Will these be okay for transit back to Stonecreek tomorrow?”
Unlike chicken, I liked wild fowl and duck.
“Absolutely. I have both of those types in the freezer already. You just have Joel give me a ring when you want to get them, and I’ll rig a cooler for you.”
I stared at Joel.
“If you want to load a cooler up with meat to haul back to Stonecreek tomorrow, I’m not going to stop you. We’ll have the trailer, so it’ll be trivial to fit the cooler in the back. I’ll bring the one we got over at my parents’ place over.”
“Can I have one of each wild fowl? Is it possible? Anything that doesn’t taste like chicken .” As I was so sick and tired of chicken, I made a show of gagging. “If I have to eat another piece of chicken for the next month, I’m going to lose my mind.”
Jolena snickered. “If you don’t mind everything frozen, I got one of all the stuff I carry; it’s only if you want it fresh that I’d have to call around to the local hunters to see if any can do me a favor. I can promise that none of the wild fowl taste anything like chicken.”
Well, if frozen was an option, and the cooler could fit everything, I had space in my spare freezer for everything—and a healthy interest in getting a new generator for my basement. “Okay, I’ll take one of each type of bird unless it’s small, in which case I’ll take enough to feed four people.” I browsed the rest of her offerings, licking my lips at the thought of getting my hands on some wild deer. “What do you have in the way of deer?”
“I just got in three carcasses this morning, so you can have everything your heart desires. I can have them butchered for you for delivery tomorrow morning. They’re in my cold storage.”
I pointed at my favorite part, which was the entire back haunch including the leg. “I want one of those, please.”
I would use the rest of my bonus to get the fancy charcoal grill with propane backup I wanted, and I’d buy an overhang for my backyard, which I would cover with rose vines so I could grill in any weather without getting wet.
Life would be good—and I would lure the luna moth shifter into paying visits to me. At first, I’d settle with luring him out while a luna moth, but in time, I’d coax him into making appearances while a man.
“You’re going to need a second cooler, Joel.”
“I will steal both of Dad’s coolers, no problem. And if not, I’ll go buy a new one. I could use it.”
“You really could. I’ll go pick you up a good one and spare you the errand. And as I have to run errands for you, I’ll sell you your favorites and fill the extra space with it.”
“Deal. Pay at pickup?”
“Yep. I’ll bill you for the stuff you’re taking for dinner and have everything else ready for you for the morning.”
As I was the kidnapping victim and he was the handsome kidnapper, he paid for my steak and everything for dinner, and he grabbed a few extra steaks, all of which were good cuts. I waited, shifting my weight from foot to foot, anticipating the moment I could listen to the sizzle of meat touching a grill .
“I think Valerie likes grilling, Joel.”
“I’m thinking you might be right. Are you going to be okay for the fifteen minute drive to get to my parents’ place?”
“Maybe. It’s questionable. Maybe we should salt the steaks now so that’s fifteen less minutes to wait.”
Jolena narrowed her eyes, nodded, and went to the back and retrieved a bag of salt, carefully opened each package of meat, and handled making sure all of the meat was appropriately seasoned for the trip. “That’s a good idea, and I’m going to have to start offering that as a service for those calling in. Joel, buy her a musk ox roast as a reward for being smart.”
“Sure. Valerie, I’m buying you a musk ox roast because Jolena said so.”
“I’m not going to say no to trying a new meat on someone else’s dime. I have decided that in addition to my craft store conquests, I’m a true apex predator, able to eat more meat than even a wolf.”
“Are you a shifter?” Jolena asked, raising a brow.
“No. I’m just really hungry, and Joel hasn’t fed me yet.”
Joel laughed, waited for his cousin to repack the bag with our lunch and dinner to grab it, and said, “That’s my cue to get her to my parents’ place so we can wait until we can throw everything on the grill and feed her. We’ll be back tomorrow before we head back to Stonecreek.”
After exchanging hugs with his cousin, Joel herded me to his SUV, opened my door for me, waited until I was buckled in to close me inside, and placed everything in the back before climbing into the driver’s seat and starting the engine. “We got carried away.”
“I started it, and I finished it. I’m the one who got carried away. You’re just a hapless victim of your family.” Understanding that Yolana and Jolena were family helped me accept the man’s playful tantrum in the craft store. “Your cousin took you to town on those silks, though. Standard silk is only fifteen a yard—up to thirty if you’re getting the excellent stuff.”
“Shifter silk is ridiculously expensive,” Joel complained. “And then, when I became successful at my job, I decided I’d wear nothing but shifter silk to work. Luna moths are the only local shifters that produce silk. When I do wear material other than silk, I try to buy from shifter-owned businesses. My jeans cost a hundred a pair because there aren’t many shifter-owned companies that sell denim.”
Ouch. “I buy the cheapest clothes money can buy for when I’m not at work, and I wear much fancier clothes than my position suggests I should wear, except with the bonus, I now feel I’m appropriately dressed for my job.” I rubbed my hands together. “For the first time in my adult life, I got a bonus that was not part of the budget, and I spent it with wild abandon!”
“You definitely went wild over Shifter Five’s silk. I can’t say I haven’t done the exact same thing. And being completely honest about my purchase today, I’ve been saving up specifically for that purchase for a long time, so the money was just sitting in a savings account waiting for the bolts to become available. I spent less than I had budgeted for the bolts. I can be reckless with money, but I’m not that reckless.”
“Without the bonus, I would have splurged on one of her kits. But that project holder is beautiful .”
“I thought you were going to swoon when you saw it. You were delighted. I was going to get it for you if you hadn’t gotten it for yourself, just as a thank you for bringing peace to our street and making this year’s flood recovery sane.”
“I appreciate it, but I was okay getting it. The bonus helped. I really didn’t need two entire bolts of silk, but I won’t need fabric for a while. How far out of town are your parents?”
“We have to go about fifteen minutes down a dirt road, and they’re the only ones living on the dirt road. They are the farthest property still associated with town. Honestly, unless you want to go back to that specific spot from earlier, all we have to do to see luna moths and waterfalls is take a walk down a trail from their place. They’re walking distance from one of the falls.”
“It sounds nice. Do your parents let people camp on their property?”
“Yes, camping is allowed with permission. They have a few campgrounds set up.”
“How much land do they own?”
“They have about fifty acres,” he admitted. “There are a lot of luna moths on their land, and they gather mundane silk and use magic to maximize the amount of viable silk they get from the cocoons. In exchange for stealing all the cocoons, my parents manage the land so the babies have plenty to eat. They actually watch for the hatches and when the larvae are most active. They pay to have leaves brought in to preserve the ecosystem. The larvae actually leave behind small amounts of silk, which my parents use magic to gather. Normally, it’s not practical to harvest silk from luna moths. Well, mundane ones.”
“And how do shifters produce silk? ”
“You know that whole digestive system thing that shifters have that mundane moths do not? Well, luna moth shifters expel silk after digesting nectar and when they shift. They expel it by spitting it out.”
I bowed my head, understanding my fate. “I’m in love with moth vomit?”
Joel snickered. “Yep. You have been fondling shifting byproduct and moth vomit.”
It didn’t take me long to determine I had no problems with having been bewitched by shifting byproduct and moth vomit. “I accept my fate. Not only will I be fondling it, I will be making it into a blanket so I can cuddle with it at night.”
“You are remarkably relaxed about this.”
“Shifter Five’s silk is that nice.”
“It did not take you long to develop a bias.”
“It’s the nicest silk I’ve ever touched, and I spent plenty of time deciding which silk was the best. I might have to get enough of the mundane silk to make something out of, though, but I’m afraid of how much it costs.” The hint of jealousy in Joel’s voice amused me.
If he was a silk producing luna moth, I would be getting into a fight with his cousin over his silk. While I’d only spun cotton, rabbit fur, and wool, I bet I could figure out how to make a decent hank of silk yarn or a good spool of thread. I’d even done some dyeing, but I preferred mixed colors rather than the solids the store mostly featured.
“Shifter silk is more expensive than mundane because the shifters are paid for their contribution. Yolana sells her mundane for roughly fifty dollars a yard for fabric. I’m not sure how much she charges for the threads. Honestly, I have entire cones of sewing thread. I put in a special order for it before the wedding order, and I’ll be set on threads for a while. I have white, black, and navy. I bought the navy before I had the cloth, not expecting the wedding order. It’s been taunting me for years.”
“Do you have silk suits already?”
“I have a set of seven black suits with a mix of white and black shirts. Two are classic cut, and the rest are in different styles so I can pretend I’m not cycling through seven suits for work. Cleaning them is painful. I have a washing machine designed to handle silk, but the detergent is expensive and I have to do them in small batches to make sure nothing gets damaged.” Joel sighed, reversed out of the parking spot, and headed back in the direction we had come. “If you can’t handle holding luna moths, now is the time to tell me. I’ll need to warn my parents. They enjoy decorating people with sleeping luna moths and taking photos of them. They charm them with magic and then handle their winged charges at will. Once the females have bred and have laid her eggs, they send them off to go be prey off their property. They have some pretty hefty wards in place to prevent predators from bothering the breeding luna moths. Healthy specimens are sometimes transported to new areas if the wild populations have gone into decline. But their property? It’s a luna moth sanctuary. Most of the trees here are good food for luna moths, other species that would compete for the leaves are kept out, and my parents collect the silk to pay for the habitat as needed.”
I couldn’t wait to see the place. If there were moths on every tree, I’d be a happy woman—and I’d be showing up at Joel’s door with excuses to go stalk Shifter Five’s goods and hit up the garden store. I’d have to involve the bookstore as well.
If it was open before we returned to Stonecreek, I’d have to check out the literary offerings.
“I can absolutely handle holding luna moths, but any shifter that vomits on me loses their bounty to my greedy ways.”
“If a shifter can’t keep their silk to themselves, that seems reasonable, although I’m concerned what you’ll do with it.”
“What else? Spin it, of course. I know how much that stuff costs, and I will not be allowing even a strand of it to go to waste.”
“Should I be concerned?”
I allowed myself a grin. “Only if you’re a luna moth shifter and you don’t want me making off with your silk. Otherwise, you should be safe. For the most part.”
“Will you still go to the garden store with me?”
I laughed. “Of course. I am not into punishing myself, Joel, and the garden store is filled with beautiful temptations.”
Him included.
“Oh, good. For some reason, it’s hard to find someone willing to go to the garden store with me. It seems I have a reputation.”
“For what? Having a beautiful garden and a determination to make it better every year? Oh, no. What a dangerous reputation.”
He snorted, cleared his throat, and after a moment, choked on a laugh. “I take too long, I’m indecisive, and I have a hard time deciding what I want when I overfill the cart trying to buy everything.”
“I have solutions for all those problems. I’m perfectly capable of setting time limits, and if you can’t decide, I will decide for you after having gotten a second cart. Multiple trips are always an option. What other problems do I need to solve?”
“I have somewhat inflexible hours,” he admitted. “I do not like interrupting my work for anything other than an emergency during my working hours.”
“Joel, my boss had to order me to take a day off work. I think I’ve only taken four days off the entire time I worked there, and I only did it because I was contagious and refused to get anyone sick. As long as the work hours are reasonable, they can be inflexible. But if I find out you’re working more than ten hours a day, we might need to have a talk.”
“I work nine, but I’ll do overtime if needed.”
“Nine with optional overtime is acceptable. What’s the problem?”
“I don’t allow my money to jump from my wallet into hers,” he confessed.
I stared at him. “You bought me a camera and my lunch.”
“Those were bribes to accept being my kidnapping victim, mine to do with as I pleased for the trip. That’s not the same! They just want the money, and I don’t play those games.”
Ah-ha! I understood; I came to the table as a homeowner capable of handling my budget and finances without help from some man. He knew it, having seen me live my life over the years without any outside evidence of assistance.
“I never understood the whole money jumping from one wallet to another thing. I only date men I can afford, and honestly, that did a good job keeping me out of the dating pool. Most of the men I’ve met were either unwilling to split the bill or expected me to prove I wasn’t just some gold digger and pay for everything. And those ones were just greedy snots. You got away with taking the bill solely because you presented paying in an entertaining fashion. You wanted to be a kidnapper, and the idea of roleplaying being kidnapped is highly amusing.”
“It really is. And that’s why I didn’t grab your camera bill; you were determined to pay your way, and I’m not going to interfere with that. Now, I had been willing to step in when you saw the project holder; I knew how pricy those are. Yolana hand sews them, and she only uses her best fabrics for them, and she hand designs the patterns and weaves them herself. They take months to make.”
I gasped. “That was not silk screening?”
“She weaved the design into the fabric. She makes a special thread for it, because she wants the tightest weave and highest thread count, and she hand weaves every strand to get the appropriate design. What she can’t weave is then hand embroidered right into the fabric as she’s making it. All the loose threads, and so on, are hidden with a thin layer of some material that she smooshes between two pieces of her fabric. The front of the fabric is gorgeous . The back is utter chaos, and the chaos is cleverly hidden using skill and technique.”
I wailed, grabbed my precious holder, and clutched it to my chest. “I underpaid her!”
Joel laughed. “She sold it for a price she is happy with. Trust me, she is delighted knowing how happy her piece made you. But I’ll let her know about your reaction. She’ll love it. You didn’t underpay her, I promise. Her project holders are labors of love, and she works on them when she’s working in the shop and needs to pass time waiting for customers.”
“I bet she’d make a bloody fortune if she sold cross-stitch kits in a luna moth theme, catered to the shifter who produced the silk,” I muttered. “And I’d end up buying every single Shifter Five kit. She’ll have to make an extra one of all kits just for me. She could make a specialty kit that includes a project holder themed to match the project, and there would be bidding wars to have it.”
“She’s going to have to put Shifter Five in protection. If you find out who they are, all hope is lost. I’m going to warn Two and Three just to be safe—and Twelve. Actually, we should just put all the luna moths on notice. You might try to find the ones that aren’t under contract and get their silk out of them.”
“Do you think they’d accept fifty dollars a pound for theirs? Is that too low?”
At a stop sign, Joel dug out his phone, unlocked it, and handed it to me. “Find Yolana in my contacts and give her a ring. She can tell you what the going rate per pound is, and if you want to spin fibers, she can tell you if she has any shifters willing to give up their wares to supply your hobby.”
I grabbed his phone, tapped on his contacts, and did as told. I put it on speaker before dialing.
“Didn’t you just leave, Joel?” Yolana asked.
“I did, but Valerie is a little excited over her acquisitions, and she’s contemplating cornering luna moths for their goods.”
“Shifting byproduct and luna moth vomit are my two new favorite things in life, Yolana. I never thought I’d be saying this, but I’m officially weird. ”
The woman busted a gut laughing. “It took me a full month to accept my favorite things in life are shifting byproduct, vomit, and copious amounts of urine, usually sourced from cattle but I’ll take it from anywhere that’ll give it to me pure enough.”
“There’s a magic trick you can use to skip the urine phase,” I informed her. “And it’s just as permanent as urine.”
“I will pay in two bolts of silk or the equivalent in embroidery thread for this secret.”
Huh. Was my accidental magic trick, something I’d concocted to stop having to buy urine, that valuable? “A project holder, made from Shifter Five’s silk, luna moth themed but a different color and design than what I have, and enough raw silk, also from Shifter Five, to turn into thread and fabric for my stitching adventures,” I countered. “And you have to come to Stonecreek and help me kit a refugee with fiber so she can make her own clothes and stuff. I don’t think she’ll accept silk, except as scrap, out of the gate, so you have to help me bring her to the dark side.”
“Deal. I’ve been wanting to expand my contracts with the shifters anyway, so I’ll do that. I need fresh blood.”
“I think you mean silk fiber,” I told her, struggling to keep from laughing.
“That, too. I keep my scrap cloth, so if she likes working with scrap, I have scraps. I know someone in Stonecreek that can help her out without being obvious about it. I’ll talk with Joel and he can be our middleman for our Stonecreek adventure.”
“You mean driver,” Joel muttered.
“That, too. ”
“How did you come up with a trick to skip the urine part?” Yolana asked.
“I can handle byproduct. I can handle vomit. But piss? I cried the first time I used urine for a craft project, and I swore never again. Honestly, I was trying to find a way to remove stains. Instead, I found a way to permanently set them. I did find a way to remove most stains, but it won’t work on the stuff I permanently set. Once I set something, it stays set.”
“How much bleeding do you have to contend with?”
“Zip, zilch, nada,” I reported with pride. “Rinse once, and that’s it . I have a magic trick for that, too.”
The wailing sounds from the phone made me giggle. “Joel, you are a cretin!”
“Hey, what did I do?”
“You found my guardian angel, and you hoarded her all to yourself.”
“Yolana, you control Shifter Five’s supply. You have her wrapped around your finger at this stage.”
“But she has unlocked the true secrets of the universe.”
Joel rolled his eyes, shook his head, and kept on driving. “I have to return her to work tomorrow. You can’t steal her.”
“Traitor!”
“Does that mean I can buy raw silk from Shifter Five?”
“Absolutely. I’ll figure out a fair rate for it, and I won’t even mark you up too much. Those shifters are a pain in the ass, though, so I have to mark it up.”
“Of course. I mean, they’ve earned being a pain in the ass. You want them for their vomit, Yolana.”
The woman giggled. “I’m going home tonight and telling my husband I only want him for his vomit, and he’s never going to forgive me.”
“It’s important that he understands his place in life, and that is as a provider of excellent quality vomit.”
Joel snickered. “And on that happy note, we’ll let you go. I’m about to hit the dirt road, and I expect we’ll be stopping every other minute along the way. Do me a favor and call my mother, would you? I’ll be taking my time so Valerie can enjoy the sights.”
“Will do. Enjoy the drive.” Before I had a chance to say goodbye, Yolana hung up.
“What sights?” I asked.
“You’ll see.”