Page 84 of A Light in the Dark
Bacon and eggs made it easier to face the day.
Once the bacon was draining on a rack and all I needed to do was make the eggs, I returned upstairs and began the process of waking my captive. I started with poking him on the shoulder.
He whined and rolled over to escape me.
I giggled at his protests and prodded him some more. “Rise and shine, hostage. We’re having bacon and eggs for breakfast, and then I need to head down the hill to see if Elenora is up and can teach me the basics of making death cobbler.”
I wasn’t sure if it was the bacon and eggs or the death cobbler that got him on the move, but he bounced out of bed with alarming energy.
“You’re really going to have that harpy teach you how to make death cobbler?”
“I mean, she gave me the recipe, but I don’t bake, so I’d really like a lesson or two on how to bake without…” I struggled to find a way to explain I didn’t want to poison people with anything other than actual poison.
He raised a brow at me. “You are definitely going to be poisoning people with your baking, Valerie. That is the entire point of death cobbler.”
“I want it to be delicious poison,” I informed him in a solemn tone.
“I can respect your willingness to do evil as long as it’s tasty evil.”
“I mean, it worked. She kept bringing me delicious poison, and after a while, I understood she was literally poisoning me. But it was so good I couldn’t resist.”
“And now you’re resisting her poison.”
I eyed him. “I mean, yes. And I’m even grateful for that. But the fact it’s something the people in this city do is horrifying.”
“Yeah. I’m pretty horrified over it, too. Or more accurately, I’m shocked that Elenora feels there’s just cause topoison people on our street if they didn’t grow up used to the hazards of Stonecreek.”
“Me, too. And I’ll admit, if she hadn’t started trying to kill me off, I wouldn’t have learned about strangleberry and the others.”
“I suspect there are more than a few dead refugees because of those berries, too.” Joel’s expression darkened, and he followed me downstairs and into my kitchen. “I’m concerned.”
“So am I.” As I had no idea how much Joel knew about my activities with the Hunters, I decided I’d keep my secrets close to my chest. If he knew, he’d tell me—and one of the Hunters would confirm it before I peeped a word about it. “I’m sure Elenora will help you learn how to make death cobbler, too. We can continue the tradition of helping our friends and loved ones and neighbors through making them sick as hell.”
He grinned at me and took a seat at the table. “At least we can get their consent before making them sick as hell. We could have death cobbler parties, and the graduates get to have the fancy cobbler while the newbies get the graduates helping them cope with their illness.”
“Nobody helped me cope,” I complained. “I just threw up by myself and thanked her and asked for more to be polite.”
“She laughed at you for days over that, by the way. The entire street did. I did not thank her, nor did I ask for more. In fact, when I asked her if she was poisoning me on purpose, she gave me a hug, kissed my cheeks, told me I was such a good little boy, and to run along and eat my cobbler and try not to get too sick, as the whole point is to make it so I wouldn’t get sick at all. Sane people would have been reporting her to thepolice, but I did some basic research into what she was poisoning me with and realized she really was just trying to make it so Stonecreek wouldn’t kill me. And she doesn’t know I’m a luna moth, and wewilleat strangleberry while shifted. It doesn’t bother us when shifted like it does when human, but it can sour our stomach after we shift. I haven’t had a sour stomach since she started giving me death cobbler.”
“Now that’s a good sales pitch for being a luna moth. You can eat strangleberry!”
“You have an unhealthy fixation on strangleberry.”
“But it’s so good,” I groused before splitting the bacon onto two plates. “How do you like your eggs?”
“Hot and in my belly,” he replied. “Preferably without any poisonous berries hidden within them.”
“Scrambled it is.” As scrambled eggs took little time, I went to work, making a large batch, aware shapeshifters tended to eat far more than the rest of us. If five eggs didn’t contain him, I had another dozen to work through, and if that wasn’t enough, I’d dig out another pack of bacon and fight to defeat his appetite. “I’m absolutely willing to make second breakfast for hungry hostages, and I’ll even hold the berries.”
“I tend to do my gorging at dinner time,” he admitted with one of his lopsided grins. “And if you’re going to be putting out the luna moth buffet, I may just borrow your bathroom and indulge.”
“As long as you, my hostage, do not leave my garden, you may go outside and enjoy my roses. You can even earn your keep and help me tend to the plants, weed, and make certain they’re all happy and healthy roses.”
“I’d be happy to help you care for your roses after we pay Elenora a visit and learn how to make death cobbler. Just please forgive me for my bad breakfast habits. Breakfast food is meant to disappear in a hurry. I savor lunch and dinner. That is how I eat.”
As I’d already witnessed one of his morning feeding frenzies, where his mother slid entire stacks of pancakes his way, I worried he’d run me out of food before the weekend ended. Then again, I still had some room left in my deep freezer. I could buy more meat from Jolena.
I loved several of the game bird species and needed more of them in my freezer for bad days.
