Page 130 of A Light in the Dark
My father waved his hand. “I’ll allow it.”
I laughed. “Thanks, Dad. Please just do me a favor. If my neighbors offer you cobbler, ask if it’s poisoned, how sick you’ll get if you eat it, and how often they recommend eating it.”
My father heaved a pained sigh. “Ronald told us about the poisonings. Then to find out it’s one of the reasons you survived that bastard’s attack? I was going to ask if we could try a small piece.”
“I’m sure Elenora would love to feed you some Death Cobbler. Just ask her to help identify the toxic berries sensibly. Anyway, after we finish eating, we need to head back to Stonecreek.” I regarded my mother, who had an entire basket of luna moth larvae beside her. “Joel has an aquarium with larvae you can visit at his home, but you can’t steal their larvae.”
“I’ll put those ones aside for you so you can love them when you get back,” Joel’s mother promised. “They wouldn’t appreciate the car ride, and they’ll be happiest here. We try to do all their transportation while they’re still in their eggs. That makes it easiest on the little ones. Joel, how is your food supply for yours?”
“There’s a store that sells food for them near my work, so I’m good. They know it’s feeding season, so they made certain they have everything my babies need.”
“Any idea if you got any color morphs?”
“I have five that might be candidates,” he announced with pride.
The woman waggled her finger at her son. “When you get home, show them your color morph collection, Valerie’s moth, and your larvae. They’ll enjoy it. And as you have been in close proximity with Valerie, you are barred fromrose sniffing until she’s cleared and you’ve been blood tested.”
Joel sighed. “Damn it.”
“There will be no ruined silk on my watch, boy.”
“Ruined silk?” my mother asked.
“Darling?” Joel’s mother asked.
Joel’s father stood, chuckled, and nodded. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Well, that would solve that problem nicely. While waiting for Joel’s father to reveal their secret, I polished off my steak and helped his mother clean up the dishes.
My mother bowed her head, and it impressed me that she refrained from sighing. “I’m so confused.”
Joel pulled out his phone and showed me the screen, revealing someone had captured a picture of me as a glowing luna moth lounging on Coraline’s head while she’d been a wolf. I giggled at the phone, taking it and swiping through to discover there were numerous photos of my stint as a luna moth, including when I’d gotten positively skunked on a bouquet of roses. Handing the phone back, I shook my head. “We have a little secret.”
“You have, from a young age, been a little too good at keeping your secrets, so that’s something I can believe. What have you been up to?” my mother asked, narrowing her eyes.
Joel’s mother went to the back door of the house and opened it, letting Joel’s father out, and he winged his way to us. As I was shameless, I held out my hands so he could come visit me. To my delight, he did, and I settled into the serious business of petting him. “You wanted to see a glowing luna moth. Here you go. This is Joel’s father. That’s why this town doesn’t like our town all that much. If they find out they’re abunch of glowing luna moths…” I paused, glanced at Joel, and added, “I’m one, too. I just had my first shift, and I’m banned from shifting again until after I’m better from the bacterial infection. The bacteria ruins silk. I’m obsessed with luna moth silk.”
“We all are,” Joel’s mother replied, smiling as she rejoined us. “You’re probably luna moth shifters as well; Valerie hasn’t had enough time with Joel to transfer the genetics, and she’s a color morph luna moth. Nobody in town is a color morph. We’re not sure if she picked up her color from her first exposure to a color morph luna moth, though. A mundane one, that is. But I suspect she was born as a color morph.”
“Color morph?” my father asked, and his brows furrowed.
Joel handed over his phone. “This is Valerie while shifted.”
My parents spent a long time staring at the device.
“You’re beautiful,” my father whispered.
“It’s how I could promise that you would get to see a glowing luna moth. If I couldn’t convince any of the other luna moths to show up, I would show up. But I can’t show up because my silk will beruined, and we can’t have that. I need that silk.”
“With your obsession with fiber? I can believe that,” my mother said, and she stole the phone from my father. “Can I text these to us, Joel?”
“Absolutely. So, you’ll have plenty of luna moths to visit with you while we’re in Stonecreek. Valerie loves having members of the flutter get skunked on her roses, and she feeds them snacks before they sleep it off and head home. I’ll start you small with five or ten of them for you to watch inher garden tonight.” Joel smiled, waited until he had his phone back, and sent some texts. “But we should hit the road so Valerie can get her work at City Hall done. And Valerie? No more than five hours today, and I’m expecting three tomorrow to make up for it.”
“I’ll make sure to rest properly.”
“Good.”
I leftmy parents with Joel in the lobby of City Hall, went to my new office, and went on a rampage the entire city-state wouldn’t forget anytime soon. Every sheet of paper in the office either went to the police to join the charge list, to accounting to be paid, or to human resources to somehow address. Once I finished that, which took two hours thanks to my usage of piles, I began ambushing random employees from the various departments, demanding their department’s wishlist. I asked each victim selected to serve as my contact for the department, gave them orders to leave their contact information in my newly cleaned office, and then hunted for someone in the tech department. I made certain the city-state was aware that my laptop was mine, signed papers agreeing that all data on the laptop could be copied and evaluated in case of any issues, and that if the city-state opted to confiscate any of my personal equipment, they were responsible for replacing it with the modern equivalent.
