Page 29 of A Light in the Dark
I shook my head.
At the next stop light, Joel stared at me. “Want to team up with me for the competition? If I win with the ultimate novice accompanying me, I will be the grand swashbuckling PVP king. All the other novices have played games before—or they started playing after getting the invitation. I want you to continue never touching a computer until it’s time to start playing, and then I will teach you everything as we go.”
“That sounds like you’re giving yourself an epic handicap, Joel.”
“But if we win, our victory will be unmatched. We will go down as gaming legends in this competition.”
“There’s a small problem with this whole idea, though.”
“What problem?”
“I don’t have a gaming computer.”
He waved off my concern. “You’ll come and play at my house. It will be my problem to provide the gaming computer for your use. But since it’ll be my problem, you won’t have to fight to get the computer set up, the operating system installed, or the game running. I’ll take care of everything. You’ll just show up, and we’ll play during the competition windows.”
If he wanted to deal with the computer problems, I wasn’t going to tell him no. Doing something other than work on my house and read seemed like a fun and interesting time. I wouldn’t even take advantage of the opportunity to learn his last name.
If he wanted to tell me, he would.
“All right. I’ll do this, but don’t cry when we lose because I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“I’ll cry a little, but only because I hate to lose and Calden willneverlet this go if I don’t win.”
Men. When left alone for more than a few minutes at a time, they would posture and engage in competitions, resulting in the utter destruction of their prides. “I won’t cry. I’ll just join the losing novices and scheme to crush you all.”
“That’s the spirit. I will do my best to make sure you don’t regret joining my team.”
ELEVEN
Sure enough, it was a buffet perfect for a luna moth.
The garden storeturned Joel into a hyperactive child, one who needed adult supervision else he might buy the entire thing. I pushed the cart through the aisle, realizing we’d need multiple trips within five minutes of arrival.
We hadn’t been in the store for ten minutes, and the man muttered about how he needed hundreds of plants to restore his home to rights.
His exterior garden had been completely eliminated, and his interior garden featured primarily annual plants, mostly in the form of vegetables and herbs.
If he wanted his leafy green things to eat sooner than later, he needed to plant his garden, and he needed to plant his gardennow. A suspicion roused, and while Joel hummed over the assortment of herbs, I scouted the internet for what sorts of foods luna moth shapeshifters consumed.
Not only did they love fruits, they were categorized as a species of pollinator, sticking their noses in every flower tocross their path. Nobody knew why shapeshifting luna moths had evolved to be pollinators, but a colony of moths could cover an entire city in a night when hungry for nectar.
I checked the cart against the list, and sure enough, it was a buffet perfect for a luna moth.
My neighbor’s last name appeared to only be the start of his secrets, and I could understand how he’d gone from keeping to himself to inviting me to go shopping with him. It didn’t matter if Joel wastheluna moth from the rescue; according to the site, luna moths formed colonies in cities, of which Stonecreek was listed as having a small but closely knit population of the shapeshifters.
Joel’s knowledge of what was going on up the street pointed at the same general place: my handsome neighbor had a shapeshifting habit, and he’d been on guard when he’d spotted Gabriella. Roger’s intel made it all the more likely that Joel was the same luna moth.
Until then, my neighbor hadn’t had much interest in me at all, keeping to himself and being secretive.
That pointed to him being a luna moth, too.
Add in the fact that Joel knew some Hunters and wanted to engage in computer gaming with them, and many of the puzzle pieces fell into place. The Hunters could talk to Joel about the situation, Joel could keep an eye on me—and if there was some conspiracy going on in Stonecreek, nobody would think the handsome man living on the corner was involved with trying to safeguard the refugees.
I would serve as the bait, a role I was content to play.
After checking the list, which happened to list the top ten favorite flowers and herbs for luna moths, I pointed at aplant described as a chocolate mint. “Chocolate and mint are a match made in heaven.”
Joel’s gaze followed my finger to the plant, and the man licked his lips. “I see you speak my language, Valerie.”
