Page 40 of A Light in the Dark
“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 vacationorsick 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 storewas 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 inall 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 embroideryflosses 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.
