Not that sheneededchildren to be happy and Mike, had never wanted any, so for a long time it was a moot point. But since breaking things off with her ex, Lucy had begun to think along those lines again. After all, she wasn’t exactly young anymore, so the clock was ticking. Seeing all the kids in their cute costumes was just going to remind her how abysmally single she was!
“Nonsense,” her aunt said briskly. “Seeing the happy, laughing children will bring you out of this funk you’re in. Why, you’ll feel athousandpercent better by the end of the evening!”
“A thousand percent, huh?” Lucy said skeptically. “Wow, that’s kind of alot. How do you know that’s true?”
“Your special crystal told me.” Aunt Delilah touched thedimrielcrystal lightly, sending it spinning as it threw deep red shadows over the entire shop. “Didn’t you tell me that the Monstrum Kindred call it a ‘heart-stone?’”
“Well,yesbut they call it that because it’s the heart of their Mother Ship,” Lucy protested. “They don’t mean that it can predictaffairsof the heart or anything like that.”
“Nevertheless, I think the heart-stone has some special uses that the Monstrum have yet to discover,” Aunt Delilah said mysteriously. “And this one is telling me that where you need to be is right here in the shop on Samhain night.”
“Right, so you can be dancing naked under the moonlight with your coven,” Lucy grumbled, but she knew when she was beaten. She was going to stay right here and guide the trick-or-treaters through their tours and watch all of them pick a piece of “magic candy” and then probably eat too much leftover candy herself and go home and go to bed with a stomachache and a sore heart. There was just no getting out of it.
“Remember if the trick-or-treaters run late, you can always stay in the back bedroom,” her aunt reminded her. She was already gathering her things to go. Clearly since the decorations were done, she was anxious to get to her coven meeting.
“Right, the back bedroom,” Lucy muttered.
When Aunt Delilah had first opened her shop, she’d had to live in a room behind it in the old Victorian mansion where it was located. (The top floors were all lawyers’ offices that were only open during the weekdays.) But in the years since opening, she’d made enough money to move out and get a real house. So now the back bedroom was only used for late nights when she was doing inventory.
“I hope I won’t be herethatlate, though,” she said.
“You never can tell my dear. I have an idea you’ll be glad you stayed.” Aunt Delilah gave her a kiss on the cheek and touched thedimrielcrystal again, which glowed for her, just as it did for Lucy.
She left with a mysterious smile.
“Yeah, right,” Lucy muttered, closing the doors behind her.
But a little later, she had to admit that her aunt had been right. She was still sad about how things had turned out with T’zaren, but the steady flow of trick-or-treaters coming to admire the shop and get a piece of “magic candy” at least kept her mind off her pain. Still, it was hard to smile and be cheerful when she couldn’t help thinking that if things had gone differently, she might have had the big Monstrum with her on this special and fun night.
Then, just as the last trick-or-treater left and she was about to turn off the porch light, she got a sudden feeling that someone wanted to speak to her urgently.
The sensation had her feeling for her cell phone but then she realized what it was—someone was trying to call her by Think-me—the Kindred device that enabled telepathic communication. Iyanna had shown her how to use one and had even called her once to show her how it felt.
As soon as she thought of her friend’s name, she knew that was who was calling. Closing her eyes, she froze in place with her hand over the light switch and opened her mind.
“Iyanna? Is that you?”
“Oh, thank goodness you picked up. I really have to talk to you!”her friend sent back.“Are you busy?”
“Well all the trick-or-treaters are gone so I’ve got some time. What is it? Is everything okay with the Mother Ship’s new heart-stone?”Lucy sent anxiously.
“Perfectly fine—the new stone you and T’zaren brought back is growing like crazy. It’s already filled half the heart-space of the ship and Commander Rarev is extremely pleased. But that’s not what I called to talk to you about.”
“What then?”Lucy sent, feeling confused.
More like ‘who’,”Iyanna told her.“I had a little talk with T’zaren today.”
“Oh you did, did you? Well, how is the big jerk?”The name of the big Monstrum immediately made Lucy blue and grumpy at the same time.“You know he didn’t call meoncethe whole time I was staying with you in the Mother Ship?”she demanded, not waiting for Iyanna’s answer.“After all we went through together and he never even called or came byone timeeven though he knew I was leaving soon to go back to Earth!”
“You know, he said the same thing aboutyou,”Iyanna said.
“What? But that’s not how it works—he’ssupposed to callme!”Lucy protested.
“Not in his culture he’s not. How much do you know about his people?”Iyanna asked her.
“Well…”Lucy shifted from foot to foot.“Not much, I guess,”she confessed.“We didn’t talk about it much other than for him to say that the Darklings took over his home world, which is really sad. I didn’t press him on it much because I didn’t want to pry or make him feel bad.”
“It is sad,”Iyanna said.“But if you’d dug a little deeper, you would have known that the Stri’vor Monstrum were a Matriarchal society. In their world, thewomanchooses theman. She even, er, takes him sometimes—sexually I mean—at least from what I could gather from T’zaren.”