Marked by Shadows: MM Paranormal Romance Mystery (A Simply Crafty Paranormal Mystery Book 2)

by Lissa Kasey

  “Boy,” Jonah said, “you know the way to a cosplayer’s heart. Did you see the shimmering latex? Made a bodysuit out of that last year and the boys couldn’t keep their hands off my unmentionables. If any more people examined my package, I’d have to call myself UPS.”

  Alex snorted into his coffee cup. “I like him.”

  Jonah reached across the table, though it was too far to touch and patted the wood top in Alex’s direction. “Same, Sugar, same.”

  “No bodysuits for me,” Chad said. “But you should see the new mockup of the Infinity Glove that Freya’s helped me with. It’s amazing.”

  “Freya is amazing,” I said pointing out my friend’s strengths. She gave me a sweet smile.

  “She is,” Jonah affirmed.

  Everyone else agreed and the group broke off into chatter about their projects. It became a round robin of excitement with everyone talking about their latest creation, fueled by Freya’s support and helpful comments. By the time they got to me, we were cleaning up. The sound of the bus arriving saved me from having to admit that I didn’t have a specific project in mind, but dozens. The actual number of my UFOs, unfinished objects, I had no idea. Things were sorted and categorized by Skylar’s super compartmentalization, however, my brain did not work that way. Out of sight, out of mind for me, at least when it came to crafts. Which meant I had a lot of started things or probably nearly finished things that I’d completely forgotten about in favor of a new idea because Skylar had put it away.

  Alex refilled our water bottles and stuffed them in his bag. He was still using the faux leather tote I’d thrown together for him. I offered to make him something more elaborate, but he’d refused, saying he liked what he had. I returned to his side and he immediately reached for my hand, drawing me up into a little hug.

  “What’s this for?” I asked, returning the squeeze and then letting go as we made our way out to the waiting bus.

  “Happy you’re here,” Alex offered.

  “Where else would I be?”

  He shrugged. I wondered if he’d had another dream. His brother warned me that sometimes when he woke up in a new place it could set off a PTSD episode, but Alex had been up and coherent before me this morning. He usually was. Not necessarily a morning person with a cheery attitude and zipping around the house, but awake and mobile, ready to move. Like a soldier, I realized. Which of course made sense as he had years of training under his belt.

  “You okay?” I asked him.

  “Yes.”

  The bus was one of those high-end things, with padded seats and TVs popping out of the ceiling. Only half the size of a normal bus, I estimated we had only twenty or so people on the tour. We got a listing of the shops from the guide on the way onto the bus, a stack of coupons, which I handed off to Alex, and instructions for getting back on the bus at each location.

  Alex and I took up a pair of seats, him on the aisle, and me by the window. He bumped me with his shoulder, which made me look at his face again. He rewarded me with a goofy grin.

  “You’re a nerd,” I teased him as he slid his fingers through mine and rested our hands in his lap. Surrounded by a group of old ladies and a few of their husbands, I worried we’d get some flak for touching in public. We were in Texas after all. But if anyone noticed, they said nothing.

  “Guilty,” Alex agreed. “Do you think we’ll find some new fabric to replace the curtain into the sin cave?” The bus began to move once everyone was on board. The small group from the B&B sitting around us.

  I blinked. “Sin cave? Oh, the back of the shop. Why does it need a new curtain?” Right now it had something that blended in and was boring. Since sex toys was a small part of my business I’d never put a lot of effort into the space.

  “Everything else in the shop is custom and handmade inspiration, right?”

  “Yes. But I don’t make the toys.” Since adding the one-off costumes I made to the shop, I’d had to move things around to create an area where people could try them on. They weren’t exactly one size fits all. I’d found a market with capes, which took almost no time to put together, but a lot of fabric. In truth, I was running out of space. “I thought about adding a small area, taking part from the breakroom, and moving the adult section to a more enclosed space.”

  Alex seemed to consider that for a few minutes. “That would give us more room for costumes and quilts. But what about Narwal Dickmaster’s fans? Relegated to a closet. No one likes being in a closet.”

  “Narwal what?” Jonah asked catching only part of the comment.

  I smiled and shook my head at Alex. “I could put some of Narwal’s most popular design in the register case.” In the main part of the store, beneath where we processed payments with an iPad, was a locked glass case of custom jewelry.

  Alex’s eyes went wide. “Like have dicks… big alien ones, right there for everyone to see?” His face went red when he realized he was sitting on a bus filled with old people. The quilting hobby really did seem to be dominated by old white women, but we were in the South. “Fuck.” He slapped his hand over his mouth.

  “Alien dicks?” Now our whole group was interested. “I could use a big alien dick,” Jonah said. “How did I not know your shop carries alien dicks, Micah?”

  “It’s a small part of the business. I have a couple artists who provide specialty pieces, and the rest is part of a company agreement I have.”

  “Specialty pieces?” MaryAnn wanted to know. “How special can a dildo be?”

  Chad’s eyes were huge, absorbing the conversation. Julie and Nicole laughed. Jonah fished out his phone. “Girl, let me show you pictures.”

  “Have you tried the alien impregnator?” Alex asked Jonah. “It seems to be a thing.”

  “I’ve seen videos,” Jonah stated. “It looks capital H.O.T., hot.” He showed a few pictures on his phone, which I couldn’t see, to MaryAnn and Chad, both whose eyes grew wide and a bit shocked. “I have a bit of a collection. But what can I say? I like dick.”

  “Narwal Dickmaster strikes again,” Alex said. “Converting another sweet angel to the darkside with his demand for obedience and subjugation. It’s a growing religion.”

  “I must meet this Dickmaster of yours,” Jonah said. He turned so we could see the pictures on his phone. There was some sort of bluish green phallic shape with segments and beads at the top. It looked sort of bug-like. “This is my favorite. It tingles in all the right places.” There were a couple more angles of the dildo in pictures, and even a picture of it next to a book. The thing was huge.

  “Wow,” Alex said, suddenly at a loss for words. “I didn’t know using a thing like that was humanly possible.”

  “Sugar,” Jonah said, “This baby is magic. I’ll send Micah the link so he can order one for the two of you to play with. If this Narwal religion has got a hold on you, wait until you meet the Scorpion King’s cock. It is up there with the giant Spaghetti Monster, but instead of wearing a strainer on your head, you got a thick cock in your dock, nudging all those delicious things inside.”

  “Cock in your dock?” Alex tried to translate. “Wait, Spaghetti Monster? Strainer on your head? What?” He narrowed his eyes and looked at me. “Monster spaghetti? Does spaghetti come alive like some old blob movie and eat us now? Just how much did I miss while in the military?”

  And for the rest of the bus ride to the first shop, I spent explaining what a Spaghetti Monster was, and how it had become a thing of pop culture. Alex looked several times back at Jonah’s picture of the Scorpion King’s cock. I ordered one to be delivered to the shop in a handful of clicks, wondering what Alex would do if I brought it home with us. Either way, as the tension left his shoulders, and he chatted with the group, even after they teased him, I was happy he’d come along. If anything, his ease with the others made my own anxiety fade.

  Chapter 8

  The first shop was large and filled with a lot of traditional prints and walls of Batiks. “Batiks are hand dyed,” I explained to Alex as h
e marveled at the rainbow wall of color they were arranged in, like some horizontal cascade of fabric. “The quilt I made you had green Batiks in it. That leaf design, which looks sort of like it’s dyed in the fabric rather than printed on top of it.”

  Alex stood out of the way of the people entering the shop, not really moving, but sucking in air for a minute. Was it too crowded for him? There were a couple dozen people in the shop, but there was plenty of space between us and everyone else.

  I squeezed his hand. “You okay?”

  “Taking it all in.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh at the awe in his words. “The convention makes this,” I waved at the walls of color, “look like nothing.”

  Alex turned his gaze my way and blinked several times, the words processing slow enough with him that I could almost see the wheels turning. “For real? There’s more?”

  “The convention fills a giant convention hall. Hundreds of booths, dozens of designers, classes, and even machines. It will be packed with people.” Mostly Alex seemed okay in crowds, but I planned to keep a close eye on him. “I have a vendor pass, which means we actually get in for a sneak peek on Wednesday. It will be less crowded, but not all the booths will be ready, and there won’t be other events like classes or those live tutorials.” Ideally, I would find a few lines to carry in my shop and begin discussions with the line owners. It was much easier in person than trying to work through the bazillion walls of marketing directors for some of the larger lines. My goal was to aim for newer designers, establish a relationship, and help them build their brand.

  “Your eyes got all glowy,” Alex said to me.

  I tilted my head and looked up at him. “Glowy? Is that a word?”

  “Maybe? I might have just made it up. Um, excited?”

  “I do find fabric exciting,” I agreed.

  “And calming.”

  “Yes.” Because was that true or what? I petted the bolts in my hands, finding the texture soothing as well as thought provoking.

  “Hoarder,” Alex teased.

  “That is the quilter’s way,” the lady at the cutting counter informed him as she took the bolts of fabric and the measurements I wanted. “We call it a ‘stash’ though, not a hoard.”

  “Like a pirate stash? I do like the dragon hoard thing better,” Alex told her. He put his hands on his hips and struck a swashbuckling pose with a wide stance. “Arrr, do I make a better pirate than a dragon?”

  The lady laughed at him. I smiled and put an arm around his waist. “You can be whatever you want, whenever you want,” I assured him. He let out a deep breath and relaxed into my touch. “Pirate, dragon, merman, whatever.”

  “Oh, merman. That would be cool. Didn’t Jonah say something about mermaid scale fabric?” His gaze scanned the shelves again, not finding scales I was sure, because this shop had none.

  “There’s a new trend this year in scales,” the lady informed him. “Our shop doesn’t have it, but a few others do. Some with metallics in them. Beautiful stuff.”

  “I’m sure one of the shops on the tour will have them,” I said. I thanked the lady and we made our way back out to the bus. Julie and Nicole had a bag of Batiks. No one else seemed to have purchased anything. “None of the shops today will have apparel fabric,” I told Alex.

  “You made boxers for me out of cotton,” he reminded me. “I thought a lot of clothes are made out of cotton?”

  We found our seats and sat down to wait for the last of the group to return. “True. Cotton is useful. However, it’s also stiff and limiting in regard to costume design and wearable fabrics. The quilt shops feature very specific cottons with tighter weaves.”

  “Apparel is a lot of synthetics,” Jonah said. “Makes it softer in some instances, more malleable in others. Like latex—”

  “The stuff gloves are made of,” Alex said.

  “Yes. Gloves are super thin latex.” Jonah smiled. “Like condoms.”

  “We use a non-latex version of those,” Alex said without thinking. “Fuck,” he muttered. “Stupid broken filter.”

  I patted his knee. “It’s okay. Latex, whether condoms, gloves, or even fabric, isn’t porous. Which is why the gloves always feel powdery inside, to dry the sweat. What Jonah is saying is that latex is now mixed with spandex or a few other fabrics to make it more breathable, and softer against the skin. Most apparel fabrics are the same way. Jeans are no longer made with denim, it’s cotton and spandex. Even true cotton is mostly used for quilting, as the rest is mixed with polyester. Everything is made to stretch and breathe.”

  “Which means you can make a bodysuit out of latex and not feel like you’re wearing a full-body condom,” Jonah said.

  “You guys have such weird conversations,” Chad said as he sat down behind us this time. MaryAnn slid in next to him.

  “I point this out often!” Alex agreed. “It’s how we find ourselves in conversations about the Scorpion King’s penis and body condoms, and yet sounds completely natural.”

  “Sex is natural,” I pointed out. Alex’s cheeks turned pink again. I smiled and leaned over to kiss him. “You’re adorable when you blush.”

  “I’m too old to blush.”

  I patted his knee again. He could think what he wanted. The bus started up, and we were soon on our way to the next shop.

  “So do you hobby, Alex?” MaryAnn asked.

  “Micah taught me to crochet, but I’m a newbie. Haven’t done cosplay since before I enlisted. I do find all this stuff fascinating. Not really time for hobbies when you’re serving.”

  “Have you been out long?” MaryAnn asked. “Or are you only on leave?”

  “Out. Medical discharge,” Alex said, not willing to go into it further. Technically his physical issue wasn’t substantial enough to discharge him. Despite the fact that it made him nearly immobile some days as his hip joint locked up. His mental health problems had gotten him an official, while quiet, release. They didn’t want what Alex had to say to be taken seriously. His recall of monsters in the desert didn’t seem to scare them as much as I thought it should. Not disbelief, Lukas had said to me while Alex was missing. He’d met with Alex’s superiors a few times. They had offered Lukas condolences, assuming Alex was dead, likely by his own hand.

  Lukas had asked about Alex’s memories, the death of the soldiers in his group, and that dark day in the desert. The military had brushed him off. But Lukas had discovered that, indeed, most of Alex’s group had died that day. Two others’ survived. One losing an arm, the other seeming to have gone mad as he, like Alex had been for a time, was now in a mental institution. Lukas implied that the military knew more than they let on, and it wasn’t the training exercise gone wrong that they led everyone to believe.

  It was something both Lukas and I agreed not to bring up with Alex. He didn’t need the rehashing of the past year. He’d been scapegoated in a lot of ways; made to believe he was crazy. Which frustrated me. He had a good therapist now. Someone who let him talk and didn’t tell him he was nuts. But I knew it was a daily struggle. He rolled between depression, anxiety, and being overwhelmed on a regular basis. Rarely showed it outwardly, but I did try to help him clear his head and focus when possible.

  Skylar indicating that Alex would find a hobby on this trip, that was well worth the overpriced ticket I had paid to get him in. Having him along was a bonus of course. He was pleasant company, easy to joke and make light of himself first. And his childlike awe over new things was adorable. Though it made me a little sad to realize he’d enlisted so young, and spent a sizable part of his life in the military rather than experiencing the normal sorts of things most people did. He had never been on some stateside base working a desk job. He’d been overseas and in training almost non-stop. Which was why he sometimes had a hard time processing normal events.

  “Alex is an amazing cook,” I said. “He makes these peanut butter cookies that are super rich and tasty.”

  “I do like to cook, but I’m no chef,” Alex agreed. “
I’d like to learn how to quilt like Micah does. Or something with fabric. He takes scraps and poof it’s suddenly a blanket, or a bag, or a pillow case. Magic.”

  “Once you get started it’s hard to stop,” Julie said.

  Nicole nodded. “Even when you mess up those first few times. As long as you keep going, the magic happens.”

  “I want to learn magic,” Alex said with a childlike wonder.

  “Tomorrow is supposed to be a craft day,” I told him. “We can find some things you like and I’ll show you a few simple designs.”

  “I don’t even know how to use a sewing machine.”

  “That’s okay. If you can take apart guns and put them back together, I think you can figure out a sewing machine.” I thought of something that Lukas had told me. “Didn’t you fix a coffee pot with spare gun parts?”

  “It’s not like I put bullets in it or something. Just some screws and a few barrel fittings. The water was so hard it kept clogging. At least with the barrel fittings I could take them out and scrub them clean. The cheap plastic ones that come in most coffee pots don’t ever come clean.”

  Everyone looked at Alex.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You used gun parts to fix a coffee maker?” Chad confirmed.

  “Hardcore coffee drinker, right there,” Jonah said.

  “Guilty,” Alex admitted. “I don’t function without coffee in the morning.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you function just fine,” Jonah teased him, flirting a little.

  Heat turned Alex’s cheeks pink again. “I don’t actually. But that’s okay. Micah doesn’t mind.” He was referring to the fact that he didn’t wake up with wood like a lot of guys did. I think he worried that I thought he didn’t find me attractive enough. But I knew that wasn’t the case. It took very little effort on my part to ever ‘turn him on.’ “Fuck,” he cursed. “I keep saying stuff I shouldn’t.”

  I squeezed his thigh. “You’re fine.” It didn’t matter that the folks not in our group had moved to the other side of the bus and a few were giving us disapproving eyes. Everyone in the cosplay group knew I had worked in adult videos, and my cosplay had never been PG rated.