“No way.” Gabe swears, loudly. “That’s the coolest thing I have ever seen.”
“I told you—” Another ball disappears into my body. Then another. And another. Each time, Whitney’s brother swears, pumps his fist in the air and dances around.
“So with like, bullets, same thing?”
I nod.
An attendant with a vest embroidered the same as the front entry sign comes by. “Hey, where are all the balls? You can’t keep them.” He glances around almost frantically. “Those are ours.”
“Dude, relax.” Gabe pats his back. “You’ll have all your balls. I promise.” He slaps the boy’s shoulder and says, “Trust.”
For some reason that works, but I’m still confused about the entire interaction. Once the employee’s gone, Gabe spins around, his eyes wide, his fingers pointing at me.
“We can get the balls back, right, my man?”
I shoot the balls back out at the machine that attacked me, until it’s utterly ruined. “I can always get things that try to harm me ‘back out.’ Never fear.”
Gabe stares at the smoking machine in horror. He swears again, loudly. “Okay, time for us to go.” He grabs my arm and practically drags me out of the batting cages. Fine by me—we didn’t even do any batting.
Our next stop is a local jewelry store.
“Welcome to Green River Gems,” a woman with a white shirt and a black skirt says. As I look at her, I can see it—she’s sick and doesn’t know it yet. She’ll be gone within a year. If Whitney were here, she’d be sad. I’ve learned not to share that kind of information with her. I understand that’s just how life works, but apparently the kind of information I immediately sense from people isn’t welcomed by others. “How can I help you?”
“My man here needs to wow his girlfriend. They’ve been dating for. . .” Gabe clears his throat. “A month.”
“Which means you want to keep things small and modest. It’s early, after all. You don’t want to scare her off.”
“Diamonds are always good, though, right?” Gabe peers through the case.
I can sense the clear stone in the case quite well—it’s one I’ve never noticed before. “This stone is rare, and humans value it?”
“Uh, yeah,” Gabe says. “Humans.” He clears his throat and widens his eyes, reminding me that I shouldn’t refer to humans as though I’m not one myself. “We sure do value diamonds.”
“What other stones do you value?” I ask.
The woman helpfully shows us the different cabinets with the different precious stones they’ve set into jewelry for female adornment, and I begin to get a feel for what the various stones humans place value on feel like. Perhaps I can find some inside the earth at a later date.
“What types of jewelry does your girlfriend like?” The woman’s staring at me intently.
“She likes guns a lot,” I say. “All sorts of guns. Handguns, rifles—pretty much all of them.”
Gabe’s expression when he looks at me is quite strange. “Jewelry,” he hisses. “Not guns.”
“Oh.” I frown. “Well, I’ve never seen her wear jewelry, honestly,” I say. “But we go shooting pretty often.”
“You might be in the wrong store, then,” the woman says with a half-smile. “The pawn shop around the corner would have quite a few guns.”
On our way out, Gabe shoves me with his shoulder. “All women like jewelry, and trust me. Whitney doesn’t need any more guns. The only person. . .” He freezes. “Wait. She could shoot at you, and you’d be fine, right?”
I shake my head. “Not so. Your sister, like you, is split evenly between light and dark energy. Any attack made by her would harm me.”
“Oh.” He nods, and we’re back in motion. A moment later, we’re in the ‘pawn’ shop the woman mentioned, and I’m not impressed. It smells strange, and all the goods appear to have been used by other humans.
“I don’t think this is a good place to purchase gifts,” I whisper. “The place feels off-putting, and the things they are selling all appear to have been used by others.”
Gabe laughs. “You’re a trip, man. Yes, that’s the whole point. People bring nice stuff here when they need money, so you can get—” He waves as a shop attendant meets us. “We need to see some guns, man.” He glances my way, and then he sighs. “The older and more unique the gun, the better.”
The attendant smiles. “I have just the thing.” He disappears again.
