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“The gypsy blood runs strong in you then.” Luna laughed.
“Not really.” I smirked. “I don’t know much about the culture. My mom spoke very little of it because I think it hurt her to remember. She was shunned, so she had to leave it behind.”
“Ugh, that sucks.” Luna pushed away her empty fry boat and wiped her hands. “Some of the communities can be very hardcore traditional, and if you don’t conform, they’ll give you the boot really quick.”
“Sounds like you know from experience,” I said carefully.
Her pretty features shadowed with sorrow as she gave a tiny nod. “Unfortunately, I do. But this community here is different. They are very open. It didn’t take long for them to embrace me.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” I said.
“You should come over with me,” she chirped. “It would be cool to show you around.”
I wiped my hand with a napkin, Lucian’s words still ringing in my head. He didn’t want me to go there. He specifically told me not to. But had I really just started obeying his every command as though I didn’t have my own mind?
No. That was definitely not the case. It wouldn’t ever be the case. And just because things were evolving between us didn’t mean I was going to be his stay-at-home pet who waited at the door for him to come home every night.
“I think that would be fun,” I told Luna. “I’d like to come check it out.”
She picked up the tray and headed for the trash. “Awesome! You’re going to love it.”
When Luna said she was taking me to the community, I assumed it was somewhere in the city. But she started driving and didn’t slow down until we reached the desert, and even then, she kept going for miles before the commune appeared.
Her eyes lit up as she gestured to the flock of camp trailers parked in the middle of the desert. “Voila!”
“This is it?”
Luna parked the car in front of a small blue camper, and we both got out. “Yep. It’s quiet here now, but give it another hour or so, and it’ll get wild.”
I offered her a weak smile as my fingers grazed the links of the watch Lucian gave me. Stupidly, I thought I’d be back before he even noticed I was gone. But at this rate, it didn’t seem like that would be the case.
I followed Luna through the maze of trailers into the heart of the camp where a bunch of chairs and a fire pit were set up. Along the way, she introduced me to a few of the community members who had taken notice of me. There were a variety of people, young and old, and I could see what Luna meant when she said they weren’t all gypsies. She’d called them societies outcasts, and that net spanned far and wide. I didn’t know what I was expecting when I came out here, but the reality was completely different.
Everyone was clean and well fed and happy… and most notably, social. It seemed as if every person we passed stopped to say hello along the way, and they all knew Luna by name.
“People just live out here in the middle of the desert all year?” I asked.
“Pretty much.” She pulled out a couple of empty chairs, and we sat down. “It depends, though. I mean, people move around a lot, but then you have the regulars who are content to stay. Some are only here seasonally and then pack up and head off to other pastures for a while.”
“What does everyone do out here? How do they make money?”
Luna smirked. “Haven’t you heard that all gypsies are con artists?”
I knew she was joking, but it hit home for me, considering that I was. “I thought you said they weren’t all gypsies,” I replied.
“They aren’t.” She shrugged. “But we’re all tarred with the same brush because we live together. We get a bad rap, especially in Vegas because of a few bad apples. Some do run cons, but these people here are solid. They do good, honest work. Some have local jobs, or some just do seasonal work. A lot of the gypsies will leave the women home to tend to the children while the men work. It just depends on the family, really.”
I sat back and took in the buzzing excitement of a community free from the rules of society. “So where exactly does that leave you in all of this?”
“You mean because I’m single?” Luna teased. “I get by. I actually have a job in the city if you can believe that. I wait tables at a diner a few nights a week.”
“You forgot to mention your real talent,” another woman chimed in as she sat down beside us. “I bet you didn’t even know who you were sitting next to here, did you?”
