The box of cell phones in the cage had numerous devices in it, but most were broken or older. Casey wanted Simon to have something that looked new — it was the least he could do. After checking out the possible options, he selected a newer phone with a shattered screen and found a repair kit in a drawer on the desk.
They had already ordered new glass for it, so it was just a matter of disassembling the device and replacing it. Normally, Avery did this sort of finicky work, but Casey did know how. Avery had insisted he learn.
After fifteen minutes of fussing and one irritated curse word describing the phone’s ancestry in improbable terms, he found a charging cable, plugged it in, and the phone booted right up after the repair. It took just a few more minutes to set it up with a phone plan and make the first call.
“Who this?” Avery answered. He sounded completely wide awake, with refreshing energy and life in his voice.
“It’s Casey. I’m setting Simon up with a phone. Just testing it out first.”
“How do I know it’s Casey?” Avery retorted, tone teasing. “You could be a bot with an AI voice.”
“Speaking of talking computers, you watched every single episode of Knight Rider last year, in my apartment, after dinner.”
“Too many people know about that. We had like a dozen people over for Knight Rider marathons. There were drinking games. It was all about the car.” Avery said this with an audible grin in his voice.
“Hmph. You sing show tunes in the shower...”
“Too easy to guess. I sing everywhere, doing everything.”
“...In your muppet voice.”
“I’m pretty sure everyone has heard my muppet voice.”
“At your eighteenth birthday party, the moment you were legal ‘cuz she’s three years older, Chloe Arbor asked you out on a date, and you said no. She still gives you grief about missing your chance.”
Avery laughed. “She’s really not my type.”
“What, too normal for you?”
“I guess. I never expected her to take me seriously. I’m more careful about who I bat my eyes at now,” Avery said, tone just a tiny bit defensive.
Casey immediately stopped teasing. He hadn’t intended to make Avery feel bad.
Avery, apparently no longer in the mood for the game, said, “So... the elf’s sticking around for a bit, then? Last I heard, you were going to try to send him home.”
Casey leaned back in his chair and filled Avery in. Avery was silent for most of it but spoke up occasionally to ask clarifying questions. Only when he was done did Avery say, “... huh. I’m sorry I missed all this.”
“When are they letting you out?”
“Doc says tomorrow, maybe.” Avery’s voice hit a plaintive note. “I miss you guys, and I want to go home.”
“Hey. We miss you too.”
“They don’t want me to go up to Payson right away because of the elevation. I’ll have to stay with my mom at the house on Camelback Mountain.” Now Avery’s tone hit a peevish note. “I haven’t lived with her since I was eighteen.”
“How long?” He hadn’t even thought about that. Annette loved her son, but she tended to express that love in ways that triggered Avery to hell. “Could you stay in a hotel?”
“Until a doc clears me. A few days, maybe. They won’t release me unless somebody’s staying with me. I’d ask you, but my mom would be furious if she didn’t get to take care of me... she’s already talking about getting me a new wardrobe and a ‘professional looking’ haircut, and trying to sign me up for auditions in the valley with some sort of theater troupe.”
He could have reacted with a joke. Avery’s tone, superficially, was amused. Behind that humor, however, was frustration and anger, and more anxiety than he’d heard from his brother in years. He bit his lip and didn’t directly address his complaints with his mother. They both knew Annette reacted to her own anxieties by trying to fix everything in Avery’s life, and that included things Avery didn’t consider problems or want changed.
Casey, instead, with long experience in talking Avery down, and recognizing the signs of real stress, suggested a practical solution to the hair problem and left the rest alone. “Want me to ask Katie if she could come with me next time I go see you and do your extensions? Your mom won’t fuss as much if they’re brand new.”
Avery’s naturally dark hair was nearly unmanageably thick, with a texture that varied from one spot to another from tight springy coils to loose waves, and it would fry and break if he tried to straighten, bleach, and dye it. He preferred long, flowing, loosely curly locks in various shades of purple, so he’d started wearing wigs in his teens and now opted for extensions or weaves as an adult. The upkeep was constant, time-consuming, and rather expensive.
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Casey didn’t pretend to understand the appeal. His own preferred style was “buzzed short.” He hadn’t dyed his hair since his junior year of high school, when Avery and Shana had talked him into a rainbow design for Pride. Hair was very important to Avery, who took obsessively meticulous care of his appearance, so he did his best to support his brother’s preferences.
Presented with a calm solution, Avery relaxed. In a much more normal tone, he said, “I — yeah, I’ll pay Katie for a full day’s time if she’s up for it. You can take her to lunch or something too. My treat.”
He had no doubt Katie would jump at a chance to earn a day’s hairdressing wages. “Are they letting you have real food?” Casey asked, not wanting to leave Avery out of a fun meal.
“They said I’m doing great. No restrictions on diet.”
“What do you want for lunch? We could pick something up.”
“Barbeque? From The Pig?” Avery said, hopefully. “My mom won’t let me eat the hospital food. She took my dinner away last night, then gave me a tiny kale side salad. The doctor yelled at her when he found out and said I needed real food, and he got me a turkey sandwich, but I think the sandwich had been in the fridge for days. It was really stale... Then, she did it again for breakfast. She walked off with my plate and only left me a banana because she said the hospital eggs were gross and the donut and bacon were bad for me.”
“She took your bacon away? That’s wrong, man!” This wasn’t stress that Avery needed to be dealing with, and it sounded like Annette was being a bit more of a problem than he’d initially understood. “I’ll call my mom. That’s BS.”
Avery snorted a laugh that ended in a pained squeak. "Calling in the big guns? Stacy came by this morning, anyway.”
"Did you tell her what your mom’s doing?” Casey’s mother, Stacy, had been skilled at wrangling Annette for as long as Casey could remember.
"No... I didn’t want to cause drama.”
"Yeah, I get that, but you gotta eat. Can you order something from Uber Eats? I’ll be there tomorrow with a whole Pig Platter, and I’ll challenge your mom to a duel if she tries to steal it."
Avery asked, in a confused tone, “Can Uber deliver to the hospital?"
“Bet they’ll figure it out if you offer a big enough tip. If you get something that looks healthy, your mom probably won’t take it away. What about a bunch of sushi? Or a giant Caesar salad?” Casey figured the average delivery driver, if they saw Avery’s idea of a ‘good tip’ in the app, would move hell and high water to get the food to his brother, even if it meant a long trek from the parking lot to Avery’s room.
“Awesome. I didn’t think about that.”
“Mm. How are you feeling?”
"I had PT. The therapist was surprised I didn’t hurt more, with six broken ribs from the CPR and the sword."
“You’re tough. And ... some of that might be the necklace. Do me a favor, and don’t take it off for anything.” He had an idea that the necklace was a potent talisman. They shouldn’t risk losing it.
"The necklace freaks me out.”
“Yeah, me too. All of this weirds me out.” The memory of reaching for the power and wrapping it around the pencil was viscerally real. He’d gotten distracted, and in a fraction of a second, everything had gone wrong. The magic had been drawn to the pencil lead, and the pencil had blown apart.
To create the portal, he knew instinctively that he’d harnessed exponentially more energy. What would a spell like that do if it went bad? The idea made him frown hard at The Book, sitting silently on the desk in the cage. Just how much danger had it put them in by opening those portals and enslaving Simon? He was beginning to understand why Mrs. Riley had locked it away in a storage unit a hundred miles from her home.
Avery said, “So tell me more about your short and stabby blond buddy.”
He welcomed the distraction. "I like Simon, Avery. He’s crazy smart and he cares about others. Huge sense of responsibility. He didn’t even hesitate to go after that monster. Lots of integrity.”
"So, he looks like Stephen but has a better personality.” Avery had started out liking Casey’s ex, but that friendship had quickly soured. There was still irritation in his voice when he talked about the man, even months after the relationship had ended.
Stephen had also been blond, with high cheekbones, green eyes, and a smile that lit up a room — a smile that Casey had learned the hard way could not be trusted. Still, Casey laughed at Avery’s observation. Avery wasn’t wrong. "I’ve never denied I have a type. Stephen was taller, though. And more whiny and less stabby.”
Avery didn’t have a physical type. He’d dated an incredible variety of women and the occasional man or enby, all different. However, they had been similar in personality: artistic, with snarky senses of humor, and competent at life. Most acted or sang. Several were cosplayers. One had been a model, and one a fairly successful romance novelist.
His brother pointedly asked, "Serious question: You’re thinking about Simon that way?”
He blew a sharp breath between his lips and said carefully, "Eh. Once we break the spell, it’ll depend on him. Simon’s never had a partner, and he says he wouldn’t be reacting the way he is now without the geas.”
“You’re a really good dude, you know," his brother said consolingly. “And Stephen was an idiot to throw that away for the laughs he got making fun of us. You’ll find somebody."
Casey snorted. “Stephen was a mistake. My Gift was neutral on him. I should have taken that as a red flag when combined with that catty sense of humor... He chose to be a jerk when he had the potential to be so much more.”
“What’s Simon’s sense of humor like?"
“Very dry, and never mean.”
“What’s your Gift say about Simon?" Avery said, words soft, like he expected the answer to be negative, and was talking Casey around to hard decisions.
“Avery, it loves him." Casey hunched his shoulders as he said this, misery rising. It would have been easier if the Gift didn’t like Simon. He knew there was a distinct chance his attraction was entirely one-sided without the magic. He said, “I want him in my life. He’s... not somebody I ever want to let go.”
Avery was quiet so long that Casey thought perhaps the call had dropped. He pulled the phone back to look at it just as Avery said, “Casey, could that geas thing be affecting you too? You don’t usually actually fall for anybody this quick.”
“I don’t know."
“We were joking about love spells, remember, when we opened the portal?" Avery prompted.
“Fuck." He glared at The Book on the desk beside him. He really needed to talk to it again. He wasn’t looking forward to the conversation. With more feeling, he groaned, “Fuuuuuuck."
After ending the conversation with Avery, he decided that talking to The Book could wait. It wasn’t like it was going anywhere.
