When Casey walked back up the basement stairs, Gus Bright was at the cash register, wearing a too-small grease-stained T-shirt with an American flag on it. A bright red baseball cap perched backward on his head, and long, limp, grey hair straggling out from underneath in all directions.

  The man had a soda in one hand, and he said to Freddie, as Casey walked up, “... I gave you a fifty!”

  “It was a five.” Freddie’s voice was calm, but then, Freddie was always pleasant. However, he glanced over Gus’s shoulder at Casey with a look of entreaty while also holding one hand strangely high in the air. Whatever was going on wasn’t the usual scenario that Freddie could charm his way through with a quick smile and a demonstration of competence. Freddie repeated, “It was a five, and I gave you the correct change.”

  “Can I help?” Casey said firmly, walking around behind the counter.

  “Your boy here didn’t give me my change. I gave him a fifty.” Gus scowled. “He said it was a five.”

  “He’s not a boy,” Casey said, deciding in that instant that he would not be hiring Gus Bright for anything. This was a classic scam, and it said something unpleasant about Gus that he’d tried to pull it on a potential client’s employee. “Freddie, have you taken any fifties this morning?”

  “No. He’s the first customer today,” Freddie, voice still level, said. “He just doesn’t remember right.”

  Casey wordlessly popped the cash register drawer open. He lifted the tray. No fifties. Just the usual $200 in small change that they started the day with, plus or minus a little bit from the sale of a soda.

  He checked the number of five-dollar bills. There were eleven. The drawer would have started with ten $5 bills. The one on top was crumpled, stained, and very damp to the touch. Casey stuffed it under the tray of money so they wouldn't hand it to a customer, closed the register, pulled the bottle of hand sanitizer out from under the counter, and applied a liberal squirt to his hands.

  “Oh, well, maybe I made a mistake ...” Gus, now desperate, let his voice rise. “And, I looked at your windows. I’ll get you a quote in a few hours.”

  “Okay,” Casey said, eyes narrowed. Just because Gus gave him a quote didn’t mean he needed to accept it. There were other contractors in town who could slot him in, just not for a week or two. They could live with boarded-up windows.

  He offered the hand sanitizer to Freddie, who had clearly been grossed out by the moist bill, too, given how he was holding his hand so it didn’t touch anything else. Freddie eagerly accepted a squirt and rubbed hand sanitizer all the way up his wrists.

  “Here’s the thing with Freddie,” Casey said. “He might have Down Syndrome, but there’s nothing wrong with his memory. Also, he counts change the same way, every time, without fail, the exact way he was taught. He would have put that five on top of the register, counted the change out, looked at it again to verify it was a five, and then put it away.”

  “Yeah,” Freddie agreed. “I think he just forgot what he gave me.”

  “Mmm. We’ll assume he forgot.” Casey contemplated banning Gus from the store. He didn’t need a psychic Gift to know that Gus was lying: He’d tried to convince Freddie to give change for a $50 that didn’t exist.

  “The kid coulda dropped it...” Gus said weakly and leaned forward as if to look over the counter at the floor. Casey ground his teeth together. Freddie was twenty-five years old. He was not a ‘kid’ in the patronizing way that Gus meant it.

  Then Gus peered up at the 'Missing Person' poster on the wall and said abruptly, “Tara was a good girl. Bit of a lesbo, but I guess that's the times we live in... kids get weird ideas from the internet these days. Shame about what happened.”

  "Tara likes guys, too. She told me that she had a crush on Orlando Bloom in high school. She even painted a picture of him in art class. I sat behind her. Then she painted one of Gillian Anderson," Freddie replied, in a completely helpful, chatty, tone, and without any hint of criticism. “Tara's poster’s fading. If you’ll bring us a new one, we could put it up for you.”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Casey figured Gus knew he’d been caught trying to scam Freddie, and he was now trying to change the subject by bringing up his missing niece. Freddie probably suspected the scam as well, since Shana had specifically coached him on that sort of crap when teaching him to run the register. Or maybe he didn't. It was hard to tell.

  It was petty, but Casey pointed out in a tone with a lot more censure than Freddie’s, “Tyler brings a new poster of Todd by every week.”

  Gus stuck his hands in the pockets of his overalls. “No point. Posters won’t bring Tara back. You might as well take that thing down.”

  “Yeah?” Casey said, suddenly alert. His Gift had twitched with interest at that statement.

  The man looked down at his feet. “I shoulda never sent her to the Riley place. I told her she and Todd were both grownups, and she needed to get over the rivalry they had when she was a kid, plus he’d specifically asked for her. Her dad said she needed to do her job and stop whining about asshole customers or quit already, and I let him talk me into it when I kinda had some misgivings... I guess I was too mean. I should have listened when she said she didn’t want to go.”

  Freddie made a soft sound of distress. “Todd was awful to her when we were in school. He used to make her cry.”

  Gus brushed an untrimmed, nose-length shock of graying hair that erupted from under the baseball cap’s band out of his eyes. He bit his lip, then said, “Her dad told the cops that she probably killed Todd. She absolutely hated him, and that girl’s got a temper, so ... who’s to say that’s not what happened? I should have listened to her, though, and never sent her out there.”

  According to Casey's Gift, that wasn’t what had happened, and Gus wasn’t telling everything he knew. Casey said quietly, “Weird shit happens around here, sometimes.”

  Gus glanced sharply up at Casey’s words. “You’ve got a reputation for being psychic. You know things you shouldn’t.”

  Casey lifted one shoulder up in half a shrug. “I’m pretty sure there’s nothing you could tell me that would surprise me.”

  “You’d think I’m a nut.”

  “Already do,” Casey said with a grin. He deeply disliked the man, but some friendly teasing might set him at ease. What Gus knew felt more important than Casey’s strong desire to kick him in the ass so hard he flew right out the door.

  Gus let out a sharp sigh. “Tara’s mom’s side is a bunch of witchy freaks. Granny Hazel was straight-up scary. You hear what I’m saying?”

  This had the feel of truthful words. Casey leaned on the counter casually and said, in a tone of admission, “I believe in that kind of weird witchy stuff. I also met Tara’s Granny when I was a kid. She wanted to train me for that psychic gift you mentioned, but my dad thought she was loony toons, freaked out, and told her no.”

  “Huh.” Gus looked sideways at Casey. “Well... Tara’s dad said he found Tara covered in blood at the Riley place the night she supposedly disappeared. According to him, she killed Todd and then she used a magic book to go through a portal. She won’t be coming back.”

  “She went through a portal?” Casey asked, and he was proud of how he managed to keep his voice level and curious, even when he knew that Gus believed what he was saying... but also, Gus’s words weren’t true. Something else had happened. His Gift whispered something worse.

  “Libby — that’s the matriarch of the Adrial clan — went looking for her at the house too and said she couldn’t find her or a magic book that’s missing. I know this all sounds crazy, but you said you’d seen things...”

  “I’ve met that Book,” Casey said dryly. “I’ve seen it open a portal. Twice. I believe what you’re saying might have been possible, but I know for a fact that the Book is still here on Earth. Unless she came back with it later, something else happened.”

  Gus hunched his shoulders uncomfortably. “Maybe something else did. Her father’s happy she’s gone. He’s driving her car, and he got the court to agree to him handling her affairs — I expect her bank account’s empty. Tommy might be my brother, but... well, at least I love my kids. Me’n him don’t talk much, partly because he just sees his kids as burdens.”

  He trailed off, looked at Freddie, and then said, “Hey, sorry about, you know, the money. I’m kinda an ass, I guess. There wasn’t ever a $50.”

  Freddie said, “Just do the right thing in the future.”

  “Yeah. Hey, I gotta go. Guess I don’t got the job” He hurried out the door suddenly, steps quick, shoulders hunched, and hands still stuck deep in his pockets.

  Freddie said, after Gus was gone, “Magic isn’t real, right?”

  “Yeah, Fred,” Casey said, “For most people, it’s not. Fred, did you know Gus was trying to scam you?"

  Freddie nodded. "Yeah. Daxi and Shana taught me to look out for that game. They said to watch Gus specifically 'cause he tried the same thing with Daxi at another job. We practiced what to do if anyone tried it here."

  He hadn't realized Freddie had been on to Gus from the moment he'd walked in the door. "You were nice to him, though."

  Freddie explained, "I can be polite to people I don't like."

  Casey sighed. "Well, in the future, feel free to be ruder to anyone you catch trying to scam you."