At the sound of a car on the gravel driveway, Casey shut the 1970s-era fridge in Avery’s kitchen and padded past three cats. A beer could wait. With a practiced block of his foot, he stopped cat number four, the tortie kitten, from darting past the rickety wooden screen door and stepped out onto the sun-bleached grey wood of the porch.

  It was late in the day, with the winter sun about to set behind a jagged pine-crusted mountain. He had expected the exotic sports car moving slowly up the muddy drive to arrive much sooner.

  That car did not fit. Not here, in the little rural enclave of Sanctuary, where there was a faint scent of manure and the distant sound of bawling calves in the air, mixed with the tang of pines. Not here, where the fanciest house was the crumbling old Riley place, built a century ago by a long-dead cattle baron. That imported car was bright yellow, with exotic lines, heavily tinted windows, and a deep, rumbling engine. It screamed money, privilege, and expensive tastes. You could buy half a dozen Larkspur homes for what it had cost.

  The vehicle parked next to The Junk Shop’s battered old truck, tires spinning a little in a lingering patch of slushy snow. Casey could see a brief glint of glowing light through the dark glass as the driver tried to make a phone call. She always tried that, and she always failed. There was no cell phone reception until you reached the highway a few miles away.

  Then, she put the phone away, opened the door, and stepped out.

  Annette had looked the same for all of Casey’s life: Fiercely curly blonde hair, red lipstick and matching nails, and diamond earrings. Her designer jeans were worth more than the junk shop truck that she’d parked next to, and her hand-woven cashmere turtleneck didn’t have a single loose thread. A purse from a brand often carried by movie stars dangled from the crook of her elbow.

  Casey couldn’t help but catalog the values. Selling secondhand merchandise was his livelihood. There was a difference between faux or budget designer goods and the real thing; hers were emphatically genuine. However, he also knew Annette had not paid retail prices for anything, including the vehicle. Avery hadn’t gotten his bargain-hunting skills out of thin air. His mother had billionaire tastes on a mega-millionaire’s budget.

  The smile she gave Casey was as genuine as her nose was fake, and she threw her arms around him in an excited hug. “Kiddo! Thanks for taking care of the cats for my boy!”

  “It wasn’t a problem, Annette.” Casey squeezed her tight, smelling her familiar fancy perfume and feeling the wiry muscles under her blouse. She did yoga daily and worked out with a trainer several times a week.

  The passenger door finally opened, and his brother slowly and painfully stood up, back stiff, one hand pressed to his chest. He claimed his ribs didn’t hurt as much as they should, and he’d had more than a week to heal, but he still looked uncomfortable. He said in a voice too low for his mother to hear, “What, no elf? I kind of wanted to meet the mythical man.”

  “Simon’s closing tonight. Freddie’s off, Hallie’s babysitter quit, Megan’s got the flu, and I sent Daxariel to Denver for some sort of auction with action figures. Shana needed a break, so Katie and I ganged up on her until she went home.” It had been an exasperating week. Casey had worked multiple open-to-close shifts due to labor problems.

  Despite his enormous knowledge gaps, Simon had been an endless source of help. He’d picked up cashiering with the ease of a man who’d been dealing with multiple currencies since childhood, and he was both efficient and meticulous at cleaning the store and stocking shelves. However, both of them had collapsed, exhausted, into bed every evening. They’d been running a business that should have had eight people with just three.

  “Is that wise? Letting Simon close?” Avery frowned. “He’s so new ... and, well, the other fairy-tale thing.”

  “He’ll be fine. He has our cell phone numbers if he has any questions. Annette, you staying here tonight?” Casey asked her.

  She said brightly, “Absolutely! I need to take care of my boy! However, I have a board meeting tomorrow. I’m flying out in the morning. Davis is meeting me at the Payson airport with jet.”

  Avery’s lips pressed together briefly in the tiniest of frowns.

  Annette said defensively, “It’s important.”

  Casey assured Annette firmly, “Don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of Avery.” After all, he and his mother had been ‘taking care of Avery’ since they’d both been children. He glanced up at his brother, whose eyes had darkened in an otherwise expressionless face, and then he said to her, “I made the guest bedroom up.”

  She nodded and tip-tapped inside on her high heels after opening the admittedly dusty screen door with a delicate pinch of two fingers. From inside the house, while pulling out a tiny bottle of hand sanitizer, she said, “Be a dear and bring our things in, will you? And wow, you need to fire your maid, there’s cobwebs behind the fridge...”

  The ‘maid’ was Avery, who rolled his eyes behind her back. She didn’t release enough money from his trust fund for Avery to afford hired help. He’d pointed this out to her multiple times in Casey’s hearing, and she would admit it was true, then reference the mythical domestic staff again the next time she saw a dust bunny in his place. It was an entirely passive-aggressive reminder on her part that thrift store owners weren’t exactly paid well.

  It also wasn’t the first time Casey had retrieved her luggage, though if Avery had been well, she would have directed the task to his brother. This time, at least, Casey remembered the trunk was in the front, a “frunk,” and he expertly reached inside the door and popped the latch. She hadn’t bothered to hit the trunk-open button on her key fob.

  The frunk turned out to be stuffed full. The suitcases were probably hers, all four of them. There were also shopping bags from an ultra-high-end second-hand shop in Scottsdale. It was the kind of place that sold thousand-dollar shirts on commission for five hundred bucks.

  When Avery had been life-flighted to Phoenix, he’d arrived with nothing but the blood-stained clothes on his back. New clothes were Annette’s way of showing she loved her son. However, Casey was also certain she’d bought him exactly the sort of expensive business clothes that Avery would normally refuse to wear, and she’d probably steamrolled right over his opinions.

  He glanced at Avery, as what his brother had on truly registered: a very expensive pair of charcoal grey lady’s slacks, a woman’s collared dress shirt, men’s Italian loafers (probably because there were no off-the-shelf women’s shoes in his size), and an older Rolex.

  Annette had no issue with her son’s preference for feminine styles. What she didn’t grasp was that, for Avery, it wasn’t just about ‘male’ or ‘female’ clothing. He wore flashy women’s clothing, often vintage, because he liked the cut, the style, and the bright colors. She’d been trying to convince him to tone it down and dress ‘more professionally’ for at least a decade, with little success. Her idea of ‘professional’ was monochrome women’s pantsuits directly modeled on men’s clothing. Avery called them 'business butch.'

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  If Avery objected to the first choice and insisted his style was brighter and more casual, she’d flip the other way and buy him lacey, ruffly, obnoxiously cutesy, and often downright campy attire that Avery wouldn’t be caught dead in. He was not a man who wore frilly dresses unless he was cosplaying a Disney princess.

  Well, Casey knew the new clothes would be sold within the week for enough money to refill his bank accounts — and Annette was also probably counting on that. She wouldn’t give Avery money because she had feared spoiling him his entire life. Instead, if Avery needed extra money, he could choose which valuable possessions he wanted to part with.

  “Let me have one,” Avery said, reaching for a bag. He glanced down at the watch on his wrist and then switched hands self-consciously.

  “But—” Casey tried to object.

  “I’m not an invalid,” Avery said in a clipped tone. He took the bag and walked inside, where the small herd of cats immediately set upon him. Most of them alternated between winding around his ankles and meowing from the back of the couch. Little Fuzzy simply scaled his pants leg until Avery grabbed her and tucked her under his chin.

  “Missed you guys,” he told the cats.

  From an upstairs bedroom, Annette demanded, “Avery, how is it possible that there’s a bug in the light in February?”

  Casey had checked under the furniture and in the window tracks for creepy-crawlies, but he had forgotten to look up.

  “Is it dead?” Avery didn’t even turn his head towards her voice.

  “It’s not moving, but I don’t want to sleep in a room with it!” Annette replied, voice rising a bit. There was a scraping sound, likely a chair being moved.

  “She doesn’t ever change, does she?” Casey asked. He’d spent half his childhood in Annette’s Payson house. It was immaculate inside and very stylish, but also somehow sterile. Everything was always brand new and without character, a sharp contrast with Avery’s old house. No matter how much Avery cleaned, his century old home would always have cobwebs in the corners, dust from the dirt road on all surfaces, and the occasional weird country bug desiccating in a light fixture.

  “No.” Avery sighed, coughed shallowly, and then nodded at the bulging bags full of clothing in Casey’s hand. “Will you do me a huge favor and drop that off at Shana’s? She said she’d list it for me; I’m paying her a cut of whatever she can get. There’s a new iPhone in there too, not even activated. I have an iPhone. It’s just two generations older.”

  Avery slid his fingers under the Rolex’s band and contemplated it, but did not take it off.

  “You should keep that watch if you like it.” In contrast with the clothing, the watch was Avery’s style: vintage, elegant, with rose gold and diamonds. Just at a glance, he could tell this one was old, rare, and valuable.

  “It’d pay for a lot of things..." Avery said doubtfully.

  “You’ll have plenty of money when you take control of the trust next year. Enjoy the watch. It’s gorgeous. You’ll regret selling it."

  “It was my dad’s favorite.” He fiddled with it for a second. “My mom said one just like it sold for $300,000. That’s so much money, and there’s so much we could do with it for the business. But my dad loved this watch. It’s crazy rare and the prize of his collection; they only made a few like it.”

  "So, keep it. Not everything needs to have a price tag. You’ll have control of your trust in six months, and then it won’t matter.”

  Avery nodded at Casey’s suggestion, stepped out of the loafers, used a toe to pick them up rather than bend over with his painful ribs, and passed them to Casey. “Five hundred bucks more, there. And at least another four hundred, with what else I’m wearing.”

  “And none of it is your style. You look like a prince, not a queen.”

  Avery paused as he was stripping the shirt off over his head. He peered at Casey, lifted one purple eyebrow in mock disbelief, and then finished stiffly pulling the shirt off. He threw it at Casey, who caught it with a laugh before falling silent because Avery’s chest and abdomen were a Frankenstein’s mess of bright red ten-day-old incisions, with visible stitches.

  Avery took his belt off and handed it to Casey. The leather was buttery soft. After another painful cough, he wandered into the master bedroom and then returned with the clothes he’d been wearing in one hand. He dropped them on top of one of the bags. He’d donned a pair of lady’s cut-off jean shorts, a t-shirt with a rainbow space ship on it, and a fluffy pair of purple slippers and now looked a lot more like himself.

  He was still wearing the watch.

  With a weary sigh, Avery lowered himself into the recently reupholstered couch. The couch was from the 1960s, and Avery had spent weeks fixing it up with the help of Shana’s girlfriend. Two of the cats promptly settled in his lap. A third hopped up onto the couch behind his head and draped an affectionate paw over his shoulder. The kitten rattled around inside one of the shopping bags.

  Avery petted all three adult cats in turns, fiddled with the watch, and then said, “You sure Simon is going to be okay by himself?”

  “Yeah, he’ll be fine. Shana’s right across the street if anything happens.”

  Avery said, “You know... I don’t like any of this.”

  “You haven’t even met Simon. He’s a good dude. It’ll be fine.”

  “Oh, I’ve met him.” Avery lifted an eyebrow. “Short guy, bad smell, stuck a sword through my chest.”

  “It’s amazing what soap and water did for the smell.”

  Dead serious, Avery replied, “Casey, this is all crazy. He ran out of a rainbow-colored hole in the air. I’d like to pretend none of this happened, but I’ve got the scars to prove it did!”

  Casey rocked back on his heels. “In his shoes, I might have been angry enough to kill, too. He’s no threat now.”

  Avery shook his head. “It’s not that. It’s just ... it’s everything.”

  “I can’t send him back,” Casey said, slumping into the armchair across from Avery’s couch. The kitten, startled by the movement, zoomied all the way to the top of the cat tree by the window, then aggressively licked a patch of orange fur on her hip. Both of them watched her for a second, then Casey added softly, “Simon’s a good man, Avery. He needs a safe place to land.”

  He hadn’t had a chance to truly talk to Avery about what had happened. Avery just looked at him for a long moment with his mouth pressed together. One of the cats stood up, planted his front paws on Avery’s shoulder, and head-butted him for attention. Avery stroked him for a minute before saying, finally, “You trust him.”

  “... yes. Completely.”

  “Mojo?”

  “It’s even beyond that. Shana likes him too.” Casey paused, then added, “He and Daxi hit it right off, too, and you know what they’re like. Simon’s truly interested when Daxi starts chattering about whatever they’re hyperfixated on that day — yesterday, it was about how stop lights were timed, I believe. He just fits in well.”

  “I’d like to say I don’t believe in magic, but I saw it.” Avery stared at Casey. “I don’t want us to get too involved in this, CeeCee.”

  “I am already involved.” Casey sighed heavily. “I can’t abandon him, Avery. What am I supposed to do? He knows nothing about our world. He’s not exactly human, and it’s my fault he’s here. I don’t know what to do other than to try to make it right for him, for you, and for everyone. Plus, I genuinely like Simon. He’s a friend now.”

  Avery pushed himself back to his feet. “I’m tired. I’m going to bed. Will you feed the cats for me before you go home?"

  Dismayed, Casey stared at Avery’s closed bedroom door for a long time. He could tell that Avery wasn't happy about Simon, and Avery's opinion mattered.