Casey jolted out of the dream so fast that he was sitting upright before he even realized it. His heart pounded, and panic warred with sheer, bone-deep exhaustion. A quick glance at the bedside clock confirmed he’d only been asleep for two hours. “Shit.”

  It all seemed surreal.

  He'd summoned an elf.

  The elf had stabbed Avery and then disappeared from the cage without explanation. Last night, he had assumed the man had gotten out somehow and fled from the building.

  “Crap.” With a thrill of adrenaline, he realized that the basement door was unlocked. Shana usually checked all the doors before closing up for the night, but he’d watched her drive across the highway to her apartment with her girlfriend, Katie, after dropping him off. had secured the building.

  The elf was still out there. He had to be pissed off and angry. What if he came back? Casey knew he needed to go down, check for intruders, lock up, and set the alarm.

  He threw the covers back with more force than necessary and stood up.

  The hall outside his attic apartment was pitch black except for a red ‘exit’ sign all the way at the far end. When he snapped on the lights with the three-way switch by his door, they didn't seem to drive the shadows back much, and sunrise wasn’t for another hour.

  His apartment took up a third of the attic, and multiple other rooms opened off the hall. Nearly a century ago, this had been a boarding house, and the cheapest rooms had lined a narrow top-floor corridor. Now each tiny room held differently themed collections of goods for any shoppers determined enough to climb the stairs. The last in the row before the stairs was where they kept the second-hand sporting goods. It seemed like a good place to pick up a makeshift weapon.

  His Gift have alerted him to a threat, but as tired as he was, he didn’t trust it. Actively using it took focus, and his exhaustion was a palpable thing, weighing his limbs down and fogging his thoughts. Quickly, he reached around the door jamb into the thick shadows and turned on the light. Despite his nerves, nothing grabbed his hand nor leaped out at him, and the space was empty of everything but the expected displays of merchandise. The glaring fluorescent light drove away the shadows, and Casey relaxed a bit after confirming that no murderously violent elf lurked in a corner.

  After considering a golf club and a ski pole with a pointy tip, Casey settled on a classic — an old baseball bat. He swung it experimentally and wished it was a firearm. Avery did not want guns anywhere around him for mental health reasons, and Casey deeply regretted deferring to his brother’s intrusive thoughts. He’d have felt a lot more confident with a shotgun in hand.

  He was, he feared, being horror-movie stupid. Shana was going to find his corpse in the morning, all cold, stiff, and bloody on the floor. His eyes would be just as sightless as Avery’s, but his blood would be dried by the time he was found.

  Casey shook his head at the morbid thought and made his way down to the maze-like second floor. There, half a dozen rooms were filled with racks of clothing, shelves of books, and aisles of collectibles. Skin crawling, he walked the aisles while swishing shirts and pants aside with the end of the bat. Frightened by the thought of the elf somewhere, he paused to open the doors of an antique wardrobe. There was nobody in it. With dark humor, he poked the back of the wardrobe with the aluminum bat. It felt solid. If elves were real, why not wardrobes with gateways to other worlds?

  The public bathroom was empty.

  The dressing rooms were unoccupied, though some terrible person had left a dirty diaper and a wad of used baby wipes on a bench. He hung a ‘closed for cleaning’ sign on the door before continuing. He’d have to play rock-paper-scissors with Avery over who picked that mess up... the thought was mentally jarring when he remembered Avery was in the hospital.

  Avery would not be strolling through the door at eight AM with an enormous thermos full of strong coffee in one hand and a baking pan of cinnamon rolls in the other. He wouldn’t be able to casually ask his brother, with his notoriously weak stomach, to ‘do him a favor’ and clean the dressing rooms just so that he could hear his shriek of disgusted outrage when he found the loaded nappy.

  Blood was on the floor by the cash register, and a trail of spatters and footprints led the way to the stairs. He averted his eyes from the largest dark stain and descended the steps to the basement, careful not to step on any gore. That bloody mess would be a lot harder, emotionally speaking, to clean up than a diaper.

  The toy train cars remained scattered across the floor.

  The storage cage door was still closed.

  No elf. He’d nearly made it to the basement door. All he had to do was throw the deadbolt before continuing his sweep of the building.

  It would be easy to believe the man never existed at all, but then, who had stabbed Avery?

  His heart jolted into a panicky gallop before his conscious brain even realized he'd .

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  The elf was—

  SHIT!

  —still in the cage.

  He raised the bat to strike a home run with the man’s skull before it fully clicked that he was contained. The padlock was securely closed on the cage door. He was in no danger, though the animal part of Casey’s brain insisted otherwise. The jump-scare-fueled adrenaline surge had been so strong that his hands were shaking.

  The elf licked chapped lips. Dark bruises stood out on his pale skin, more purple than the dirt.

  "Uh," Casey said.

  This man had tried to kill Avery.

  His Gift insisted the elf had been terrified. It reacted with screeching horror at Casey’s first reaction, which was to call the cops and let them deal with the crazy stranger. Apparently, he needed to deal with this... problem... himself.

  The little man narrowed his eyes and said nothing in return.

  Casey took a deep breath, reminded himself that the man had been absolutely terrified, likely with good reason. At a loss for anything else to start a conversation with, he said, “I thought you escaped.”

  “I tried.” The man held up a piece of metal. Casey recognized a bracket from a shelf inside the cage. One end was newly shiny. “Your binding grows tighter with every hour that passes. I find it is no longer possible to damage your wall — or flee from you.”

  “The cage was empty. I don’t understand why I didn’t see you earlier.” He stepped closer. His heart was slowing. The man was unarmed, and while he looked pissed off, he wasn’t being overly aggressive.

  "I hid from the guard."

  "... ?" By ‘guard,’ he assumed the man meant the cops.

  “I’m short.” The elf glanced at the chest.

  “You fit in ?”

  One skinny shoulder lifted in half a shrug.

  At this range, Casey could smell both potent body odor and the acrid stench of pepper spray, with an undertone of barnyard and wood smoke.

  The elf said, chin jerking up, "I'm not sorry I killed your friend.”

  "He's not dead," Casey slapped a hand against the wire between them. To his disappointment, the little man didn't jump. "No thanks to you."

  "You and enslaved me!" The elf visibly winced. "Damn you, I will ...!"

  He opened his mouth as if to add something else, but his eyes rolled back in his head first. He hit the ground like a puppet with the strings cut, chain mail rattling against the concrete.

  Casey hesitated for a long moment. He wasn’t sure if the man was breathing. He was so very still and far too pale under a thick crust of dirt. Despite his promises of murder and mayhem, he'd fainted. Without a sword and as sick as he looked, Casey didn’t believe he was much of a threat, and he could be dying.

  After a moment more of dithering, he unlocked the door and tried not to breathe as he rested his fingers against the man's throat. The man’s aroma was genuinely eye-watering.

  To his relief, the elf had a pulse. After an instant, his eyes flickered and then opened. The sclera were inflamed, a painful-looking red, and tears crusted his long, white-blond lashes. Belatedly, Casey realized the man was still suffering the effects of the pepper spray. There was no water in the cage, so there was no way to rinse his eyes.

  "Can you sit up?" Casey asked. “What happened?”

  "Yes." He flinched away from Casey's hand and pushed himself upright. "The geas punishes disobedience."

  "Geas?"

  The man spat. "I be free someday, and I kill—"

  He went pale, jaw clenched, with two bright spots of color on his cheeks.

  "I didn’t intend to cast a spell," Casey said, though he would not deny the obvious. It happened. Casey's Gift told him to trust what he was hearing now. He was very good at telling the truth from a falsehood, even when the truth seemed wildly improbable.

  The elf’s startlingly green eyes narrowed into a glare.

  “You believe I cast some sort of sorcery on you?”

  “I you did, or another on your behalf. I am no man’s thrall. ! “ the elf pressed his lips firmly together.

  Casey resisted the temptation to test the spell by ordering him to do something silly, such as tap dance around the room. The guy was already torqued off enough. There was no need to humiliate him. "I didn't mean to summon you — or enslave you, apparently — and I definitely didn't mean for Avery to get hurt. This is fucking messed up, man.”

  The elf’s silence was as expressive as a thousand defiant and angry words.

  "Believe me, I didn’t it!”

  "Very well. I believe you. ."

  "Don't call me that." He’d thought Avery was a master of snark, but the elf had him severely outclassed.

  "What do you wish to be called?" Wary suspicion and bitter anger mixed in the elf's voice, along with more than a hint of sullen resignation.

  "My name is Casey. What's yours?"

  "Simon." The elf answered with a growl after briefly clenching his teeth together. It was a surprisingly normal name.

  “What, not something fancy and exotic?"

  “I am aware my name is human.”

  His attempt at humor had fallen flat. He sighed. "Okay, Simon. I didn’t believe in geas — geases? Geasi? — until now, but I didn’t believe in guys with pointy ears either. Did you stab Avery because you thought I’d deliberately enchanted you?"

  Simon said coolly, “He sprayed me with a blinding chemical, then tried to kill me with a chair. I intended to slay .”

  “And doing so would lift the spell?” His fingers tightened around the baseball bat, which he still held in one hand. That would be a powerful motive for murder.

  Simon’s reaction was a baleful stare. Then, as if spelling out an obvious fact to an idiot, he said, “If you die, I die.”

  “Oh. Suicide is preferable to the geas?”

  “Yes.”

  “Err. Do you still want to kill me?”

  The elf before answering, “The geas ensures I do not. I wanting to kill you.”

  “Dude. How about a better option? I didn’t intend to summon you, I didn’t plan on making you some sort of psychic slave, and I’ll be happy to send you home again. Seems like this is all one completely fucked up misunderstanding. If I can open a portal once, I guess I can open it again. You walk through it, go back to wherever you came from, and this is all over.”

  The elf looked up at him, green eyes gone wide with disbelief. “You would simply release me?”

  “Promise. All I ask is that you don’t hurt anyone else until we can figure this out.” Casey offered him a hand up. “I’ll get you home as fast as I can.”

  The elf stared at Casey's fingers as if not recognizing what they were for, and then suddenly, almost demandingly, he reached out and seized hold with a heavily calloused hand. Casey easily pulled him to his feet.

  "C'mon. Let's get you cleaned up." Casey said. “I bet a shower would help get the crap out of your eyes."

  "You intend to allow me to bathe."

  "I’m strongly encouraging it.”

  Simon shook his head. “I haven’t had the opportunity to properly wash for months.”

  “Months?” That explained a lot.

  “Yes.” For the first time, a little of the tension in the elf’s frame lessened. He looked sideways at Casey, lips pressed together and eyes wary.

  Under the dirt, he appeared to have strikingly exotic features, with high cheekbones and brilliant green eyes, though the horrific smell and their current circumstances were enough to destroy any attraction Casey might have otherwise felt. He asked, "What have you been doing, anyway, to get so filthy?”

  That prompted a tired sigh and another cautious look. "I was fleeing men who would kill me like a beast for over half a year. Where should I relieve myself? There was no bucket in that cell, and I am an animal to piss on the floor.”

  “Glad to hear you're housebroken."

  The flash of anger in the elf's eyes had no trace of humor. Offended anger was swiftly replaced by a gasp of pain, though.

  "Sorry. I guess that wasn't funny. This way, c’mon. Let’s get you cleaned up, and then I have a of questions.”