After Casey was gone in search of a ‘cell phone,’ Shana turned to Simon and said brightly, “Well, let’s take care of the email address first.”

  It took Simon considerable effort to resist a compulsion to immediately follow her wishes. The geas insisted she was in charge, as Casey’s employee. He said quietly, “I have no objection to doing that, but — do you believe us?”

  Shana had turned to the ‘computer’ on her desk. Now, she slowly turned her chair around to face him. One corner of her mouth quirked up in a wry smile. “Yes. Do you want to know why I believe Casey?”

  It was a rhetorical question. Before he could nod, she continued, “So. I had a pretty shitty childhood. My folks are super conservative, believe all the conspiracy theories, and are big followers of a certain, uh, problematic politician. They abuse the Bible to justify being evil people while being ‘visibly religious’ to everyone around. And then there’s me: I waltzed right out of the womb queer, and I am nothing like them.

  “The day I turned eighteen, and they were no longer legally responsible for me, my parents kicked me out with just the clothes on my back. My mom didn’t even let me take my birth certificate and social security card. No phone. No ID. Nothing. Just my oldest jeans, a t-shirt with holes in it, and flip-flops.”

  Here, she bit her lip. “Maybe you had it a lot worse, running around the woods to survive — but it was January, and to be extra evil, they drove me to Flagstaff, a hundred miles from their home, and dumped me off in front of a church-run women’s shelter. In their mind, they were proving to me I wasn’t a woman because the shelter wouldn’t accept me. That particular shelter isn’t exactly known for supporting queer kids.”

  She gave him a long look, likely measuring his reaction. Simon wondered how Casey fit in, but he simply said, "I’m not sure horror stories about our pasts should be a competition to see which was the worst. How did you survive?”

  Shana nodded, looking a bit relieved by his reaction. There had been some sort of test in her words, but he wasn’t sure what precisely she’d been watching for. “So, I stood on a street corner, shivered, and begged for money until I had enough to buy a coat and boots from a thrift store, and then I slept under a rack of clothes in the store that night. The cleaners found me in the morning, and I had to run like hell out of a fire exit.”

  She plucked at the colorful blouse she was wearing now. One corner of her mouth curled up in a crooked smile. “It took me years before I got my ID sorted. My mom said she didn’t know where my social security card and birth certificate were, and she hadn’t let me get a driver’s license before I turned eighteen, so I had absolutely nothing to prove who I was. Because of that, I had to work under the table to survive. There were lots of abusive business owners — and one or two really kind people. That’s why I’m taking a chance on you, Simon. We shouldn’t be hiring you without legal ID. But, I guess it’s time for me to pay it forward.”

  “Thank you.” He inferred she could get in trouble with the government for employing someone without papers. He didn’t know what else to say to a woman who was sticking her neck out for him. It hadn’t happened often in his life.

  “Hmm.”

  “And, that’s pretty awful, what they did to you.” Simon didn’t understand everything she was saying, but he grasped enough to understand she’d been isolated and then cast off, presumably because her parents believed her to be a boy, and had reacted badly when they’d learned they were wrong. She wasn’t the first woman he’d met with a similar story; while he was quite clear and comfortable with his own gender, for other reasons, he’d always sympathized with the otherness people like Shana must feel. There were parallels to his own existence.

  He said, “I’m sorry. That was so wrong of them. I can’t imagine treating a child of mine that way ...”

  “You have any kids?” she asked abruptly.

  “No.” He sighed after saying this, but didn’t elaborate. There lay old pain. Anika’s children had been eager to call him their father. The family that his heart had ached for would have meant lying to a woman he’d truly cared about as a friend... he quite simply hadn’t returned her attraction and desire.

  Shana continued, voice firm and clear, drawing him back to the present, “I hitched a ride to Phoenix, where it was warmer, but then I quickly got a long rap sheet for the crime of existing while homeless and eventually did some jail time for something completely stupid.”

  “The guard tends to find ways to arrest vagrants in my world, too, and it’s often unfair. They’re usually sentenced to labor at jobs nobody would willingly perform, with a geas to ensure compliance.”

  Her jaw muscles tensed. She sounded calm when she spoke, but he didn’t miss the flash of old fury in her brown eyes. “After I got out of jail, I found a job bussing tables and washing dishes in the kitchen of a biker bar. The owner treated me okay, but my wages weren’t enough to afford an apartment, even after I met Katie, and we could pool our money. So we bought an old van, and we lived out of it. That made life a lot easier. The doors locked, you know?”

  Simon had no idea what a ‘biker’ was. He’d have to Google it. And what was a ‘van’? Well, it sounded like she’d figured out some sort of secure shelter. He could understand the appeal of solid doors.

  “So, anyway ... my girlfriend and I were trying to sleep in an alley in the middle of the day. There was a knock on the van’s door, and this voice called my name. It’s Casey, with Avery right behind him. If you didn’t pick this up already, I was friends with them when I was a kid... but I hadn’t seen them since I was thirteen. Casey somehow knew I was inside the van. It had blackout curtains, and we’d been there for hours. There was no way he could have seen me.” She smiled crookedly. “It was, flat out, magic.”

  “So they... gave you a job here?” It seemed entirely in character for Casey to rescue people.

  To his surprise, she shook her head. “They didn’t offer that kind of save, and I probably would have said no. It would have felt like a trap. But, they took me and Katie out to lunch several times, and we reconnected. Every time they were in the Valley, we’d meet as friends. And, then, it was just the little things — Avery’s really good at Scrabble, and we started playing games online with each other. Casey introduced me to some friends in the Valley who play D&D, and we’d all get together once a month. Then, the three of us were in a competition to see who could come up with the most obnoxious elf-on-the-shelf meme, and it lasted well past Christmas. My point is, they made me feel like a woman with friends and gave me some normalcy rather than just being another homeless lipstick-wearing bum.

  “Casey always knew when I was feeling down. Something awful would happen, and five minutes later, he’d call me and ask what was wrong.

  “And... Avery did offer me money a few times. I always told him no. I was afraid I’d lose him as a friend if I started leeching off him. No matter my circumstances, I didn’t want to be a burden.” She stared at her lacquered green nails for a long moment, expression suddenly distant.

  Then she continued, her voice strong and firm. “The van broke down. We ended up renting a horrible room from a lady with a chihuahua, a macaw, six guinea pigs, and two feral toddlers. Katie and I were both working nights, and her menagerie would keep us awake during the day. Casey said we needed to escape for a bit, and he was right. So, the brothers took us out for karaoke and drinks at a bar.” She hunched a bit, her eyes distant.

  “What you’re saying confirms to me that Casey really is a decent man. It’s not the geas lying to me,” Simon noted. Then he winced as he realized that implying Casey wasn’t perfect might be taken badly by this woman. The geas interacted unpleasantly with his own anxieties.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “Oh. He is. Both the brothers are. Avery is just a complete social klutz, but his heart is always in the right place. Casey can be bossy, but he’ll back the fuck off if you tell him, and again, he means well.” Oblivious, or perhaps just ignoring Simon’s discomfort, she smiled. “That evening, Avery hugged me extra long and told me everything was going to be okay — he’s a big hugger, so I didn’t think much of it — and that night, I found five thousand dollars in my coat pocket. When I tried to thank him, he pretended he didn’t know what I was talking about. Avery and I ended up in this incredibly stupid fight over it, and Casey had to threaten to never speak to either of us again if we didn’t make up. We made up.”

  “Is that a lot of money?”

  She snorted. “We won’t be having you price merchandise any time soon.”

  “That sounds wise. I’m very good at numbers, but I have no idea of the relative value of things,” Simon allowed.

  “Neither do most of the kids we hire... if you know your times tables, you’re ahead of the game already. And, I swear Casey does math based off vibes and mojo. We do not let him anywhere near the payroll or accounts payable.”

  “I can do base ten up to about twelve times twelve in my head; then I’d have to work it out with a slide rule or on paper. I’m not as good at base twelve.”

  He had no idea why she looked at him sideways for so long. Then she shook her head and continued, “It was enough money to get the van running, plus new tires because the ones it had were bald.” She leaned over and picked a piece of broken pencil up off the floor.

  Simon was unsurprised to see that the pencil’s graphite core had been vaporized. Pencils were a bad choice for a focus object because graphite, a mildly conductive material, concentrated energy differently than wood. He needed to talk to Casey about the principles of safe use of ley power. By the time he’d realized what Casey intended, it had been too late to warn him. The geas would complicate that discussion and likely render it very painful for Simon, but the alternative was unthinkable. Casey’s power was truly dangerous, and he could kill himself, or someone else, entirely by accident.

  Oblivious to Simon’s suddenly dark thoughts, Shana said, “It was several months before Avery called and told me they had a job opening at the Shop. By then, it was summer in the Valley, and it gets stupid hot in Phoenix. Living out of the van was miserable, especially since we needed to sleep during the day, and moving up here and working for the brothers was an easy decision. Casey even helped Katie get a job as manager of the motel across the street, and that came with an apartment. But — I digress a bit. My point is, Casey found me with his Gift when there was simply no logical explanation, and he knows when we’re in trouble or just sad.”

  Simon thought Shana had revealed a lot more about herself than strictly required. However, several things she, Mark, and Casey had said made him think that women like Shana might not be well accepted in this world. Telling him a bit of her story might be a defensive measure; again, he had the sense that he was somehow being tested.

  He also wasn’t sure what to say now that her story was seemingly done. He had no context and was unsure what proper manners and social expectations required. Simon said, finally, “I am sorry you had such a terrible time.”

  She shrugged. “It’s not a unique or unusual story, except for the bit about having a psychic friend who knows when I’m in trouble.”

  “Mmm.” Grateful for the change in subject, Simon said, “Has he ever manifested the ability to move things with his mind, or call fire, or anything of that nature?”

  “Well...” she looked sideways at Simon, then said slowly, “We were cleaning out a storage unit. I bend over to pick up this big box, and Casey yells at me to STOP! I swear to you, that box suddenly got ten times as heavy as it should have been. It was like an inch in the air and went crashing back down — and then he told me there was a scorpion under the box’s flap. He wasn’t wrong. He denied affecting the box, though.”

  He wasn’t the slightest bit surprised to hear that Casey had used his Gift in an emergency. Most mages made unconscious use of their powers long before they could deliberately tap them. Simon said, “He’s probably doing other things, either intentionally or not.”

  She nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

  “That Gift of sight that he has — can you give me some examples of how he uses it?” Simon asked, partly curious and partly very concerned. He still didn’t know the full extent of Casey’s Gifts.

  “I’ve teased him about buying winning Powerball tickets, but he says it doesn’t work that way. On the other hand, he can pick out winning scratchers if there are any in the case, but he usually doesn’t. He’s afraid somebody would start asking questions if he personally won too often. Plus, he says most of the time there’s no big winners in a roll, and sometimes, even if there is one, you’d have to buy so many tickets in front of it that it wouldn’t be worth it. He did tell me to buy one once, though, at a gas station, and I won like five grand.”

  “He’s wise not to draw attention to a gift of Sight. Many will hate him for it. What’s a scratcher?”

  “Uh. You know what a lottery is?” she asked, in a doubtful tone,

  “To win money? Yes.” It was a rather time-honored tax on the stupid, as far as Simon was concerned.

  “Scratcher tickets have a waxy metallic coating hiding pre-printed numbers. You just buy one and rub the silvery stuff off with a coin to find out if you won.”

  “Hmm. It’s possible he cannot tell the future if the outcome will be due to random chance, but if the winning numbers are already printed, then that’s something he could pick up on.” Simon considered the implications of that. It was an important nuance. “What about card games?”

  “He doesn’t play except for fun now, though he earned his half of the down payment for this building at various casinos. Then, a casino accused him of counting cards, and he got banned at a bunch of them, but Casey’s just not that good at math.”

  “It may be that his Gift can’t help him with pure chance, but rather, it only works when an outcome is hidden but certain. For example, being able to identify if he holds a winning hand of cards — and, likely, the cards other people hold.” Simon was somewhat relieved to know that Casey’s gift didn’t include Foresight. There lay madness. “Does it matter if he’s familiar with the game’s rules?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “That’s something we should test. He needs to know precisely how that gift works, to use it to its full potential.”

  She tilted her head sideways. “You’re not what I expected an elf from a primitive world to be like.”

  “Have you met many elves from other worlds?” he replied, rejoinder coming quickly. Then, having surprised himself by making the teasing comment, he looked up to see how she’d respond. The geas tickled at his senses, threatening agony if he upset her.

  She simply grinned. “You’re going to fit in around here.”

  “I hope so,” Simon said, with true honesty. “Shana — I know there is a tremendous amount I don’t know. I will work hard to learn what I need to.”

  “Quick question: Can you read English?”

  “Yes, and apparently write it, if I intend to communicate with an English speaker. The spell is translating for me. It’s also likely that I won’t have any vocabulary that Casey doesn’t, at least until I learn it independently of the spell.” He’d already had to look up a few definitions on the tablet when his online readings showed him unfamiliar words. Casey, it seemed, didn’t have nearly the interest in science that Simon did.

  “Hm. You’re ahead of the game for some of our hires. There’s a cult around here, and some of the young men get kicked out when they turn eighteen. We often hire them if they don’t start hissing and crossing themselves when they meet me’n Avery. Most of them can’t read much, if at all, and counting money’s hit or miss.”

  Simon nodded, understanding, and then told her, “I am very familiar with the business principles of my world and have an understanding of the money of multiple countries, but not yours. Yet.”

  “You have a background in business?”

  “Yes. Accounting, trade negotiations, contract law — but it’s all for another world. I suspect there will be much to learn for this one, but also some universal constants.”

  “Well, you might be more useful than I thought. You know what double-entry accounting is?”

  “Yes, I do.” His assumed surname was Clarke for a reason. It was the best description of his role for Yienry: A glorified clerk, who was as good at digging into the books of Yienry’s business interests and identifying fraud and grift as he was at swinging a sword. Truth told, he preferred desk work and the consistent, reliable, structured world of numbers to hunting bandits, but Yienry had far fewer soldiers than accountants. Ultimately, he went where Yienry needed him.

  “And I bet you did it with a pen, not a computer...”

  “I used a pencil for easier corrections and fewer ink blots.”

  She barked a laugh. “Didn’t expect a fantasy world to have pencils.”

  “We don’t have doorknobs or zippers, but I assure you, pencils exist.”

  Her grin was broad, baring very white teeth. “That’s just weird... you’ll have to tell me more about your world. Hmm. Maybe you can help me with accounts payable and payroll eventually... Here, have a seat.” She gestured at the computer on her desk. “Let’s start with setting you up with an email address.”