"Where did it happen?" The cop asked Casey. She stood with one hand on the butt of her gun, attention pinned on him. Her partner, twice her size, scanned the Junk Shop’s front room with sharp eyes. His gaze lingered on the blood on the floor.

  Shana had made herself scarce, and Casey didn’t blame her. She had a bad history with the police, mostly from what Avery called ‘incredibly stupid shit’ related to two years spent living with her girlfriend out of a van. Some of the dumbassery had been her fault, but a significant percentage was utterly unfair. She was now sober and had no warrants, but that didn’t mean she wanted to talk to the cops, , especially since she would be on probation for several more years and her parole officer was a complete ass.

  “In the basement,” Casey replied, and his Gift immediately protested.

  His first instinct was to tell the police everything that had happened, minus the weirdness with the spell and the bright lights. Why would he tell them? His Gift objected to that thought with force akin to a compulsion. His ears rang. His vision grew dim. He could not physically open his mouth to tell them the story. He’d never felt it react so strongly before.

  “What happened?” The lady cop asked. Her nametag read “Start from the beginning.”

  He took a deep breath and said, "I heard a crash. I saw Avery covered in blood. There was a sword on the ground."

  "Where?"

  “We were both in the basement.”

  “Where’d he get the sword?” The male cop asked. His tag said

  “We have a bunch of Hollywood and mall ninja shit from an estate sale last month. It might have been one of those.” They’d acquired several replicas, including a certain immortal Scotsman’s sword, a bat’leth, and a few weapons based on 1980s cartoons. Shana and Avery had run around for a full day shouting things like, ‘I have the power!’ and ‘Thunder-thunder-wwwooooo!’ Most were now in a display case upstairs, along with half a dozen generic katanas of very dubious quality.

  Avery had claimed the bat’leth for himself, saying something about it being a perfect upgrade for one of his cosplay characters, whose current weapon was foam painted silver. His social media already had several viral hits with ‘Corporal Klingeron’ belting out show tunes, reimagining key scenes as musical numbers, or fighting zombies to the tune of Thriller, all the while wearing a skirt and kick-ass high-heeled boots.

  The cops started for the basement stairs. Surprisingly, Casey’s gift was not bothered by a strong chance that they’d notice an elf in a cage. He’d just let the elf do the talking if the cops found him.

  Both officers descended the stairs with caution. However, their expected reaction to a man locked up in the basement never came. Instead, the lady cop beckoned him down with a wave.

  The cage was empty.

  He didn't know if he should be relieved or alarmed that the elf had escaped.

  "Where were you?” The cop asked.

  “In the cage.” He indicated it with a jerk of his chin. “It’s where we keep the valuable stuff. Avery was behind me.”

  Avery's blood was spattered all over the floor. The lady cop jerked her chin at the lock. “Open it.”

  The male cop sniffed and observed, “Smells like pepper spray and ass in here.”

  The odor wasn’t strong enough to make Casey’s eyes water, but he could detect it. The basement had good airflow because the roll-up exterior door leaked air like a sieve, or he thought the room might have been uninhabitable. “Uh ... we got a whole case of bear spray from the same sale as the swords. I accidentally set one off this morning.”

  The cops gave him matching wordless looks that Casey had absolutely no difficulty reading: They had a low opinion of his intelligence. However, to back his story up, there a box of canisters on a shelf between the bat’leth (which had been blinged up with fake fur, glitter, and rhinestones since Casey had seen it last) and a crate full of a few dozen quasi-military boot knives.

  Wordlessly, Casey pointed at the bear spray.

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  “That's the sword you think he fell on?” The lady cop indicated the elf’s weapon, which was lying on a table. Casey remembered Avery handing it to him, but he had no memory of putting it down. The book was beside it. How had it gotten onto the table? Had it always been there? There were whole chunks of his memory missing from the last hour.

  He nodded, though. “Yeah, that’s it.”

  She peered at the sword’s hilt, and her eyes widened at something she saw. However, she did not pick it up, likely because it was still covered with blood. She glanced sharply from the sword to the Book of Needs and then at Casey, and an icy prickle went up the back of his neck. Something wasn’t right here, but he couldn’t figure it out.

  There wasn’t much inside the cage for the cops to see, though his Gift continued to be mildly alarmed by Officer Adrial. The officers stared at the red stains on the floor and bloody tracks leading from the cage doorway to the stairs, poked into a few boxes, and Adrial bent over as if she was going to open the chest, then paused with her hand hovering over it, shook her head, and straightened up. They turned their attention back to Casey.

  “So,” the male cop said, “what’s your relationship to Avery?”

  "We’re partners. We run the Junk Shop together. He’s like family.”

  “Is he — uh, she? — your boy or girlfriend?" The man frowned sharply.

  "We’re partners. Avery uses male pronouns.” There was a non-zero chance that this whole discussion was about to go badly south, and Casey knew his tone was too sharp. He took a deep breath. Now was not the time to get pissy at the police. If they started interrogating him like he was a suspect, he'd shut up and get a lawyer, but for now, he was just giving them minimal details and hoping they'd go away.

  The female cop said, "How'd you two end up going into business together?"

  "We grew up together. He's the little brother I always wanted." Casey pinched the bridge of his nose as tears threatened.

  "Must be hard, working with someone like that." That was the man.

  “What do you mean?” Casey couldn’t keep the irritation from his voice despite his anxious efforts to remain calm.

  "Don’t his ... inclinations... make your job harder? As his business partner?" The guy persisted.

  “He's . He’s family, in all the best ways.”

  "Just saying. He likes guys, right?"

  "He usually dates women." That always surprised everyone. The man's eyebrows rose, proving he was no exception to the rule.

  "Not always, I take it. Has he ever hit on you?"

  Casey stared flatly at the officer. He'd had a lot of practice with this particular expression. "You got a brother? Would you hit on brother? Ew, man."

  “Some people might get upset if that happened."

  The female cop put a hand on Casey's arm. His Gift a protest at the contact. However, it didn’t seem to think she was a threat, exactly; it just ferociously warned him against trusting her and gave him an impression of age significantly beyond her apparent years. Was she one of those women old enough to collect Social Security while still looking thirty? His Gift insisted it was possible.

  His Gift did not seem bothered by Officer Bob in the same way.

  In a gentler tone than her colleague, she said, "We have to ask these kinds of questions. Do you have a wife or girlfriend we can call when we’re done here?"

  "I'm gay. And no, I don't have a ..." he let irony tinge his voice, "... partner. I’ll call a friend myself."

  "Did Avery have any recent breakups? Or any problems with partners?" the guy asked.

  "As far as I know, Avery's on good terms with everyone he's dated who's local. He has no recent steady partners, just people he goes out for drinks with or down to the valley to go clubbing, that sort of thing. The dating pool around here is pretty small."

  The female cop snorted. “Ain’t that the truth.”

  The man asked, “What about you, Casey? Are you dating anyone?”

  "I broke up with my ex two months ago. Steph’s backpacking through Indonesia right now. I haven’t met anyone since, and haven't been looking. Like I said, not many options, especially if you’re queer."

  The male cop seized on that. "What happened to cause you and — Steph, you said? —to break up? Does he have any problems with Avery?"

  “I don’t think Stephen ever had a relationship that lasted more than a few months. I was no different. I know for a fact he's overseas. He posts on social media about it at least five times a day.”

  The cops exchanged a look, and then the man asked, "Has Avery ever created problems with your other friends?"

  "No.” The cop was very obviously trying to find a motive for what Casey had said was an accident, and he wasn’t going to give him one.

  "So if you both like men, you never had conflict over a lover? Doesn't dating get awkward?"

  He that question. It was far from the first time he’d heard it. "Do you poach on friends? Anyway, his boyfriends aren't my type. When he has boyfriends. Which isn’t often. He dates based on personality and common interests, and he says he’s more likely to find what he’s looking for from a woman.”

  "What’s your type, then?" The female cop asked.

  "First two qualifications? Not Avery. And not his lovers because that's rude." Casey, thoroughly angry and trying to hide it now, said, "If you don't mind, can I go? I need to call Avery's mother and then head to the hospital."

  The cops continued to question him for another twenty minutes. At least their line of suspicion had, apparently, shifted from Casey to anyone else who might have wanted to hurt his brother.

  Once they left, taking the sword with them in a plastic evidence bag, Casey locked the cage back up and grabbed his cell phone. He got Avery's mother's voicemail and could only leave a terse message to call back. Heavens knew when that would be. She wasn't exactly known for being reliable.

  At the top of the basement stairs, he glanced down, trying to focus his mind enough to figure out where the elf had gone. He was too rattled to concentrate.

  He’d worry about later. With long strides, Casey headed for the parking lot. Avery had to be okay. He to be.