Last night’s rain had left puddles on the crumbling asphalt of the parking lot, but the morning air was already warming. Late February in Phoenix felt downright balmy compared to what Casey was used to. It had been snowing when he’d left Sanctuary, two hours away and nearly a mile higher in elevation.

  “You about ready?” Avery asked, grinning ear to ear as he walked around the corner of the box truck. He’d driven the shop’s pickup, and it was parked next to the bigger vehicle. Two storage units were up for bid today, and Avery had been bouncing excitedly all morning.

  “Yep.” Casey stood up, deposited his coat in the back of the box truck, and then shut and locked the door.

  “How’s your mojo?” Avery inquired, “Please tell me your mojo thinks this is a good day!”

  “Dunno, I’ll tell you when I see the units.” Casey shrugged.

  Avery nodded, then spotted a woman he recognized in the parking lot, and bounded off on long legs to greet her. They’d been doing storage unit auctions for years, and there were always regulars. “Toni, girl!” he called, “How’s your cold?”

  Vaguely, Casey remembered Toni had been miserably sick when they’d seen her last, two weeks ago. It was just like Avery to recall something like that and to ask.

  As Casey followed at a walk, with his hands in his pockets, Avery complimented her green purse and matching shoes. She returned the favor, mentioning Avery’s brilliantly purple braid. Avery turned around so that she could see the peacock hand-painted on the back of his jean jacket. A key chain with at least twenty keys and a glitter-encrusted pepper spray bottle dangled from Avery’s hand. He waved his hands with animated enthusiasm. The keys jingled, and the bottle sparkled in the light.

  Toni blushed. Judging by his body language, Avery was outrageously and mostly jokingly hitting on her, and she was enjoying every minute. Casey grinned at that, realizing Avery had found yet another person who appreciated his eyeliner and fashion sense and was delighted to play what he called the ‘flirting game.’

  “Casey,” Avery said brightly as he approached, “Toni says there’s a soda machine in the office! Do you want anything?”

  “Yeah, a diet-whatever.”

  Avery promptly loped off in quest of liquid energy. He consumed more caffeine daily than most people did in a month, without any apparent ill effects. If Casey drank as much caffeine as Avery did, he’d have been stuck to the ceiling with his hair on end, like a cartoon cat.

  “Your girlfriend’s cute,” Toni said.

  “Huh?” Casey turned back to the woman. Her words registered, and since she wasn’t being rude, he gently corrected, “Oh, Avery isn’t my partner. He’s family.”

  “Oh! Oh, sorry! I misunderstood.” She blushed and stammered a bit. “I just assumed ... he’s so, uh... You two are always together. I’m sorry!”

  “We’re used to it. He’s like a little brother to me.” Casey held his hand above his head as he said ‘little’ in wry acknowledgment that Avery might be younger, but he was several inches taller than Casey — and Casey wasn’t really short, at a solid six feet himself.

  “Little brother?” she prompted, clearly curious. She’d picked up on Avery’s correct pronouns immediately, which he thought was a point in her favor. She’d probably assumed Avery was trans, and she’d been trying — clumsily, but with good intent — to gender him correctly.

  “Yeah, our dads were in the military together, then my dad worked for his dad as a pilot. I’ve known him since he was in diapers.” Casey didn’t mention that both their fathers had died together in a plane crash a decade ago, when Casey had been nineteen and Avery sixteen. He had no desire to distress this nice woman. However, he did add, “His dad encouraged our relationship. He thought I was a good influence. I just thought Avery was a pretty cool kid. I was nine, and he was six when we decided to call each other brothers.”

  Before Casey could elaborate on Avery’s father’s enthusiastic approval of their friendship, Avery came jogging back with two sodas and a package of cookies. Avery asked, “Auction’s starting in five minutes. You ready?”

  “Let’s go,” Casey said, even as he snagged both sodas from Avery’s hand. He took a swig of Avery’s Dr. Pepper entirely because he knew it would piss Avery off.

  “Hey! Mine!” Avery grabbed his bottle back.

  Casey reached for the cookies, and Avery danced away, holding them possessively to his chest. Then, he ran backward toward the small crowd of bidders in front of the first unit. Casey, smiling again at Avery’s antics, followed, with Toni trailing behind.

  When the storage unit staff broke the lock on the unit with an enormous, beat-up pair of bolt cutters, it revealed a pile of battered furniture. Avery immediately became all business.

  “I could do something with that,” Avery said thoughtfully, though his arms were folded and his mouth set into a thin line. The furniture visible in the storage unit had what he referred to as ‘good bones,’ but it all needed refinishing. “I say we bid up to a thousand. I can break even on the tables and chairs alone if I give them a retro farmhouse look with a crackle paint job and some chicken stencils.”

  He was listening to Avery, but most of Casey’s attention was on the storage unit itself, even as he hugged himself to stay warm. A stiff wind blew from behind them. He regretted leaving his jacket behind. It was not as warm as he’d thought now that the sun had disappeared behind a cloud.

  A gut feeling, one he’d learned never to ignore, told him not to bid. “No. Not this one.”

  “Casey, you’ve got to be fucking with me. That’s the best unit we’ve seen in a month!”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Last time I said ‘no,’ and you bid on it anyway, we regretted it.”

  “We didn’t lose money,” Avery noted, a bit defensively, “and the naked Barbies and the costume jewelry did well on eBay. The food bank was happy to get the entire truckload of plastic knives.”

  “We didn’t make significant money either, and that’s the goal.” He hated being the bad guy but didn’t want to waste time with an unprofitable unit.

  For a moment, he feared Avery wouldn’t listen. They were equal partners in the business, but Avery occasionally rebelled and bought things with his own money. Most of Avery’s very sizable inheritance was tied up in a trust for another six months, until his birthday in August, but his mother doled out enough per month to give him a little discretionary income on top of his salary.

  Unfortunately, even if the company did not have to pay for Avery’s impulsive purchases, Casey would inevitably end up helping Avery dispose of them.

  Then Avery clapped a hand on Casey’s shoulder. “Ah, well. Maybe the next one will have a safe full of cash.”

  Toni won the unit of old furniture. He hoped she did well. While she paid the cashier, the auctioneer led them to the other unit. It was equally big, and the contents were even more mysterious.

  “Boxes,” Casey said, frowning when the door was rolled up. Boxes were a huge unknown, particularly when they filled the unit floor to ceiling. This unit was ten feet deep and eight across, and nearly full. “I don’t see anything but boxes.”

  Casey stood on his tiptoes, which, since he was already taller than most people, gave him a considerable height advantage over the rest of the crowd. Avery didn’t even bother to stretch. He could see over everyone else’s heads with ease.

  “All boxes,” Avery agreed.

  “Remember the newspapers?” Casey said, rolling his eyes. A few years ago, Avery had bid on a unit that Casey had a bad feeling about. Somebody had stored dozens of cardboard boxes full of fifty years’ worth of newspapers, which had gotten wet at some point and turned into solid cakes of mold.

  “So, what do you think of this unit, CeeCee?” Avery said, turning serious despite the pet name.

  Yes, that little voice in Casey’s heart whispered. Yes, a very strong yes, the kind of yes that had led him to treasures and profit many times before. “Yeah, we bid on it.”

  “Five hundred?” Avery said, frowning. He didn’t like units that were just boxes because they often turned out to be boxes of crap.

  “Go a thousand. Maybe more. It’ll be worth it.” Something about this unit was different. His mojo was insisting they win this one.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Ultimately, they got the unit for $950, which wiped out their auction budget for the weekend. It had gone high because it was a big unit and because some of the other auction regulars had started to notice Casey’s unique psychic talent. If Casey wanted a unit, so did they!

  After paying, they hurried back to the unit. With his longer legs and extra enthusiasm, Avery beat Casey there. He grabbed a box off the stack, grunted at its weight, and said, “This better contain gold, not books!”

  Casey pulled his pocket knife out and opened the box.

  “Books.” Now Avery sounded like an eager child whose Christmas present had turned out to be an ugly wool sweater two sizes too small. He set the next box down with a thump and opened it. With mock enthusiasm and an exaggerated grin, he declared loudly, “Hallelujah! More books!”

  It wasn’t that Avery disliked books. His house was jammed full of a personal library numbering in the thousands of titles. These books, however, were not ‘keepers.’ Some novels were battered library remainders, a handful were missing their front covers, and all were mouse-chewed and yellowed, with pages falling out of their bindings. Casey was pretty sure he saw dead insects stuck to the pages.

  He made a face. If they were in good condition, there was money in books, but these were not. He didn’t even want to touch some of them; they were filthy.

  “All right,” Avery said, clapping his hands together briskly. “Let’s pull the trucks around and go through this stuff right here.”

  They backed the Junk Shop’s vehicles — a box truck and a 1960s pickup that Avery kept running through ingenuity and sheer force of will — up to the unit and began sorting the books.

  Avery, never one to enjoy the silence, turned the pickup’s radio up and fiddled with the dial. He suddenly straightened up and paused at a news report about a man and woman from Payson who’d gone missing a few years previously. Casey, upon hearing their names, set a stack of books down on the tailgate and leaned through the window to listen.

  Tara Bright had been in Avery’s class from kindergarten through the middle of his senior year of high school when she’d dropped out. Todd, a few years older, had been an irritation in Casey’s life his entire childhood, all the way to graduation.

  Three and a half years ago, Tara had gone to Todd’s home on a job — her family owned an appliance repair and home improvement business — and then both had disappeared.

  To Casey’s disappointment, the news was a recap inspired by a social media campaign from Todd’s family. There was no new information and minimal mention of Tara.

  Avery sighed. “I wish we knew what happened. Tara was cool.”

  “Always figured Todd would end up in jail or dead,” Casey ran a hand over his face. Not for the first time, he tried to consult his unpredictable Gift on her fate — it was frustratingly silent.

  “No shit. Remember when you punched Todd in the nose ’cuz he wouldn’t take no for an answer from Chloe Arbor, about going to prom?” Avery grinned, clearly proud. “I think dumping Todd or Mark on his ass was an annual tradition.”

  “I always felt bad for Mark,” Casey replied. “Stuck with a brother like Todd, plus I don’t think his mother was much better. With the two of them influencing him, I’m not surprised he’s such an idiot.”

  “He groped me,” Avery objected. That had happened in seventh grade. Mark had given Avery a sack tap in gym class to ‘confirm Avery hadn’t cut them off.’ The gym coach had pretended not to see Avery’s swift, well-trained right hook. Mark had sported a black eye for weeks after that.

  “Oh, not saying he’s not an ass,” Casey shook his head. He reminded Avery, “I hit Mark once, too, because he was bullying some girls, and he squared off at me when I told him to stop.”

  Mark was even banned from the store. Todd had been caught shoplifting bras, and Shana, their manager and best friend, had kicked both brothers out. Mark had reacted with a memorable tirade of abusive language directed at all of them and his brother — the man was a walking thesaurus of insults and profanity.

  Avery sighed, fiddled with the radio, then stopped at a Chappel Roan song, eyes lighting up. To Casey, his attempt to ‘change the subject’ was pretty transparent, as he sang along to the infectious lyrics, resumed sorting boxes, and threw in some skilled dance moves. Walking by in the background, Toni stopped and stared in surprise at Avery’s strutting moonwalk, accompanied by his soaring voice; Avery was oblivious to her astonishment. Casey grinned at her, and she mouthed, “Wow!” before moving on.

  Anything of no value was thrown in the pickup to be trashed. As much as it pained Casey to discard a book, they couldn’t even donate the worst of them to charity because of their unsanitary, crumbling condition.

  A second group went into the box truck, neatly sorted into totes labeled “donations,” “store stock,” and “eBay.” Certain books sold best on eBay; others moved better in person. Long practice had taught them that sorting items as they loaded them was most efficient.

  Avery put a few battered titles aside to read later, and he crowed with glee when a rare and vintage science fiction novel turned up. It was water-stained and yellowed but difficult to find, and Avery added to his small personal pile of “keepers.”

  Halfway through the lot, Casey opened a box to discover a collection of family photos in three-ring binders. He set them aside in the pickup’s footwell. They always returned personal items.

  However, none of what they found was valuable. After they’d gone through almost the entire unit, Casey was beginning to wonder if his Gift had failed. The pickup was full and sagging on its springs from the weight of rodent-chewed paper, while only a few tubs of low-value but probably saleable novels made a stack in the box truck.

  Casey glanced over at the discards in the truck bed. Was there a Gutenberg Bible or a first edition Shakespeare hiding in that pile, and they’d just missed it? ... No, his Gift assured him the books they were throwing out were desired by no one, sad as that was.

  Then, Avery laughed aloud and said, “Casey, now I know why you wanted this unit.”

  “What did you find?” He hopped out of the back of the box truck and ducked into the shadowed interior of the storage unit. Avery, grinning, had just lifted the lid off a large box full to the top with glossy hardbacks.

  “Look at all the art books!”

  The books appeared to be from the 1970s and featured black-and-white photographs of men, some of whom wore little or no clothing. He was not, Casey well knew, happy about the content of the books. Avery just wasn’t into looking at dicks (or tits) that much. He said he didn’t care what strangers looked like; he was attracted to personalities, not people’s jiggly bits.

  “I think I recognize the artist on this one,” Casey said, flipping through a coffee table book of stylistic nudes. “But, uh, not my type here.”

  He was plenty interested in seeing naked guys, personally, but he had to keep up appearances by protesting. He crouched down to look at the contents closer to, er, assess the value. The book cover in his hand featured a beefy male model who was shaggy in more ways than one, and when he flipped through it, the rest of the men were similarly hairy.

  That was disappointing. Bears were the opposite of what he liked. The next book had models with slightly less hair, a lot more ripped muscle, and some spectacular mustaches, but he only briefly thumbed through the pages to assess the condition and subject matter before putting it back on top of the stack. It was still not his style.

  “What, you don’t like beefcake?” Avery teased.

  Casey gave him a look and then said mildly, “Not my type. You know that.”

  “Yeah, yeah, not twink enough. Well, we should do good with these on eBay,” Avery said, picking one up. He thumbed through it casually before pausing. His eyebrows went up. It was an amused expression, not a lecherous one.

  “That’s gotta be photoshopped.” Casey looked over his shoulder at an image of a fully nude man standing knee-deep in a mountain lake. The photo looked like a caricature. Tucked in with it were several pieces of paper. Somebody had done some rather good pencil sketches of naked men and signed them ‘M. R.’

  “Photoshop wasn’t around when these were printed. It might be a composite image, though. Literal cut and paste, and a bit of airbrushing ...” Avery looked closer at the photo. “If that thing is real, I’m not sure he could wear pants without looking like he’d borrowed Bowie’s codpiece. If he tucked backward, he’d have a tail.”

  Casey snorted a laugh at what was only a mild exaggeration, sipped his soda, and then spotted Toni walking back up the alley between the rows of storage units. He quickly shut the box, hefted it onto his shoulder, and loaded it into the truck.

  Toni approached with her hands in her pockets and a morose expression. “Hey, do you have a second?”

  “Yeah, what’s up?” Casey asked.

  “Need some guy strength with the furniture in my unit and maybe a shoulder to cry on.”

  “What’s wrong?” Avery’s voice was full of genuine concern.

  “Cat pee. The whole unit. Everything’s saturated. Never seen anything like it. I think I’m just going to take it all straight to the dump, but I need some help loading it up.”

  “Oh, God.” Avery rolled his eyes. “Cat piss is the worst.”

  “Yeah, I can help,” Casey agreed. He wondered if he should have warned her about what his mojo had said, but who would believe him about his gift? She might have just assumed he was trying to scare her off so he could get the unit for less.

  He grabbed some rubber gloves from a box under the truck’s seat and left Avery sorting books while he followed her.

  After he stepped into the unit, Casey realized she had not been exaggerating the degree of cat contamination. He didn’t think anything in the unit was actually worth salvaging.

  “Sorry for your bad luck,” he told her after shoving a stinky recliner into the bed of her truck. There was so much urine on the upholstery that it was crystallized.

  She snapped a glove off and threw it into the bed of her truck after the recliner. “I think I’m going to get out of the business. I lose more than I win on these units. You and Avery always get the good ones. Shoulda known to nope when you didn’t bid.”

  “We get sucky units. I’ve taken entire lots to the dump before. Current one isn’t looking great.” Casey commiserated with her for a moment longer, then returned to their unit, mindful of the end-of-the-day deadline they were working under to clear out the unit.

  Much to his surprise, Avery was wrestling an antique chest out of the back. It had been buried under the mountain of boxes.

  “Early to mid 1700s,” Avery said, excited. “Maybe even older. Worth thousands, I think. We’ll need to get it appraised and find an auction house. Your mojo wins again!”

  “Wow.” Casey crouched down to look at it better.

  It was walnut, dark with age, and locked tight, with hardware that seemed newer than the chest but not modern. The chest was in exceptional condition, and they’d never found anything like it before.

  Avery clapped him on the shoulder. “Good job, Casey.”

  The hair on the back of Casey’s neck went up. Something about the chest made him deeply uneasy. His Gift had led him to it, but now it warned him of real danger.

  Avery was oblivious to Casey’s new concerns, and not wanting to worry him, Casey said nothing. Instead, he loaded the last of the tattered books into the truck bed while Avery bought more sodas to feed his caffeine addiction.

  When Avery returned, he was grinning. He planted a foot on the truck’s tire and vaulted up to straddle the edge of the bed with ease.

  Deliberately, Casey turned his back to the silently threatening chest and snagged Avery’s unopened soda. Avery tried to grab it back but wasn’t quite fast enough. Teasing, Casey held it just out of his reach. Avery, eyes bright, declared in a voice full of melodramatic outrage, “Jerk! That’s mine!”

  A second later, Avery was chasing him in circles around the truck, trying to reclaim his drink. The resulting horseplay was epic and a good distraction from the menace that his mojo insisted resided within that antique chest.