It was nearly two in the afternoon when Tyla woke up, and for a while he just lay and watched Malyn sleep in the bed across from him. He was so charmingly graceless, light brown hair rumpled, limbs sprawled, blanket kicked almost entirely off. If you’d asked Tyla what kind of person he found attractive a year ago, this would not have been what he’d described. But now…

Tyla sighed. He should have seen these feelings coming. For too long, he’d told himself that he’d just found Malyn funny, or easy to be around, that he’d appreciated how Malyn could switch between intense focus and goofy humour with ease. He hadn’t seen the seeds of attraction until they’d turned into something altogether inconvenient. You couldn’t just ‘shoot your shot’ with someone, as Malyn would have put it, and then go back to sharing a room with them if they turned you down.

Eventually Malyn’s eyes pinched and he brought a hand up to rub at them, and he was awake. Mostly, anyway. It took him a few more minutes of wriggling around and stretching out before he fully committed to wakefulness.

“Oh,” Malyn said when he finally opened his eyes and noticed Tyla watching him. “Good morning.”

“Afternoon, actually.”

“Figures.” Malyn swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Fuck, I’m hungry. Breakfast?”

“Sounds good to me.”

Malyn slept in a T-shirt and boxers. Tyla slept in something Malyn had jokingly called a nightie for the first three months of them living together before finally admitting that, on his own world, men had also slept in something not all that dissimilar. 

Malyn had mostly abandoned his past and his culture beyond the bow he fought with, but that was hardly surprising. He’d arrived here alone, thrust into a whole new world as a child. Of course he’d adapted, learnt to speak, dress, and act like a native of this world.

Tyla had been an adult when he’d come here, and an entire city, along with its occupants, had come with him. He still wondered what had become of the rest of his world, now presumably missing a city sized chunk. He doubted he would ever find out. This was a one way journey.

“Ah, you’re up,” Adin said as they entered the living room. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d see any daylight at all today.”

Tyla glanced at the door to Finch’s room, still shut. “Looks like Finch might sleep through it if he’s not up soon.”

“Finch ended up seeing dawn, so I’m not sure it would count,” Adin said. “Luther called him last night, not long after you all went to bed.”

“And he convinced Finch to get up?”

“He offered him a thousand dollars. Which, to be fair, he did pay.”

“Nice,” Malyn said. “What did Finch have to do?”

“Hm,” Adin said. “Take a look in the bottom of the linen closet. Be quiet, though.”

For some reason, that had Tyla expecting a kitten or a puppy. Why Luther would pay them so much to look after a baby animal or why he would even have one in the first place, Tyla didn’t know, but that was what came to mind when he thought of things he’d encountered since arriving in this world that might hide in linen closets and be startled by loud noises.

He did not expect a man, curled up with his back to them under the bottom shelf, which is what they were faced with when Malyn opened the door to the linen closet.

“Uh…” Malyn said as he stared down at the unmoving body. “Is he alive?”

“Shh,” Adin said. “Close the door. Yes, he’s alive. He’s sleeping.”

“Oh, of course,” Malyn said as he shut the door to the linen closet. “Who is that and what does he have to do with Luther?”

“I can hear Finch moving around. Sit down while I make breakfast, and he can explain things once he gets out. I’m afraid I don’t understand the situation very well myself.”

They both sat down at the kitchen table, Malyn slumped forward over it, as Adin busied himself in the kitchen.

When Tyla had first moved in, he’d insisted on helping Adin with cooking, with the dishes, with whatever he could. He had thought it was rude of the others to just sit idly while Adin buzzed around the kitchen, preparing multiple different meals. Eventually he’d realised that while Adin would accept help and give polite thanks for it, he didn’t actually want it. He enjoyed having his role in the house and doing it well. He liked taking care of other people.

Malyn didn’t lift his head from the table until Adin set a plate of eggs on toast in front of him. He smiled. “Thanks, dad.”

“Thank you,” Tyla murmured as Adin placed a bowl of fruit salad in front of him.

Tyla had been here for six months, and he still didn’t know quite how to treat Adin. He looked no more than thirty, but he had a kind of serene wisdom about him that seemed incongruent with his apparent age, and Finch treated him with a higher regard than he did Malyn or Tyla.

Malyn, for his part, simply didn’t care about that sort of thing. To him, it wasn’t about making any kind of a statement, it just didn’t seem to occur to him that one person should be treated with greater respect than another purely on the merit of status. 

Finch emerged from his bedroom and went straight to the bathroom without so much as glancing at any of them. When he came back out, he looked at them, put his hands on his hips, and sighed.

“Hey Finch, why’s there a dude in our linen closet?” Malyn asked around a mouthful of egg and toast.

“He’s in the linen closet?” Finch countered.

“He is,” Adin said. “It was strange, actually. He went to sleep under my desk when I was busy elsewhere, and eventually I had to sit back down. I didn’t notice him stir, but about an hour later, I looked down and he wasn’t there anymore.”

Finch frowned as he sat down at the table. “You’ve got sharper senses than that.”

“So I thought,” Adin said as he served Finch his own plate of egg on toast. “It took me at least half an hour to find him. The only reason I wasn’t worried enough to wake you was that his things were still here and the futon was not, so I assumed he hadn’t actually left.”

“Interesting,” Malyn said. “Hey Finch, who is the guy in our linen closet?”

“According to Luther, Luther’s son,” Finch said.

“Okay…” Malyn said. “So is he human, or…”

Finch swallowed a mouthful of food. “Well, who’s really human these days?”

“It might surprise you with the circles we run in, but most people, Finch,” Malyn said.

“By whose definition? There isn’t a legal one. I’ve seen definitions that include all of us and definitions that include none of us.”

“Even Malyn?” Tyla asked. “Surely he would be human by anyone’s definition.”

“You would think, huh?,” Malyn said. “To some people, anyone who wasn’t born on this world isn’t human because who really knows what could be going on. But then of course that gets weird, because this world has been permeable, like, always, so who would actually know for sure that they don’t have a single person from another world in their family tree? Also, none of this is the point. The point is, do we or do we not have a vampire in our linen closet?”

“We do not,” Finch confirmed. “He was eating bread when I met him, so he’s definitely not that. He does have some kinda weird pale blue eyes, but I don’t know about assuming that means anything magical. Like, if you’d seen someone with unusual coloured eyes on your world where there was no magic, Mal, you probably would have just thought he was a guy with strange eyes, right?”

“Oh, no, we would have one hundred percent thought he was a witch,” Malyn said. “Just because there was no magic doesn’t mean we didn’t think there was. We weren’t the most advanced society. When you don’t know shit about shit, everything becomes magic. Severe storm? Magic. Deformed calf? Magic. Identical twins? You better believe those fuckers are magical. Never saw a single thing I don’t now have a really boring explanation for.”

Adin took a break from wiping down the counters to join the conversation. “From a certain perspective, those things, in your world, were magic. What is magic other than things we don’t yet understand? Is Finch in some way magical just because he’s significantly stronger than most humans? So is a chimpanzee. If someone could regrow lost limbs, we would call that magic, but no one would suggest a gecko’s ability to do the same is in any way magical. Even Tyla’s abilities, which are fairly unambiguously magical, have to work in some way that could potentially be studied and understood. If we did fully understand them, would they still be magic?”

“What if geckos are magic?” Malyn suggested. “Discuss.”

“Why do we have Luther’s son?” Tyla asked, bringing the conversation back on track.

“Ah, yeah,” Finch said. “That. Well, apparently another vampire named Katrina has shown up and she was the one who turned Luther into a vampire in the first place, which is a thing apparently, so she thinks Luther should basically belong to her. He isn’t down with that, so she’s pissed. Normally I’d say tough shit and leave him to sort his life out on his own, but Katrina is apparently targeting Luther’s son, Shadow, who doesn’t seem like such a bad person, so I grudgingly agreed to take him in until things are safe because it seemed wrong to refuse just because I hate Luther. Also he offered me a thousand dollars. Mostly I agreed because of the thousand dollars.”

“And Shadow seems… okay?” Malyn asked.

“Well, he’s nothing like Luther, that’s for sure. Very quiet. Hard to know much more than that because I hardly got a word out of him. Did he say anything to you, Adin?”

Adin shook his head. “Not a single word. He nodded and shook his head a couple of times, but that was it.”

“Well, if nothing else, he probably won’t be much trouble,” Finch said.

“What do you think Luther meant when he said Shadow was his son?” Malyn asked. “Like… do you think he actually raised him?”

“No idea,” Finch said. “Shadow said he was twenty and Luther hasn’t been here that long, so he sure didn’t raise him from birth.”

“Well, I’d hope not,” Tyla commented. “Perhaps there’s more to Luther than I know, but from what you’ve told me in the past, he certainly has a troubled history. I don’t know what kind of influence he would have been on a young child.”

“Yeah, damn, I hope not,” Malyn said, passing his empty plate to Adin as he came by to collect dishes. “We have anything on tonight, Adin?”

“Someone called in a sighting of one of those dogs we lost track of,” Adin said.

“The ones with the burny acid bites?”

“Mm. Apparently it’s been hiding out in the woods and it’s already killed a couple of large dogs. No people yet, but everyone has been staying inside since it was spotted so it hasn’t had much opportunity. They’re offering a five hundred dollar bounty on it, so make sure you stop in through the local town after you’re done and show them the body.”

“Those things are class three, too,” Malyn said. “Actual okay government compensation.”

“Do you guys want me to come too, or have you got it?” Finch asked.

Malyn waved him away. “Team Glass Cannon should be able to handle this one. We took out two on our own last week, so one should be easy.”

Tyla nodded his agreement.

“Okay,” Finch said. “Guess I’ll be on standby here. Maybe I’ll see if I can get any more information out of Shadow.”

“Yeah, do that,” Malyn agreed. “Partly because it might be a good idea to get to know him if he’s going to be staying here, but mostly just because I’m so goddamn curious.”

“Me too, though I’m not sure how many of the answers I’m going to like if Luther is involved.”

“Yeah, I gotta agree with that,” Malyn said. “Anyway, Tyla, want to get ready to head out? We may as well make the most of the daylight we have left.”

“Sure,” Tyla said.

“I’ll get you the file,” Adin said as he piled the last of the dishes in the sink. “It’s about a forty minute drive, but that should still leave you with a few hours of daylight once you get there.”

They went and got dressed and then they waited near the garage door until Adin brought them the file. 

Malyn immediately bopped Tyla on the top of the head with it. “Ready?”

Tyla nodded. “Let’s go.”