"Yeah, that's fine. She'd probably like it."

"Cool."

"Okay. ...thanks."

"Sure thing."

Everything is weird and terrible, but it's less weird and terrible than it was last night, so that's something. 

She goes to mass. There's one weird old Catholic church in this town, and it's usually next to empty, but she goes anyway. And then she spends the rest of the day at the library, because as of about a month ago Karen doesn't really get days off. Maybe she can sit down and figure out their shared income and expenses at some point and see if this can be fixed with two high schoolers who have unusually lucrative after-school jobs.

Or maybe she will come around to asking for a bunch of money and then burning it. Hard to say.

He takes Zana to the store and lets her test materials for her scratching post and buys the materials and goes home and puts the scratching post together. It is fun. It sucks that Karen won't talk to him anymore but in every other respect things are okay.

She's not aware that this is something that he's experiencing as a problem, even though she could probably get it if she thought about it or knew more about what was happening, because firstly she barely understands what's happening, and secondly it has never actually occurred to her that anyone who isn't related to her might ever want to talk to her for more than purely logistical reasons.

She does tell him that it's a pretty great scratching post.

"Thanks! We'll see if she likes it enough to use it instead of the couch."

"Yeah. We can hope. What's dinner?"

Dinner is chicken nuggets with ketchup and barbecue sauce and several other odd sauces that go well with chicken nuggets.

Cools.

On Monday morning she gets ready for school and then makes herself cereal. She doesn't wake him.

Then he won't be at school.

But she will be. And so will his older brother. Not the weirdly perfect one who was creepy even before she knew he was a fairy, the one who goes around in a jacket that says that his most prominent personality trait is being a musician. 

"I need to talk to you about stuff. And also need to not get entangled with any more fairies. Is there anything I can give you for talking that isn't, like, terrible?"

"I don't know, what's terrible? Traditionally people pay fairies in kisses."

"That's terrible."

"You could do my Spanish homework."

"Yeah, okay."

"What do you want to know?"

"So a week ago I saved your brother from zombies, and I didn't think this was a big deal, apart from part where zombies are real and the cemetery has completely inadequate safety procedures regarding them? But apparently your parents and whatever magical debt system they adhere to thought it was a super big deal, because first they tried to pay me eight hundred thousand dollars, and then they dropped your brother off at my house and said he couldn't come home until whatever debt he's incurred has been paid off, and this is really weird, and not what I wanted, because now we're not, like, friends anymore, we're some weird thing where he bows to my family members and when I tell him not to he acts like I invoked some kind of magical leash or something, and it's weird, and creepy, and I don't know how to interact with him anymore, and I don't actually know that you have any insight into this at all, but it seemed worth a shot, you know, before we get cemented into some kind of weird - thing, and then we can never be friends because I and the zombies messed everything up. Did that make sense?"

"I guess?

Look, if I told you that you were in a lot of my debt right now because there's a secret fairy rule against saying the word 'cemetery', which would be scarier, if I was like "and now I want you to do jumping jacks and also stand next to the window' or if I was like 'this is very tragic! now we can't be friends anymore!"

" - well, we're not friends, so the first one, easily, but assuming we were, we wouldn't be anymore if you started ordering me around, because firstly that's not a - friend way to interact? And secondly a minute ago you didn't know that asking people to pay debts with kissing was terrible, so I feel like the situation would end up pretty bad pretty fast."

"Huh. See, to me, the first one's friendlier, because the first one's - we have a problem, we're going to solve it together. And the second one's - we have a problem, and there's nothing you can do about it."

" - okay, but if you're ordering people, or implying that you're ordering people - I'm really unclear on how much fairies have to do stuff for people they're indebted to, I just know that the thing happened and also that your father said 'obey her' and it was really concerning - if you're giving people orders, and there's something that's making them follow them, that's not solving things together, that's just, like, solving whatever your problem with them is by giving them less control over their lives? And if they don't want to be friends with you, that's - fine, I guess, but also not what the situation is here, because if I didn't want to be friends with your brother then I guess I wouldn't care that much that talking to him is weird now."

"He's not forced to obey you, it's just more debt if he doesn't. He can choose to ignore you if he wants, if he doesn't care that much about being more in your debt."

"Okay. That's - better, I guess."