The mugs go into the soak first. Boiling water, dish soap, and twenty minutes if I want the residue off without scrubbing through the glaze. The scones I bag up for the compost run. Nobody is eating those now. The blood smears on the bottles need the cloth-and-bleach method Sasha taught me my second week. The process takes hours, and while it works, it leaves me smelling like a hospital ward for the rest of the day.
By the time the front of the counter is clean, my hair has half escaped the rubber band. There’s a wet patch on my shirt where I leaned against the sink. A streak of something dark crosses my apron strap at the hip, and I am choosing not to identify it.
I’m thirty seconds into scrubbing the prep counter when the bell rings.
I don’t have to look up. The chime is the same as yesterday—deep, wrong, settling into the floorboards before the sound properly arrives. The temperature in the shop climbs by a degree.
I straighten and push my glasses back with the inside of my wrist. When I look up, Rakan is standing in the same spot as yesterday.
Today his suit is a charcoal grey, woven from what looks like smoke. The amber veins under his skin pulse slower this morning, more steadily. The gold of his eyes is still fixed on me. There’s a tension in his gaze I can’t read.
“Back again?” I reach for a clean cup from the stack with my cleaner hand. “The black coffee wasn’t that good, was it?”
He doesn’t answer right away. He starts toward the counter with that same wrong-weighted step. His attention goes to the wreckage I haven’t finished clearing. “It was adequate,” he says.
“Adequate,” I repeat, already moving toward the coffee pot. “High praise. Same thing today? Large black?”
“Yes,” he replies from behind me, and I can feel his gaze burning into my back.
I pour the coffee into the cup, no faster and no slower than I do for any other customer. Then, I reach for my trusty marker and write his name on the side.
Rakan. It’s a monster’s name, a name with weight that screamsI’m powerful. It fits him almost better than those stupid suits.
“Four-fifty,” I say, sliding the coffee toward him.
He doesn’t reach for the metal card today. He goes straight to the inside pocket and produces another twenty. This one is less crumpled than yesterday’s, folded along its own crease. He sets it down. I make change—fifteen-fifty, exact—and offer him the bills.
He waves the change away with two fingers. “Keep it. I have no use for paper.”
“Suit yourself.” I drop the change into the tip jar with Sasha’s fifties. Between him and the vampires, we might end up needing a bigger jar.
Rakan picks up the cup. He doesn’t leave. He stands there, his heat filling the space between us. The cardboard hisses where his fingers close around it. He watches me without speaking.
“You are still here,” he murmurs.
“I work here, Rakan.” I rinse my hands at the small sink and dry them on a rag. “I’ll be here until four.”
He leans one elbow on the counter. The wood doesn’t groan under it the way it should. Traitor.
“Tell me, Iris,” he murmurs, almost as if he’s tasting each word. “Is there something you wish?”
I narrow my eyes at him. I know what he’s asking, and I have no desire to play his game. “To finish my book, maybe?” I shootback. “Though my friend Camille said last week I should be a little friendlier. So maybe… that.”
Rakan goes very still. He stares at me with the cup forgotten in his hand. A small flame flickers at the corner of his mouth, then vanishes.
“You are a strange creature,” he tells me.
“I’m just a barista,” I reply, shrugging. “And you’re blocking the line.”
There’s no line. The shop is empty. He knows it, and so do I.
He looks around once, slowly, taking in the empty room. When he turns back to me, his face has changed—not by much, just enough. The careful composure of yesterday has loosened by a degree. Whatever he is when he isn’t being looked at, this is closer to it.
“Until tomorrow, Iris.”
He turns and walks to the door. The moment he disappears outside, I press my palm to the spot on the counter he leaned against.
The wood glints, as if Rakan had turned it to gold with a simple touch. It’s warm, and I’m irrationally resentful of that heat.
