Page 53 of Tusks And Conditions

"For what?"

"I've been thinking." Her eyes sharp. Calculator eyes. "Supernaturals get audited at three times the rate of humans, and most of them don't even know what a W-2 is. The troll who runs the deli by your old office told me he hasn't filed taxes since 2019."

"You talked to Grug?"

"Grug owes the IRS forty-seven thousand dollars. He was very forthcoming once I explained the penalty structure." She taps my sternum. "I want to open a firm. Specifically for supernatural clients. Out of our barn."

SABINE

Two years later, on a Tuesday in October, a nine-foot swamp troll sits in my waiting room and weeps into a crumpled 1099.

"Grug, we've been over this. Freelance income is still taxable income. The fact that you were paid in enchanted fish does not make it a gift."

"But fish friends. Not money. Fish friends."

"The IRS doesn't care about the friendship status of the fish, Grug."

He blows his nose into a handkerchief the size of a beach towel. The converted barn smells like pond water and the lavender diffuser I keep on the filing cabinet for exactly these situations. My desk is solid oak, custom-built, because the previous one collapsed when a centaur client leaned on it during a panic attack about capital gains.

The barn doors are propped open. Autumn light spills across the wide plank floors. Through the doorway, past the gravel path and the low brick wall, the farmhouse kitchen window glows warm. A shape moves behind the glass. Massive. Grey. Wearing an apron.

Jagger is baking again.

"Here's what we do." I slide a folder across the desk. "I've already prepared your amended returns for 2022 and 2023. The penalty reduction request is on page seven. Sign where I've flagged, and we'll have you current by the end of the quarter."

Grug stares at the folder. His lower lip trembles. All four of his eyes well up.

"Sabine... best accountant."

"I'm your only accountant. Sign the papers."

He signs. His pen looks like a toothpick in his massive green fingers. When he stands, his head brushes the reinforced ceiling beams. Jagger installed those after the minotaur incident. Structural upgrades. Insurance claim. I still have the paperwork.

Grug shuffles out past my next client, a harpy named Delphine who sells handmade jewelry on Etsy and has questions about sales tax nexus in multiple states. Behind Delphine, a pair of goblin twins share a bench, clutching a shoebox full of receipts. After them, a dryad. After the dryad, a vampire who owns a chain of 24-hour laundromats and needs a full corporate restructure.

Tuesday.

I work through lunch. The harpy cries. The goblins argue with each other in a language that sounds like silverware in a garbage disposal, but their books are actually spotless. The dryad pays me in wildflower honey and a check, because I accept both but insist on the check.

At three o'clock, the barn door darkens.

Jagger fills the frame. Dirt on his knees. Flour on his forearms. The runic tattoos peek from under his rolled-up sleeves, incandescent soft and content, the way they do when he's been in the garden all morning. He carries a wooden cutting board with fresh sourdough, sliced thick, and a small ceramic pot of butter he churned himself last week because he read about it in one of his novels and decided their characters were doing it wrong.

"Break."

"I have a vampire at four."

"Break." He sets the board on my desk. The bread steams.

I eat. The sourdough is perfect. Crisp crust, soft interior, faintly sour, still warm. He watches me eat with the same intensity he used to reserve for tracking fugitives across rooftops. Now he channels it into bread hydration percentages and tomato cage placement.

"The butternut squash is ready."

"All of it?"

"Forty-seven pounds."

"Jagger. We cannot eat forty-seven pounds of butternut squash."