Page 2 of Twice Bitten

“New blend I’m trying.” Addy sank onto one of the chairs. “I’ve messed it up more times than I can count, but this might be the one.”

“Can’t wait to try it.” I tucked my shirt in and shrugged into the black vest embroidered with the shop name and three little cartoon espresso beans underneath. I had no less than a hundred pins dotted over the surface, so the vest clanked every time I put it on. Some of the pins had coffee puns, some were about books, some were just pretty little flower pins, but I loved them all.

Addy snorted when she spotted me adding a new enamel pin that saidJust One More Chapteron top of a colorful stack of books. “If you ever fall over and land on those things, it’s going to be hard to explain how you died due to an enamel pin obsession.”

“’Twould be an honor to die by enamel,” I said in the worst English accent.

She rolled her eyes and stood up. “Harriet gets off in ten. You sure you’re up for a double shift today?”

“Nothing else to do,” I said with a shrug. It wasn’t quite true. A ton of online orders were waiting for me back at the house, but that side hustle was my own dark little secret.

I ran an internet-based apothecary, though it wasn’t exactly on the up and up. Easy access and a familiarity with the dark web made the business untraceable to me or my location. To be safe, I shipped once a week from other surrounding towns, offered no return address, and had a strict no-refunds policy. Some people tried to push the issue, but customers had limited options when using the dark web. They were just as guilty as I was, and it’d be a true idiot who complained to the police about buying unregulated and illegal magical products through a shady online seller.

If they tried a chargeback over something that was their fault, I banned their IP address, preventing them from ever making a purchase from me again. My shop might be illegal, but I was the best around, and few dared cross me.

I didn’t think I was dodgy, but I was breaking a few laws, no matter how ridiculous I considered those laws. However, business was brisk, and the money was good. I dreamed of shutting my operations down and opening my own above-board apothecary close to Addy’s cafe. If I continued saving at the same rate, I’d be able to buy a brick-and-mortar shop outright. No mortgage, no landlords.

I didn’t sell anything awful. In fact, I’d argue I did a lot of good in the world. My bestseller was a birth control potion. My second bestseller was an STD cure. Neither of them would be illegal if corporations weren’t firmly in control of our government. I chose to think of myself as a Herbal Vigilante™, someone who saw a problem and took care of it because the current establishment was woefully inadequate.

The third bestseller was a love potion, but it never workedthe way customers expected because forcing someone to fall in love with you was incredibly immoral. I might work on the wrong side of the law because the law was dumb, but I refused to strip someone of their free will. All the love potions I crafted in the remodeled basement of a quirky historical home I’d bought a few months ago made consumers love themselves rather than forcing someone to love them.

Once they had a healthy dose of self-respect, it would finally be clear that Chad, from two cubicles over, was three texts away from love-bombing them into financing a Corvette for him.

Addy’s eyes narrowed as if she could sense my thoughts running away from me like a speeding train. “I don’t think that’s exactly true, but you’re the only barista willing to be on her feet that long in a day.”

I kicked my Doc Marten-clad foot up and wiggled it. “I know you’re obsessed with my feet, but tone it down at work, would you?”

Addy sighed and headed out the door. “No more pins!” she barked on her way out.

“Over my dead body,” I muttered, slowly caressing all the enamel over my left boob. “Don’t listen to the bad lady. Everyone needs more friends.”

The pins didn’t respond.

Harriet threw me a look of stark relief when I walked out from the back. She stepped back from the register as if the thing was about to bite her and tore off her vest.

“I’m out of here!” She turned to leave, but I grabbed her by the arm.

“Gotta count the register. You don’t want me to rob you blind, do you?”

Harriet snorted. “You’re way too nice to rob anyone.”

Her words didn’t sound like a compliment. I was nice, but then again, would a nice person have a basement full of poisonousherbs and illegal tools? “Maybe, but I’m bad at math, and we all know how wrong that can go when it comes to a register’s final count.”

I batted my eyelashes at her. “Addy’s coming with a new register for me in just a minute, so hang tight.” I pointed at the clock. “Plus, you still have five minutes left on your shift. I’ll take the coffees out and be over once the registers are switched out.”

Harriet’s pinched expression told me she didn’t like that idea, but since I hadn’t given her a choice, she had no way out other than to take the next order. The customers in line shifted in anticipation, already annoyed by our thirty-second off-topic convo. With an apologetic smile, I snatched up the two coffees Guillermo had set on the window ledge.

He gave me a gap-toothed grin. “Alex!”

“Heya, G,” I greeted. “You and I. Twelve hours. Ready for a caffeine extravaganza?”

Guillermo shook his head at my overexuberant attitude. “Eight hours in and you beg for the nitro.” He had a deep accent I could never place, and he often misused words, sometimes with hilarious results. His hair was dark and insanely thick—fairytale prince hair that I occasionally teased him about, asking when he was going to let me bring some hair product and a curling iron so I could make him go full-on storybook glam. He had a jaw so crisp I bet he could cut paper with the thing, and his eyes were an alarming shade of green that he covered with sedate brown contacts because he didn’t like the attention those pretty little peepers brought him when he was at work.

I’d seen him without his contacts once and gasped at the brilliant shade. His discomfort with my attention was obvious, and I refrained from peppering him with a million questions about them as I’d never seen another goblin with the same shade.

G wasn’t handsome—goblins never were—but his featureswere put together in a pleasant way, and I knew he was a good person. But get him angry and he could kick some serious ass.

All these things together put G firmly in hot territory, no matter his diminutive height or the human glamour customers saw when they spotted him.