Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

1. Quinn

QUINN

TOILET DUTY AND OTHER CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

“Hey, intern! Could you brew another pot of coffee? Some savage left it empty.”

“On it,” I answered.

“Bradley, I need twelve copies of this. Collated.”

I gave a quick nod. “Already collating.”

“Can you call maintenance? Printer three is making a noise that feels accusatory.”

“Absolutely.”

“Hey, the bathroom on two is out of toilet paper.”

“Got it.”

“Jacobson, lunch order. Salad, no onions.”

Suppressing a sigh, I said, “I’m Bradley.”

“Right. No onions.”

There were only so many ways a person could answer a demand before words stopped sounding like words and started sounding like one of those sad little desk toys that mooed when you hit a button.

By ten thirty, I’d handled the coffee, copies, facilities calls, and even dealt with a missing dry-cleaning order. Then I found myself carrying a plunger and a bottle of industrial cleaner to one of the partner bathrooms.

I had a law degree, for God’s sake. It was framed and hanging on the wall of my apartment, because I figured my six-figure debt should at least add to the décor.

Yet there I was, standing in a silk blouse from the thrift store and sensible block heels, using a plunger on a toilet some man making four-hundred-thousand dollars a year had decimated with biblical confidence.

What made it so hard to resent was the fact that no one was ever rude when they asked for something.

People at Payton & Wallace didn’t bark, but there was always a little urgency in the air, a little pressure, a little “while you’re up,” and “could you just.” Because I was an intern and eager and not stupid, I said yes before anyone had time to ask twice.

We were six interns. I had to stand out if I wanted one of the two projected associate spots next year. Every day felt like a group project where the prize was health insurance, and the punishment was going back to waitressing with a license to practice law.

So yes, I was unclogging the fucking toilet.

“Come on,” I muttered as I worked the plunger and tried not to think about how much I needed this job. “You and me, toilet. Let’s make this a growth opportunity.”

The toilet didn’t appreciate my teamwork mindset. It threatened me with a gurgle, then sent up a belch of swampy water that stopped just shy of my hand.

I groaned under my breath. “This is beneath both of us,” I told the toilet.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, three times in quick succession. Either there was a true emergency in the office, or someone had discovered there were only oat-milk creamers left.

Abandoning the plunger, I scrubbed my hands until they felt flayed, then checked the screen.

Moira: Where are you?

Moira: Cressler needs the family court binders.

Moira: And someone just asked me if the flowers in the break room were dead. Please advise.

I glanced at my reflection. A little flushed and harried, but still cheerful. My face had always had this traitorous quality where stress sat on it like a polite houseguest instead of the squatter it really was.

My long, auburn hair had started the day in a smooth twist and had since evolved into a loose professional surrender, soft pieces escaping around my face no matter how many pins I’d used. My eyes looked more green than blue when I was tired.

I smoothed the front of my thrifted silk blouse, checked that the tiny floral buttons were still behaving, and tried to look like a woman who belonged in a law firm.

“Please advise,” I repeated, then laughed. If I didn’t laugh, I was going to sit down on the closed toilet lid and start evaluating my life choices, and that would not improve the afternoon.

Instead, I did what I always did: I handled it.

I gathered the binders, stopped in the break room to swap out the bouquet I’d brought in the previous Monday, and carried the wilted flowers to the trash.

That part, at least, I never minded.

The firm had a service that dealt with the expensive flowers where clients could see them, but the flowers in the break room were unofficial, which was a nice way of saying nobody cared until they were dead enough to depress people.

I had raised planters on the small balcony outside my kitchen window, where I grew mostly wildflowers and whatever herbs could survive my hectic work schedule.

Once a week, I clipped whatever looked happiest and brought it in to keep the room from looking like a place where people inhaled yogurt over case files and forgot they had bodies.

My mother had always said a space could tell whether it was loved.

She’d spent years cleaning other people’s houses, so she knew the difference between a place that was used hard and neglected, and a place that was cared for.

My dad had laid brick until his back gave out.

Neither of them had ever had the luxury of pretending small touches didn’t matter.

Fresh flowers, folded dish towels, and toilet paper on the holder instead of perched nearby represented dignity.

Because of that, because I was raised to notice the little touches, I’d vowed I wouldn’t grind my way to the top and come out the other side incapable of noticing the people who kept the place running.

“Quinn.”

I turned to find Mrs. Mendez from reception peering into the break room. She took in the flowers, the restocked sweetener caddy, and the stack of get-well cards I’d left near the coffee maker for signatures.

Her face softened. “You brought more.”

“Last week’s looked tired.”

“That’s because Jonah microwaved fish in here on Tuesday and killed the atmosphere.”

“Honestly, that’s on us as a legal community.”

Her mouth twitched. “Moira’s looking for you.”

“She always is.”

“That one likes you.”

I glanced toward the hallway. “She only likes my willingness to sprint.”

Mrs. Mendez patted my arm as she passed, which was both comforting and bleak.

I found Moira, one of the junior partners, outside copy room three with a stack of binders braced against one hip, looking like she was one inconvenience away from committing arson for insurance money.

“There you are,” she said. “Cressler needs those family court binders, printer three is haunted again, and if any of the other interns ask, I have never heard of lunch.”

“Good, because I’m starting to think lunch is a rumor spread by union workers.”

“Move, Bradley.”

I delivered the binders to Cressler, who barely glanced up as he took them, then I got waylaid by one of the newer transfer associates, who asked if I knew where facilities kept the spare legal pads. I did, of course.

By four o’clock, my body had stopped with the hunger pangs from skipping lunch and had moved directly to a kind of distant moral disappointment.

I made it halfway down the hall before I saw Devon, another intern, cut left and disappear into the supply closet with the furtive urgency of a man fleeing war.

A second later, Indira, also in the trenches with the rest of us, slipped in after him, balancing a protein bar and a yogurt cup in one hand.

I changed course. Sneaking into the break room, I grabbed my lunch and hurried to the supply closet.

It was bigger than any of the other supply closets, and housed three shelves of toner, two mop buckets, a vacuum, banker’s boxes, and now three interns trying to eat in peace.

Devon looked up as I squeezed in and shut the door behind me.

“Quinn,” he said, through a mouthful of turkey sandwich. “Were you followed?”

“I don’t think so, but full disclosure, I have emotional residue from a toilet on two.”

Indira winced sympathetically and scooted over on a box of printer paper. “Partner bathroom?”

“Partner bathroom.”

She handed me a pack of baby wipes from her tote.

“I love you,” I said.

“I know.”

Though I’d scrubbed like a menace, I wiped down any visible skin with the wipes, just for peace of mind. That done, I sat between them, unwrapped my peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, and took a bite so fast I barely tasted it.

For maybe ten blessed seconds, nobody asked me for anything.

I smiled and took another bite of my sandwich. The closet smelled faintly of paper dust and lemon cleaner, but beneath that was the stench of desperation unique to overeducated people making nine dollars an hour after tax.

Indira peeled back the foil on her yogurt. “Moira still says two openings.”

“She says that every week,” Devon said. “Moira also says she’s quitting every Friday.”

“She means it every Friday,” I said.

Indira glanced at me as she popped a spoonful of yogurt into her mouth. “You still think you’ve got a shot?”

The question was light, but it was covered in barbed wire.

Six interns. Two spots.

I studied my sandwich. “I didn’t go to law school on loans and scholarships and spend three years bluebook-ing myself into a fugue state for personal growth.”

Devon raised the last of his sandwich in salute. “Amen.”

“It’s either this, or I start committing tasteful fraud.”

Indira snorted. “See, this is why I like you. You say the darkest thing in the nicest possible way.”

That made me laugh, but only a little. Because the truth was, I needed this job. I didn’t just want it, I needed it.

I loved my parents too much to let myself pretend otherwise.

They had never once made me feel like a burden.

And they were so proud of me. I still didn’t know how to handle it.

My mom cried every time she told somebody her daughter was a lawyer, as if I had personally argued the Constitution of the United States into existence.

Once, my dad introduced me to the cashier at Food City by saying, “This is my daughter, Quinn. She’s the smartest person I know,” with total, unembarrassed conviction.

They had made so much out of so little so I could better myself.

I had no excuse not to do something with the opportunity they’d given me.

Though I was still up to my ears in student loan debt, my parents had saved every dime they hadn’t needed for bills when I was growing up and put it toward my college fund.

I wasn’t about to let all that sacrifice and faith go to waste.

I took another bite. “I’m getting one of those jobs.”

Indira nodded slowly. She understood the sentence for what it was: razor-sharp determination.

Devon checked his phone and groaned. “Cressler wants me.”

“Godspeed,” I said.

He slipped out first. Indira followed a minute later after pocketing her spoon like this was prison and not midtown Manhattan.

I had just bitten into the second half of my sandwich when my phone lit up again.

Moira: Need you in copy room three

Moira: Now please

I looked at my sandwich, then at the door. “This is fine,” I told the closet.

The closet, having seen things, withheld judgment.

By the time I got to the copy room, Moira was standing over a stack of family court filings and a bunch of pages in disarray, her patience visibly depleted.

“Tell me something good,” she said the second she saw me.

I set my sandwich on the counter and tucked my phone into my back pocket. “What are you trying to make it do?”

“Collate these. It keeps putting page six behind page two.”

“It can do that. I found the manual.” I tapped through the advanced settings menu, selected the right sequence, and fed in the originals. The machine whirred, then began producing neat, properly collated sets.

Moira watched the first set emerge in the correct order. She narrowed her eyes. “You read the manual?”

I shrugged. “It’s only seventeen pages.”

Her expression changed in stages: suspicion, disbelief, then offense on behalf of everyone who had suffered before me.

“You read seventeen pages about a printer.” Moira put a hand over her heart. “Never let this place break you.”

“Working on it.”

She made a sound that might have been a laugh, then glanced toward the door when voices drifted in. Her team supervisor was with one of the partners, and they were speaking in that clipped, low register people used when talking about money, risk, or high-profile clients.

I kept my hands moving over the copies, but my attention sharpened.

“We have to be careful,” the partner said. “There’s a lot of prestige attached, yes, but dragons are mercurial.”

Moira’s supervisor answered, “Wouldn’t you be, if there were only a hundred or so of your kind left?”

The partner grunted.

I kept my face blank and my ears open.

Everyone knew the broad strokes. The Winged War had happened two hundred and fifty years ago.

Dragon shifters and phoenix shifters nearly wiped each other off the map in a conflict that had long since curdled into legend and museum exhibits.

Olden Folk were part of the world, sure, but dragons existed in that strange category of being publicly known and still mythical enough that people lowered their voices when they talked about them.

The voices moved on.

Moira exhaled. “Well.”

I handed her the first completed set. “That sounded expensive.”

She narrowed her eyes again, though not unkindly. “Don’t get curious.”

“Curiosity is my only marketable trait.”

“That and whatever dark art lets you operate office equipment.” She gathered the copies. “Finish those, then go home before someone else remembers you exist.”

I opened my mouth to make some noble statement about dedication and ambition, but my stomach chose that exact moment to make a sound so dramatic it could’ve been dubbed into a cartoon.

Moira looked down at my abandoned sandwich on the counter.

“Actually, leave them. Go,” she said.

“I can stay.”

“You look like a Victorian orphan with a LinkedIn profile. Go home, Quinn.”

I signed two get-well cards on my way out, checked the flowers and made sure the break-room fridge door was latched, then left the building with the other lucky interns in that post-work stagger particular to people whose salaries required side hustles and whose ambitions required denial.

I hadn’t come this far to be forgettable.