Serving Second Chances (The Lighthouse Diner #1)

Chapter 1 Emily

EMILY

Last year, I had a fancy job, a hot coyote shifter boyfriend, and an apartment in Manhattan. Now my intern has the job, my neighbor has my boyfriend, and I’m back in my childhood bedroom, pretending the bedspread doesn’t still smell like middle school.

I turned to the mirror and tugged at the lapels of my blazer.

It was the least-wrinkled thing I owned that screamed, Please hire me, I promise I’m stable.

I didn’t believe it, but I needed someone else to.

I leaned closer. The woman staring back at me looked like she hadn’t slept, trusted no one, and might cry if the printer jammed again.

I was twenty-seven, which felt fake for someone currently living rent-free and hiding from life.

I needed this interview. I couldn’t stay here forever, pretending boxed wine and lavender sachets counted as healing.

I needed a job. A paycheck. A reason to stop moping around my dad’s house like a ghost with student debt.

It was time to get on with it. Or at least fake it until someone paid me enough to figure things out.

"Not sure if this looks too desperate or delusional. I think I need something else," I said.

I flicked my wrist at the closet. The air tightened, holding still for just a moment as the magic moved.

Two suits sprang from their hangers and floated across the room.

One stopped in front of me, shoulders squared like it had something to prove.

The other hovered a few steps behind, quiet and composed, waiting its turn.

The first was a sharp black suit, all angles and ambition. The lapels gleamed like they had been shined with ego. It smelled like boardrooms and bad coffee—like something you wore to win an argument you didn’t believe in.

The second was a soft blue, tailored clean and sleek, with mother-of-pearl buttons and a lining the color of seafoam. It looked like confidence without cruelty, like diplomacy with a side of steel.

I reached for the blue one. The fabric settled against my arms with a whisper. The black suit huffed as it spun back to the closet, hangers rattling in protest.

Let it pout. I had already made my choice.

This was the extent of my magic. Lifting. Nudging. Starting a flame when I needed a candle lit. Useful party tricks. Household magic. The kind of thing witches learned early and either grew past or didn’t. That was fine. Magic didn’t have to be flashy to be useful. Neither did I.

My jewelry floated toward me like well-trained ducks.

A silver ring slid onto my finger. My father had carved the protective sigils himself before I left for New York, back when he still thought my marketing job had anything to do with magic.

A necklace settled around my neck, warm against my skin.

It had belonged to my grandmother, and it buzzed now like it wanted to remind me of something. Probably to eat breakfast.

I touched the pendant and took a breath.

Then I turned back to the mirror and picked up my concealer.

While I painted on the illusion of rest, I whispered a grounding spell.

Same words I’d used for years. Just a habit.

Like brushing my teeth. Like locking the door twice.

Like pretending I had everything under control.

The printer whirred from the corner of the room, louder than it had any right to be, then made a choking, mechanical grind and stopped.

I closed my eyes. "Of course," I said.

The machine sat smug, its crooked little mouth blinking red.

I knew better than to try a spell. Magic could lift a suit across a room, but it couldn’t fix jammed paper or the spiteful heart of an office printer.

Somewhere, a truly powerful witch could probably manage it, but it probably would take the energy of the sun and end the universe in the process.

With a sigh, I crouched and yanked open the tray. My fingers hit crumpled paper. Warm and damp. I ripped it out, then grabbed a fresh sheet, shoved it into the feed slot, shut the tray, and gave the machine a warning glare.

It groaned back to life, coughing out my résumé with all the grace of a cat bringing me a dead mouse. The page came out warm and slightly curled at the corners. I flattened it on the desk and stared at the bold header.

Emily Carter – Marketing Director. Still there. Still mine.

I thought about deleting it. Pretending I had never worked at Nexus & Hart. Pretending I had never cared. But I had. I left it. Erasing it felt too much like agreeing with them.

I had worked years for that job. Started with internships that didn’t pay and managers who pretended they forgot I was there.

Climbed until I reached the glass conference room with the espresso machine that nobody knew how to use.

Nexus & Hart liked to say they were “proudly integrated.” They meant they hired supernaturals like me and didn’t flinch when I wore a charm bracelet.

The humans and vampires and werewolves and witches all sat in the same meetings, drank the same burnt coffee, and fought over who got the last branded notebook. Integration at its finest.

My grandfather used to say the supernatural coming-out was the best thing that ever happened to the world.

He said that with a scowl and a glass of whiskey, which confused the message a little.

It happened long before I was born. There were protests and arguments, a few years of chaos.

Then we all agreed to pretend we got along.

Mostly because everyone realized we could make more money that way.

Marketing didn’t care what you were. Human or not, the job ran on deadlines, caffeine, and mild treachery.

Tiffany came to me as an intern. New, eager, and alarmingly good at eyeliner. Her voice always sat a little too low. Managers leaned in. Her ideas sounded familiar because they were mine, just reheated with extra adjectives. She smiled when she stole. That was the worst part.

I kept telling myself I was imagining it.

That I was just tired. That she wasn’t using her succubus magic in staff meetings.

But the human managers got glassy-eyed every time she spoke.

Then came the closed-door conversations.

The new initiatives. The way my projects suddenly had her name on the timeline.

I should’ve turned her into a toad. Nothing permanent. Just enough to teach her a lesson. A week as a terrarium pet. Maybe two.

The firing felt fake. I swiped my badge, and the door blinked red.

The receptionist stared at me like I had arrived to rob the place.

The HR director met me with a folder and an expression I wanted to hex.

She asked for my laptop, my badge, and my soul.

I gave her two of the three. The cardboard box she handed me barely fit my things.

I left behind a stress cactus and a commemorative key-chain from the agency retreat.

Outside, someone bumped into me. My favorite mug slipped from the box and shattered on the sidewalk. The pieces scattered across the concrete like tiny insults.

No one stopped.

All I’d wanted that night was to go home.

That was it. Just bed, dumplings, and Lucas.

I had pictured it the whole subway ride.

Me in pajamas, him shirtless and smug, both of us eating straight from the cartons while watching something with explosions.

The day had kicked my ass, and I planned to let Lucas fix it with his arms and sesame noodles.

Instead, I opened the apartment door and found my boyfriend in bed with our neighbor from across the hall.

Lucas was still tangled in the sheets, sweatpants crumpled somewhere near the foot of the bed. His coyote instincts clearly hadn’t prepared him for the possibility that I might come home to my own apartment. He didn’t look guilty. He looked startled. Like I was the one being rude for interrupting.

The neighbor stared at me like I was a stranger.

Our neighbor. I hadn’t even known her name. Nobody in New York City knows their neighbor’s name. You share a wall, maybe a fire alarm chirp, and that’s the full relationship.

Apparently, Lucas was the exception. He not only knew her name. He knew her far better than zoning laws or common decency would suggest.

The betrayal didn’t scream. It whispered.

It curled into my ribs and made itself at home.

Everything I had counted on was gone in an instant.

New York shrank around me. The buildings pressed in.

The subway screeched louder. The air thickened.

I no longer belonged in a city that once made me feel powerful.

Now, back in my old bedroom, I slipped my résumé into a folder and tried to breathe like a functioning adult.

I had not planned to run home to Chrysanthemum Cove.

It wasn’t supposed to go like this. I had moved out at eighteen with fire in my veins and a plan.

Now I slept under a bedspread that didn’t fit and argued with a printer that might be possessed.

I needed work. I needed something to do besides stew in my own humiliation. I needed money. Preferably from a job that didn’t involve soul-sucking interns or sex-with-the-neighbor surprises.

That was why the Lighthouse Diner listing caught my eye. Marketing for a small-town diner? Not exactly glamorous. But it was real. It had meat on its bones. And okay, fine, it wasn’t just the job.

That diner used to be the center of the universe.

After school, we all piled into those booths because we had nowhere else to be.

Backpacks on the floor, fries in the middle of the table, milkshakes sweating in tall glasses.

The air always smelled like bacon and possibility.

My boyfriend Jason worked the counter, grinning like the world hadn’t hit him yet.

His aunt owned the place and let us stay way past the point of being paying customers.

It was the last place that felt like forever.

Then I moved. Jason and I didn’t fight. We just…

stopped. Unanswered texts. New schedules.

Bigger dreams. Or maybe just different ones.

Every now and then, I thought about him.

Wondered if he still flipped burgers or if he became one of those people who owned a boat.

I wasn’t giving up and settling in Chrysanthemum Cove for the rest of my life.

That was never the goal. This job? Temporary.

A stopgap. I didn’t spend years building marketing skills in New York just to throw it all away and fade into some small-town background.

That would’ve felt like admitting defeat.

The plan was simple: take the job, make some money, pay down the loans, and stop living off my dad and microwaved guilt. While I did that, I’d flood every marketing agency in New York with my résumé. Big firms, boutique firms, even the ones with terrible fonts and no careers page. I’d hit them all.

Land something in six months. Pack a suitcase. Leave Chrysanthemum Cove in the rearview. Return to Manhattan smarter, sharper, and better dressed. With a salary that screamed watch me now.

The next time my cheating ex saw me, he’d choke on his regret. And I’d be too busy to notice.

But first, I had an interview.

I grabbed my folder, shoved on my shoes, and gave the room one last look.

I wasn’t the girl who left this room. I wasn’t the woman I wanted to be. Not yet.

But I was done stalling.

I squared my shoulders, opened the door, and stepped out.

Time to work.