Sabine
"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."
"Grug can."
Fair point.
He leans against the doorframe. Behind him, the garden stretches in neat, aggressive rows.
Every vegetable planted with military precision.
The man who once tracked a wendigo through a sewer for six days now wages a personal vendetta against cabbage worms. Last week I found him at dawn, crouched between the kale rows, whispering threats at a slug.
The Snarbo lounges on the porch in a patch of sunlight, all eyes half-closed, fat and content from the scraps Jagger feeds it when he thinks I'm not looking.
"What are you reading?"
He holds up a paperback the thickness of a cinder block. The cover features a muscular elf wielding a glimmering sword.
"Any good?"
"The elf makes terrible tactical decisions."
"You say that about every book."
"Every book has terrible tactics."
I brush the crumbs from my fingers. The iron mating band on my thumb is warm. Always warm. Two years of warmth now, steady as a second heartbeat.
He crosses the office in two strides. Leans down. Kisses my head. His hand rests on the back of my neck, and the calluses that once came from weapons now come from garden shears and bread dough.
"Your four o'clock is here." He straightens. "Vampire. Smells like bleach and quarters."
"That's the laundromat."
"Weird business for a vampire."
"Steady cash flow, low overhead, excellent write-off potential."
He shakes his head, smiling with his whole face, tusks and all. He takes the empty cutting board and walks back toward the house, the kitchen light reaching out to welcome him home.
I open a new file and pull out a fresh pen.
"Send him in."