Twice Bitten (Fangs and Fur #1)

Chapter 1

ONE

Three Little Beans bustled with customers even at this early hour.

The scent of coffee smacked me in the face the moment I walked in—a Colombian roast, dark, with hints of caramel and spice.

I inhaled, savoring the smell of the new blend, and waved at the barista on shift as I headed toward the back to prepare for my second twelve-hour shift of the week.

A cloud of pixies streaked overhead in a shower of multicolored sparkles, their rapid chatter sounding like tiny bells. One of them, a tiny creature named Quinn, perched on the curtain rod over the main window by the entrance.

We locked eyes, and I almost laughed at her annoyed expression. Quinn never participated in the other pixies’ shenanigans and tended to keep to herself, although she hung out in the coffee shop a few times a week.

Turning away from my path to the counter, I headed toward the pixie. “Hey.” I peered up at her.

“Hey.” Her voice was a few octaves lower than the others, surprisingly deep for such a small creature.

Quinn had dark hair and sharp features, and she also had the brightest purple eyes I’d ever seen.

I lowered my voice. “Want a shot of syrup?”

Quinn’s eyes lit up, but her expression swiftly fell when her gaze slid to the others. “Do I have to share?”

I snorted. “How about this?”

I opened my purse and pointed inside. “Get inside, and I’ll sneak you to where the good stuff is. Think you can get back to the front on your own?”

Quinn’s eyes narrowed. She looked at the bag, then back at the pixies, then back at the bag once more. Pixies existed on flower pollen and sugar water, but our special organic syrup proved too much for her initial resistance to the dark recesses of my purse.

With a quick look at the others, she nodded and leaped off the rod, straight into the confines of my bag.

“We can’t let Addy see,” I whispered. “Stay quiet.”

Quinn’s eyes glowed. She gave me a quick nod.

I smiled and closed the bag, hiking it over my shoulder.

Addy liked having the pixies inside the shop for the ambiance, but my boss did not like sharing the goods for free.

Even so, I had a soft spot for Quinn. She reminded me of myself, and if a little simple syrup could make her day a little brighter, I’d add a buck to the till later on.

A few minutes later, Quinn was back at the front with no one the wiser, a bit of extra pep in her step, and I was clocked in, ready to start the day.

My boss, Addy, coffee roaster extraordinaire, awkwardly held a fifty-pound bag over one of the roaster’s hoppers, slowly pouring in new beans.

I tossed my purse onto the table and hurried over, snagging the stepladder next to the table.

She sighed when I lifted the bottom of the bag, easing her burden. “Thanks. The weight isn’t as bad as the awkward shape.” Addy adjusted her grip and let the flow of beans die down to a trickle before she tied the top with a piece of brown twine. “Want to help me down?”

I eased some of the bag’s weight onto my shoulder, and we carefully walked it down together. The burlap sack was no longer heavy, but it was still cumbersome enough to cause a nasty fall if one of us lost our balance.

When we made it to the floor, Addy set the beans on the table, dusted her hands off, and wiped her shiny forehead with the back of her arm. “I need to get a hoist or something.”

“You could have called one of the baristas back,” I chided.

My boss was a small woman with hair so pale it was almost white.

She had the fey look of a Faerie resident, though she never claimed to be one thing or another.

The only time I ever asked, she’d given me a look so withering that any future questions I might have asked had shriveled up and died in my throat.

Some people were sensitive about their roots. Asking wasn’t exactly polite, but Addy and I had worked together for at least three months before I even broached the subject. Apparently, with her, there was never a right time to have that kind of conversation.

Addy lifted a thin shoulder. “I had it. Mostly.”

We laughed. I’d worked at her shop for a while now, and Addy had only started asking for more help a few weeks ago. I was glad to chip in. I liked my boss, but I liked money more, and she tossed a little extra in my paycheck during the weeks I was more helpful than usual.

Addy rarely hired new baristas. Attrition was low in her shop, but eventually, people had to move on to grow. Her hiring process was glacial, but I didn’t mind because it meant extra hours for me.

I understood her reticence in bringing on new employees.

When magic was an integral part of your success, and you were secretive about your origins, hiring the wrong person could tear down everything you worked so hard to build.

No one freely discussed their abilities.

In a society where power dictated status, few gave up any information another could use to harm them.

My boss was a perfect example of this. She knew I was a witch because she’d done a thorough criminal and magical background check.

I suspected she was fae, but there was no way to confirm unless she told me.

Hiring me, even with my less than stellar history, was a no-brainer.

Few witches could truly be deemed as dangerous.

My registration as a lower-level hedgewitch meant I was no threat to anyone. On paper, at least. Plus, I didn’t like talking about where I came from any more than she did, and I didn’t even have any major skeletons in my closet.

A few bones, maybe, but none were my fault.

I carried some generational trauma around, but didn’t we all?

“The roast smells wonderful.” I snagged my purse from the table where I’d dropped it and fished out the rest of my uniform.

“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 said Just One More Chapter on 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 worked the 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.