Even a simple cup of coffee holds Trouble for a magical Protector…
Cary has no idea what draws her to the café. Maybe the easily accessible bookstore next door. Or maybe just the smell of rich roasting coffee beans. As a caffeine addict and sucker for a cute coffee shop, it wouldn’t take much to lure her in. And of course, Deacon happily indulges her habits.
But what starts as an innocent break at a new-to-her coffee shop turns into something danger the minute the mysterious man walks through the front door.
No rest—or uninterrupted coffee—for this magical Protector. Cary jumps into action to keep the good guys safe. Eventually she’ll get back to her coffee. So long as no one dies.
CARY AND DEACON AT THE CAFE is available to read for free until the 1st of July, when another story will be posted. For readers who would prefer to read on a device of preference, or who would like their own personal eBook of this story, you can find it here.
***
Cary and Deacon at the Café
A Café Story
Cary Redmond pushed through the glass door and grinned at the cute café, the smells of brewing coffee settling deep into her coffee-addicted soul. This was the best possible thing she could imagine. A coffee shop attached to a bookstore.
“There’s a bookstore,” she excitedly whispered to Deacon.
“Yes,” he said, his expression neutral, though she spotted the slight twitch to his lips. “I did notice that part. I assume we’ll be spending time in there after the coffee?”
“You would assume right, big guy.” She patted his arm, then had to force her hand away when she got distracted by the feel of him. Her sexy as hell leopard shifter mate was almost as addictive as coffee and their mate bond ensured she could not get enough of him. Fortunately, this was not a hardship in her life.
Other things in her life were complicated and a pain in the ass. Deacon was not one of those things.
The coffee shop had at least a dozen people scattered around the round wooden tables, in various states of typical café activities. Two different people on laptops, mugs beside them as they focused on whatever was happening on their screens. A trio of teenagers all talking while also scrolling their phones, which Cary found impressive because the conversation seemed to be about who was the best philosopher, Jung or Canto. Although, she might have been hearing that wrong and they could be talking about sports people or musical people or fellow students. Hard to say with her ordinary human hearing. Deacon probably knew with his super shifter hearing.
There was an older woman sitting in the very middle of the café sipping on a mug and reading an erotic novel with a very racy cover—Cary would have to remember that cover and look into that book later. A woman with a baby stroller cooing at the baby inside while she downed a very large coffee. A man reading a book Cary couldn’t see as he sipped his drink and occasionally glanced up at the barista. And a couple of people who liked like they might work nearby and were here on a break—she was pretty sure it was a weekday. Maybe?
Hard to remember. Her job was a kind of twenty-four hour on call thing so she didn’t pay attention to weekdays and weekends. And Deacon had taken a few days off because his twin sister was in town and there was definitely something going on there but no one had deigned to tell her about it yet and wasn’t that a state of affairs she intended to do something about.
Despite the crowd, there were still a few free tables. And she’d been on her feet for long enough she wanted a seat. Plus the call of the coffee was drawing her toward the counter. So coffee first. Then off to bookshop because she was nosey and she wanted to know if that book the older woman was reading was any good.
Deacon set a hand to her lower back as they headed toward the counter and the awaiting barista and this gave Cary a warm, melty feeling all over. She still couldn’t believe he could do that to her with such a simple touch. The man was truly a wonder. She was delighted he’d turned out to be her wonder, though.
At the long wooden counter, the barista waited, smiling at them. “What can I get you?”
Cary was so tempted to say, “I’ll have what she’s having” about the woman reading the erotic book. So. Tempted. Her obsession with 80s music and movies was a source of much amusement to her family and a shared obsession with her friend Marianne. Deacon, who’d been an actual adult in the eighties—because shifters aged differently and even though he looked in his mid-thirties, and was about that “age” in leopard shifter years, he had actually passed fifty-eight years on the planet—did not understand her all-things-80s obsession but he did indulge it. For which she was grateful.
The barista looked young enough, though, she probably wouldn’t get the reference. Though her age was difficult to judge—and Cary sucked at judging ages anyway since her job required her to be around preternatural and supernatural beings (like her mate) who either didn’t age or aged differently to humans—the barista looked like she was probably in her late twenties-early thirties. Which, though Cary was only in her early thirties—because you weren’t mid-thirties until you hit thirty-five and that was a hill she would die on—most people her age, outside of Marianne and Lucy (Angie was that little bit older so she didn’t count in this and had a valid reason for her enjoyment of all things 80s), did not know 80s references.
A long way to get to the fact that she didn’t, despite much desire, spout the line and just grinned. “Largest coffee you have available. Milk and sweetener are excellent. This place is adorable.”
The barista grinned. “Thank you for that. I’ve worked really hard to ensure it’s comfortable for people.”
“You have accomplished that. Though how could you go wrong opening a coffee shop attached to a bookstore.”
“Exactly!” The barista looked at the very large Maine coon cat sprawled over the top of a stool that looked entirely too small for the little beastie. “Told you so,” she said to the cat.
The cat, for his part, licked a paw and gave Deacon a very long stare.
Occasionally, cats took issue with the large human who smelled like cat. Not always. Dogs were more of an issue for Deacon, though her little three dog pack had accepted him right away. But since Deacon’s job was rescuing animals—and wasn’t that just amazing and made him even more perfect for Cary—he always found a way to deal with the animals that might have problems with large cats walking in their midst. It was a family business so all his leopard shifter siblings were good at that. His twin brother was even a vet!
The Maine coon and Deacon spent a few moments staring at each other, the cat gave Deacon a sort of nod, Deacon nodded back, and they both went back to what they’d been doing. Deacon checking the menu behind the counter and the Maine coon licking his paws.
“That’s Boo,” the barista/café owner said. “Ignore him. He’s got an attitude.”
Cary would swear she heard the cat release a short, sharp hiss before purring so loudly he sounded like an engine gearing up.
She chuckled. “I love all animals, his attitude is perfect.”
The café owner grinned. “Can I get you anything else besides the one coffee?”
Deacon frowned a little. “I don’t suppose I could get a glass of milk. Just milk.”
The café owner paused only a beat before saying, “Skim or whole? With or without ice?”
“No ice. Whole.”
Cary reached back and took his hand. Her big cat shifter drinking milk always made her grin. The fact that it had barely fazed the café owner was a testament to her professionalism.
The woman rang up their order and said, “Make yourselves comfortable. I’ll bring this over to you in just a minute.”
Cary and Deacon found a table near one wall of the café, a position that allowed her to see the door and all the people coming and going. Part of that was a habit from her job—she didn’t have to see bad guys coming but it helped—and part was because she was nosey and wanted to watch all the people coming and going. It also gave her a good view into the bookstore where she intended on spending some time after getting a much-needed caffeine boost.
“So,” she said to Deacon as they waited, “are you going to tell me what’s happening with Jocelyn or is it private and you can’t talk about it?”
He pulled in a deep breath, let it out slowly. “As my mate, I would tell you anything. I do tell you everything. That I can.”
“But this is Jocelyn’s private life and not yours to tell.” Cary nodded and let out a sigh. “I figured. But I’m curious so I thought I’d ask.”
“If and when she gives me permission to discuss it, I’ll fill you in.” He took her hand across the table, gently circling his thumb over her fingers.
She got distracted by the gesture for a beat before saying, “It’s fine. Really. I don’t want to violate her privacy.” But yeah, no, she was super curious and that wasn’t going away any time soon. If he could explain it all one day, she would be all in, popcorn in lap, ready to listen.
The barista brought her coffee and Deacon’s milk a minute later, giving them a friendly smile before heading back to the counter. On the way, she glanced at the man sitting alone in a cushioned chair by the front window—the man Cary had noticed glanced at the barista regularly. The barista looked away quickly and an adorable blush rose up her cheeks. Cary grinned.
Well, she might not get the gossip on Deacon’s sister, but she could content herself with imagining all the stories going on inside the café. Starting with the man by the window and the café owner.
Her fist sip of coffee left her humming under her breath, a deep sigh of satisfaction.
Deacon grinned at her. “All better now?”
“Superb.” She grinned back.
Or at least she was happy until the door to the café opened and that warning tingling along her back started up.
The warning that her particular brand of help was needed.
***
The man who stepped into the café didn’t look threatening outwardly. That happened sometimes. Bad guys just looked like ordinary people, walking around, doing life without anyone noticing they were dangerous and not nice. Cary wasn’t even sure she would have realized this guy was bad news if it weren’t for her Protector instincts kicking in.
Being a magical Protector was ever so slightly like being a superhero—at least that’s what she liked to think—and meant she had these skills. But instead of instincts born of a radioactive spider bite, she had Protector instincts. And instead of a secret cave with all her cool stuff in it, she had a secret attic with all her cool stuff in it. Although her cool stuff included a lot of very weird books she wouldn’t want her mother to see and a computer linked up to the parts of the internet she wouldn’t be able to access on her ordinary laptop—she had someone who’d set that up for her, she wouldn’t know how to access a dark net if it fell over her head.
At any rate, what Cary did know was how to protect people from bad guys. It was her entire job. She even got paid for it. She channeled magic given to her by her bosses—the North American Fae who created Protectors—and that magic created a lovely shield and that lovely shield kept all the bad guys out and all the good guys in. Cary just had to be between them.
She often described herself as a walking, talking Kevlar vest. This was an accurate description. She could even stop bullets with her shield—though not always in time to keep from getting a bruise, but that was another story.
The trick really was to get between the good guy and bad guy in time—and a burst of more-than-human speed was within her realm of the possible thanks to the Protector magic—but that was even trickier when you weren’t sure who the good guy was. And in this case, while Cary was quite certain the man who just walked in was the “bad guy” she could not for the life of her figure out who the “good guy” was because the man who’d just entered didn’t look around the place like he was looking for someone. He didn’t hone in on one person. He gave the café a cursory glance, the way Cary had when she’d entered, and then went right to the counter to order a coffee.
Cary did notice that the café owner looked a little more stiff and formal with the new customer. But she didn’t look in obvious distress, and the man only gave the owner enough attention to place and pay for his order. Most of his attention appeared to be turned inward.
He wasn’t the one Cary was supposed to be protecting. She could feel that. He was the threat. But she couldn’t tell who he was threatening. And that made it very difficult to get between him and the someone. Keeping one eye on the man, she glanced around at the other patrons to see if anyone was looking at him too.
Deacon of course had gone quiet the minute she straightened in her seat and muttered, “Shit.” He knew what that meant. Knew the look she got when she had to go save someone. He held himself perfectly still, waiting for her to move, his gaze also tracking around the café. There was a very very faint hint of yellow in his golden eyes, just the barest sign of his leopard raising its head. But he seemed well controlled—probably because there was no immediate threat to her—so she didn’t worry about him.
Everyone else in the café seemed to still be doing their own thing. The three teenagers had left for the bookstore, and a couple of other people had wandered in from the bookstore. The man by the window who’d been exchanging looks with the café owner was watching her, his mouth turned down slightly, his attention more obvious now. Watchful, but in that way that actually reminded Cary of Deacon. A sort of waiting-to-act coiled sort or watchfulness.
Waiting to see if the owner needed help.
That was interesting all on its own, and if she didn’t need to get to work soon, she’d have watched that like a TV show. But it was obvious he wasn’t the one in danger here. And it didn’t seem to be the café owner either.
The man in the back of the café pounding away at his computer was still pounding away. The woman who’d been working on hers had since closed her laptop and was sipping her coffee while flipping through a magazine.
No one looked in distress or panicky. No one but the man at the window, the owner of the café, and Cary and Deacon were paying the newcomer any attention.
What the hell?
Her instincts were screaming at her to move, to get between that man and…someone. But which someone?
She couldn’t remember ever having this problem before. The good guy was almost always obvious. Mostly because the bad guy was already proving they were the bad guy by going after the good guy by the time Cary’s instincts started up. She’d rarely encountered someone her instincts screamed was the threat without having someone also standing right there being threatened.
This was weird. “This is weird,” she murmured to Deacon.
“What’s happening?” He leaned across the table and took her hand, pretending at casual even though his muscles were all tense and ready for action.
Again, under different circumstances, she’d have indulged in admiring those coiled muscles. “I’m not sure.” She leaned forward to whisper too. But in her case, she didn’t have to worry that he’d hear her. She could whisper at him from across the room and he’d hear her. “The man who just walked in triggered my Protector instincts in a bad way. I need to get between him and someone. But the someone isn’t presenting themselves so I’m not sure what to do.”
“The owner doesn’t like him,” Deacon murmured.
“No she does not. Her admirer is ready to jump to her rescue as well. But no one else in here seems to be paying any attention to the man.”
“You know you’re supposed to protect someone from him and not, say, protect him from someone?”
She shook her head just a little. “He’s the bad guy. Certain of it. Just…” She scowled and glanced around. “No idea who the good guy is.”
“This is weird.”
“Very.” She scanned the café again. Maybe it was someone due to walk in soon?
She kind of wanted to ask the owner if that man came in regularly. The owner might have been formal with him because he was a regular that she knew was bad news? But Cary wasn’t sure how to broach that topic without it being weird. She couldn’t very well explain that she needed to get between him and someone he intended on hurting but she wasn’t sure who that someone was. And also she didn’t tell people she was a Protector. The less people knew about her and what she did, and most importantly how she did it, the safer for everyone.
Several tense moments passed without anything happening. And then a middle-aged man carrying a small, fluffy dog walked into the café from the bookstore. He was maybe Cary’s height, which was a little shorter than average for a man, with dark hair liberally sprinkled with gray. He wore a colorful pair of pink and orange pants with a geometric pattern in blue on them, a plain white cotton t-shirt, and a blue kerchief tied around his neck like a cravat. Half his face was clean shaven, the other half had a full beard and mustache—and she imagined that took a lot of effort to maintain such a precise line down the middle of his mouth and chin. And he wore a bowler hat on his head at a jaunty angle.
He was a study in contrasts. Designed to stick out in a crowd. Eccentric. But in that sort of pleasant way that Cary admired in people. Being his true self. She loved that.
He cooed at the dog in his arms as they moved into the café, the dog’s tail wagging, its little tongue hanging out. “Maybe they’ll have a biscuit for you,” the man said, his voice surprisingly deep—though she wasn’t sure why that surprised her. “Would you like a biscuit, Betty?”
A dog named Betty.
Perfect.
“You suppose his name is Al?” Deacon whispered.
“Huh?”
“Nothing.” Deacon smiled at her briefly. Then grew serious again. “That’s your good guy, isn’t it?”
“He is,” she said and patted Deacon’s hands. “I’ll be back.”
She stood and, as casually as she could manage, she set herself between the man in the bowler hat and his dog Betty, and the man she knew was a threat. She made a sort of pretense at walking toward the counter as if she intended on ordering something else but really was just positioning herself to protect Betty and her owner.
Which was good timing because that’s when the man she’d been certain was a bad guy stood up from the seat he’d taken and started toward Betty and her owner.
Drawing a knife as he charged.
***
Cary heard all the exclamations around her, the gasps, the curse from the owner. She heard the man behind her let out a surprised squeak and Betty started barking—the little dog had a very high-pitched bark. The man with the knife over his head charged Betty’s owner.
And Cary took a single step to the side. Placing her right in between the knife guy and the dog guy.
This resulted in the knife bouncing off her shield in an almost comic way that sent the attacker backward a step.
Silence and stillness reigned for a full twenty seconds after that.
Cary could see from the corner of her eye that the café owner had come out from behind the counter, her admirer was now standing, and strangely—or not so strangely—the Maine coon cat was now inching toward the man with the knife.
She looked directly at the cat and said, “Don’t get hurt. I’ve got this. You can go back to napping.”
The cat stilled, looked at her in that slow way that proved Cary’s guess had been right, and then he licked his lips, blinked his pale blue eyes, turned and leapt back up onto his too small stool, circling a few times before sprawling across it again. The cat did keep his attention on the happenings, but he stayed out of the way.
This was good. Cary would absolutely have to jump in and save him if he got into trouble because Cary always protected animals. But that could get complicated in this situation. Better to have the bad guy focused on only one person and that person was already under Cary’s protection.
“So,” she said into the still ringing silence that followed her comment to the cat, “what’s all this about then?”
“He stole my dog,” the man with the knife said. “She’s worth a fortune. I want her back.”
Since said dog was behind Cary growling low in her throat in an almost subsonic show of “no,” Cary was going to assume Betty was happier with the man with the bright pants and jaunty hat.
“She was never your dog,” the man behind her said. “She was our dog and you gave up any rights to her when you tried to sell her off to a breeder.”
Yeah, that didn’t sound nice.
But it also sounded like some really interesting gossip and Cary was up for listening to the gossip now she was sure no one would get hurt.
“She could have gotten me out of debt and all you cared about was keeping her to yourself,” the man with the knife snarled.
“Do you know what they would have done to her at the breeders!” shouted Betty’s owner—yes, Cary saw the man behind her as the sole owner of Betty now. She knew what went on at some breeders. She’d been a vet tech before her job change to Protector.
“Do you understand what they’ll do to me if I don’t pay them back?” the knifeman hissed, getting as close to them as Cary’s shield would allow, then scowling at the empty air that refused to let him pass.
From her right, Cary could just hear the owner speaking to someone quietly on the phone, probably a 911 operator. Cary didn’t tend to like when the cops showed up because they complicated things and sometimes gave her more people to protect, depending on the situation. Also, they asked questions she couldn’t answer, like, “How could you just stand there and not get stabbed when that man had a knife he kept trying to stab you with?”
That was a complicated question to answer when you didn’t want to tell the truth because it might get you locked up but also couldn’t tell the truth because it was dangerous for you.
But in this case, with all these witnesses, it would be weird if no one did call the cops, and even weirder if there were no cops arriving to take care of the man with the knife. Maybe Cary could just…slip out after they arrived. She’d miss her bookstore shopping spree, but she could always come back. Outside of the knife-wielding bad guy, she really liked this café.
Until the cops arrived, though, Cary needed to keep the knife-wielding bad guy talking. If he left that would be fine, too, but it would make it harder for the cops to arrest him.
“Who do you have to pay back and why and how much?” There was just no way he was going to answer those questions.
“I’m not telling you anything, you bitch. Get out of my way.”
She told herself so. No way he’d answer. She was not counting on the man behind her with Betty telling her everything, however.
“He bets,” Betty’s owner said. “He throws all his money into a gambling addiction. And anything Betty ever earned on the dog show circuit he also gambled away. We broke up because he couldn’t stop throwing good money after bad with increasingly dangerous bets.”
“I just need one more chance. The next one will pay off. But I can’t make that bet without up-front money. And I can’t get up-front money without that fucking dog.”
Cary moved a little more firmly in front of Betty and her owner. She realized she might actually be protecting the dog more than the man but that was just as well. She always protected animals.
“Betty isn’t your bargaining chip or yours to sell off,” Betty’s owner said. “And she’s not getting sent off to some puppy mill to pop out endless rounds of babies after they’ve breed her with unacceptable males.”
The disgust in his voice echoed Cary’s sentiments.
“You don’t understand,” the man with the knife said. “They will kill me. I need to give them something.”
“That’s your own problem. You shouldn’t have gotten in with them in the first place.”
“They?” Cary asked over her shoulder, though she already knew. It was always one of two kinds of people and either kind were quick to take out a man’s knees if they didn’t get their money back.
“Loan sharks,” Betty’s owner said.
Yup. Definitely one of the two potentials. “They’ll probably only take your knees,” she told the knife man. “Those types want their money back and they can’t get money from a dead man.”
The man with the knife wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, then charged at her with the knife raised.
She scowled and shook her head as he bounced off her shield. “That was ridiculous. Stop. You’re embarrassing yourself.”
From behind her, she was pretty sure she heard Deacon growl. But he was safely behind her, under her protection if he needed it, and she was between him and the guy with the knife so the guy with the knife was safe from Deacon. She really really hated protecting bad guys, especially from the man she loved, but what could she do. It was her job.
The knife man waved his knife at her. “How are you doing that?”
“Just a knack. You know they’ve called the cops, right?”
He looked around more frantically now. “The cops will turn me over to them. They’ll kill me.”
She wasn’t sure that was true.
Although, she wasn’t sure it wasn’t true either.
“In that case,” she said pragmatically, “maybe you should run away.”
“Not without that fucking dog.” He lunged again, so hard he bounced off her shield and landed on his ass on the ground.
She sighed and shook her head. “Embarrassing.”
“I will gut you,” the man screamed from the floor.
“Your dumb ass is laid out flat on the ground. How do you propose to do that?” She was losing patience for this guy. Especially since he was trying to use poor Betty to save himself from a mess he’d created for himself. “Get therapy. Join a twelve-step program. Get help. Do something that isn’t horrible for once.”
Knife guy shoved himself back to his feet. But he’d managed to drop his knife. He swung around, hunting for it.
He and Cary realized at the same time the knife had slid over the floor to the man by the window who’d been making eyes at the café owner. The man was standing and he had his foot on the knife. Knife Man would have to shove him over to get at his weapon again. Window Man did not look like the kind of person who would be easy to shove over. Which kind of surprised Cary because he’d looked perfectly innocuous when sitting at the window.
Huh. Interesting.
Also, though, how had the knife even gotten that far away? Cary hadn’t heard it slid. And she hadn’t thought Knife Man had hit the ground hard enough for that to send the knife so far. But maybe she’d been distracted by Knife Man’s pathetic plan.
“There you have it,” she said. “No more knife. You’re not getting Betty. And the police should be here any minute. Run away. Get therapy. Get into a program. Do better. Maybe you’ll survive.”
“Bitch,” Knife Man yelled as he charged her again. She shook her head. This really was ridiculous.
Window Man made to move toward her but she raised a hand and shook her head as Knife Man bounced off her shield. Again. This hit sent him flying back against the café door. Cary winced since the door was glass, but fortunately it didn’t break.
“What are you doing to him?” Betty’s owner whispered—not very quietly—to Cary.
“He’s doing this to himself,” she said. A sort of hand wavy way of avoiding a proper answer. But, technically, also true. If he’d stop charging her shield, he’d stop getting thrown around.
From down the street, she could just hear the approach of sirens. Knife Man must have heard the sound at the same time because his eyes widened and he fumbled his way out of the café. She watched him look both ways on the street, before running off in the opposite direction from the sirens.
“You suppose he’ll get into a program for his addiction?” she asked Betty’s owner over her shoulder.
“No. I tried that tact for the last two years. He’s hopeless.” Cary turned to see Betty’s owner scratching Betty under the chin. “And he was trying to hurt you, wasn’t he?” he said in a cooing voice. “But daddy won’t let anyone hurt his baby.”
Betty’s little fluffy tail wagged furiously as she licked the man’s face—the side that was shaven.
Window Man joined them at the same time as the café owner came around the counter.
“Everyone okay?” she asked the other customers.
There was a series of muttered affirmatives and relieved sighs.
“A coffee on the house for everyone,” the owner said. To Cary, she added, “You can have free coffee for life.”
Cary waved that way—even though it was tempting. “That’s not necessary. But I will take one of the free ones now.” She got paid for her job, but it was still nice to receive the occasional small gesture of gratitude. When that gratitude came in the form of coffee. Or books. But they weren’t in that half of the store, so…
“The knife is under the table, when the cops get here,” Window Man said to the café owner. “You’re okay?”
She smiled at him and nodded.
Cary grinned and rocked back on her heels, watching them. She loved a good budding romance. And it looked like these two were in the early stages. How sweet.
Deacon came up behind her and set a hand to hear shoulder. She sighed. Speaking of romance.
“You okay?” he murmured close to her ear.
“Of course. But thanks for asking. Also, thanks for not attacking that man when he kept threatening us.”
“I’ve learned not to do that,” Deacon said, sounding offended. “But…” And now he sounded a little embarrassed. “It was more the way he was talking about Betty. I hate puppy mills.”
She turned and gave him a big smacking kiss right on the mouth. This was exactly why she loved him so much.
“I’m afraid the police will probably need your statement,” the café owner said to Betty’s owner. “Coffee and pastry to make the wait more bearable?”
“Yes, please,” the man said. “Black coffee. And one of those croissants you get. They’re delicious.”
“You got it.”
Before the owner walked away, though, she turned to Cary. “I should probably get your name after you stopped a potentially horrible situation.
Cary grinned. “Cary. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Nina. This is my place. And you’re always welcome. I’m sure I can get the bookstore owner to extend you a discount too, if you like books.”
“I love books.” She was going to have a hard time saying no to that discount, so she might not. She had a bunch of new hardbacks she’d been looking to buy. “And it was nothing.”
Nina snort-laughed. “I swear we do not get knife-wielding men in here every day, so it was handy you happened to be here.”
“Definitely.” Though, given her job, Cary sort of suspected it was more than a coincidence. She always seemed to land where Trouble was about to happen. Hazards of the job, she supposed.
Nina headed back to the counter and Window Guy followed, giving the cat on the stool a little head scratch as he stopped at the counter to speak quietly with Nina.
Cary gave that cat a look. The cat looked back. Yeah, she was pretty positive he was a familiar. But probably best not to discuss that with Nina while the café was so full. She hadn’t met a proper witch familiar in person before, even though one of her best friends was a witch. Cary was very curious how that all worked.
Questions for later.
She turned to Betty’s owner. “I should get your name too.”
“Al,” he said with a grin.
“Told you,” Deacon said.
“I still don’t get the joke.” She looked between the two men who were smiling at each other.
“It’s from a Paul Simon song,” Al said.
“Ah.” Now she remembered it. And was embarrassed she hadn’t before. Her obsession with all things 80s had let her down.
Because she was embarrassed, she changed the subject. “If you don’t mind my asking, what was the thinking behind the half beard, half clean-shaven look? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that particular style of facial hair before.” She kind of liked it. It was so precise and interesting.
Al chuckled. “I’m in a play. It’s very avant-garde. Very experimental. I play two different roles at the same time and the director wanted the two characters to have different looks.” He gestured at his face. “Thus the facial hair.”
“Cool.” Cary got the information for his play, fully intending on going to see it.
Al went to get his coffee when Nina called him over. And Cary leaned back into Deacon. “You sure you want to stay and talk to the cops,” he murmured next to her ear.
“I would rather not. But I have a feeling Nina can handle the more…mysterious aspects of what just happened.”
“Because she’s a witch with a familiar and so not unaccustomed to dealing with paranormal things?”
Cary chuckled. “Wondered if you’d spotted that.”
“Her familiar won’t talk to me, but there were some subsonic growls while we established the boundaries of me being here.”
“Really? Cool. I didn’t know you could do that.” And that gave her a whole bunch of questions to ask her mate.
But after coffee. And maybe after some book shopping.
A police car pulled up outside, and Nina dealt with the two officers who walked into the café like a pro. The man who’d been pounding away at his computer went back to furiously pounding the keyboard until the cops asked for his statement. The rest of the people in the café gave their statements then settled back in with their free drinks. No one seemed particularly bothered by the interlude with a knife-wielding man.
Even the cops settled at the counter for a couple of coffees and some croissants, completely ignoring Cary and Deacon.
The fact that they didn’t have to answer questions or give a statement and no one in the café seemed to notice was something that did not go unnoticed to Cary. She gave Nina a raised eyebrow.
Nina gave her a wink.
Cary grinned.
Yeah. She was definitely coming back to this café.
***
Thanks for reading CARY AND DEACON AT THE CAFE. I hope you enjoyed it. If you’d like your own personal eBook copy of this story, you can find it for sale here. You can also peruse the previous Café stories that are individually available for sale here.
Also, if you haven't guessed by now, I like the Betty and Al song by Paul Simons and it was stuck in my head while I was writing a bunch of these stories so it...ah, came up a few times. LOL.
If this was your first Cary Redmond story, I have a whole series you might want to dive into! Cary and Deacon first meet in the main novel series, starting with THE TROUBLE WITH BLACK CATS AND DEMONS. There are also a load of short stories and novellas that take place in the time before Cary meets Deacon, after she becomes a Protector, and some stories after she's met Deacon that aren't necessary to the main series but are fun to read.
Cary also has some of her own merch, including her own Coffee--because of course--available for shipping to US and Canada, as well as items that crossover with the cafe. Most of the merch is only available in the US at the moment. Sorry! But keep your eyes out as I'm looking for options to expand into other territories.
Thanks again for reading this month's Story from the Cafe! And don’t forget to check back on July 1st for the next Free story from The Café!
CARY AND DEACON AT THE CAFE Copyright © 2025 Kat Simons
All Rights Reserved. No part of this story may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This story is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.