BONUS READING FOR DECEMBER
Virgil at the Café
A Café Story
Nina was having “one of those days” and since it was one of the rare “one of those days” at the café, she wasn’t particularly happy about it. She supposed she could consider herself lucky, that since she’d started this coffee shop adjoined to the bookstore next door, she’d had very few really disastrous days. A few weird things had happened of course. Couldn’t be a witch café owner with her particular clientele and not have the occasional weird thing happen.
Mostly, though, those had been isolated incidents that hadn’t resulted in a full day of irritation, complications, and snafus. A stroppy ex that needs wrangling—lasts a few minutes and the length of time to give a police statement. Mysterious man saves a surgeon from an early death—all over in less than fifteen minutes. The possible goddess hanging out in the back of the café drawing the attention of another go—no worries, Diana handled all that without breaking a sweat and the rest of the café were none the wiser.
Things happened here. But for the most part, even the really strange, supernatural stuff happened and then was done.
It was when the ordinary stuff started to go wrong that she felt a headache coming on. First, the lock on the front door had gotten stuck. Some idiot had tried to jimmy it overnight, which was the height of stupidity, because this was a witch’s café, so of course the lock was warded. But also, there was nothing in here to steal at night. She took the money from the register to the bank every day. And at this point in history, so few people used cash, she usually didn’t have all that much on hand, even when the register was full. The most expensive thing in the café was the espresso machine, but it weighed a ton. A thief would really be desperate to steal it. And then where the hell would they sell it? She couldn’t imagine there was a big call for café-sized espresso machines on the black market. Or whatever. She’d never been a thief. She didn’t know how all that worked.
At any rate, the screwed up lock meant she had to come in through the bookstore—which hadn’t had its lock messed with thankfully!—and get a locksmith to come immediately to change the lock. But immediately for the locksmith wasn’t “immediately” in the conventional sense of the word, and it took him a good three hours to arrive. Which meant she’d had to hang a sign on the door telling everyone who wanted to come into the café that they had to come in and out through the bookstore.
That was working, mostly. And it did mean more foot traffic through the bookstore, which the owner didn’t mind because some of those people stopped to peruse the shelves. The bookstore had been doing a good business that morning because of it.
But the lock issue wasn’t the only problem that seemed to plague the café that day.
Nina had only been open for twenty minutes when the espresso machine started to hiccup and hiss. That was very bad, because her entire business was that bloody machine. It kept making coffee, and the coffee tasted fine. But the machine was making some very bad sounds that did not bode well for its future and health.
Then the pastry delivery was late. Not just a few minutes late. But two hours late. Which meant she hadn’t had her usual selection for the breakfast crowd who came in for their mid-morning coffee and snack on a work break or even on the way to work. By the time the food arrived, she had too much of it and knew it wouldn’t sell by the end of the day. She’d been in business long enough now to have a good estimate of the supply and demand for things, down to the times of day when things were in demand. Unless she had a very unusual day, she was going to have a whole bunch of pastries left over.
She hated wasted food, and she’d salvage what she could, sell it at a discount tomorrow, but not everything would last, even in the fridge. One of the things she’d prided herself on since opening her doors was that the food treats served were fresh and at the peak of their yumminess. Day old was not peak yumminess for most of this stuff.
Then, just to add a little more irritation to the morning. Two of her most comfortable couches suddenly had cushion fluff popping out. She’d had to duct tape the holes in the soft leather closed as a temporary fix, which didn’t look good at all, and discovered that at least one of the couches had a few more thin spots where the cushion fluff was peeking through. They were new couches. She hadn’t bought used, she’d gone all in on brand new furniture when she’d added the more comfortable seating. There’s no way they should be this worn already. Yes, the café was busy with a lot of people coming in and out, but this amount of wear and tear was ridiculous.
All that had just been the morning. The first few hours after opening. Most of it—except for the strange noises coming from the espresso machine—weren’t horrible. They were things that could be dealt with and wouldn’t mean shutting the café for a full day, but they were all individually irritating and when taken together left her well and truly kerfuffle.
The afternoon did not get better.
It was all a series of inconveniences mostly. Some plates and mugs broke, at random moments and not just because they were dropped. She had a to-go cup of coffee crumble in her hand, spilling coffee all over her and her apron. That required a lot of profuse apologies to the customer and getting a whole new coffee for them—but at least the second one didn’t crumble. The lock got fixed and she was able to open the front door, but it kept getting stuck open when people pushed it inward, letting in some very cold, and breezy air. The fall hadn’t turned to winter yet, but it was definitely cold enough the door needed to stay closed.
Then Boo’s stool, the place he’d spent every day since they opened the café, developed a wobble. One of the three legs suddenly seemed an inch shorter than the other two. She checked the stool repeatedly, thinking maybe one of those cushiony bits on the bottom that prevented the legs from scratching the floor had come off, but she couldn’t see a problem there. The stool just wobbled. After a few attempts to make himself comfortable on the newly wobbling stool, Boo finally gave up and curled up in one of the cushioned sets beside the counter. That took up a seating area where customers could sit—and some of them didn’t actually mind sharing the table with a cat so didn’t hesitate to join him in his little seating nook, but others were nervous or just not happy about having their coffee and pastry sitting so close to a strange animal.
Boo gave her a look when she pointed this out and used the term “strange animal,” but really, he couldn’t realistically object to that descriptor because he was a witch’s familiar and therefore definitely a “strange” cat.
She didn’t shoo Boo out of the spot, however. Where else would he go? She did spend any quiet time she had trying to fix his stool, though.
At one point, while she was attempting to fix the seat in ordinary, conventionally human ways—like adding a bit of cardboard under the leg that seemed to be shorter for no reason—Boo sidled up to her and actually whispered, “Use magic. I miss my stool.”
“First, you’re talking while we have customers?” That was surprising. He’d been really good about not doing that when the café was open, because he was supposed to be an ordinary—if large and strange—cat. This was the first time since they’d opened that he’d actually spoken to her while there were customers inside the café.
He made a show of licking his paw and wrapping his tail around his lower legs as he sat beside her while she worked on the stool. From the outside, he probably didn’t look suspicious at all. Still. He didn’t normally talk. So he must really want his stool back.
“Second,” she said, still quiet enough that she was pretty sure no one else would hear them. There was a shifter sitting at the far end of the café, a tiger, if she wasn’t mistaken, but the woman had earbuds in and her face in a book, so Nina assumed the shifter wasn’t interested in listening into Nina and Boo’s conversation. “Second, I’m not going to use magic unnecessarily in front of our customers, especially if they might notice.”
Boo gave her a look, and she could tell he desperately wanted to say more, but he kept it to himself and went back to the cushioned chair, curling up in the very center divot on the seat. It was both large enough for him and looked a lot more comfortable than the stool ever had. But obviously Boo preferred the stool, so she had to fix it.
The cardboard didn’t work, though, and Nina was starting to wonder if there wasn’t some sort of hex on the café. The sheer number of weird stuff and inconveniences and irritants happening was a little over the top for just having a bad day.
By the time she’d tried and failed three different ways to get the stool stable, she gave up and decided her time would be better spent—in between customers and clean up—making sure there wasn’t some kind of magical hex on the café. She hadn’t thought to look for something because bad days happened, and the things that were going wrong were ordinary enough. Nothing that really smacked of the supernatural or magic.
Except for maybe Boo’s stool.
So when she could, she let her gaze drift to near shut and scanned her surroundings, looking for the telltale signs of magic.
There wasn’t the immediate sparkle and flash that she’d have thought might show up if the place was the subject of a witch attack. But at the very edge of her vision, she spotted some dark patches. Not a particular color, but just…shadows. It wasn’t like anything she’d seen before. Almost more like things had been cloaked, the spells or whatever hidden.
After helping another customer, Nina wandered over to a corner of the café where she had seen one of the shadows and made a show of straightening the table and chairs as she looked for the source of that darkness. And there, in a corner nook at the back of the café, tucked tight to the floor and very difficult to see, she spotted a button. A very small button. Black. And if she hadn’t known better, it would look completely innocent. Like someone had lost a button off their shirt. Nothing more.
But she barely had to wave her hand over it to feel the angry energy of it.
Not witch magic as it turned out. Wizard magic.
And not just any wizard.
She sighed. Murmured a spell to break the magic on the button, watched it hiss and smoke as the spell woven into it shattered. Then carefully picked it up and dropped it into one of her apron pockets—the one that was set with a spell for holding potentially dangerous objects. She only had one pocket on the apron bespelled that way, because while she liked to be prepared, she hadn’t anticipated this kind of magical trouble in her café. Just went to show. Maybe she’d better get another pocket bespelled. Or get the lovely weaver who frequented the café to make her a new apron with all the bells and whistles. There was only so much Nina could do with cloth.
Once she was sure the little button was secured, she paced the café, to the other dark spots, until she found the rest of the random buttons dropped around the seating area and even behind the counter, just at the back of the espresso machine. When she broke that spell, the espresso machine stopped making all the ominous noises it had been making all day. Some relief in that. Getting a replacement fast would have been difficult.
In total, she found seven buttons scattered throughout the coffee shop. One near the door leading into the bookstore, which worried her, so she went into the bookstore while Boo watched the register—by sprawling on the floor right in front of it—and hunted for any dark patches on that side of the business. Nothing there, fortunately. So whoever had dropped the buttons hadn’t been out to sabotage the bookstore. Just the café.
And she had a pretty good idea who’d done it, too.
The question was, why?
Well, she had a vague idea why. And who. She’d have to double check. She did want specific answers, though. Because the particular type of wizard magic used on the buttons, wizard magic that was unique, pointed to one particular culprit.
Virgil.
***
When Nina returned to the register, Boo was perched next to his stool watching the store closely. She squatted down, pretending to pet him, and opened the pocket in her apron enough for him to see inside. He met her gaze, and she raised her brows, sure he’d pick up the scent of Virgil the way she got a sense of Virgil’s magic.
Boo let out a low hiss and his tail slashed back and forth.
She felt the same way.
Virgil hadn’t been inside the café, that she’d been aware of, since she’d met him, but somehow the former vampire-hunting wizard, turned vampire wizard had managed to get all those bespelled buttons dropped around the café. Either he’d hired someone and she hadn’t noticed the associate. He’d been able to disguise himself from her—which was rather a scary prospect. Or he’d tricked several people into dropping the buttons throughout the café using his vampire mesmerism.
All possible. The last probably the most logical. She wouldn’t necessarily have spotted that kind of mesmeric suggestion on different customers, unless she’d been specifically looking for it. Which she hadn’t been. Though she would now.
Without asking Virgil himself, she couldn’t eliminate any of the possibilities, though.
“Have you smelled him at all?” she asked Boo quietly, her gaze scanning the café. Virgil would have to go a long way to sneak in here himself and hide his scent from her familiar. That was one of the great benefits of having a familiar.
Boo made a small hacking sound that she took for a no.
Didn’t mean the vampire hadn’t snuck in, but that pushed the option lower on the list of possibilities.
As she watched the customers, she noticed one young woman, sitting in the corner not too far from the bookstore, stretch and reach down toward her shoe. Something tumbled from her fist as she retied her shoe laces, which hadn’t looked loose, then she straightened and went back to scrolling her phone as she drank her coffee.
“You see that?” Nina asked Boo.
Boo nodded, then wove through the café tables, toward the woman who’d just dropped another one of the black buttons. Boo rubbed against her leg and she grinned and reached down to pet him. Boo made a show of enjoying the attention—actually it probably wasn’t a show—as he swatted at the button that had been dropped. The woman looked at what he was swatting but didn’t show signs of being concerned that she’d been caught doing something. She didn’t pick the button up either, so didn’t seem to see it as something she’d lost. In fact, even though she could clearly see Boo moving the button around, she didn’t seem to notice the button at all.
Well, that pretty much answered that question. Looked like vampiric mesmerism.
Nina let out a long hiss that wasn’t unlike her longtime companion’s hisses and pulled her phone out from under the counter. Her text was brief, and to the point.
Now she just had to wait for Rhys to get here.
***
Virgil and Rhys Witherby were brothers, wizards, and vampire hunters. Thanks to a series of events that happened long before Nina had met Rhys, Virgil had been turned to a vampire, and he blamed Rhys for that. The two still hunted vampires together, and Virgil gave lip service to them still being brothers. But Rhys didn’t feel like Virgil actually saw them that way anymore.
Virgil did, however, use the connection to manipulate Rhys.
Unlike most magic wielders who were killed by and rose as vampires, Virgil brought his wizard magic with him. Which made him both a deadly foe to the vampires, and a dangerous vampire in his own right.
It also made him a dangerous enemy for Nina to have.
She wouldn’t have even been on Virgil’s radar, though, if it weren’t for Rhys. And the fact that Rhys liked the café. And Nina.
Since she liked Rhys too—a little more than liked actually—she’d made the choice not to banish Rhys from her life. And he’d made the choice to keep coming back to the café. So far, all they’d done was build their friendship—longer conversations when he stopped in, occasional texts after they’d finally exchanged phone numbers. But anything more had remained ephemeral. Neither of them had pushed their fledgling relationship to be more than friendship.
Some of that had to do with the inherent difficulty of a witch and a wizard having a relationship. They happened, but not often. The two different types of magic didn’t always…get along very well. But for Nina at least, that was an obstacle they could manage. That wasn’t the real reason she was hesitant to let things go farther than friendship.
She wasn’t sure what Rhys’s reasons were, but she knew why she was really hesitating.
Virgil.
The one and only time she’d met Rhys’s brother, he’d left on a threatening note. He’d accused Rhys of being distracted by her and since he blamed Rhys’s past distractions with work for his vampiric conversion, Virgil did not approve of Rhys and Nina’s interest in each other.
And while Nina didn’t want a random stranger dictating what she did and didn’t do in her life, she did have a business to run. Having a wizard vampire as an enemy wasn’t her first choice. A part of her thought if she and Rhys didn’t move too fast into something, if this stayed just friendship for a bit, Virgil would adjust, and there wouldn’t be a problem. He’d see that Rhys wasn’t so distracted he ignored his vampire hunting duties, and all would be well.
Except obviously things weren’t going to be that easy.
Rhys arrived a half hour after she texted. In the interim, she spotted one other person dropping a button, this time near the bathroom door, which proceeded to get someone locked inside the bathroom. Nina had to break the spell, then magic open the lock because even once the spell was broken, the lock remained stuck. She’d offer the poor trapped customer a free coffee and pastry for their inconvenience.
She was not in a good mood by the time Rhys walked through the café’s door.
Still, seeing him managed to make her skin warm and her stomach dance and a giddiness that felt ridiculous for her age coursed through her system. Really, she should be too old for this kind of crush, but apparently, she wasn’t.
To be fair, Rhys was a very handsome man. With a smile that could make her miss a step if she wasn’t careful. He was dressed for work, in a well-fitted suit and tie. His ordinary, non-supernatural job, was as a lawyer who mostly did work for non-profits but occasionally took on individual people in contract trouble. Most of which he couldn’t talk about because of attorney-client privilege and NDAs. But she got the impression his lawyerly work was important and helped people.
She liked when he was dressed for work. The suits were sharp and he looked good in them. To be fair, she liked when he was casually dressed too. She just…liked him. Most especially she liked his smile.
He wasn’t smiling as he came through the door that afternoon, though. He made a beeline for her, his expression all seriousness, his brows low over his lovely brown eyes, and murmured, “What’s happened?”
“Let’s get you a coffee and I’ll explain.” Now that her espresso machine was working well again.
Rather than the latte he got on his days off, or the black with sugar he got when he was working, he ordered an espresso shot. She supposed that was as close as they could get to alcoholic shots in the middle of a work day. So she got herself an espresso shot, too, and they took their tiny mugs to the table by the front window, where he always sat and which had just miraculously cleared out when he walked through the door.
She hadn’t done that. She wasn’t sure he had either. But she’d seen Boo flash past the table while she’d gone to get Rhys his coffee, so she figured it was something her familiar had done for them. Nice of him. Especially since Boo was reserving judgement on Rhys until things played out with his brother.
As soon as they were seated, she said, “So, your brother has decided to plague my business with mishaps.”
“Damn it. What’s he done?”
She explained the buttons, even pulled one of them out of her apron pocket and set it on the table between them. Rhys was also a wizard, like his brother, and so when he hovered his hand over the button, she knew he was feeling for the spell that had once been there. Even though she’d broken the spell, the button still had the residue of the magic on it. Magic that belonged to the person who’d created the buttons.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” she asked. She already knew. Virgil had brushed his magic against hers the one and only time they’d met face to face, so she knew it’s flavor. But having that confirmed by Rhys would put to rest any possible doubts.
“It’s him,” Rhys said with a long sight. He knocked back his entire shot of espresso in one go, and gently set the tiny ceramic mug back on the table. “Bastard promised me he would leave you alone.”
“You ask him to?” She probably shouldn’t feel all soft and squishy inside at hearing that, but here she was. Soft and melty for Rhys’s consideration.
She was really in deep with this crush.
“I asked him to. And asked him to promise me that he wouldn’t hurt you.”
She considered that, then groaned. Vampires could be so literal when it suited their purposes. “Technically, he’s keeping that promise. Nothing bad has happened to me all day. And even the things happening around the business aren’t life or death. Just irritating, inconvenient, and could potentially shut my doors for a day or two. So far, nothing that would kill the business. And nothing has happened in the bookstore either. He seems to be leaving that alone.”
“I hate vampires,” Rhys murmured.
“Does that include your brother now?”
“No. Not…” He sighed. “No. But I don’t like him very much right now. And it’s the vampiric part of him that ran with the hairsplitting of keeping his promise while still tormenting you.”
“Vampires are pretty irritating that way.” She sipped her own espresso. It tasted good. No permanent damage to her machine. In fact, there hadn’t been any permanent damage to anything. Even Boo’s stool was back to stability after they’d found the button tucked up next to the floor beneath the counter.
Rhys remained quiet for a moment, staring at his empty mug, a crease between his brows. She was a patient person—or could be when she wanted to be, she amended in case Boo got a whiff of that half-truth—so she remained quiet as he thought through everything she’d said. As she waited, she scanned the café, looking for any other possible disasters waiting to happen.
Diana—the probable goddess, but she hadn’t confirmed it yet—sat with a fashion magazine near the open arch into the bookstore. She’d come in an hour ago, and ignored most of the minor disasters. She hadn’t even commented when Nina had to get up from trying to fix Boo’s stool to get Diana her black coffee and chocolate muffin. But as Nina watched, a woman walked into the café from the bookstore, stepped wrong on her heels, and nearly tumbled to the ground. Without looking up from her magazine, Diana reached a hand out and caught the woman by the arm, keeping her upright easily.
Once the woman was stable, Diana flashed her a lovely smile and helped her pick up the books she’d dropped. There were a lot of effusive thanks from the woman, to which Diana was gracious and dismissive. The possible-goddess went back to her magazine after giving the woman a sultry look that didn’t help the woman walk steadily on her heels.
Nina set her espresso down and murmured, “I need to help a customer really quick. Be right back.”
Rhys nodded, his gaze still turned inward.
On her way to the register, Nina glanced back at Diana in time to see her lean down and pick something up from the floor just under her table, stare at it, then press it hard between her fingers. A little puff of smoke rose. Then Diana set the object on the edge of her table, glanced up, and met Nina’s gaze.
Nina served the young woman who’d stumbled coming into the café, waited until she was sure the woman could get her coffee to a seat without another mishap, then went to join Diana.
The probable-goddess was back to reading her magazine, but when Nina’s shadow fell across the surface, she pushed the little black button on the end of the table toward her. Nina picked it up, but kept her cussing internal.
She did say, “The woman dropped it?”
“The woman dropped it,” Diana confirmed as she flipped a page.
“Thank you. For helping.”
“You’re welcome.”
Since Diana hadn’t removed her attention from her magazine during all this, Nina figured that was the extent of the conversation they needed to have on the subject and she took the now harmless black button back to the table where Rhys sat, slipping it into her apron pocket.
“That woman who stumbled coming through the door,” Nina said as she sat, “dropped another button.”
“Just now? Damn it. May I see the button?”
Nina passed it to him.
He blinked when he held his hand over it. Then glanced back at Diana. “Woah,” he murmured.
“Crumpled like tissue paper,” Nina said, nodding.
Virgil’s spell had been so thoroughly dissolved by Diana there wasn’t even much residue of it left on the button. In fact, it would barely take a cleaning before it could be used as an ordinary button again.
The evidence for Diana being the Diana goddess of the hunt were stacking up. But Nina liked to give her customers their privacy, so she didn’t say any of that part out loud.
And neither did Rhys.
He did say, “This is getting ridiculous. He had to have mesmerized dozens of people for this. Just to give you a bad day.”
“Or he’s currently handing buttons to random people about to walk into the café or bookstore. Can you tell when he’s in the neighborhood?”
Rhys’s mouth worked and he glanced out the window. “Usually. But he’s been working on a trick lately to hide even from me. If he’s around here, it means he’s gotten better at that trick because I can’t sense him.”
“That feels like a bad development.”
“It would be, yes.” He looked back at her. “Would you object to me texting him and asking him to meet us here? We could step outside to speak with him if you’d rather he didn’t come inside.”
Nina appreciated him asking.
Vampires had to be invited into private homes to pass over the threshold, but public businesses had implied permission inherent in the fact that they were public businesses where people had to be able to come in and out. She had a spell that would keep vampires out, but she hadn’t set the ward on her door and the bookstore door yet because it would keep all vampires out. And some of them were just interested in a quiet place to sit during the day to read. They even pretended to drink coffee if they came in.
During the day, the average vampire wasn’t particularly dangerous either. Their powers all but vanished in sunlight, which was why most, especially the powerful ones who didn’t want to show weakness, didn’t come out during the day. The one or two who occasionally came into the café were not the super strong vampires. They were lower rung and just looking for some peace and quiet.
She didn’t want to banish all the vampires from her establishment if she didn’t have to just because of one troublesome one. Which meant Virgil could come into the café any time he wanted. He hadn’t yet—that she and Boo were aware of—and there was definitely a part of her who preferred things that way.
But they had to solve this issue because she couldn’t continue to have all these problems popping up every day. She would have a hard time maintaining any kind of equanimity in the face of all the irritations. And that would spill over onto her customers. And that, eventually, would cost her her business.
A slow death, by a thousand tiny cuts, was still death.
Would it be a mistake to invite Virgil into the café? Probably. But it would also be a show of good faith intent to settle things.
“He can come in,” she said. “Sooner rather than later would be good.”
“Now?”
“If he’s in the neighborhood.” She huffed a laugh at Rhys’s sardonic expression. “Right.” She glanced at Diana, still peacefully reading her magazine and ignoring the not-very-subtle longing stares from the woman who’d almost fallen earlier. “I think now would be a very good time.”
Once Diana was settled in, she stayed for a while. If Virgil tried anything, it was kind of nice to know they had a probable-goddess right there just in case.
Nina had some tricks up her own sleeve too. This wasn’t her first rodeo. And not the first time she’d dealt with vampires, even though she tended to stay out of their business. This was the first time she’d had a vampire wizard mad at her, though, so having a little divine backup could be useful.
“I’ll text him now,” Rhys said.
Nina got up to get them each another shot of espresso. They were going to need it.
***
Boo remained with them while they waited for Virgil, sitting next to Nina on her seat and letting loose a constant stream of purring that soothed her nerves and kept her grounded. Occasionally, she reached down to pet him around the head and neck where he liked scratches. That soothed them both, and the little burst of energy from his fur felt reassuring.
Conversation with Rhys faded to silence as they waited, both of them anxious, and that anxiety finding an easier place in silence than pointless small talk.
There was still a lot about Rhys and his brother, and what they did when they went vampire hunting, that she didn’t know. And hadn’t asked about. Just like with his legal practice and the cases and clients he couldn’t discuss, he kept a lot of his hunting to himself. She respected his rights to his privacy and secrets—even if her curiosity didn’t much like her keeping her questions to herself—so she didn’t bring up the subjects first, instead waiting for him to talk about what he was willing to discuss.
This was one of the other reasons she hesitated to attempt something beyond friendship. There were still a lot of things they didn’t know about each other and moving into something that was more than friendship meant opening up about those things. There were topics Nina didn’t discuss with Rhys either. Especially some of her exploits from when she was much younger. And she was also still deciding how much of that she was willing to share.
It was funny, but they both seemed to be coming at this…whatever it was between them, in a very similar way. Which ironically probably meant if they could get past this initial hesitance, they were well suited to each other.
The bell over the door dinged and both she and Rhys turned to look as Virgil walked into the café.
The entrance was just as dramatic and notable as a vampire might like. Every eye in the café turned to look at him. Even Diana glanced up from her magazine, though she went back to reading a moment later. Frank, who’d come in and set up with his laptop near the back of the seating area about twenty minutes earlier, focused in on Virgil, and Nina saw that look of creative thinking pass through the writer’s expression before he stared tapping away at the keyboard.
Nina couldn’t blame any of her customers their attention—brief or long as it was—on Virgil. He stood in the doorway with the late afternoon light haloing him, dressed entirely in black, a black suit and shirt under with a thin black silk tie around his neck. His skin was pale against all that unrelenting black, and yet he didn’t look washed out or cadaverous. He looked sleek and wealthy. Lean and a little shorter than Rhys but still tall. His dark hair cut to a modern short style.
If one wasn’t familiar with vampires, he would look like any of the business people who came into the café regularly. Maybe one of the more successful ones, one with a lot of power at their business, but nothing more than an ordinary human with a lot of money and influence.
And, during the day, Virgil was essentially that. At least his vampiric side was that. Not much stronger than an ordinary human, not any more powerful. Except Virgil was also a wizard who’d somehow maintained his magic through the death and resurrection. And according to Rhys, in the daylight, when the vampiric powers were weaker, Virgil’s magic was stronger. He was a more powerful wizard now than he’d been before being involuntarily turned into a vampire.
Nina got the impression he wielded that power with pleasure.
She was used to dealing with magic wielders. She’d been around too long not to have met some pretty powerful people. She wasn’t intimidated by Virgil’s magic powers, large as they were. She did have to pause when it came to his vampiric powers because, while she could defend herself against them, vampires weren’t a frequent part of her ordinary day-to-day life.
The combination definitely made Virgil more formidable. Not someone Nina could take lightly. That he’d chosen to inconvenience and irritate her rather than attack her because of the promise he’d made Rhys probably did say a lot about Virgil as a person.
Vengeful. But a part of him maybe still loyal to Rhys.
If true, she could work with that.
Virgil gave the café a scan, his brows raised as he nodded to himself. Most of the clientele had gone back to what they’d been doing before he made his grand entrance. Once he’d satisfied himself with whatever it was he was looking for, he gave her and Rhys a slow, closed-lipped smile and joined them at their table.
“I didn’t expect to be invited in,” he said to Nina by way of greeting.
“Can’t technically keep you out while I’m open for business. But if you keep pushing me, I will.”
“Pushing you?” He put a hand to his chest, where his unbeating heart would be. “I can’t imagine what you’re talking about.”
“Sit,” Rhys said, sounding as annoyed as she’d ever heard him. “She found all the buttons.”
“All of them?” He seemed genuinely surprised, which left Nina extremely suspicious. “How very clever of you.”
The condescension didn’t hit well, but she kept her snarling response in.
After hovering over them for a moment, he pulled a cushioned chair from the table behind Rhys and sat at the head of the small table between them, facing the window that looked out onto the sidewalk. Then he waited for one of them to speak.
Nina was waiting on Rhys, but Rhys just stared a hole into the side of Virgil’s head, so she decided to get things started herself. She set the handful of buttons she had in her apron pocket out on the table, spreading them so each was alone. They took up a dinner plate sized section of the wooden table.
And somewhat to Nina’s surprise, one of the black buttons was now a bright yellow color. She frowned at that, then let her fingers hover over it. Ah. The one Diana had cleaned. Interesting that the button’s real color was yellow. Or maybe that was just a result of a goddess breaking the spell.
Virgil’s gaze caught on the yellow button too and he frowned at it. He didn’t glance behind him at Diana, and Diana didn’t look up from her magazine, but Nina saw Diana’s slight smile come and go in that moment, looking ever so slightly smug.
“What am I to make of these?” Virgil said in a sing songy voice designed to grate on her nerves.
It worked. But she kept the reaction to herself. “Your magic has a distinct flavor. You won’t be able to hide it from me.”
“Really?”
“That wasn’t a challenge to see if you can. That was a warning that you need to stop. Honestly, this is childish behavior and I’m a little disappointed in you.”
That last sentence didn’t get the rise she was hoping for, but she got the satisfaction of watching a muscle along his cheekbone jump before settling. Unintentional movement from a vampire was definitely a win.
“Has anything gone wrong on the vampire hunts lately?” she asked, keeping her voice down so only the three of them would hear. And maybe Diana, but she didn’t seem to be paying close attention. Or care all that much.
Virgil didn’t answer, but he did flick a glance at Rhys. So she asked Rhys the same question.
“Nothing has gone wrong,” Rhys said.
“Have you avoided joining Virgil on a hunt because of me and the café?” Might as well cut to the chase.
“No,” Rhys confirmed, his attention on his brother.
“Then what’s the problem?” This she directed back to Virgil.
“There is no problem,” he said, his expression neutral.
“Bullshit, or I wouldn’t have all these buttons dropped around my place of business.”
Virgil raised a brow. She just stared. Because it was daylight, she could meet his gaze, but that wasn’t something she’d attempt at night. And given he’d been able to mesmerize humans into doing things for him during the day, she didn’t take that skill of his lightly. But she had her own protections activated. And with Boo next to her amplifying her magic, she was safe enough in that moment.
“There will be a problem,” Virgil said after a few minutes. “You know it. He knows it. He is already distracted, even if it hasn’t impacted our hunts yet.”
“How?” she asked. “Because he comes here regularly for coffee?”
“Yes. Because he spends all his spare time here. With you.”
That made her a bit soft and squishy inside. “Why is that a problem?”
“Eventually, he will choose here, and you, over the hunt.”
“Because he did that with his job?”
“Yes. I know him.”
“Apparently not,” Rhys murmured, but when Virgil cast him a look, he didn’t say more.
“You do realize I’m not like his work, right? I don’t have filing deadlines and court dates. He can simply tell me he has things to do, and I’ll wish him good luck.” And maybe offer a few protective spells if he wanted them, but since he was a wizard, he probably had those handled already. Really, it was something of a relief to have a crush on a man who not only knew his way around the supernatural world but also had the skills to survive it.
“Feelings are a distraction. They always will be.” Virgil’s expression remained passive. Unmoved by their logic.
Nina found that extremely irritating. “Okay, let’s go with this, then. You will no longer torment my place of business, just to irritate me. You will stop dropping your little spells around the place. You will leave my place of business alone permanently and for all time. In exchange, you can drop in any time you like to ensure Rhys leaves for hunts when he’s supposed to, and I promise not to interfere in your work. You can even drop in when Rhys isn’t here to pretend to be a human drinking coffee while you ensure I know you don’t like me. So long as you do not harm or interfere with my customers.”
“Or Nina,” Rhys added.
“Or me,” she said with a nod. “Or Boo. Or the bookstore. You stop being a dick. And you can glare at me all you want.”
That last actually made Virgil’s mouth tick up at one side. A small smile but still a smile.
“I’m not sure why you think that will help things,” he said after rearranging his mouth back to a frown.
“First, no sneaking around,” she said. “You can keep an eye on me and Rhys without having to be an asshole about it.”
Rhys made a little snorting sound that tread the line between huff and chuckle.
“Second, a truce can only be good for all of us, you included.” And now she put a hand on Boo to let her power rise enough for Virgil to feel. “I cannot allow you to endanger the people in this place, the bookstore, or my business.” Her voice deepened as her power rose. “I cannot allow you to endanger people in the name of causing me trouble. And I will put an end to it if you don’t stop voluntarily. So far, I’ve wished to remain on neutral ground with you. But I am not without the power to put an end to this. Permanently.”
It was a threat she hadn’t wanted to make. But felt it was important for Virgil to know. She didn’t want to hurt Rhys by getting into a death fight with his brother. And she certainly didn’t want to be on the wrong side of the fight with Rhys—she had no idea if he’d side with his brother or not and didn’t want to have to ask that question.
But it was important for both of them to know that she didn’t view this issue lightly and she was in a position to stop it. If pushed. And that it would be better for all concerned if Virgil didn’t push her.
Innocent people and her business took precedence. Always. These were her people to protect and she would do that if needs be.
Rhys raised his brows, but sipped his espresso without comment. Which half surprised her. She would have expected him to be more upset that she’d just threatened his brother. And maybe this was a show for Virgil. Something she’d have to discuss with Rhys later. Maybe. But for now, he seemed content to let her threaten his brother in the name of protecting her people and her business. She appreciated him not interfering. It did lend credibility to her threat.
Virgil glanced at Rhys, then back at her. He snarled at her. She let her power come up more, aided by Boo’s brush of fur against her fingers. She let Virgil get the taste of her magic, and the power behind her threat.
Then she very purposefully pulled it all back in and returned to her usual persona. A human coffee shop owner just doing her job. All her magic tucked away where one would have to really go looking to find it.
She watched Virgil acknowledge the change with a slight nod, the control it took to both show and then hide her magic. Behind him, across the café, Diana’s mouth ticked up in a little smile again. She’d switched from a fashion magazine to a hunting one now, and it was possible she was smiling at something in the magazine, but Nina got the distinct impression Diana was pleased with her.
That felt oddly validating. Which made her want to roll her eyes at herself. She refrained. Virgil and Rhys wouldn’t understand.
“Your offer is that I can…sit here if I want?” Virgil said, sounding disdainful but also resigned.
“Not just sit,” she said. “You can pretend to drink, and you can glare at me all you want. I won’t even try to make you stop glaring. And and! You can glare at Rhys when he’s here, too.”
Rhys raised his brows at her. “Did I agree to that?”
“You will agree to that,” she said.
He sighed. “Fine. He can glare at me.” He shot his brother a look. “He does all the time anyway.”
That earned a side-eye from Virgil. Nina did not smile. But she wanted to.
“And when he’s needed for a hunt and…here?” Virgil said.
“Come get him.” She shrugged. “I’m not going to interfere. So long as you aren’t trying to kill one of my customers who is harmless and just looking to keep their heads down, I have no reason to object to your work.”
Virgil’s mouth worked as he glanced between her and Rhys. “A truce?”
“A…trial period,” she said. “While we all see if we can work together without things going pear-shaped.”
“You are not working with us,” Virgil said.
“Okay, then, deal with each other in a respectful way. How about that?” Semantics. She did roll her eyes then.
Virgil looked at Rhys and held his gaze. “You and I will talk later.”
“We can talk now,” Rhys said. “If it has to do with Nina and her business, we’ll talk here.”
“If you even once hesitate in your duty, you know what I’ll do,” Virgil said.
The threat had Nina tempted to let her magic wind out again. But this was between the brothers so she kept her hand on Boo and kept her magic hidden.
“I’m getting tired of the loyalty tests,” Rhys said.
“I’m getting tired of distrusting your loyalty.”
“No you’re not.”
Virgil’s lip twitched in a snarl. “For now…a trial period. While I ensure you will not abandon your duty.”
“For now, I’ll go along with that.”
There was a longer staring contest and Nina was certain there was some silent exchange between the brothers. Finally, Virgil broke eye contact and faced Nina. “I’ll be in tomorrow. I expect there to be no barrier.”
“And I expect there to be no more buttons.”
He smirked. “For now.”
He rose, snapped his suit jacket back into place, and strolled out of the café as if he had nowhere to be in a hurry but was completely done with them.
“Will this work?” she asked Rhys as she watched Virgil disappear into the pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk.
“Maybe. If it doesn’t, we’ll renegotiate another agreement.”
She turned to look at Rhys.
He gave her a small smile. “Allowing him free access to the place so he can glare at us was a good idea, though. Virgil likes to glare and have his unhappiness widely acknowledged. At least with me.”
She smiled. “He’ll be able to reassure himself our…friendship isn’t going to interfere.”
Rhys nodded, but his smile vanished into a thoughtful expression.
“What?” she asked.
“This truce is good. But can only be temporary. Virgil and I will have to have it out at some point. I was being honest when I said I’m getting tired of the loyalty tests. I realize the one time I failed him it was a pretty epic fail. I suppose I deserve his continued questions.”
She wanted to deny that, out of loyalty to Rhys and a dislike of his brother. But she knew she wouldn’t be able to alleviate Rhys’s guilt with words.
“But since I’ve proven my loyalty continually since then,” Rhys continued, “I’m growing tired of Virgil’s games.”
“It’s not an easy situation,” she said, trying not to pass judgement either way.
“No,” he agreed. “And also not one that will resolve itself in one meeting.” He reached across the table, his hand up, an offer if she was willing to take it.
She slid her fingers across his palm, holding his hand because she wanted to reassure him that she didn’t blame him for the past. They all had regrets. It was part of life. What counted was how they went on from here.
“But at least we have a truce for now,” he said.
“For now, it’ll do.” She smiled, and squeezed his hand.
And maybe it would be enough to allow her and Rhys to let this thing between them become more than friendship. Maybe.
She could always hope.
***
The next day Virgil showed up at the café. He sat in a corner with a cappuccino in front of him, which he never drank but the contents of the cup did slowly disappear—an effect that impressed Nina. He glared at her the entire time he sat at his table. Which she dutifully ignored.
Diana returned to the café that day, too. And sat at her usual table, drinking her coffee and eating her chocolate muffin as she flipped through a small stack of magazines. She and Virgil never once looked at each other.
No more buttons turned up. And the inconveniences and irritations stopped. In fact, except for having a vampire glare at her for several hours, it was a good day in the café.
When Rhys came in after work, he spared Virgil a glance, then sat at his usual table by the front window. She stopped to sit and chat with him in between helping customers. Enjoying his company and ignoring Virgil’s continued glare—but wow was he good at glaring! He could win gold medals for that glare.
After Rhys left, and Nina began closing up for the night, Virgil finally left. He didn’t say a word to her. But he also didn’t cause any issues. And he wasn’t waiting around after she locked up. Diana hovered just outside the bookstore, though. After Nina pulled down the new sliding gate over the café door, ensuring everything was safely locked up and her protective wards were set, Nina gave Diana a little wave. Diana gave her a regal nod as a black limousine slid up to the sidewalk. Diana climbed in the back and the car moved off into traffic.
Nina smiled.
For the moment, it looked like the truce would hold.
And if it didn’t, it was nice to know she had a goddess at her back.
***
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NINA'S WINTER SOLSTICE AT THE CAFE
VIRGIL AT THE CAFE Copyright © 2025 Kat Simons
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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.