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Lydia dumped the espresso grounds into the blue bin, long-since stained brown, to be added to the composting pile and set a metal cup of water under the milk frothing arm to boil all the old dairy off of it. 

The last of the aspiring screenwriters or indie novelists had packed up their laptops, moleskin notebooks, spiral binders and one iPad with a Bluetooth mechanical keyboard and wandered off into the Austin night, the door locked behind them. The October weather in Texas was mild enough that they could spend several hours on the patio furniture out front if they needed to follow their curated muses, but Lydia tripped the power to the Wi-Fi router on her way to carry the kitchen waste to the dumpster out behind the cafe anyway. No sense in being overly hospitable, after all.

The alley was remarkably clean for one behind a coffee shop walking distance from the business district and open late enough to support the I-should-not-drive-just-yet spillover crowd from Sixth Street.

As the dumpster lid slammed down on the paper cups, sugar packets and wooden stir sticks of the past few hours, a flock of grackles stirred from the window ledges, black feathers blotting out the feeble light from the street lamp, already set at a precarious angle and casting shadows in random directions as she made her way back towards the yellow spear of light indicating the back door to the kitchen.

Lawrence had texted earlier to let her know that everything was fine in Boise, as if everything is ever really fine in Boise. Or fine with him. The guy was a disaster, forever flinging himself out of his weight class with only the defense of his endless ghost stories and random trivia. That couldn’t realistically keep anyone alive for very long, but his flannels were laundered into a kind of cottony cushion that was weirdly endearing. 

The other remaining employees of the South by Caffeine coffee house had gone home over an hour earlier, so Lydia was alone when she saw the angular form seated in the darkest corner of the wall facing the street. In defiance of the shadows, Lydia could make out the crisp creases in the courtly frock he wore, frills at the neck and cuffs and twin faux-military lines of buttons down the breast.

Weirdly, that happens in Austin sometimes, but Lydia knew this wasn’t some anime cosplay guy with plastic pointed ears who had walked in past the locked front door and just taken a seat there.  

“Hey, Nyx!” Lydia called, walking back towards the sink to start the hot water before gathering glasses and mugs to soak in soapy water, “What brings you to Austin?”

“That is Nyxil Thornwrought to you, mortal,” he huffed, “I despise your diminutives almost as much as I hate your humid, cattle-scented homeland.”

“I never agreed to call you that, Nyx,” Lydia grinned, “but I’m sure we could come to some mutual arrangement about that.”

“I’m not here to haggle with you, witch,” he stood and stalked to the bar, sitting awkwardly on a stool in front of the espresso machine, “I’m here to remind you of a previous obligation.”

“I figured,” she answered, tilting her head slightly towards a display of jars of carefully labeled tea.

Nyxil Thornwrought nodded in response, so slightly that even someone watching him closely might have missed it.

Lydia set a fresh kettle on the gas stove and made herself busy waiting for the water to boil. She produced a tiny ceramic teacup from a high cabinet and set it on a wooden tray next to a small container of cream and a little jar of local honey. She carefully measured out tea leaves from three different containers and scooped them into small cloth bags, dropping one into the little teacup and another into a much larger mug from behind the bar that read “Wicked Witch Before Coffee”.

Neither spoke as she wiped down the bar, set out cloth napkins and spoons and stirring sticks. After the kettle whistled, Lydia poured water over both tea bags and gestured to the steeping cup and settled in two stools down from the Fae while he prepared his tea.

She sat in silence, stirring nothing into her own tea while she waited, the spoon clinking softly against the ceramic mug. She had just about decided to check the notifications on her phone when she was interrupted.

“Her Majesty will be claiming the Meadow of High Heather in the next fortnight,” he pronounced, “She requires you to support her efforts and attend the celebrations afterwards.”

“Her Majesty’s requirements are irrelevant,” Lydia smiled, “My obligations are well documented, Nyx.”

“You’re right, of course, witch,” and the word managed to sound like profanity, “and your obligations are no doubt amply enumerated and backed up by precedent and beautifully annotated.”

“You flatter me, Nyx,” Lydia sipped at her tea, wondering if she should have left out the caffeine and imagining exploding hummingbirds drinking Mountain Dew out of a feeder.

“I do not,” Nyx clarified with a snort, “I merely remind you of the reality.”

“I’m aware of the reality,” Lydia sipped again at her tea, “Tell me what changed, Nyx.”

“What changed, witch, is your company,” Nyx seemed to have finally dissolved enough honey into his tea, “Your pet ghost hunter has annoyed another of the Fae Courts and Her Majesty has decided to not intercede on your behalf.”

“I never asked Her Majesty for help,” Lydia offered.

“Of course you didn’t,” Nyx laughed, “You’d be a terrible solicitor if that was the case.”

Lydia already knew what company of hers had complicated things, so she wasn’t surprised. This had happened before, but in this case, she hesitated to throw him under the bus for some reason.

“Tell me how Lawrence Miller offended the fairy courts, and I’ll go to work having him make it right,” Lydia sighed.  

“How did he offend them?” Nyx mocked, “How did he not?”

“You’ve got to make exceptions for body-cam ghost hunting bullshit, right?” Lydia asked, “YouTube has a whole algorithm that prioritizes your nonsense for you, you know?”

“Of course,” Nyx waved her off, “Her Majesty couldn’t possibly care less about Lawrence Miller’s opinions.”

“Great,” Lydia stood and went for more hot water, “I’m sure that was keeping him awake.”

“We can shortcut this,” Nyx offered, “Agree to an arranged marriage and these worries will all belong to someone else.”

“No thanks,” Lydia chuckled, “The non-fairy dating apps are quite awful enough.”

“And Miller is a better prospect than we can offer?”

“Miller is no kind of prospect, Nyx,” Lydia took another sip of tea, possibly longer than hydration dictated, “He’s a box of broken glass and obligations.”

“Fair,” Nyx offered, “But all of you are boxes of broken glass, it doesn’t get better, Lydia.”

“Is that the wisdom of hundreds of years of life, Nyx?”

“It is the wisdom that comes from watching several thousand hours of your reality television,” Nyx admitted, “Your Love Island Australia is a pit of disease and idiocy.”

“Her Majesty has you spending a lot of time in our realm these days?” Lydia asked.

“Her assignments are varied but necessary for the good of the realm,” he sipped at his tea, more to observe tradition than to enjoy it.

“And they are Need to Know only. I get it, Nyx,” she sipped her tea as well, wondering if he appreciated the blend she had concocted, “I’m not trying to pry any state secrets out of you.”

“Nor could you,” Nyx scoffed, “I am here to discuss your obligations only.”

“And the Fae are known for staying on topic,” Lydia laughed.

“I am not some sprite or brownie to be bribed with snacks,” he gestured at the shot glass filled with honey next to the cash register and the fresh half-loaf of dense brown bread beside it.

“I have no idea what you are talking about, Nyx,” Lydia lied. They both knew about her fairy housekeepers, though each of them also knew the other wouldn’t speak of it. There are rules to be followed, and when there are multiple cultures involved, sometimes those rules are all that a person has that can be counted on.

“Of course not,” Nyx smiled in a way which seemed to make the room less warm and inviting, “But you’ll be too busy for that anyway.”

“And what precisely does Her Majesty require of me?”

Nyx sat for a moment and watched her in silence. Lydia smiled serenely at him for a few seconds longer than necessary before refilling his teacup.

“Her Majesty requires a standard set of documents,” he began, “a Writ of Authority over the contested lands, standard non-aggression documents for the five kingdoms which share a border with the meadow, and Orders of Retribution for any Fae, noble or common, who works against Her Majesty’s Lawful Commands.”

“All of these would be implied for a land grab on the mortal side of the fence, you know?”

“On our side of the fence, what is implied is meaningless,” Nyx raised an eyebrow as he sipped again, setting the tiny cup down with a clatter on the wooden tray, “Only what is expressly stated matters.”

“And yet,” Lydia refilled his cup again, “Here I go still taking your hints.”

“Then let me state this next part plainly,” Nyx stared at her, his eyes shining golden yet coldly, “If Lawrence Miller continues to flail about ‘our side of the fence’, as you put it, and his actions compromise the wishes of Her Majesty, she will have him peeled like a grape and buried in peat for a thousand years before offering him the opportunity to plead his case.”

“That ghost werewolf didn’t even end up in your backyard, Nyx.”

“No, it did not,” Nyx was smiling again, and Lydia hated it, “We would have contained the beast quickly. The territory Miller invaded with a supernatural monster lacks Her Majesty’s resources and tactical brilliance, and they suffered for it.”

“It was desperation, not aggression,” Lydia shook her head, “He wouldn’t have sent that creature somewhere he knew would be occupied.”

“Intention is irrelevant here,” Nyx shrugged, “Only the facts matter, and the facts are that Miller sent a threat, a dangerous creature, into a realm which was occupied and, we have been told, several of their citizens are dead as a result.”

Nyx pressed his lips together tightly as Lydia refilled his cup again.

“Intention is everything,” Lydia looked at him as though he was a clueless child who had asked a particularly embarrassing question, “Our intentions make us who we are, they color our every action, every conversation.”

“For you, perhaps,” he said, “but hardly for the rest of us.”

Lydia refilled his tiny cup again anyway.

“No, Nyx,” she still smiled at him, “Intention is what fuels our magic. It protects us from the predators who seek us out. It protects us from you.”

“If your ghost hunter continues to fling himself about like an idiot, no manner of intention will protect him from us.”

“And none of us would try,” Lydia lied, “Because first of all, how dare he, right?”

“Your insolence is why you are my least favorite solicitor, Lydia,” Nyx admitted.

“That’s not why,” Lydia smiled, refilling his teacup again, “But it’s a good reason, to be sure.”

“Then why would you assume we would take exception?”

“I picked a tiny teacup for you and kept the conversation going long enough to refill it several times with a laxative tea. If you’re going to hate me, I’d like to give you a reason,” Lydia’s smile was more sincere than it had been, and that smile alone would have had a laxative effect on most people.

“I hate you and I hate your realm,” Nyx admitted.

“I’ll do Her Majesty’s paperwork, Nyx,” Lydia said, “So you’ve accomplished your goal here.”

Nyx fumed for a moment, seeming to simmer next to his ridiculously small teacup.

“One of my goals,” he acknowledged, “but I more wanted to secure your hand in a faerie marriage.”

“Sorry,” she shook her head in mock sadness, “I’m only entertaining marriage requests from people who aren’t about to violently shit themselves.”

“You are why the realms hate you,” Nyx said before opening a portal behind the bar and stepping back into his natural domain.

“Yeah,” Lydia admitted into the dark and empty coffee shop, “but not for that.”