Lost in Another World, Claimed by a Dragon

Genevieve

The espresso machine chose three o'clock on a Tuesday to start dying, which was when Mr. Garrett walked through my door with two movers and a clipboard.

I was elbow-deep in Mrs. Albright's half-finished latte, my hands shaking so badly I'd already spilled milk twice, and the burning in my chest had been clawing at my ribs since I'd dragged myself out of bed at five that morning. Three customers waiting. Four orders backed up. The machine making a sound like metal grinding against bone.

And Mr. Garrett, setting that piece of paper on my counter like a death certificate.

I knew that paper. I had written those numbers myself three months ago, sitting at my mother's kitchen table with her reading glasses because mine had broken and I couldn't afford new ones. Every number a little piece of everything falling apart.

I smiled at him anyway. "Mr. Garrett. One more week. I have an order clearing Friday—"

"You said that last month, Genevieve."

My mouth was still open, words forming, excuses I'd used so many times they'd worn grooves in my throat — when his mover walked past me and picked up the crate.

The crate I'd hauled up from storage at six this morning. Alone. In the dark. Up three flights of stairs because the freight elevator had been broken for three weeks and I couldn't afford the repair. My back still ached from it. My hands had blistered and bled and I'd wrapped them and kept going because the supplies had to come up and there was no one else left to move them.

He carried it out the door like it weighed nothing.

The second mover took the next crate. Then the next. I watched every single thing I'd scraped together disappear into the gray afternoon — the last of my stock, the final desperate restocking that was supposed to buy me one more week. Just one more week.

Just enough time to figure out how to not lose everything.

Mrs. Albright touched my hand on her way out. Gentle. Pitying. "Poor thing," she said, and I heard every word even though she wasn't quite looking at me. "But I suppose it really can't last much longer."

I dug my thumbnail into my palm until I felt skin break. Smiled until my face hurt. Held it together until the door closed and I was alone.

Then I sat down behind the counter with my father's ledger and made myself look at the numbers again.

Two suppliers gone in six weeks. The third called while I was sitting there — Diane, who'd known me since I was six years old, who'd held my hand at my mother's funeral and then again at my father's three months later and cried both times like she meant it.

"I'm so sorry, honey. I have my own bills. My own family."

"I understand," I said, and I did, I understood every single person who was walking away, and it didn't change anything. It didn't make the numbers different. It didn't make the account balanced or the rent paid or the debts disappeared.

It just meant I was alone.

The burning in my chest came back, vicious and sharp, spreading from my sternum outward like something trying to split me open from the inside. I gripped the edge of the counter and counted. One. Two. Three. Doctors had given me a name for this: chronic condition, idiopathic origin, manage your stress.

Manage my stress. Like I had a choice. Like I could just decide not to lose everything.

Twenty. I made it to twenty. Stumbled to the sink and ran cold water over my wrists until my vision cleared and I could breathe without feeling like I was drowning.

Then I went back to the ledger because there was work to do and no one else to do it.

My father had tested three different coffee roasters before he found the right blend. My mother had tried forty-seven versions of her mulled cider recipe — I knew because I'd found her notebook, every attempt written out in her small, careful handwriting, dated and annotated and perfected. This place had been their whole lives. Twenty years of building something people came to because it felt safe. Because it felt like home.

I'd kept it going for eleven months by myself. The roasting schedule. The recipes. The accounts. The ordering. The cleaning. The smiling. Getting up at five and going to bed at midnight and doing it all over again.

It wasn't enough. I'd known that for weeks now. I just hadn't let myself think it directly until today.

The burning came back at six. Then again at seven, worse each time, like my body had decided today was the day to give up too.

I counted to twenty at the sink. Twice. Three times.

I went back to work.

The man from across the street showed up at eight-thirty, which meant he'd been watching. Waiting for the last customer to leave so he could come over here and do this. The Freshline franchise had opened six months ago with its clean counters and its loyalty cards and its seasonal menu written in chalk, and it had been bleeding my customers away ever since.

He looked around my shop like he was pricing furniture at an estate sale.

"Rough day, little Genny."

I'd told him twice not to call me that. He'd smiled both times and kept doing it.

"I'm closing," I said. Smiled when I said it, because I was good at smiling.

He sat down anyway. "I've been thinking. You can't keep this up. You know that." He named a number. Said it slow, like it was generous. Like it was a gift.

The number was less than I owed on the espresso machine alone.

"That doesn't cover a third of my debts," I said.

"That's the market." He leaned forward, and something in his face sharpened. "Your parents built something here. I respect that. But they're gone now, Genevieve. What's left is just the sign on the door."

I stared at him.

Just the sign. Like I hadn't been here every single morning for eleven months. Like I hadn't learned every recipe and memorized every supplier's number and knew every regular customer's order without asking. Like I hadn't stayed up until two in the morning fixing the ice machine and scrubbing the floors and rewriting the menu boards because I couldn't afford to pay anyone else to do it.

Like the last eleven months of my life — the exhaustion and the pain and the counting to twenty at the sink — had been nothing. Had meant nothing. Had changed nothing.

"Get out," I said. Quiet. Calm. So angry I couldn't feel my hands.

He left. The bell jangled above the door, cheerful as ever, completely indifferent.

I stood there in the empty shop and looked at the photograph on the wall. My parents. Younger. Smiling. My mother's hair dark, my father's grin crooked from the fingers he'd broken as a teenager. They looked like people who had everything figured out.

I used to think that photograph was proof I could figure it out too.

What's left is just the sign.

I was so tired. Tired in a way that sleep wouldn't fix. Tired in the way that comes from being the only person left, the last one standing, the one who has to keep smiling because if you stop you might never start again.

If I can't even keep this, I thought, what am I even still doing here?

The thought came so easily it scared me.

That was when I heard it.

The storage room. The locked one at the back, the one my parents had told me my entire childhood never to open. Never to go near. Never to ask about. I'd heard sounds from there before — soft chiming like glass, footsteps that might have been pipes, low murmurs my eight-year-old self had decided were friendly ghosts.

Tonight the sounds were different. Closer. Louder. Pressed against the door like something trying to get out.