8
Tandri was not wrong.
The following day, Legends & Lattes opened to receive customers for the first time.
Viv propped the big livery doors wide, hung a sign that readOPENfrom a peg on the wall next to the window, and waited nervously behind the counter.
Not one customer appeared.
Viv could admit that it really wasn’t surprising. After all her thoughtful planning, research, and preparation, she hadn’t taken into account the most important thing. Who showed up to buy something they didn’t know they needed?
Tandri had seen the problem immediately.
Why hadn’t she?
Tandri arrived with a leather folio tucked under one arm, but she made no mention of it and stowed it beneath the counter. The succubus took up a station behind the machine and made a pair of drinks.
“A bit of quiet makes a good opportunity to practice.” She’d clearly paid attention to Viv’s demonstration. Her first attempt was a little bitter, and the second came out a touch watery. Still, they were eminently drinkable, and Viv found the aroma calming.
The air breezing in the door was moist and cool, and enticing curls of steam rose from their mugs. Everything was in place, closer to plan than she could have hoped.
Except there was nothing whatsoever to do.
Viv spent the first hours pacing like a penned predator.
Cal made a brief appearance, drinking a coffee while loudly commending its flavor, as though there was anyone to overhear him, until he eventually excused himself with a pained smile.
They did, however, receive one unexpected visitor.
Midmorning, Laney tottered across the street.
“Mornin’, dears,” she said brightly. “Reckon I should see what all the fuss is about.” Althoughfusswas clearly thin on the ground. “Let me have one of those. How much?” She waved a hand at the coffee machine.
Viv thought about the slate menu at the pub she’d visited and cursed herself for failing to think of something similar.
“Uh, half-copper for coffee. That’s… that’s plain. A copper for a latte, that’s, uh… for one with milk. I thought, with your stomach…?” Viv rubbed her own.
Laney fussed in a pocket of her voluminous dress and slid a copper onto the counter. Tandri dutifully deposited it in the cashbox and set to work.
The old woman chuckled and twittered over the machine as it hissed and ground and gurgled, and she received her milk-frothed mug with a nod.
“Very nice. Very nice,” she said. “Thank ya both, dears. Oh! And while I’m here, I’d love to have that plate back, mmm?”
Viv handed it over with thanks.
“Thank ya kindly!” she exclaimed. “Well, got to be gettin’ back to m’ chores. Don’t be strangers, now.”
Then she waddled back across the street, plate in hand, leaving the cooling latte on the counter top without taking so much as a sip.
Viv sighed heavily.
Tandri drank the latte.
* * *
“So,”said Tandri, clutching the leather folio in front of her. Up ’til now, Viv would have said the succubuscouldn’tlook nervous. “I mentioned some ideas last night, and back in my room, I did a little thinking.”
“Oh?”
