Chapter 654 | A Recurring Fixture

Chapter 654: 654 | A Recurring Fixture

The coffee kiosk on the Spine took twelve minutes. Percy had calculated nine. The barista recognized me halfway through and stopped mid-order to stare.

I gave her the list like I was reading coordinates. Three cups. Nobody at Eastside Protective Services operated on convenience, and the last week taught me the logistics faster than I’d learned them anywhere else. I could not afford to get this wrong.

Dralun’s was black. Large, no modifications. When a man writes "bring coffee" like he’s filing a subpoena, I don’t test the margins.

Ophelia’s was the gamble. Oat milk lavender latte, double shot. She’d posted one earlier in the week with a caption about suffering aesthetically. I wanted the cute-point deduction delayed until after I made it inside the building. It was probably the wrong call. I made it anyway.

The third was jasmine tea. For Grandma Lin. A woman I had not met yet but whose presence loomed large enough in the collective Eastside memory that showing up without acknowledging her felt like walking into someone’s house and ignoring their grandmother.

The checkpoint Heroes waved me through. No scan. The rock-skinned one gave me a nod that meant we’d graduated from stranger to recurring fixture. I took it without comment. The stone pillar at the WARDEN gate registered me with its usual polite concern, congratulated me on surviving whatever it thought I’d survived, then informed me my caffeine consumption was tracking above recommended levels for a first-year academy student.

I held up the tray.

"I’m carrying it for other people."

[That is noted, Lukas Belmont. Please hydrate anyway.]

Route 14 rolled in at seven past eleven. The same grey-haired driver looked at the cardboard tray, then at my face. ℴ𝒗ⅇ𝑙.

"You bringing coffee to the dragon, gold boy?"

"He asked for it in writing. I’m treating it like a legal requirement."

She laughed, waved me past the fare reader, and handed me a hard-boiled egg wrapped in a napkin. I balanced the tray on my knees in the front seat and peeled the egg one-handed. Most heroic thing I’d done all morning. The crack in the vinyl pinched my thigh on the first pothole, the second, every one after. The pain became part of the commute.

My phone buzzed twice against the tray.

First message was Sloane. She was on her way to the meeting. If I felt her heart rate spike, I wasn’t allowed to text her about it.

Second was Felicity. Same message, except it ended with a pink heart and a knife emoji placed directly beside each other.

I put the phone face down on my thigh and watched Creston Hills slide away out the window.

At Central Station I switched to Route 31. The driver on that line still didn’t know who I was. I was starting to like it. When the bus came over the river bridge, the second heartbeat in my chest woke up early and pressed outward, slow and patient, toward the flat roofs and the old water towers. I let it. Arguing with my own sternum on public transit seemed like a bad look.

Halverson Avenue smelled of fryer oil and wet pavement. The old man outside the barbershop said his line about my jacket in Spanish before I’d even reached him.

"I brought coffee this time. You can’t say anything about the jacket."

He looked at the tray, said something new that made the barber choke on his own laugh, and went back to his newspaper.

Lin’s door was fogged up from the inside. The bell rang when I pushed through. Grandma Lin stood at the counter cutting scallions so fast the knife blurred. Her eyes went to the tray, the tea, then me.

I set the jasmine tea on the counter in front of her.

She picked it up and sniffed the lid. "This is not tea, this is perfume for a sad cat."

She took a sip anyway. Made a face. Took another sip.

"Go upstairs, skinny boy, and tell Ophelia she owes me a mop."

"What did she do with the mop?"

"Ask her yourself. I’m busy." She pointed the knife at the stairs. I left before it became a conversation.

The black stairs creaked under my boots. The pressed-tin ceiling caught the sound and threw it around the office when I came through the door.

Ophelia was standing on a stepladder in front of the window, taping a new sheet of bat stickers to the frame. Her tongue peeked out between her teeth. The dress today was black velvet with a deep red underskirt. The corset laced so tight it pushed everything up into the square neckline, which had clearly given up its job as clothing. Her stockings were white with little black crosses printed up the sides. The garter clasps peeked out from under the hem every time she reached for the top of the frame. Mr. Stitches sat on the radiator below her, facing the room, keeping watch.

Dralun was in his chair with the scanner on. WORLD’S OKAYEST UNCLE mug in one claw, yellow form under the other. His tail lay across the floor between the desks. He didn’t look up when I came in.

I set the large black coffee down on his desk beside the mug. The tray rattled.

"You told me to bring coffee. I brought coffee."

He looked at the cup, then at the lid, then at the little green logo on the side. He picked it up, took one long pull, and set it back down beside his own mug without a word. Then he took a sip from the WORLD’S OKAYEST UNCLE mug, the one full of Grandma Lin’s tar, and sighed through his nose.

"That’s too clean, Belmont, and it tastes like a bank."

"I’ll get you something dirtier next time." ⅇ𝒃𝚗ℴ

"Don’t bother, kid, because I already have mine." He tapped the chipped white mug on the shelf behind him, the one that belonged to his sister, and it was already full and steaming. "Drink that one, and leave the bank coffee for Ophelia."