I fastened the knot of my apron behind my back as Cassey turned on the open sign in the café window. It should have been a morning like any other. We were starting our day at five in the morning, serving the early birds of the community cappuccinos and flat whites. This was the front we all put in on in order to slip under the radar. A secret organization couldn't simply pay their secret employees for doing work that wasn't supposed to exist in the first place. Armond and Dawn had started this café as a ruse to justify giving us proper paycheques so that those dedicated to the cause could still have lives outside of work.

For me, all of my money was funneled into taking care of my parents. Even though I was an adamant supporter, if I hadn't been paid the generous salary, plus bonuses for killings, I would have had to turn away from the work. A full care facility that my parents required was not a cheap thing.

Thankfully, that was not the case and I had enough money to support my parents and enough iced coffee to fill my caffeine addiction.

Cassey was the one to bring up my concern when six o clock struck. "Don't you think it's odd that Quin isn't here?" she asked.

Of course, I thought it was strange. Quin was the kind of guy who chewed his nails if he wasn't fifteen minutes early to an event. But admitting that made it all too real, so I gave a half-hearted shrug and handed a customer her caramel macchiato. She had a beaming grin on her face and leaned down to squint at my name tag. "Thank you... Sam. Odd, I could have sworn last time your name was Amelia."

"Odd indeed," I responded with an equally bright smile.

And for a brief moment, it was just Cassey and I. all of the absurdly early people were now on their way to work with their favorite beverage and the people who woke at a normal time had yet to roll in. I let out a sigh and leaned back against the counter beside Cassey. She was a kind enough girl, and fairly new to the organization, which I found problematic. She was like me when I had first started, far too inquisitive.

While I just wanted to appreciate a moment of quiet, she studied my chalkboard style name tag. "Why do you put on a different name tag every day? Do you not like your name? It is kind of outdated."

For the hundredth time this week, I reminded myself that we needed Cassey. Hell, we needed every body we could get on our side. I had been lucky to not be taken out within the past four years of fieldwork. The same could not be said for everyone. Cassey was the future, whether I liked it or not. And she was just like I had been back then, the only difference was that it was her little sister, not her parents. All she wanted to do was understand and to help.

"I like my name just fine," I said flatly and began to prepare myself an iced coffee with enough sugar to kill a horse.

"Ah, you just don't like people knowing who you are. I get it, all black ops and stuff."

She found confirmation in my silence, though her statement wasn't exactly true. I did like my name and sure, there was a little bit of anonymity if every customer didn't know my name. But I refused to wear a name tag with Georgia scrawled across it because hearing my name from anyone other than my family, it was painful.

My parents knew Georgia. The girl who sighed over toxic boys in high school and dreamed of visiting the Eiffel tower. My brother knew Georgia. The girl who screamed and stomped every time he came into her room. Georgia was a girl of whimsy and romance, someone who wanted a prince charming for herself, someone who believed in prince charming.

Slowly, I stopped dreaming of a soft handed prince who knew his feelings and I started dreamed of a Hercules who could lift the weight off my shoulders. He never came either. But it was okay, because I no longer needed him. I had become my own Hercules.

And all my customers needed to know was that I would be here to serve them their coffee. And all my team needed to know was that I could be sent out on any assignment and only take a single arrow and my little knife. It was why they lovingly referred to me as Huntress.

"We should call Dawn or Armond and tell them that Quin didn't come in," Cassey mused. "We could use the extra hand around here before it gets crazy."

"No," I said, my voice bordering on cold. "They won't come in anyway."

"Why not? This is their business. They should want to keep it afloat. It seems like a bad business plan if we're too busy and have to turn away customers."

I had thought like Cassey once and I had made the call. Armond shouted at me for ten minutes, asking me if I was too stupid to handle a small café on my own. Armond was notoriously quick to temper, but it had shocked me. I could remember being furious with him, thinking that he always preached that we were in this together. but the reality was that the café was nothing to them, it was something to me, it was something to Cassey. It was where we got our paycheques and where we spent eight hours of our day. But Dawn and Armond weren't concerned about irate customers. They were trying to protect humanity.

I shoved myself off the counter as the first customer of the second rush came in. "They care about werewolves, Cassey, not a shitty café that sells brownies and breakfast sandwiches."

The hoard of customers came and went in a flurry and when it passed, I made sure that I was busy scrubbing down tables and mopping the floor. I ignored the bell each time it signaled the entrance of a new customer. If Cassey was busy taking orders, she couldn't be busy bothering me.

But my silence didn't last long.

"Um, excuse me," someone murmured from behind me.

"What?" I snapped, whirling around. Because that was the kick of working customer service. Your nerves could be shot, you could spend your evenings staring at the water stain on the ceiling, worrying about your teammates, but you were still at the beck and call of strangers who couldn't care less about you. But it wasn't my customer service side that made me stammer out an apology.

"It's alright," the man said, offering me a smile small that only pulled up one side of his mouth. Grey eyes that sparkled with humor shone down at me and I felt myself opening and closing my mouth several times like a fish out of water. "I just wanted to order a coffee. There's no one at the counter, but if you're busy—"

"No!" I shouted, then lowered my voice while adding a grin that would have made a party clown cringe. I almost felt lucky that Cassey had made herself scarce. "No, no, of course not." I took off to the counter like a rabbit.

I didn't even have a second to be embarrassed about my behavior. Watching him stroll to the counter after me was poetry in motion. How was it even possible for a human being to look so good before nine in the morning? Was it even legal to be that attractive while only wearing jeans and a Patagonia jacket?

Like he could read my mind, his smile grew, pulling up both sides of his mouth to reveal perfect teeth. "What do you recommend, Sam?"

"Uh, well, that's hard," I blurted. Christ, what was happening to me? I didn't consider myself smooth by any stretch of the imagination, but there was no need to be smooth when I was perpetually indifferent. Now here I was, not even able to tell a man a drink suggestion from a menu I knew by heart.

"How about you just make me something?" he offered. "Whatever you like best. I'm trusting your judgement since you're obviously the expert here."

"Yeah, okay."

It should have been easier. Instead, it was infinitely worse. Would he think I didn't know what I was doing if I just gave him plain black coffee? He seemed like a black coffee kind of guy, but how was I supposed to be sure? What if I made him something more complicated with syrups and whipping cream and then he thought I had the palate of a child? Now I was taking too much time just staring at the menu board, not doing a damn thing.

I got to work trying to make the perfection concoction. Not too sweet. Not too fancy. Not to simple.

"Here, it's one of my favorites, a dirty chia latte," I announced, pushing the compostable to-go cup towards him.

There was that laughing sparkle in his eyes again that made my knees feel all weak. "Thanks, Sam."

He turned and left without another word. He would climb into his car and start his day, doing whatever he was going to do. He wouldn't remember the wide-eyed, tongue-tied girl for another second. But I just watched him go like a love-struck teenager.

"Who was that? And why are you staring like that?" Cassey demanded, clearing returned from whatever she had been doing.

"Um, I'm actually not sure," I confessed.

"Well, are you okay? Was he rude to you? I only ever see you get shaken when someone tears into you and you can't strangle them over the counter," she babbled.

"We need to get the lunch sandwiches prepped," I said, thoroughly diverting the conversation and my mind. 

~~~Question of the Day~~~

Who is your favorite fictional villian?