Avery Dubois never imagined she’d be a waitress in a small diner located in Blaine, Washington, employed alongside a werewolf shifter who was actually nice to her. The last time she’d been forced to work with shifters, she’d been sexually harassed and ended up in a long spiral that led her directly to prison.

Thankfully, that wouldn’t be happening again… not in this job, at least. Grace, the shifter, flashed her a smile as she took a stack of plates back to the kitchen.

With a sigh, Avery approached the table where customers had just motioned that they needed her.

“What can I do for you?” she asked, plastering a smile on her face. She could tell the twenty-something-year-old guy was going to complain before he even spoke. He and his friends had told her earlier the coffee was too hot. A stupid thing to say, in her opinion. There was no such thing.

“I ordered my burger medium-well, and this is clearly cooked to medium,” the man said. Avery studied the curve of his lips and the twinkle in his brown eyes as he grinned at her. She’d seen this before… another asshole looking for a free meal.

She smiled and leaned in to take a look at the meat he’d cut. Medium-well… medium… being a vegetarian, it all disgusted her.

Glancing around, she noticed her boss staring at her. Bart was a cranky man in his fifties who not only owned the place but cooked too. He’d been running the diner since he had opened it twenty years ago. With the new navy-blue booths, the black and white checkered tile, and sky-blue walls—all of which she’d helped to install—the place almost appeared as if it had just opened yesterday. Business had been steadily picking up. This was good and bad. With the new stream of good customers, a few bad ones always managed to slip in. Like this guy and his friend.

Unfortunately, telling the customer to shove his burger up his ass would be out of the question. She needed the job for a few more months and couldn’t afford to get fired.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she said as she watched his friend snicker. “I’ll take your plate back to the chef.”

She picked up the white platter and hurried to the kitchen.

“What’s wrong with the burger?” Bart asked while wiping beads of sweat from his brow and bald head.

“He says it’s cooked medium when he ordered medium-well.”

Bart studied the plate and rolled his eyes, then let out a string of curses under his breath.

“Are they looking for a free meal?” he asked.

For some reason, this scam had been occurring more and more lately. People would come in and complain about everything, and in the end, expect a free meal even though they’d eaten everything on the plate.

Avery tucked a lock of loose auburn hair from her ponytail behind her ear. “Well, so far the coffee has been too hot, and now this.”

Bart rearranged the burger on the plate. “That’s medium-well. That snotnose piece of shit doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Tell him I put it back on the grill with apologies.”

She nodded and picked up the plate with a sigh, wishing she could be just about anywhere else, except prison, of course.

Waitressing bored her, and she hated every minute on the job. She much preferred house construction, but not a lot of that was going on in rainy Washington State during the winter months. She had tried to move into corporate building but hadn’t been able to find a position. Liking food and a roof over her head, Avery had taken the job. Every shift seemed like a long, slow death, but it paid the bills.

“Here you go,” she said with a smile while she placed the plate back on the table in front of the customer. “Go ahead and let me know how it is.”

The man took a bite, then grimaced and set the burger down. “It’s overdone now.”

Shutting her eyes for a moment, she tried not to think about picking up the customer’s fork and stabbing him in the eye.

Instead, she leaned over and put her hands on the table. “Listen… I know what you’re trying to do. That burger is as medium-well as it gets. Don’t be a dick. Eat the damned thing if you so choose, but you will leave your money on the table, and then get out.”

Glancing over her shoulder, she noticed that Bart was busy with another order in the kitchen. Avery turned back to the customer, levitated the ketchup, spun it around in front of the customer’s face, unscrewed the lid then turned the bottle upside down. His mouth formed a perfect O of horror while the red goop oozed onto his lap.

“What the hell?” the man yelled and scrambled to his feet, trying to wipe the mess with a paper napkin, which only smeared it further.

At that moment, Grace sauntered to Avery’s side. Long, blonde hair tied up in a ponytail fell to her middle back. A smattering of freckles crossed her cheeks, and wide blue eyes stared at the customer. She stood taller than Avery… no surprise… at five-foot-two, almost every adult she’d ever met did. Long and lean with a great rack, Avery felt like a dumpy troll standing next to her.

“Is there a problem?” Grace asked, her brow furrowed.

“I… I just… she threw ketchup all over me!”

Grace crowded the man, trapping him against the table. “I highly doubt that. Avery’s as sweet as they come. No one spilled anything, except you.”

Avery bit back her smile. When she’d started working at the diner, she’d immediately known Grace was a were-shifter because of her wet dog / freshly cut grass smell… the odor of the Bellevue pack, if she wasn’t mistaken. Grace had known Avery was a Fae… well, Avery wasn’t sure how. Shifters always said they could smell a Fae, but none had ever told her what that odor was.

Anyway, after some initial wariness, the two had become fast friends… something that didn’t often happen between Fae and shifters. There was too much animosity between the groups that had gone back generations.

Avery glanced in Bart’s direction and watched him making his way toward them from the kitchen as he wiped his hands on a towel tucked into the white apron around his waist.

“Put your money on the table and get out,” Grace hissed. Her eyes flashed yellow, a sign she was about to shift into wolf form.

The guy’s stare widened, and he screamed a high-pitched sound that might have peeled the paint off the walls.

He reached into his pocket and threw a bunch of paper money on the table. Avery quickly picked it up. He and his friend ran toward the door. She counted forty single bills, which definitely covered the tab and left a nice tip.

“What the hell happened?” Bart asked. He and the waitresses watched through the window as the two guys sprinted across the parking lot in the pouring rain.

“Well, he got all upset when the ketchup spilled on him,” Grace said. “Then he just tossed his money and left.”

Avery rolled her eyes as the shifter batted her eyelashes at the boss. The act was unnecessary. Grace could get anything she wanted from Bart just by smiling at him.

“Did he leave enough to cover the tab?”

Avery and Grace nodded.

“Good. That’s all that matters. And that damned burger was medium-well.”

Bart returned to the kitchen. The Fae and shifter traded grins and each crossed arms over their chests.

“You need to keep your magic in check,” Grace whispered.

“And you should quit flashing your shifter-eyes at customers.”

Grace nodded. “We’re going to have the paranormal police investigating if we’re not careful.”

A shudder traveled down Avery’s spine. Spectral Prison had been the worst place she’d ever laid her head. Because of a tiff with a were-shifter, she’d ended up in solitary confinement. Grey walls, floor, sheets, and blanket. For a Fae who loved plants, color, the outdoors and bright sunlight, it had been a living nightmare.

“We can’t have that,” Avery replied. “No cops.”

“Nope. But you have to admit, the look on their faces was priceless.”

They both broke out into laughter. Bart glared at them, his stare sending the message loud and clear. Get back to work.

Avery spun on her heel and started clearing the table. The sight of the burger had her swallowing back rising bile. If only summer would come, I could get back to building houses instead of serving ground beef!

Then, it would be easy for her to grab a construction job. She loved working with her hands and watching a building come to life as she hammered nails and hung two-by-fours. She found the work physically exerting, but also rewarding. Waitressing would simply get her past these dark, dank months in the Northwest until the building season started up again.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you this earlier,” Grace said. “You had a visitor earlier looking for you. Didn’t give me a name, but he did say he’d be back tomorrow.”

Avery furrowed her brow. “What did he look like?”

“Tall, dark hair, nice smile. Friendly.”

Avery nodded and thought about who she knew who fit that description. There was a guy she’d gone on a couple of dates with… Tyler. He’d been okay but was in the military and had been deployed. Maybe he came back early.

The other guy… nah. She’d never see him again.

If it was Tyler, she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Frankly, she hadn’t given him much thought since he’d gone. He’d been nice enough, just a bit… boring.

As she carried the dishes back to the kitchen, her stomach twisted up just a bit. Was it from the burger on the plate or the unknown visitor she’d meet tomorrow?