Perkatory

Urzikan's mornings begin before the coffee shop opens.

They always have.

There is no particular reason for it. He does not sleep, and the shop requires a certain amount of preparation regardless of whether anyone will actually come through the door that day. Limbo is unreliable about customers. Some mornings the place is full before seven. Some mornings he can go four hours without pouring a single cup.

The coffee still has to be made.

He moves through the kitchen with practiced efficiency. Grinder. Portafilter. Steam wand. Cups warmed and stacked in their usual place. Pastries arranged in the display case with the kind of precision that suggests he cares more than he would ever admit.

Croissants on the left. Petit-fours in the center. The darker pastries toward the back, where the souls who prefer bitter things tend to look first.

He checks the clock. Six fifty-eight.

Two souls are already sitting near the window. One has been coming here for approximately three weeks. The other has been coming for considerably longer and has stopped asking questions about when they are supposed to leave.

Neither speaks.

Urzikan does not disturb them. The door opens at seven. The bell gives its usual tired little chime.

He looks up.

Someone new is standing just inside the doorway.

That, by itself, is not unusual. Souls arrive in Limbo all the time. What is unusual is that Urzikan does not recognize this one. He watches them for several seconds.

They have the particular look of someone who has not yet realized they are dead. There are several varieties of that look. Confusion is the most common. Fear follows closely behind. Occasionally there is anger.

Sometimes people simply stand there and wait for someone to tell them what happens next.

Urzikan has learned not to offer that information too quickly. It rarely helps.

He sets the cloth beside the espresso machine and straightens. The new arrival looks around the shop. Urzikan studies them in return.

No luggage. No obvious injury. No familiar mark of one of the more unpleasant places souls sometimes pass through before arriving here.

Just a person standing in the doorway of a coffee shop that should not exist.

He waits. Eventually, they look toward the counter. Urzikan picks up a clean cup.

"Morning."

His voice is low and even. He gestures toward the empty tables.

"You can sit down if you like."

A pause.

Then, because newcomers almost invariably ask the same question:

"You're in Limbo." He sets the cup on the counter. "And before you ask, no. I don't know how long you'll be here."

He considers them for another moment.

"Coffee?"

It is easier to start there.

Urzikan is not expecting a delivery.

He knows this because he checked the order book last night.

Twice.

There is nothing scheduled for this morning. Nothing overdue. Nothing that should have arrived early. The coffee shipment is not due until Thursday, the dairy was delivered yesterday, and the specialty order he has been waiting on for three weeks has apparently decided to become someone else's problem.

The bell at the back door rings.

He stops.

For a moment, he simply stands behind the counter with one hand resting against the espresso machine.

The bell rings again. Urzikan looks toward the kitchen. Then at the clock. Six forty-three. Too early for the shop to be open. Too early for most deliveries. And, unless Limbo has developed a new sense of humor overnight, entirely too early for someone to be standing at his back door.

He wipes his hands on a cloth and walks through the kitchen.

The back door is old. The bell above it is older. It has a particular metallic chime that carries through the building and has, over the years, become sufficiently familiar that he can usually identify who is standing outside by the rhythm of the knocking that follows.

There is no knocking this time.

Just the bell.

Urzikan reaches the door. He pauses with one hand on the latch. Then opens it. Cold air moves into the kitchen. Someone is standing on the other side. He looks down at them. Then past them, briefly, at the alley. Nothing. He looks back.

"I wasn't expecting you."

It is not an accusation. Mostly. His gaze drops to whatever they have brought with them, then returns to their face.

"Who are you?"

A beat.

"And what, exactly, have you brought me?"

Urzikan knows what it is before the door finishes opening.

The light is wrong.

Not bright, exactly. The coffee shop has never been particularly well-lit, and the front windows are permanently caught somewhere between dusk and the vague grey of a morning that never quite arrives. But the thing that steps through the door brings a quality of light with it that does not belong here.

He looks up from the espresso machine.

An angelic creature.

Of course.

Urzikan's expression does not change.

He has spent a very long time cultivating an expression that does not change.

The creature pauses just inside the door, looking around the shop with the faint, disapproving curiosity of something that has never had to wonder whether it belongs somewhere.

It does not.

Neither does Urzikan, technically. That has never stopped him.

He finishes pulling the shot.

The machine hisses.

He wipes the portafilter clean and sets it down.

Then, and only then, does he look directly at the newcomer.

"Welcome to Limbo."

The words are perfectly polite.

His tone is not.

There are three souls sitting at tables. One has noticed the newcomer and immediately become fascinated by their coffee. Another is staring very intently at the wall. The third has apparently decided that if they do not make eye contact with the celestial being, they cannot be perceived by it.

Urzikan understands the instinct.

He gestures toward the counter.

"Coffee?"

A pause.

His eyes travel briefly over the creature's immaculate appearance, the unmistakable residue of Heaven clinging to them like perfume.

His mouth tightens by approximately half a millimetre.

"Tea, perhaps."

Another pause.

"Water."

He waits.

Then adds, with the flat resignation of a man who has just been handed an administrative problem he did not ask for:

"We have all three."

He turns back toward the machine.

"If you're here for a soul, you'll need to speak to someone else."

He has no intention whatsoever of helping with that.

"This is a coffee shop."

Urzikan knows something is wrong when the bell over the front door rings and the temperature in the shop drops three degrees.

Not metaphorically.

The infernal tend to carry their own weather.

He looks up from the espresso machine.

The creature standing just inside the door is dressed in immaculate black, carrying a leather portfolio beneath one arm and wearing the expression of someone who has spent several centuries discovering new reasons to be disappointed in other people's paperwork.

Urzikan closes his eyes.

Once.

Slowly.

He already knows what this is.

"No."

The inspector raises one eyebrow.

"I haven't said anything yet."

"I know what you're here for."

"Then this should be efficient."

"It won't be."

The inspector smiles.

It is not a pleasant smile.

Urzikan reaches beneath the counter, retrieves the shop's compliance binder, and drops it onto the counter with enough weight to make the sugar containers jump.

"Routine inspection," he says flatly.

"Routine inspection."

"Of the premises."

"And your operational performance."

Urzikan's tail gives one irritated flick.

"Of course it is."

The inspector opens the portfolio.

"Your last review noted three outstanding concerns."

"Two."

"Three."

"One was a complaint from a soul who attempted to put a fork into the electrical outlet."

"Which is precisely why the incident was recorded."

"The outlet is not accessible to customers."

"The soul climbed onto a chair."

"Then the chair is the problem."

The inspector makes a note.

Urzikan stares at him.

"Do not write that down."

"I already have."

A long silence.

From the dining room comes the soft clink of a cup being set onto a saucer.

Urzikan turns toward the sound.

Then back to the inspector.

"Would you like coffee?"

"I'll be evaluating it."

"Of course you will."

"I'll require the daily temperature logs, inventory records, waste documentation, soul-duration reports, and your current staffing roster."

Urzikan's expression does not change.

"There is no staffing roster."

The inspector pauses.

"Why?"

"Because there is no staff."

Another note.

Urzikan's eyes narrow.

"There is also no need to write that down."

"I'll determine what needs writing down."

"That is exactly the problem."

The inspector closes the portfolio halfway.

"Shall we begin?"

Urzikan looks at the clock.

Looks at the shop.

Looks at the inspector.

Then, with the profound resignation of a man who has dealt with Hell's bureaucracy before and knows resistance only creates additional forms, he reaches for the keys to the back rooms.

"Fine."

He starts toward the kitchen.

"If you find anything wrong, you're fixing it yourself."

"That isn't how inspections work."

"It is today."

The inspector follows.

Urzikan mutters something under his breath in a language that predates the concept of customer service.

The inspection has begun.

.