It is a truth universally acknowledged that when a dragon queen gifts you real estate, you should be afraid.

  Deeply, profoundly afraid.

  Jade didn’t give presents the way normal people did. Normal people gave you a mug or a candle or maybe a gift card to a place you pretended to like. Jade gave you things that changed your trajectory. Jade gave you responsibility with a ribbon on it and watched to see if you flinched.

  So, when I stood in front of the squat brick building that used to be Sparkle Spin Laundry—clutching the deed Jade had slipped into an envelope and had delivered to me during our celebration party after saving the city from the Curator—all I could think was:

  Oh, no. I’m becoming a small business owner.

  There were terrors I understood. Monsters. Hexes. Bureaucratic abominations that tried to put you in a drawer.

  A commercial lease? That was eldritch.

  A cracked neon sign still flickered above the door, sputtering “Spa- -in,” which wasn’t far off from what Lily wanted, honestly. The windows were grimy, the awning sagged like it had given up on life, and the whole building smelled faintly of mildew, wet dog, and the kind of detergent that always felt like it had a personal grudge.

  A flyer was still taped to the glass:

  SPARKLE SPIN LAUNDRY — GRAND REOPENING!

  (Now under new management!)

  The date was eight months ago. Underneath, in smaller print, someone had handwritten:

  DO NOT ENTER.

  So that was encouraging.

  Elly clasped her hands under her chin and sighed like she was looking at a castle. “Daniel,” she declared dreamily, “it’s perfect.”

  “It’s a crime scene,” I corrected. “A crime scene with lint and soap scum.”

  Lily leaned in toward the glass, peering inside. “It has potential. You can feel it. Like a cocoon. Or a—”

  “A dead moth,” I said.

  “—a chrysalis,” she finished pointedly.

  Eury stepped past me, eyes sweeping the brickwork, the foundation line, the roof pitch. She looked like a real estate agent with a superiority complex and the power to petrify you if you offered low.

  “The bones are good,” she said. “With proper restructuring, stabilization sigils, and soundproofing, it could function.”

  “Soundproofing for what?” I asked.

  She paused. Looked at me the way you look at someone who just asked what a seatbelt is for. “Whatever we’re going to do in here.”

  …Fair. If ominous.

  The front door groaned when Lily pushed it, the metal frame warping like it had been holding its breath for months. One hinge snapped with a dramatic clank and narrowly missed her foot.

  Lily stared down at it, then at me. “Well.”

  “That’s… not a great sign,” I said.

  She stepped over the fallen hinge anyway, unbothered, heels crunching on a carpet of fallen ceiling tiles. “Okay,” she announced, voice echoing into the dim. “Hear me out: massage tables over there, incense burners in the corners, maybe a velvet chaise—”

  “Lily,” I said gently, following her into what used to be the main laundromat floor, “this is not a spa.”

  “It could be,” she purred.

  “It will not be.”

  She pouted in six languages simultaneously. It was impressive, honestly. If pouting were a weapon, she’d be on a government watchlist.

  Inside, the place was worse than it looked from outside. Rows of rusted washing machines stood like defeated soldiers. A dryer door hung open like a mouth mid-scream. The floor was sticky in that way that made you want to burn your shoes after.

  There were faint chalk marks on the wall—old ward lines, half-scrubbed off, the residue of something that had tried to keep things out. Or keep something in.

  Elly hopped in next, voice bright and too excited for a building that smelled like haunted fabric softener. “We need a reception desk! And a wall of gadgets! And a whiteboard for mission planning! And maybe custom uniforms—”

  “The uniforms thing again?” I asked. “You’d better not give me the red one.”

  “They always die, right?” Eury inquired, dead serious.

  Elly nodded emphatically. “Matching jackets! With our logo on the back!”

  “We don’t have a logo,” I said.

  “We will,” she said, already grinning like she’d ordered patches in bulk. “I’ve got a gremlin street artist working on one.”

  “That sounds like how you end up with a logo that curses people.”

  “That sort of thing establishes brand identity,” Elly said, offended.

  Meanwhile, Eury wandered toward the back of the shop, stepping around rusted machines like a cat navigating puddles.

  “This area will be my office,” she announced, as if the building had been waiting for her approval. “Minimalist. Clean. Controlled lighting. Fresh air. Sand garden. Stone fixtures.”

  “We can’t afford stone fixtures,” I said.

  She regarded me coolly. “Then steal some.”

  “Elly,” I said, “please tell her we’re not stealing rocks for her.”

  “He said please,” Elly chirped. “That means he’s probably lying.”

  I groaned.

  Eury shrugged. “Fine. I’ll have Aunt Theona freeze me some. She owes me.”

  Lily tilted her head. “You can’t just freeze stone fixtures.”

  Eury’s mouth twitched. “Watch me.”

  I rubbed my temples. This was day one. Day one.

  And then the contractors arrived. They didn’t knock.

  The front door burst inward as Krug’s Mythic Masonry tromped in—three man-sized gargoyles with tool belts, wings scraping drywall, dust raining down like the building was shedding.

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  Krug himself lumbered in last. He looked like he’d been sculpted by a drunk with a vendetta against symmetry. His chisel-scarred jaw was permanently set in disappointed-dad mode, and one horn had “KRUG” scratched into it like someone had signed their own forehead.

  “Mercer,” he rumbled. “We doin’ demo or tile first?”

  “What— I thought we were getting an estimate.”

  He handed me a stack of forms thick enough to qualify as a novella. “Estimate, invoice, waiver, and compensation form.”

  The compensation form was… concerning.

  I skimmed, frowning. “So, this says… you want… my dream?”

  Krug shrugged. “Just a little one. Something you weren’t using.”

  “That’s not— that’s not currency.”

  “It is to us,” he said patiently, like I was being difficult at the bank. “You got spare nightmares? We take those too.”

  “And what’s with the mineral rights?”

  Krug pointed at the wall like it was obvious. “Asbestos.”

  I stared at him. He stared back.

  Then, in the background, one of his gargoyle workers leaned down and licked the wall. “Mmm,” it said thoughtfully. “Spicy.”

  I set the paper down. “Let’s… put a pin in that.”

  Next came the trolls.

  Troll demo crews are enthusiastic. Too enthusiastic. They arrived in a herd, stomping in wearing bright orange safety vests that said:

  SLOW: TROLLS AT WORK

  One of them had a hard hat that read KISS THE FOREMAN.

  “Wait—wait—WAIT!” I shouted as they lumbered past me with sledgehammers.

  They were already knocking down a non-load-bearing wall, cheering as plaster exploded in a cloud.

  “That was the coat closet!” I yelled.

  “That was the FUTURE,” one troll replied, beaming, as if he’d just invented modern architecture.

  Another one pointed at the washers. “CAN WE KEEP THESE?”

  “No,” I said. Not because I cared, but because I thought they could be worth something, even if it was just scrap metal.

  He looked crushed. “BUT THEY SPIN.”

  “We have enough spinning,” Elly said solemnly.

  Eury pinched the bridge of her nose. Lily laughed. Elly filmed everything like she was going to post it with upbeat music and a caption that said #RenovationEra.

  Then came the kobold electricians—small, frantic, with tool belts full of shiny wire and an emotional dependency on copper. They scurried in, sniffing the outlets like bloodhounds.

  “BAD WIRES,” one hissed dramatically.

  “ALL WIRES BAD,” another agreed.

  A centaur plumber arrived after them, ducking through the door and immediately getting stuck.

  “WHO BUILT THIS DOORWAY?” he demanded.

  “A human,” Eury said.

  The centaur snorted. “OF COURSE.”

  A gremlin IT consultant crawled out of the shadows like he’d always been here and tried to unionize my toaster. He held up a tiny pamphlet labeled APPLIANCE RIGHTS and stared at me like I was the problem.

  By noon—by noon—the building smelled like insulation, strange herbs, ozone, and the faint metallic tang of newly scratched ward lines.

  I paced with a clipboard like that would grant me competence.

  “Okay,” I muttered, “so the gargoyles want a dream, the trolls want naming rights to the break room, the kobolds want shiny objects—”

  “They prefer ‘glittering assets,’” Lily corrected from where she’d claimed a pile of ceiling tiles and was somehow making it look like a throne.

  “—Eury wants a zen garden, Elly wants a drone network, Lily wants a massage suite—”

  “I NEED A COMFORTABLE WORK ENVIRONMENT!” Lily shouted.

  “—and I want to not be bankrupt.” I protested.

  Elly hopped onto a dryer and sat crisscross, tapping away at her tablet like she was conducting an orchestra. “I built us a budgeting system.”

  I blinked. “That fast?”

  “It tracks money, favors, barter, enchantments, debts, and potential future losses,” she said. “Also, I color-coded for you.”

  “Why?”

  She smirked. “Because you panic and do dumb things when you get overwhelmed. And it’s funny.”

  “That’s… not reassuring.”

  “It’s accurate,” Eury said without looking up from whatever she was doing with chalk lines and a measuring tape.

  Eury stepped into the middle of what would be the main office space and turned slowly, taking it in. Her expression went serene and judgmental.

  “This building has a second floor,” she said. “You need living space. And you cannot stay in your current apartment anymore.”

  “Because of the pantry spider?”

  “Yes.”

  “Eury,” I said, “the spider is harmless.”

  “FEEDER,” whispered faintly from my pocket.

  I froze.

  Elly’s head snapped toward me. “You brought it?”

  “I DID NOT BRING IT,” I hissed. “IT FOLLOWED ME.”

  “In your pocket?” Lily asked, fascinated.

  “It’s sneaky,” I said through clenched teeth. “And apparently has variable sizing now.”

  “So,” Lily said slowly, eyes gleaming, “it’s a company mascot.”

  “No.”

  “Yes,” all three women said in unison.

  Behind us, a troll punched a hole in another wall. “OPEN CONCEPT!” he roared like it was a war cry.

  I pressed a hand over my face. This was going to destroy me. Emotionally. Mentally. Financially.

  And somehow… It felt right.

  Jade knew. Of course she did. She saw the path ahead long before I did. Error Solutions wasn’t a building. It wasn’t even a business.

  It was a declaration. A way forward for a guy who never asked for any of this but somehow ended up wearing the crown anyway.

  Elly bounced beside me and hooked her arm through mine. “We’re gonna make this place amazing,” she said. “Promise.”

  Lily rested her chin on my shoulder. “Just trust us.”

  Eury stood behind us, quiet for once. When she spoke, her voice softened. “Trust yourself,” she said.

  I looked around the disaster zone—plaster dust swirling, magical contractors yelling, Lily planning a jacuzzi we could never afford, Eury marking the floor where a koi pond definitely shouldn’t go, Elly digitizing the entire universe into spreadsheets.

  My team. My weird, chaotic, terrifying team.

  And for the first time since the Curator fell, since the Eidolich escaped, since the world cracked open and spilled its nightmares into the streets…

  I felt ready.

  “Well,” I said, sliding the clipboard under my arm like I knew what I was doing, “let’s get to work.”

  A ceiling tile immediately fell on my head.

  I stood there, blinking dust out of my eyes, while Lily cackled and Elly gasped “ICONIC!” and Eury sighed like she’d seen this coming in a prophecy.

  Somewhere inside my pocket, the spider clicked approvingly.

  “ICONIC,” it whispered.

  I stared at the ruined laundromat, the contractors, the broken walls, the absurdity of it all.

  “…Yep,” I muttered. “This is definitely my life now.”