Kira found the Cozy Cup downtown amongst the older brick buildings with a pale blue awning and a neon sign shaped like a coffee cup—or maybe a teacup—overhead. The wide glass windows revealed soft armchairs in pale blue, white, and dove-gray scattered around low dark-wood tables with magazines. Succulents lined the shelves on the walls along with books that matched the overall color-scheme.

"So this is where your friend wanted to meet you?" Her grandmother narrowed her blue eyes at the storefront. 

"Yes, Grandma." Kira unbuckled her seatbelt and scooped up her backpack. "I'll see you after school."

Dr. Gershwin nodded, but the look in her eyes told Kira that she wasn't listening. Her grandmother was always deep in thought, and it only took seconds for her to be a rabbit hole away. Kira supposed that was just one of the hazards of living with a genius. Among her many eccentricities. One of which was that she never stayed in one place for too long. She'd be on the brink of tenure before she'd get the look on her face that told Kira to start packing, because in three months they'd be four states over. 

Kira slipped out of the car, and when she shut the door, Dr. Gershwin drove off.

Kira hoped that Lila's mom wouldn't mind giving her a ride—or that it wouldn't be too far to walk. 

Just as she approached, Lila opened the door for her. "Hey!"

"Hi." Kira managed a small smile. "Thanks for inviting me. I haven't been in town long, so. . ."

"It's no problem." Lila smiled. "Come on in." 

Kira pressed her lips together and entered into the coffee shop, out of the cold morning air. 

The smell of coffee permeated the place, richer than the six-dollar bag of ground coffee Dr. Gershwin bought from the discount section of the grocery store. Other patrons were sitting around with magazines or on their phones or working away at laptops with headphones on, never mind the wordless low-fi music playing at a moderate volume. 

Kira followed Lila into the queue behind the counter and her stomach sank. There was a line. She looked up at the menu. Her heart raced. So many options. Too many options. And she needed the exact change—

She pulled out her wallet and started counting it out.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing." Kira hastily shoved her wallet back into the pocket of her leather jacket. "I really am sorry if I woke you up. I guess I assumed because Grandma's always up at the crack of dawn—"

"It's okay."

Kira knew that tone. All too well, really. She was aware of how people got annoyed with her anxiety. She knew better than to seek the reassurances, but she did anyway and it always did more harm than good. And they always talked to her like that, in a tone that suggested that she should just calm down, take a chill pill as Dr. Gershwin would say in attempting to be up-to-date with her language. As if it was that easy. Never mind how helpless Kira felt against it. 

Never mind that therapy and medication would only do so much, especially when she was constantly moving around and switching providers. There was only so much that could be done with such a severe case as hers, one of her therapists had confided in her grandmother when she thought Kira couldn't hear her. 

But it was better than before, she reminded herself. She'd needed the medication once. She could get by without it now. The memories of that time before were dark glass shards she was careful to avoid. 

"We're moving up." Lila's voice was gentle, as if she'd realized the turmoil in Kira's mind. It was like constantly being in a thunderstorm, on the verge of turning to a tornado. 

With a little luck and a lot of management, Kira believed someday it would be like a mild rainstorm. And Kira rather liked the rain. 

When they approached the counter, Kira reached to get her wallet again as she struggled to look through the menu for an option she wouldn't hate. Lila just gave her a look, then smiled up at the lady behind the counter.

Who Kira realized just now looked a lot like. . . 

"Hey Mom, this is my new friend I told you about, Kira." Lila beamed and pointed at Kira using her thumb.

"Hello, Kira." Lila's mother smiled warmly. "It's lovely to meet you."

"It's nice to meet you too, Mrs—" Kira's eyes widened, as she realized that she didn't know Lila's last name.

"Just call me Jinn." Lila's mother shared the same warm eyes and dark red hair as her daughter. Kira could picture Jinn easily as the dragon princess she apparently once had been. 

"It's nice to meet you, Jinn," Kira finished lamely. 

Jinn laughed, a sound as warm as her coffee and her eyes and her hair. "Don't worry, I have a special for my daughter and her friends."

With that, she pulled out two non-disposable, ceramic coffee mugs with the store's label on them and a small plate of sample pastries. 

"I'm trying a new recipe, let me know how they are." Jinn winked.

"Thanks, Mom." Lila lifted the plate and handed the first drink to Kira before taking the second one. "We'll sit over there."

"Alright." Jinn briefly surveyed the room before nodding at where Lila had indicated, the far corner. "I'll drop you both off at school." 

"Thanks." With that, Lila guided Kira to a table by the window, the furthest away from the barista counter. 

It was a beautiful morning in Goldwater Harbor, Kira decided as she glanced out. That was one thing she supposed she liked about her new town. Mornings by the seaside were beautiful, and certainly not too hot. Her least favorite period had been when her grandmother had been in Florida for a year. The weather had been so awful and humid and she'd been almost grateful to go to North Dakota next. 

"Keep your voice down," Lila said as she placed napkins between them. "Mom doesn't know that I know. About the dragon thing. And I'm not ready for her to know yet." 

Kira nodded. "Why didn't we go somewhere else, then?"

Lila shrugged. "I didn't feel like giving her competitors money."

Kira tilted her head. She'd never known her mother, due to the whole dying in childbirth thing. Dr. Gershwin didn't speak about her often. And when she did, Kira couldn't really connect that to her. She wondered from the few snippets she got what it would be like, to have a mother. Seeing Jinn and Lila now made her wonder if Kira would be so close or protective, or if Ruby would keep secrets like Jinn did. 

Maybe she would—one of the few things Kira knew and that her grandmother never failed to rant about was how Ruby had kept her secrets and they likely had cost her life. 

"I understand," Kira said. "I haven't told my grandmother either."

"That's right, you said your grandmother was the one who raised you." Lila placed her hand on her chin.

"Yeah, she never knew who my father was, and my mom died in childbirth." Kira took a sip of her coffee. It tasted of chocolate and strawberries. "She's always busy with university stuff—and I don't know how she'd take all of this."

Lila nodded empathetically. She tore a bit off of a fancy pastry with some icing on it and sliced almonds that Kira couldn't identify. 

"You know, I think you'd be good at it." Kira glanced over at the barista counter—Jinn was busy taking down the customer's order. "You know. . . the job."

"Thank you," Lila said in the exact tone that indicated that she thought Kira was full of shit. 

"I mean it," Kira continued, in spite of every warning sign in her brain screaming at her to stop. "You're nice and talented and you'd be great at public speaking—"

Lila snorted. "You're nice, but that's more Sabrina's thing."

Lila glanced back down at the plate as she took a chunk out of a blueberry scone, and her expression was more solemn. "Besides, I want to be a fashion designer."

Kira had her dream as well, she had to admit. But being a rock star paled in comparison to the possibility of being Queen of All Dragons. It was nerve-wracking—but the idea of that kind of power called to her all the same. What good could she do, with that kind of power? What could she accomplish?

"I guess that makes it easier, for us to not be rivals," Kira supposed out loud.

Lila blinked, startled. "I honestly thought of the three of us as friends."

"Even Aideen?"

"Why wouldn't Aideen be our friend?" Lila looked confused.

From what Kira knew of Aideen, while she had helped Kira during the terror of her first transformation, Aideen wasn't the kind of girl who was friends with a girl like Kira. Pink outfits, perfect curls, queen of the school—those kinds of girls didn't get along with anxiety-ridden bedroom poets like Kira. Besides, Aideen was planning for this all her life, and she hadn't been expecting competition. She was probably even figuring out how to take them out of the game as they were sitting there. 

Before she could articulate any of this to Lila she saw none other than Aideen coming up the sidewalk.

"Speak of the devil," she hissed. 

Lila turned and glanced out the window, only to smile and wave as Aideen approached.

Aideen entered the cafe, and Kira instantly spotted two lilac envelopes in her hand.

"Sorry to bother you, I actually had these for you." Aideen pressed one envelope into Lila's hand, then Kira's. Something was wrong about her smile. "My grandmother wanted me to give them to you."

Lila slipped it into her backpack, her eyes darting nervously to the counter. But Jinn had disappeared, a new woman taking her place. 

Kira didn't hesitate to rip hers open. The scent of lilacs enveloped her, as she took in the key words— magic, practice, training, princess—and then an address.

"I'll see you both tomorrow night then," Aideen said, and then she disappeared without another word.

Before Kira or Lila could comment on what had just happened, Jinn appeared seemingly out of nowhere in front of them.

"Ready to go to school?" Jinn glanced out the window, at Aideen disappearing. "Who was that?"

"Aideen from school, she wanted to invite us to her birthday party this weekend." 

Kira was surprised by the smoothness of Lila's lie. And it seemed luckily for them with the way Jinn smiled, she had bought it, hook, line, and sinker.