Baristopheles was not in love again. He insisted on this several times a day. Loudly and in rhymed couplets.

“Unburdened am I by Cupid’s curse, this fluttering feeling is simply… perverse!”

Everyone in Harmony Café ignored him the way you ignore a possessed blender. Politely and from a distance.

Jo wiped down a table. “He’s writing sonnets again.”

“He’s always writing sonnets,” Mira replied, ducking as a rolled parchment zoomed past her ear.

Baristopheles, Harmony’s resident espresso demon and chaos mascot, had developed a poetic fixation on another regular customer, since Derek’s work relocated him. She was someone who only came in on Wednesdays, always ordered a half-decaf blood-orange mocha, and never remembered his name.

“She smiled at me,” he told Sev, floating upside down near the biscotti jar.

“She also smiled at the mop,” Sev said.

“She smiled at the espresso machine,” Matteo added. “That’s just her face.”

Clorvex watched Baristopheles float by, arms crossed dramatically, dragging a scroll labeled “Ode to Orange Zest” behind him. “I think the demon’s got it bad.”

Sipping her double ristretto with a hex of bittersweet and raising a brow, the Queen of the Hollow Moon said, “Ah, romantic longing. Delicious. Has he declared his intentions yet?”

“In at least four languages and two limericks,” Jo muttered.

Determined to woo, Baristopheles enchanted every foam swirl into declarations like Mocha me yours! He summoned a jazz trio made of haunted coffee spoons, and conjured rose petals from the grinder, most of which Matteo was still cleaning out.

Finally, he recited a thirteen-verse poem titled Sonnet for the Smudged Lip Gloss of My Wednesdays, only for his muse to wave politely and say, “Aw, thanks, Broccoli-something,” and leave without her loyalty card stamped.

Baristopheles didn’t speak for a full minute.

Then he evaporated into steam and reappeared near the ceiling with a soft, melancholic espresso drip.

Jo handed him a tiny demitasse and said gently, “Unrequited love sucks. Try decaf.”

He sniffled. “What’s the point of verse if it does not bind?”

Clorvex handed him a pen. “Use your words, not your foam.”

Later, Matteo added a new chalkboard rule: No Poetry Before Noon. No Exceptions.