Running a startup is supposed to be glamorous.

  People imagine whiteboards with confident arrows connecting inspiring buzzwords. They imagine exposed brick and reclaimed wood and someone saying “synergy” without irony. They imagine team-building retreats, logo mock-ups, and someone—somewhere—wearing a blazer for no reason at all.

  What they don’t imagine is three supernatural women arguing over fried rice while I try to define “workplace expectations” with a pen that keeps melting because Elly’s using it as a stress toy.

  This was night one of Error Solutions, LLC. Well—night one of us trying to decide what the hell that meant.

  The upstairs of the building Jade gave me—my new “apartment/office annex”—was still in that post-warehouse phase where every surface smelled faintly of old detergents, faded magic sigils, and maybe blood. Not fresh blood. Historical blood. The kind that had soaked into concrete decades ago and decided to stay.

  Most of the drywall was patched but not painted. The floor was clean but permanently stained concrete, awaiting a new surface or treatment. A single exposed beam still had a faint scorch mark from something that Eury assured me was “structurally insignificant.”

  We’d shoved a folding table into the middle of the main room, surrounded it with mismatched chairs that looked like they’d been rejected from three separate garage sales. Takeout containers were scattered across it like confetti from a celebration that couldn’t afford confetti.

  “Okay,” I said, tapping my laptop like that would make me sound authoritative. “We need to assign roles. Actual roles. Titles. Responsibilities. Something official.”

  “Official?” Lily echoed, arching one perfect eyebrow. “Danny, sweetie, we live with a pantry spider that occasionally sings in Latin and the Primordial tongue of creation. Nothing we do is official.”

  “It is,” I insisted. “It has to be. We’re taking jobs now. Contracts. Clients. Liability. I googled this. We need structure or we’re going to accidentally get sued by a Troll.”

  Eury snorted delicately. “Please. Trolls don’t sue. Their human lawyers sue.”

  “…that’s worse. And how do they even work with humans?”

  She shrugged. “Attorney-client privilege.”

  “That’s not how—” I stopped. “You know what? I don’t want to know.”

  Elly sprawled across her chair sideways, one leg hooked over the back, spinning my pen between her fingers so fast it hummed. The plastic tip had already warped into a sad little spiral.

  “Fine,” she said. “Let’s do corporate. I vote we give Daniel a title that makes him sound important but doesn’t let him actually make any dangerous decisions.”

  “Hey.”

  “Like C-E-O,” she said.

  Lily blinked innocently. “Chief Emotional Organizer? He can certainly rearrange my emotions.”

  Eury smirked. “Chief Exposure to Ordinance?”

  “That doesn’t even mean anything!”

  “Neither does your job,” Elly pointed out.

  I scrubbed my face with both hands. “Okay. Look. There are things we’re good at. Things we’re terrible at. We have to figure out who handles what before something gets set on fire.”

  “That was once,” Elly said.

  “Twice,” Eury corrected.

  “Three times,” Lily added sweetly.

  Elly waved them off. “Semantics. Fire and chaos are to be expected.”

  I opened a new document titled, optimistically, Error Solutions: Roles and Responsibilities.

  The blinking cursor mocked me.

  “Let’s go one at a time,” I said. “Lily—what do you want your role to be?”

  She straightened like someone adjusting for a spotlight. “I’m obviously Head of Acquisitions.”

  “Of what?”

  “Information. Secrets. Clients. Resources. People owe me favors. I can get doors opened that you can’t even see.”

  She wasn’t bragging. She was stating a fact.

  I thought about how many times she’d gotten us access to places we had no right being in. Or how many people mysteriously decided to cooperate when she asked nicely.

  “Okay,” I admitted. “That actually makes sense.”

  “And,” she added with a sweet tilt of her head, “I’m the pretty one. Which means if we need charm or negotiation, I handle it.”

  Eury inhaled sharply. “Excuse you?”

  Lily didn’t even look at her. “Please. You can petrify a grown man with eye contact. That’s not charm, darling, that’s OSHA-noncompliant intimidation.”

  Eury folded her arms. “I am charming when I choose to be.”

  “That,” Lily replied, “is what every cobra says before it bites someone.”

  “Okay!” I interjected before venom—literal or otherwise—entered the conversation. “Lily is Head of Acquisitions and External Relations.”

  She gave me a wink. “See? He’s learning.”

  “Eury?”

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  Her posture shifted instantly—less banter, more command presence.

  “I will handle operations,” she said. “Legal matters. Strategy. Contract review. Enforcement. And anything that requires someone to stand very still while I loom.”

  “That’s… unsettlingly specific.”

  “It is a valuable skill.”

  Lily murmured, “Chief Obsidian Overlord.”

  Eury ignored her. “Chief Operating Officer.”

  I typed it in.

  “Good,” I said. “Elly?”

  She kicked off the table and spun upright in one fluid, glitchy motion. “Chief Technology Officer. Also Chief Magical Diagnostics Officer. Also Chief ‘Why Is Reality Doing That’ Officer.”

  “Pick one.”

  “No.”

  She flicked her fingers and my laptop background changed to a neon logo reading:

  ERROR SOLUTIONS: We Fix Weird Sh*t

  The apostrophe glittered.

  “That’s actually…” I squinted. “…really good.”

  “I know.”

  “And you’re handling—?”

  “Digital tracking. Wards. Anti-hack enchantments. Gremlin-resistant infrastructure. Branding. Communications. Monitoring shade activity. And making sure none of you accidentally summon something because you typed the wrong search query.”

  “That was one time.” I felt like that should be our company motto.

  “You googled ‘ancient binding rituals PDF.’” Elly said, voice dripping with accusation.

  “I was researching!”

  “You downloaded three versions.”

  Eury pinched her nose.

  I typed in CTO.

  “And magical diagnostics,” Elly added, softer. “You want to know if something’s cursed, glamoured, half-possessed, emotionally fermented, or haunted by someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing? That’s me.”

  That wasn’t sarcasm. That was responsibility.

  Which left me.

  Three pairs of eyes turned toward me.

  “You,” Eury said, “are the Null.”

  “Which is not technically a job description.”

  “You stabilize the field,” Eury continued. “You allow us to approach unstable magic without being torn apart. You anchor.”

  “And,” Lily added, “you’re the only one who can walk into something screaming and not scream back.”

  “And,” Elly finished, “you’re the one that our clients will call when something doesn’t fit a category.”

  “So… Founder?” I tried.

  “You are that,” Lily said. “But functionally? You are the problem solver.”

  “That’s vague.”

  “That’s accurate,” Eury said.

  I leaned back in my chair, which creaked ominously.

  “I don’t know how to do this,” I admitted.

  The joking atmosphere thinned just a fraction.

  “None of us do,” Lily said quietly.

  The room felt bigger suddenly. The patched walls. The exposed beams. The emptiness where furniture would eventually go.

  “We just survived something that nearly erased the city,” I continued. “Now we’re filing paperwork.”

  “That’s how civilization works,” Eury said.

  Elly reached across the table and nudged my laptop. “You’re scared.”

  I didn’t deflect this time. “Yeah,” I said. “I am. Because this makes it real. This isn’t reacting anymore. It’s choosing.”

  Silence settled between us—not awkward. Just honest.

  Lily reached out and hooked her pinky around mine. “Then we choose together,” she said.

  Eury nodded once.

  Elly raised her soda cup. “To Error Solutions.”

  We clinked containers.

  At that exact moment, the pantry door creaked open on its own. The spider skittered out, its many legs tapping in polite cadence.

  “MEETING,” it chirped.

  “No,” I said immediately. “You are not on the payroll.”

  The spider paused. “EQUITY.”

  Lily burst into laughter.

  Elly gasped. “It wants shares!”

  “It eats moths and occasionally reality,” I said. “It does not get stock options.”

  “MEETING,” the spider insisted.

  Eury stared at me. “You understand,” she said, “that this is what happens when you create structure.”

  I sighed. “…we’re going to need a bigger table.”

  The girls laughed—real laughter this time. The kind that bounced off the concrete and made the place feel less like an abandoned warehouse and more like something being built.

  Something ours.

  Messy. Dangerous. Stupid. Hopeful.

  Outside, somewhere in the city, something howled. Not close. Not immediate. But present.

  We had paperwork to file. Systems to build. Clients to protect.

  And apparently? An advisory spider.

  I looked around the table—at Lily’s wicked smile, Eury’s steady gaze, Elly’s barely-contained chaos—and felt something settle in my chest.

  Not certainty. But commitment.

  “Alright,” I said. “Let’s fix weird.”

  The spider clicked approvingly.

  And Error Solutions, LLC—against all logic and several municipal codes—became real.