CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
he last time Sera had put on an actualgown, she’d beenT just shy of her fifteenth birthday and had been going to the last winter masquerade she’d attended, so it was decidedly unsettling to look in the mirror and see herself dressed up like that again.
She rather liked the way she looked, though. Jasmine had outdone herself. With just five days in which to come up with something that would fit in at the Bertram-Mogg country house, she’d bought an emerald gown from the Medieval Fair, taken it apart, restitched it to Sera’s exact measurements with layers of green silk and tiny glass beads, and crafted a gorgeous mask to match. The result was a flowy, corseted work of art that made Sera feel like she’d been transformed into a beautiful, powerful, and morally ambiguous sorceress.
Clemmie, watching from the windowsill, heaved a nostalgic sigh. “I used to look fantastic in a corset.”
“What didyou wear corsets for?”
“My everyday style could best be described as Renaissance opulence,” Clemmie replied. “It suited my body.
I had Rubenesque proportions. I was roundly, wholesomely lovely. Big, long-lashed eyes. An innocent rosebud pout.”
“Innocent,” Sera scoffed.
Clemmie was indignant. “How dare you? I was precious.
A true girl next door.”
“Only if that door belonged to Beelzebub.”
Frowning into the mirror, Sera realised her swan necklace was a problem. The neckline of her dress was too low to hide it, and having a literalswan on display seemed a bit much when the whole point was to go incognito, but it also felt wrong to go out tonight without her talisman. Hmm.
What if she turned it around and let the pendant hang down theback of her neck? Her long hair would hide it. Problem solved.
It was almost time to go. Sera picked up her phone, her keys, and her masquerade mask and stashed them carefully in the dress’s many ingenious pockets. Jasmine had also fashioned a matching cloak out of a bolt of sumptuous velvet fabric, it being December after all, and Sera tied this tightly at her shoulders, covering up the entirety of the dress.
“The last fifteen years have been quite the adventure, haven’t they?” Clemmie said suddenly, looking up at Sera, her fur haloed in silver by the moonlight behind her.
“You’re saying that like the adventure’s over.”
“Don’t we want it to be?” Clemmie looked out the window like she was already a long way away. “Isn’t that the whole point? Finally? Don’t wewant to get out of the snow globes we’ve trapped ourselves in?”
Yes, Sera wanted to say, but she couldn’t help thinking that you could only get out of a snow globe by shattering the glass, and shattered glass always hurt.
Absently, Clemmie went on. “It’s been a long time since I last went to Grey Manor. Do you remember that big fight we had? When I was gone for three days? I went to my grandfather’s house. He was so happy to see me. He wanted
to go straight to Grey Manor and demand that Albert break my curse. We got as far as the doorstep. I lost my nerve and ran away.”
Sera blinked at Clemmie in the mirror. “Back up a second. You told me your family wanted nothing to do with you after the curse.”
“They don’t. My grandfather’s the only exception.”
“And he thought he could march up to Albert Grey’s front door anddemand things of him?”
“He was used to people doing what he asked of them.”
Clemmie gave a laugh that was all teeth and claws. “Hewas the Chancellor.”
Sera spun around. “The Chancellor? ChancellorBennet?
Is your grandfather?You’re a Bennet?”
“Is that really so surprising? I told you Albert and I were classmates. Do you think just anybody gets to rub shoulders with a Grey?”
“But a Bennet! You’re pretty much Guild royalty!”
“Am I?” Clemmie snapped bitterly. “Ask your historian about the Bennet family tree. He’ll tell you I’m not on it. My family was so ashamed of the scandal that they’ve all but erased me from our history.” She jumped off the windowsill, stalking to the door. “You’re wondering why I didn’t tell you years ago, but it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? I never told you my real name because I’m not even sure I get to keep it. I never told you about my family because I don’t have one. Good luck tonight.”
“Clemmie, stop,” Sera said. “Enough. This is me, remember? It doesn’t matter what your name is.I’m your family.”
Clemmie stared at Sera, still bristling, eyes wide and dark. Then, predictably, she let out an exasperated growl. “I never expected to love you, you know. Jasmine. Theo. None
of you. I don’t like it. I don’t appreciate the way it’s snuck up on me. WhenI sneak up on people, they call me a villain, but I’m supposed to believe it’s acceptable whenlove does it?”
“Love does have a way of creeping up on you,” Sera
admitted.
Clemmie nodded. “Like black mould.”
“And it’s just as hard to get rid of. Sorry.”
“I’ll live.”
“Be careful tonight, Clemmie.”
“You too,” said Clemmie, and she was gone with a swish of her tail.
Sera took a deep breath, smoothed the front of her cloak, checked herself one last time in the mirror, and left.
Jasmine, Matilda, and Nicholas had taken the children to Malik and Elliot’s for dinner, which had been planned weeks ago and which Sera and Luke had had to apologetically get out of at the last minute, so the inn was unusually quiet.
Coming down the stairs and passing through the familiar, softly lit rooms, Sera found herself thinking about snow globes again, and it struck her that no matter how much she missed her magic, no matter how deeply she ached for it, this inn, with all its creaks and groans and inconveniences, was no snow globe. It was her home, where she knew the story of every dent and scar, where the notches on that doorframe over there told the tale of Jasmine measuring Sera’s height every year until she was thirteen, and the scorch marks on Sera’s bedroom wall spun a fable about a little girl casting her first spell. Here, the handmade curtains on the windows had laughter stitched into the seams, the cracks between the floorboards were filled with old magic and Nivea cream, and the wild, unmanageable garden was the scene of a hundred teatimes and starlit dreams.
The inn breathed magic,her magic, and maybe it was the fact that she was on the brink of getting the next part of the restoration spell, but Sera hadn’t felt this close to that magic in a very long time.
The front door opened and Luke stepped in, car keys in hand. “There you are. Nice cloak.”
“I thought I’d left holes in the sky,” she heard herself say.
“Exit wounds that kept bleeding stardust. I used up my magic when I brought Jasmine back, and I was never going to get it all back without something big like the restoration spell, but I should have got alittle. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
Magic replenishes itself.”
“You thought yours couldn’t,” Luke said.
“I thought that every time it tried, it bled out again.
Because of the exit wounds. What if that’s not it, though?
What if…” She looked up at the soft, golden starlight glimmering faintly in the corners. “What if those little bits of stardust that keep coming back, that keep regenerating, aren’t actually disappearing at all? What if they’re still
here?”
Luke watched her intently. “Go on.”
“I think it’s the spell.My spell. The one that protects us, the one that makes the inn shine in the dark so that anyone who needs it can find it.”
“I guessed as much the day my mother came to visit,”
Luke admitted. “The inn never made sense to me. I know magic. I know spells. They’re finite. Once they’re cast, they’re cast. They’re not ours anymore. And yet yours was.
You were able to change the spell to let her in. You shouldn’t have been able to do that, but you did, because it’s still yours. You’re the one keeping it alive. It’s like stoking a fire.
It’s the same spell you cast twenty years ago, the same fire,
but you’ve never let it go out. That’s where that little bit of
stardust is going.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You already knew.”
He was right. She had known. She just hadn’t seen. From the very moment she’d cast the spell over the inn, she must have been keeping it alive, giving it that little bit of stardust to keep it going, but she’d had so much of it then that she’d never noticed. Who notices a few stars scattering into the aether when there are millions more? Then, the first time shehad noticed, she’d resurrected Jasmine, and there was just a smattering of stars left in her night sky, so she’d finally seen the few that were going away.
She’d thought of them as exit wounds bleeding stardust, but she’d just needed to look at it a little differently.
“I could have stopped,” Sera said softly. “I could have let the spell die out. Taken back that little bit of extra magic I kept giving away.”
“You could have, but you were never going to,” Luke said.
“You cast the spell that made the inn what it is. You cast the spell that brought Jasmine back to life.Those things are you.
You’ve always given your magic away when it matters most, and I think there are very few things in the world that matter more to you than the home you and Jasmine made for each other, so no, you were never going to let the spell die out.”
Stupid, crumbling, ridiculous Batty Hole.
He was right again. There were very few things in the world that mattered more.
Sera traced the old, knotted surface of a wooden beam beside her, smiling a little, and gave herself another minute to listen to the familiar, comforting heartbeat of the magic all around her.
Luke leaned against the open front door, waiting patiently, hands in his pockets, and as she looked at him properly for the first time, it occurred to her that if Luke in jeans was obnoxiously attractive, Luke in a black jacket and tie ought to be illegal. For one thing, the black made his eyes even bluer, the mere existence of the tie immediately conjured images of her fingers undoing it, and shereally ought not to get started on the way the jacket fit over his shoulders and how the stark white shirt underneath did nothing to hide the
planes of his torso— He looked at her in confusion. “What?”
She refused to blush. “You, er, you look nice. No, that’s a lie. You look a lot better than nice.”
“So do you.” His voice was rougher than usual.
And he hadn’t even seen the dress yet.
Right. It wasdefinitely time to go.
Unlike the clunky metal bucket Sera drove around in, Luke’s car actually did the things cars were supposed to, so they’d barely pulled out of the driveway before the heating was on, the seats were toasty, and Sera’s breath no longer fogged white in front of her.
She was beginning to really feel the enormity of what she was about to do. She’d let herself get swept up in excitement and hope, in ideas and planning and making sure Clemmie knew what she needed to do, and it had all happened so fast that she’d been able to avoid thinking about how it would feel to go back, however briefly, to the world that had expelled her.
She bit the end of her thumbnail and looked out of the window, counting the minutes.
“Sera.” Luke reached for her hand, tugging it away from her mouth before she completely massacred her fingers.
“It’s going to be okay.”
She looked at him, her eyes tracing the lines of his profile, the angle of his jaw, the sharp, icy blue of his eyes, and she felt such a fierce, painful yearning that it took her breath away.
He met her gaze for a quick moment, and she had to look
away.
And counted the minutes some more.
“There’s chocolate in the back,” Luke said.
She smiled then. “You know me well.”
She reached behind her, feeling for the pocket on the back of her seat where Luke usually stashed Posy’s tablet on longer drives so she could reach it, but her hand hit
something in the dark footwell instead.
There was a yelp. “Ow!”
Sera shrieked. Luke yanked the car onto the verge and slammed on the brakes. “What thefuck.”
A head of grey corkscrew curls popped up between their seats. “Now before you get too cross with me,” Matilda said, uncurling from the footwell like a demon summoned from the lowest depths of Tartarus, “I didn’t plan to send us right off the road. You weren’t supposed to find me until we got there.”
Sera, trying and failing to calm her thundering heart, was outraged. “You could have been an axe murderer!”
“I’m not an axe murderer,” Matilda said soothingly. “For one thing, I don’t have an axe.”
“The fact that you addressed the axe part and not the murderer part is really not very comforting.”
Luke twisted around in his seat and levelled an arctic stare at Matilda, who, Sera noticed with increasing dread, appeared to be wearing a very nice frock. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Luke, she’s not wearing dungarees,” Sera whispered.
Luke sighed. “Christ on a wee bicycle, she thinks she’s coming with us.”
“Exactly!” Matilda said happily, settling herself comfortably in the back seat. “I was lying in bed last night, you know, tossing and turning and thinking about it, and every bone in my body revolted at the thought of squandering the only opportunity I might ever have to attend anactual magical ball. An. Actual. Magical. Ball. Where did you say that chocolate was, by the way? Are there any other snacks? I simply can’t miss supper at my age.”
“Then you should really have gone to Malik and Elliot’s for dinner, shouldn’t you?” Sera retorted.
“I’m taking you home,” Luke said sternly.
Matilda objected at once. “You can’t do that! We’re over an hour away from the inn! Isn’t Clemmie supposed to kick up a ruckus at Albert Whatshisname’s house at ten o’clock on the dot? Doesn’t that mean the two of you have to be at the Bibbly-Bogg house when that happens? You won’t have
time if you take me home first!”
“Bertram-Mogg,” said Sera.
“That’s what I said. Bibbly-Bogg.”
“It’s gone eight already,” Luke said quietly to Sera, glancing at the clock on the dash.
They shared a long, exasperated, and increasingly resigned look. Sera nodded. Sighing again, Luke looked over his shoulder and said, even more sternly, “You do what we tell you. You don’t tell anybody your real name. Anddon’t drink anything gold, purple, or blue.”
Matilda practically did a jig of glee. “Why not? Will it trap me in Hades forever?”
“We should be so lucky,” said Sera, and Matilda flicked her lovingly on the ear.
Luke started the car and pulled back into the road.
There were a few minutes of silence and then,
unexpectedly, Luke started laughing.
Sera and Matilda stared at him.
Practically wheezing, Luke said, “Bibbly-Bogg,” and then Sera, too, was laughing until she could hardly breathe.
