CHAPTER EIGHT
r, pardon? Sera was instantly suspicious. Nothing goodE could possibly come of anybody who not only knew her name but also, apparently, saw fit to react to undead farmyard animals with asigh.
“Jesus, you reallydid reanimate a dead chicken,” said the unknown man, managing to sound fascinated and disapproving all at once.
Fear clutched Sera by the throat. This wasn’t someone she’d once met at the pub or talked to on a train. He knew about magic. He knew what she’d done fifteen years ago.
Swallowing, she drew herself up to her full height and instantly transformed into the prickliest version of herself.
“How do you know about that?”
“Whodoesn’t know about that? I know it’s been a decade or so, but you can’t really have forgotten that everyone once knew everything about you.”
“So you’re from the Guild, then.” Sera bit the words out.
“Albert couldn’t be bothered to come himself?”
“Albert?” His eyebrows twitched together. “Albert Grey?”
“Didn’t he send you?”
“As I try to have as little to do with the Great and Powerful Wizard as possible,” the stranger replied in a
clipped, icy voice, apparently unimpressed with both her tone and her question, “I can’t imagine why he’d send me anywhere.”
“The Wizard?” Sera was momentarily distracted. “…of
Oz?”
“Who else?”
Sera collapsed into helpless laughter.
The stranger stared at her for a bemused moment before turning away to check on something in the car. “I’m still here,” Sera heard him say, at which point she realised that between the darkness and the whole Roo-Roo debacle, she hadn’t noticed that there was a young girl in the back of the car.
From the little Sera could see of her through the glass of the closed window, the girl seemed to be contentedly watching a tablet, one hand twirling a lock of her blond hair while the other held what looked like an assortment of leaves.
“So Albertdidn’t send you?” Sera was beginning to feel like the emotional hullabaloo of the day had taken a greater toll on her than she’d thought and she had, perhaps, overreacted a smidge. “You’re not here because of him?”
“I’m an academic, not an errand boy.”
“You could be both.”
The man gave her a look.
“Oh, quit looking so fed up,” Sera said. “You’d want to be absolutely sure, too, if you were me.”
He sighed again. “What have you done this time?”
Sera was by no means planning to tell this stranger anything, no matter what he’d said about wanting as little to do with Albert as possible, but even if shehad been so inclined, she was otherwise preoccupied with an unexpected and overwhelming sense of déjà vu.
It was that sigh, and the Scottish-ish accent, and those exact words said in that exact tone of resignation— Reluctantly, she pulled on that thread. Visiting her past wasn’t exactly a pleasant stroll down memory lane. It was a lane of teeth, crooked and sharp, and the pleasant stroll was more of a panicked scramble to find what she needed without slicing herself open on the sharpest edges. It was inevitable, then, that some things, normal things, things that were perfectlyfine, were overlooked, and it was there, between the sound of Albert’s impatient voice and the smell
of spellbooks, that Sera found him.
Luke Larsen.
She must have said it out loud because he looked surprised. “You remember my name.”
Before Sera could reply, the bright, slightly translucent figure of a teenage girl ran past her, skidded to a halt at a desk that materialised out of thin air, ducked past the legs of the slightly translucent boy standing beside the desk, and concealed herself under the desk.
The boy, who’d had his head bent over a hefty book in his hands, snapped the book shut and sighed. “What have you done this time?”
“Someone drank half a bottle of Chancellor Bennet’s favourite brandy,” the girl whispered, smothering a giggle.
“Well,two someones, really, but only one of those someones confessed.”
As abruptly as they’d appeared, the girl, boy, and desk faded away. Sera scowled at the spot where they’d been.
“What was that?” Luke demanded.
Sera scowled some more. “The house does that sometimes. It’s a side effect of my old magic. It throws up echoes. Memories. Ghosts. Whatever you want to call them.”
He looked past her at the crooked, starlit inn, reassessing it. She searched his face for the young, quiet apprentice she’d just seen and was somewhat annoyed to discover that Luke in his thirties was even nicer to look at than his younger self. And, considering the exact words she’d used to describe him to Francesca at the time were “gah, he’sso hot,” that was saying something.
He’d grown into himself. He was less lanky than he’d been, his shoulders broader than she remembered and his forearms lightly muscled. His jaw, which had once had the softness of youth, had settled into sharp lines. His blond hair was shorter, too, and a lot less boyish, ruthlessly pushed back from his brow.
His eyes, on the other hand, were just as she remembered: glacier blue and maddeningly difficult to read.
“Do you still work at the castle?” Sera asked.
“When I’m not working from home.” He was still studying the inn. “Eighty percent of my job is reading old books and documents, so it goes a lot faster when the entirety of the Guild’s library is right around me. On the other hand, there are fewer distractions at home.” He shrugged. “The professor I work for isn’t fussy about where I am as long as the job gets done.”
Sera couldn’t quite resist fifteen years of curiosity.
“What’s the castle like these days?”
Luke seemed to think he’d already said more than he’d planned to because his jaw tightened and he ignored the question. He nodded in the direction of the house instead. “I didn’t know you still lived here. It used to be an inn, didn’t it?
Your great-aunt used to run it? The one you—”
“Brought back to life with a forbidden spell that cost me pretty much all my magic? Yep, that’s the one. It’s still an inn.
We both run it now.” Rearranging Roo-Roo in her arms, she
gave him a wary look. “Why were you surprised that I remembered your name? I know you were a few years older and we weren’t exactly friends or anything, but we both spent so much time in the library that—”
He gave her a politely puzzled look. “We weren’t exactly friends, as you put it, because I was working, you were doing whatever the Wizard of Oz wanted on that particular day, and it was generally understood that you were too important to be bothered by anyone whose name wasn’t Grey.”
“I would never have said that!”
“You didn’t have to.” Luke shrugged like he didn’t care either way. “Besides, you were gone about six months after I started working in the library. I only remember you because you wereyou.”
It didn’t sound like a compliment. “Because I was me,” she echoed. “Right. Of course.”
She wasn’t sure why she’d expected anything else.She might remember Luke as the apprentice she’d had a big schoolgirl crush on, the one she’d looked for excuses to talk to, but allLuke remembered was the mythology the Guild had spun around her from the moment she’d crossed their threshold.
Pulling herself together, she said, “If the Guild didn’t send you, what are you doing here?”
The silence lasted only an instant, but it was unbearably loud.
Oh.Oh. She’d been so prepared for the worst that she hadn’t even considered the most obvious answer. “The spell brought you here.”
“I always thought the stories were exaggerated.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t believe any spell could call to somebody, beckon them from miles away, but yours did.”
She softened just the tiniest bit. “Well, you’re in luck. We have exactly two empty rooms.”
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “It’s fine. It’s not that long a drive back to Edinburgh.” He looked over his shoulder at the girl in the car and reconsidered. “I’ll find a hotel.”
“Good idea,” said Sera agreeably. “If only there was something of a hotel-esque persuasion close by.”
“I don’t need—”
“Maybe the spell didn’t bring you here because you need something,” she replied. “Maybe it brought you here becauseshe does.”
A muscle twitched in his jaw. They both looked at the child in the car, who now had her head propped against the window like she was getting tired.
Sera shifted the undead rooster to her shoulder, freeing her hands, and decided to proceed like the matter was settled. (As far as she was concerned, it was.) “We’re doing dinner at the moment,” she said, nodding back at the house. “There’s plenty, but if you’re not up for some extremely eccentric company right now, I’ll bring something upstairs for you. Thereare two rooms going, but one of them has twin beds if you’d rather stay with your daughter.”
“She’s my sister. Posy.” He hesitated. “She’s like us.”
“Magical?”
He nodded.
Sera had a lot of questions, but now wasn’t the time to ask them. “If you follow the lane a bit farther uphill, you’ll see the front of the inn. I’ll meet you there.”
“Wait.” The muscle in his jaw twitched again. “You should know Posy doesn’t understand she has to hide her magic. She could give all of us away.”
“How old is she?”
“Nine. And no, before you ask, I can’t justtell her to hide her magic ortell her it’s really, really not safe if other people find out what we can do. I have told her. Every witch she’s ever met has told her. I don’t really know how to explain it except to say she knows it, but she doesn’tget it.”
He sounded tired, like it wasn’t the first, second, or even hundredth time he’d had to explain his sister.Justify her.
Sera’s wrath kindled and she was suddenly, utterly furious for both of them. “Just to be clear,” she said gently, “I don’t care. And I mean that in the kindest possible way. If Posy gives us away, well, we’ll cross that bridge if we ever get to
it.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
But Luke wasn’t done. “I don’t think you understand. It’s a when, not an if. Wewill have to cross that bridge.”
Sera was cold and cranky and had a very bony pair of wings squashed against her neck, but she took a second to look at him,really look at him, and where she’d expected to find fear or anxiety or even anger, she found only resignation.
“You’re expecting me to come to the conclusion that this is too much trouble,” she realised out loud.
“That’s usually how it goes, yes,” Luke said icily.
“Not here it doesn’t,” said Sera. “This spell I cast? I cast it to keep us safe. It’s never been wrong about anybody, not once. Believe me, I’ve had my doubts about Clemmie, yet
here she remains.”
“Who?”
“Thepoint,” Sera pressed, “is that if my spell invited you in, you get to stay. See you round the front.”
She promptly walked away to avoid any further back-and- forth (and any encroaching frostbite), leaving the choice up to him.
She genuinely had no idea which way he’d go. It wasn’t often that someone at their doorstep turned away again, but on the other hand, it also wasn’t often that that someone at their doorstep already knew her. If she absolutelyhad to bet on it, she’d have bet that Luke would leave.
And yet, when she reached the front of the inn, there he was.
Luke switched the engine off, got out of the car again, and said, likehe was doingher a favour, “Just for tonight.”
Sera gave him a look that would have annihilated an individual made of weaker stuff. “I’m sure I’ll cry myself to sleep as soon as you’re gone.”
His mouth twitched in a brief, speedily suppressed smile.
“Are you always like this?”
“Like what?”
“Tetchy.”
“Yes,” said Sera succinctly.
“You never used to be.”
Well, it washigh time this conversation came to an end.
“I’m a lot of things I never used to be. Are you planning to leave your sister in the car all night?”
He gave her a long, thoughtful look before turning away to unlock the back door. Posy hopped nimbly out of her booster seat and regarded the house with curiosity. Sera couldn’t help noticing she’d left the tablet behind but kept hold of the leaves.
“We’re staying here tonight,” Luke explained to her. “It’s an inn.” This seemed to mean nothing to Posy, so he added,
“This is Sera’s house.”
“Sera’s house,” Posy echoed cheerfully.
“And this is Sera,” Luke went on.
Sera smiled. “Hello, Posy.”
Posy smiled back, took Luke’s hand, and then, still refusing to relinquish the leaves in her other hand, used a finger from the hand holding his to point decisively at the front door of the house.
“You don’t waste any time, I see,” Sera said appreciatively. “Come on in, Posy. Are you hungry?”
“Chockit cake?” Posy asked.
“Chocolate cake,” Luke translated automatically, then shook his head. “That was pretty obvious, wasn’t it? Sorry.
Habit. She doesn’t speak much, so sometimes it’s hard to work out what she’s saying if you don’t know her. She’s autistic. She doesn’t seem to have any problem understanding what you say to her, though, and she finds her own ways to make herself understood.”
“You really don’t have to explain,” Sera assured him. “And
yes, there’s always cake.”
Posy beamed at her.
Luke examined the old, rustic wooden sign creaking over the front door. “Batty Hole?”
“Yes, it’s ridiculous.” Sera sighed. “And also, as you’ll soon discover for yourself, it really couldn’t be more apt.”
As soon as she opened the front door, the sounds of clinking tableware and overlapping, animated voices drifted to them from the kitchen, but thankfully, none of those sounds involved the giveaway creak of the floorboards in the hallway. Sera was very, very certain that the last thing Luke and Posy needed right now was an encounter with an overly earnest (and overly armed) knight.
The house’s entryway was an open, comforting space covered in rugs and cluttered with shoes of many sizes. A tall, crooked table, made out of lovely knotty wood and
painted with flowers, stood beside the shoes, and Posy, observing the proximity of the shoes to the empty shelves built under the painted tabletop, put the shoes away at once.
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Sera said, but Posy, humming contentedly to herself, kept going.
“She likes things to be in their proper places,” Luke said in a voice that suggested he was very much in sympathy with his sister on that score. “She doesn’t, admittedly, always agree with other people’s opinions on what the proper places for things are…”
“This time, she’s absolutely right,” said Sera, watching Posy take her own shoes off and put them away as well.
“Thank you, Posy. If only Theo and Matilda were evenhalf as inclined to put things where they belong.”
On the wall opposite the front door were shelves crammed with books, places for everybody’s post, hooks for coats (Theo’s coat, Sera noted, was on the floor), and the old, overstuffed journal where Jasmine still insisted on writing by hand the names and details of every guest (cheerfully ignoring the fact that Sera had started using a spreadsheet five years ago). On either side of the shelves, the entryway branched off into two long, airy hallways, one of which led to the living room, Jasmine’s bedroom, and the kitchen, while the other led to the stairs, the downstairs loo (builtunder the stairs, so good luck not hitting your head on the ceiling if you happened to be taller than a garden gnome), and the bedrooms above.
Sera led Luke and Posy upstairs. The first landing was a snug, in-between space that had decidedly not been designed for people to linger for a chat (and yet it was, inevitably, the place where people lingered for a chat), with a single window on the tiny wall and two more hallways leading to a jumble of rooms on either side. Matilda and Nicholas had the
bedrooms on one end, while Sera’s mostly tidy study and a significantly less tidy box room sat on the other. Then it was up the next and last flight of stairs to the top of the house.
“Theo and I are down there,” Sera said, pointing to the right before pivoting left. “And these are the two empty rooms. This one here’s got the twin beds.” She fished the key out of her pocket and handed it to Luke. “Dinner?”
“No, we’re okay, thanks. Posy ate her weight in spring rolls about an hour ago.”
“I think Posy and I are going to get on very well.” Sera smiled at her. “I’ll just go get you towels, tea, and that chocolate cake, and then I’ll leave you both to it.”
Luke caught her elbow before she could walk away. “I…”
He glanced down at Posy, looked back at her, and cleared his throat. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Now I reallydo have to go. I’ve left the others alone too long already.”
Luke gave her a look she recognised from fifteen years ago, the one that said he thought she was being unnecessarily dramatic. (She usually was, but still.) “What exactly do you think they might have done in the last twenty minutes?”
“I don’t think you appreciate the sort of nonsense the inhabitants of this house are capable of when left unsupervised,” Sera said with feeling. “I may just go downstairs and find out Matilda has adopted a goat, or Nicholas has heroically stabbed a burglar, or Clemmie has convinced Theo to kidnap someone. And don’t get me started on the zombie chicken.”
Amusement sparked in his eyes. “You’re not really selling this, you know.”
“You’re only here for one night, remember? I don’t need to sell it.” She smiled angelically. “Also, I hope you have an
umbrella. It rains apple blossom tea in this room every Sunday.”
