A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping

by Sangu Mandanna

Sera couldn’t believe that it had only been a few minutes since Clemmie had found her in the kitchen, said “There’s a situation you have to deal with outside, but just so you know, I hate tears and hysterics,” and led her out to where Jasmine had dropped dead in the garden. Sera remembered little of what had happened after that, though her raw eyes informed her that there had indeed been plenty of tears and probably one or two hysterics.

To anybody looking in from the outside, Albert probably did seem fond and parental, but Sera had never been able to shake the feeling that he was faking it. That, in truth, he resented her intrusion into a space he’d enjoyed ruling alone.

“Marvellous work,” Clemmie said to Sera. “I was just thinking this morning that what we really needed in our lives was not a new fireplace or a nice car but, in fact, a resurrected fucking rooster.”

The best way Sera could describe her spell was this: if you didn’t need the inn, you’d drive on. (And if you were a dick, you’d definitely drive on.)

Whatever he thought of her casting a resurrection spell, it was outweighed by far by his pleasure that her magic was now a sliver of what it had been. He was, once again, without rival. His throne, once again, was wholly his own. That Albert was capable of pride and petty jealousy didn’t exactly come as a surprise to her, but it still hurt. She’d been his apprentice for five years. Didn’t he care about her at all?

Albert, it seemed, had forgotten that his history might be a legacy of power, but hers was a legacy of resistance.

Well, there was really nothing left for Sera to do but lean into the drama, point a warning finger like a sorceress of old, and say, “You will rue this day, Albert Grey.” And, most magnificently, it even rhymed.

the driver of the car did the most peculiar thing. He sighed. “Of course it’s you,” said the stranger, and far be it from Sera to quibble at a time like this, but she couldn’t help noticing he didn’t sound especially pleased. “Hello, Sera.”

Verity ignored him. “By the way, if you saw a fox in the library on your way out last night, you didn’t.”

<3

Albert Grey had spent years trying to understand Sera’s spell, or, rather, seething at its existence and trying to conjure something just as vast and unending for himself. He had never been able to because Albert Grey ruled with a boot on the neck of anything and anyone he was ruling, including his own formidable magic, and what he had never realised was that his magic, recognising that it was not and had never been loved by the man who wielded it, had simply decided not to play along. It did as it was told because it did, after all, have a boot on its neck, but it did not do one bit more.

Meanwhile, across the country, a certain innkeeper was about to discover that when you hold tight to the little magic you find, when years go by and the world loses much of its colour and still you refuse to forget the magic, magic will go out of its way to show you that it remembers you too.

Luke Larsen. She must have said it out loud because he looked surprised. “You remember my name.”

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 all Luke remembered was the mythology the Guild had spun around her from the moment she’d crossed their threshold.

“If you wish it, I’ll guard him with my life,” Nicholas vowed. Apparently, with Nicholas, there was no middle ground between a duel and undying devotion.

“He was only planning to stay the one night. He might not even be there when we get back.” Nicholas grinned at her. “I remember when I was only planning to stay the one night.” “Trust me, Nicholas, Luke’s not like you.” “He doesn’t have to be. You have a way about you. It makes us want to stay.” “The inn tends to do that,” Sera said without thinking. “No,” Nicholas said earnestly. “Not the inn. You.”

<3

What’s with the armour?” “Nicholas’s armour? He works at the Medieval Fair near Winewall.” Luke was unconvinced. “That was not medieval armour.” “I don’t think the Fair’s overly concerned with historical accuracy.” Sera had never seen anyone look more appalled than Luke did in that moment. “Not. Concerned. With. Historical. Accuracy?” She tried and failed to suppress a giggle. “I gather you won’t be visiting, then?” He didn’t dignify that with a response.

A blink, and the ghost was gone. By the time Luke followed her eyes across the room, there was nothing to see. She snapped her gaze back to him. “Sorry. Four sugars, please.” “Where did you just go?” “Oh, you know. Away.”

Sera was furious. She had (mostly) been able to avoid noticing how (very, very) attractive Luke was, but now he was laughing (at her! The nerve!), and as if that weren’t enough, the sun had decided this was the very moment to sally forth from behind the clouds and halo him in gold like he was a fucking archangel or something. It was unacceptable. He was still laughing. Sera drank her tea in wrathful silence.

“Oh, Luke. Luke, Luke, Luke. Has anyone ever told you that you can be an uptight prig?” “Not in those exact words, no. Has anyone ever told you that you can be a quarrelsome gargoyle?” “I like that one,” Sera said admiringly. “I’ll add it to the list.” Luke did not smile, but it was a close thing.

As soon as Luke reappeared, a few steps behind her, she ran past him, back to the door, and said, “Dragon.” “No, once was enough,” Luke said immediately. Theo leapt up with enthusiasm. “I’ll go.” Luke seemed taken aback. “You don’t have to do that.” “It’s fine, I want to. I just have to pretend to be a dragon and chase her, right? Posy? Can I play?” “Dragon?” Posy asked, looking at Theo in startled delight. “Yep, I’m a dragon,” said Theo. Posy let out a shriek of glee and ran. Theo bolted after her.

“Sorry. She shouldn’t have run off while everyone else was still eating, but she doesn’t always understand—” “There’s no need to be sorry,” Jasmine said at once. “If you’re worried about her manners, don’t be,” Matilda added merrily. “No one here has any. It’s grand.”

Light crept back into her eyes, gilding the dark brown with gold, and he had the stray, almost absent thought that her eyes really were lovely.

“It’s adorable that anybody thinks anything happens in this house that I don’t know about,” a voice said behind him.

“You fixed it.” “I fixed what I could. You’ll need new wellies.” “You didn’t have to do that.” “No,” Luke agreed. She smiled, a proper smile, one that reached all the way into her eyes. “Thank you.” It felt essential, somehow, that Luke look away. He nodded at the house. “Are you going to tell them you know?” “No, I think I’ll take that one to my grave.”

It seemed at first glance like ridiculous theatre, unnecessary and a bit silly, but at the heart of it, weren’t they just a handful of people trying to be good to one another?

“I’m at my wits’ end,” Sera informed her. “My wits, as it were, have ended.”

Sera would happily read a good book on the screen of her phone if that was all she had to hand, but there was something about the ink, paper, and dust of an old book that simply couldn’t be beaten.

Your magic knew exactly who you were. That’s why your spell was a shield, not a sword.”

Luke couldn’t think of a single other place that Posy had actually wanted to be. (He didn’t count the time she’d refused to get off the carousel at the fairground.)

And above all, at the inn, Posy had Theo.

When he came home late from school for one reason or another, Posy would stand at the back gate and say “Theo?” with the air of a tragic waif abandoned on wintry Dickensian streets. It was the purest love Luke had ever seen.

Like his lonely and her lonely fit perfectly into the empty spaces at the other’s side, saying nothing, asking nothing, just keeping each other company.

That, Luke could understand. History was how he made sense of the world, after all, and what was history if not a collection of stories to make the incomprehensible comprehensible?

He didn’t belong here, any more than he’d ever belonged anywhere else, but for the first time in thirty-four years, oh, how he wished he did.

Theirs was the sort of old, familiar friendship where talking about nothing in particular was the kindest, most comforting thing they could do for each other.

Theirs was a friendship built on the unspoken, shared understanding that you can love the home you’ve made with the whole of your heart and still know the land it’s built on will never claim you.

That moment was what had finally convinced her that she needed help, but it had come later. Right then, watching herself, Sera wasn’t thinking of the later. All she was thinking about was how much she’d hated herself in that moment, hated what she’d become, hated Jasmine for dying, hated Clemmie for the resurrection spell, hated the Guild for abandoning her, hated the country for rejecting her, and hated herself all over again for hating all those other things.

He didn’t say a word. He just sat down on the floor, shoulder to shoulder with a ghost, keeping her company.

And what she saw, for the first time, was not ugliness at all but pain so enormous and consuming that it had felt like dying. I’m sorry, she said silently to her past self. I’m sorry I hated you. I’m sorry I wasn’t kinder. All the shame that had been tangled up in the memory was annihilated, leaving only compassion and regret in its place.

Her hand lifted to the opposite shoulder, to the exact spot where the ghost’s shoulder touched Luke’s. She shouldn’t have been able to feel anything, of course, yet she could swear she did. As if that touch, that moment, had crossed the boundaries of time and space, travelled miles of night sky and stardust, and become infinite.

He leaned against the opposite wall, hands in his pockets. “I missed you earlier.”

Absently licking sticky fruit juice off her thumb, she looked up to see Luke watching her, eyes dark, a muscle ticking in his jaw. Her heart fluttered wildly, like a bird in a cage, and she couldn’t resist licking her thumb again. Luke’s voice was like gravel. “I’m pretty sure you got it all.” “You don’t look at me like that very often. I’m making the most of it.” That made him laugh. “God, you’re a menace.” “I do my best.”

“My name is Sera Swan,” she said. “My magic is a galaxy. I belong in the sky, but I stopped being able to fly.

“We argued. I won.” “Is that so?” said Sera. “You won? In other words, you stood your ground?” “I did that because of you,” Luke growled, standing abruptly. He looked down at her, furious, and she couldn’t help thinking he looked like he wanted to either shake some sense into her or kiss the sense right out of her. “That’s my point. You fight. You fight everything. Everything you just told me, about the night sky and the lost magic and the drowning, is a story you tell because you think it’s about how small you’ve become, but what I heard was a story about how you’re anything but small. You fight. You were fighting today, out there, for Posy, when you told us you were the gargoyle of this castle and you had to look out for us. That’s why I stood my ground.”

“His real name is Greg. Sera knows him in the biblical sense.” “Theo!” “What? That’s what Clemmie told me.” Luke arched an eyebrow at Sera. “In the biblical sense? Him?” Sera shrugged. “He kept most of the costume on.” Luke looked at Sera. Sera looked at Luke.

“I can’t believe she thinks his senses were addled by cider.” “I don’t think she’s seen the way he looks at her,” Matilda mused. Jasmine, ever loyal, objected. “We can’t blame her for that, dearest. He only does it when she’s not looking.” “She doesn’t have fox ears either,” Clemmie admitted somewhat grudgingly. “She doesn’t hear the way his heartbeat stutters when he looks at her.”

“We?” A tiny smile tugged at the corners of Sera’s mouth. “You were pretty adamant that you weren’t going to get involved.” He gave her a faint answering smile. “And here I am anyway.” Oh, fuck this. She hugged him.

“What if we could make him leave for a little while?” “Oh, really?” Clemmie demanded. “And how, exactly, are you going to do that?” “I’m not,” Sera replied. “You are.” “I hate you,” said Clemmie. Sera smiled. “And here I thought you’d spent almost twenty years longing for an excuse to break into Albert Grey’s house, spit in his favourite cognac, and knock over his obscenely expensive and dangerously fragile marble statue of himself.” And Clemmie, the fox, showed all her teeth.

“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. When I sneak up on people, they call me a villain, but I’m supposed to believe it’s acceptable when love 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.”

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.