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It was hardly ideal weather for the resurrection of one’s great-aunt, but Sera Swan’s magical power, while impressive, hadn’t the slightest influence over the obnoxiously blue skies.
“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.”
Jasmine had been dead only minutes when she’d been brought back, but Roo-Roo had been dead a full year. He had, to put it delicately, decomposed. He was simply not alive in the way Jasmine was alive. He was, in fact, decidedly zombified.
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.”
“Resurrecting him was an accident! I agreed to a lot of things when I cast that spell, but a lifetime with a zombie chicken was definitely not one of them!”
“I think she once told me it’s Mary, but I take your point. I do feel, though, that whatever Clemmie may or may not be capable of, Theo wouldn’t let himself be led astray. He’s an angel.” “So was Lucifer,” said Sera darkly.
😅
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“I’d say it was nice to see you, but it isn’t.”
😅
And because Sera was Sera, she couldn’t help pointing out the obvious. “So was it before or after you had the twins that you noticed how much of a fuckwit your father is?”
💀
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“That’s not fair,” said Clemmie, sounding genuinely wounded. “I would never have let anything happen to him.” “You’re what happened to him!” Sera reminded her.
“If you have something to say, just say it. In small words, ideally, seeing as I come from a strange, foreign land a whole fifty miles away.”
😂
Howard poured tea into three cups and said, “You take yours black, don’t you?” “As my heart,” said Luke.
Her family had just enough magic in it to be considered reputable but not so much that they were considered important, which meant the respect (and terror) she inspired in everybody who knew her had very little to do with pedigree and a whole lot more to do with her talent, work ethic, and disinclination to accept any nonsense.
I love her already.
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.
Matilda said regretfully to Luke, and then, like she’d only just taken proper notice of him, did a comical double take. “Well. Well. Did it hurt? When you fell out of whichever Norse myth you came from?”
😂😂😂
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.
“Sera, your rooster has spent the last hour following me around,” she announced, completely unconcerned with Luke’s presence. “I tolerated that with saintly patience. Then he tried to demand a cuddle from me, so I decapitated him. You’ll have to reassemble him. He’s over there, running around like a headless chicken. Actually,” she added reflectively, “I suppose he is a headless chicken.” “Stop decapitating the resurrected rooster,” Sera said crossly. “It’s impolite.” “Well, you made me promise not to eat the other chickens anymore, so this seems like a happy compromise.”
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.
😭😍😍1
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“Thanks,” she said again. 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.
😍
Reality was the question mark over Posy’s future, and his own, and the cold, secret fear that came late at night and made him wonder if maybe it wasn’t normal, really, to have nobody in your life you could say all of that to.
💔
She smiled, a proper smile, one that reached all the way into her eyes. “Thank you.” It felt essential, somehow, that Luke look away.
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?
“Maybe the handsome icicle did translate the spell wrong,” Clemmie grumbled. Sera would have paid good money to see Luke’s reaction to that description.
“This says you can take another witch’s magic,” she said, appalled.
Did Albert somehow steal her magic???
“This says you can take another witch’s magic,” she said, appalled.
Dod Albert somehow take Sera’s magic?!?
Carefully, Luke broke the death grip her fingers had on the edge of the desk.
😳
“I don’t see why anyone needs to explain anything,” Matilda said reproachfully. “If I’ve gone two full years not seeing wildflowers bursting to life in teacups and not hearing foxes speak English and not noticing implausible skeletal chickens running around the place, I have no idea why anyone thinks a floating child will shake me out of my equilibrium.”
Nicholas say things like “What about the High Sorcerer who works in the market at the Medieval Fair?” and “He can’t be a charlatan, he guessed my card correctly eight separate times!”
Nicholas 😂😍
She paused at the door on her way out. “You should tell Matilda you think she’s beautiful and vibrant. I think she’d really like that.”
😏
Luke couldn’t help noticing that her tongue and bottom lip were stained red from the strawberry daiquiri she’d been drinking. He looked away at once.
Your magic knew exactly who you were. That’s why your spell was a shield, not a sword.”
the undead rooster was constantly underfoot (and had taken to sleeping at the foot of Luke’s bed every now and then, which was by no means a comfortable experience),
Awwwh 😂
And above all, at the inn, Posy had Theo. Posy had adored Theo since the day he’d played the dragon game with her.
😍😍😍
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.
😍😭😍😭😍
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So Luke cast the heat spells (half of which had to be worked with an undead rooster on his shoulder), put the kettle on, and went back to his books.
😍
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?
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.
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.” Her heart thumped unsteadily. “Why?” “Turns out I’ve grown accustomed to spending the hours of nine to midnight on the same sofa as you.”
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.”
Oooh so flirty 😍
“My name is Sera Swan,” she said. “My magic is a galaxy. I belong in the sky, but I stopped being able to fly. And maybe that would have been okay if I could have become a creature of the earth instead, but this world, down here, it doesn’t want me. The posters in the pub remind me of that. The Guild reminds me of that. It feels like I’m drowning. Which is a funny thing for a swan to say, but it’s true. The earth doesn’t want me and the water could drown me, so I don’t belong anywhere anymore, and the ghosts remind me of that more than anything else. I talk about them like they’re not me
...more
💔💔💔
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flatten one palm against his chest, right over his hammering heart. And smile, and say, “That doesn’t feel like tin to me.”
wearing old, holey pyjamas that gave her all the sex appeal of a moose on Benadryl,
😂
“His real name is Greg. Sera knows him in the biblical sense.” “Theo!” “What? That’s what Clemmie told me.”
💀💀💀💀💀
“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.”
“Innocent,” Sera scoffed. Clemmie was indignant. “How dare you? I was precious. A true girl next door.” “Only if that door belonged to Beelzebub.”
😂😂😂
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