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“Just boring old tools,” she said. “Let’s try the next room.”

But the next room was the same. Clearly, whatever spell work was going on, it was going almost entirely to the foundations.

“You see?” Liza said when they reached the third room and found nothing but a ladder and some paint cans, showing it was next in line to get a coat. “And they’re trying to say they have a wait list. I’ll tell you what they have a wait list for—someone to help them finish this place in time for Christmas, that’s what they have a list for.”

Liza laughed at her own joke, and Margaret chuckled a bit as well. It made her feel the tiniest bit relieved. In fact, more than a tiny bit, as she realized the sting of tears was suddenly burning her eyes.

“Oh hell,” Margaret murmured, trying to swipe at them before Liza saw. But of course Liza saw. Liza saw everything, and in an instant, she was at Margaret’s side, throwing an arm over her shoulder.

“Oh, Mags,” she said. “It’s all right. This place has nothing on the Toasty Owl. Nothing, you hear me?”

Margaret sniffed, trying to hold it together. This P. Kerrigan could be back at any moment.

“I just . . . I can’t let them down, Liza,” she said, voice cracking. “Mom and Grandma. They never let anything stand in their way. Nothing. I can’t mess this up.”

“I know,” Liza said, squeezing her tighter. “And you’re not going to mess anything up. But . . .”

Liza hesitated. Margaret stepped out of the hug slightly to look at her.

“I just don’t want you so focused on the pub that you lose sight of your own life,” Liza said.

“My life is the pub,” Margaret said. “You know that.”

Liza huffed. “The pub is part of your life. It is not the whole part. You have me, you have your friends . . . even new friends.”

She waggled her eyebrows at this part, making Margaret laugh.

“And your mom and grandma lived, too,” Liza continued. “They had the pub, sure, but they also took risks and made mistakes. And yes, they didn’t always have the best taste in men . . .”

Margaret snorted. Growing up, it had become a cruel joke that the women in Margaret’s family had terrible taste in men. Margaret’s grandfather had essentially been a one-night stand who disappeared from Margaret’s grandmother’s life as quickly as he had appeared. She never spoke of him unless it was to warn her daughter and granddaughter away from “charlatans” like him, tips that seemed to go right over Margaret’s mother’s head as she found someone quite the same. And while he had not been a one-night stand, it might have been better if he had been. Instead, he had been the love of her mother’s life and briefly the love of Margaret’s when she was a toddler . . . until he decided to abandon the pair of them for a life traveling the globe, leaving them as a pair.

Margaret had been too young to fully mourn the loss of a father who was technically still alive, but she had felt his absence in other ways. On the one hand, it had made Margaret, her mother, and her grandmother tighter than ever. They regularly finished one another’s sentences, could sense when someone needed something, and operated as an unstoppable team. But on the other hand, a deep distrust ran through the two older women as far as love was concerned. They saw it as an affliction and a curse, particularly Margaret’s grandmother. Margaret was inclined to agree, particularly as she saw only how satisfied and happy her family was without the problem of men interfering. Why would she want someone to come in and mess that up?

“The point is,” Liza continued, “that they lived, Mags. They lived until the very last moment. And I don’t want you to lose sight of that.”

Margaret nodded, letting her friend draw her into an embrace. And yes, Liza was technically right. Her grandmother and mother had led lives separate from the Toasty Owl. But they’d had something that made it all just easier. They’d had magic. But more than that, they made it all look so, so easy. It was like they had some stockpile of secrets that made everything seem as basic as breathing. Margaret had expected the day to come when they would share those secrets, had not even realized she was expecting such a day . . .

Until that day was taken away.

When Margaret’s grandmother had died, it had been like a sudden tear in her skin, like her first time tumbling across stone and skinning her knees as a child. A wound that, until that point, had been the worst she could’ve imagined. The first time she saw blood—her blood—bubbling up and running down her leg, coming from the torn and ragged flesh of her own body, she had been certain nothing could feel so horrible.

And then her mother had died, and it was no longer a skinned knee. It was bone exposed, a tear all the way through her, cuts that were not clean and would never fully heal. She had died too young of a heart attack that left healers perplexed. Some blamed stress, some blamed genetics, some blamed how cold it was that particular year. All of them told Margaret that “sometimes these things just happen and we don’t know why.” As if that would make her feel better. As if telling her something was rare and unfortunate would excuse the unfairness of it all. But of course, no matter what anyone said, there was only one certainty in all the grief: Margaret was supposed to be an adult, but she would never shake the feeling of being a child in search of her mother. She would never not wake up and want to ask her what to do.

“Mags?”

Liza was squeezing her arm. Margaret turned to her and forced a smile.

“Thank you,” she told Liza, and she meant it. “I just want to make them proud.”

It was the simplest and truest answer she could give, even if it didn’t cover the entirety of what was running through her heart.

“And proud they shall be,” Liza said, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “But before we get there, let’s get out of here before Mr. Wait List gets back. As much as I’d like to crow over the state of this place, I don’t think we need to add trespassing charges to your already busy schedule.”

Chapter Eighteen

After an exceptionally busy day and a visit to Emberwind’s own in-house delivery station, Silas found himself thoroughly exhausted. The adrenaline was seeping out of him, the only thing keeping him going being the hopeful buzz that always settled into his bones when he’d made a breakthrough on a project.

Still, it had been a full day of social interaction, and he’d quickly learned as a teacher that there was a level of tired unique to having dozens of young people asking you questions all day long. As a result, even as one of the most extroverted people he knew, he still craved a moment of silence in his room at the inn. He could read one of his books, maybe even take a bath. But first, he had to get there.