The enchanted teapot rose into the air and poured.
“You’re trying to overwhelm us with magic,” Mom-Kate said, “with what you can offer Calisa that we can’t.” She glared at the teapot as if it had personally offended her.
“I think it’s pretty impressive,” Mom-Elise said mildly.
“But Calisa can’t stay here permanently, no matter how much magic you throw in our faces,” Mom-Kate said. “This was for the summer because you needed assistance. A temporary arrangement.”
“I want to stay!” Calisa burst out.
“Out of the question,” Mom-Kate said. She held up her hand before Calisa could argue. “You can stay the rest of the summer, and you can come back next summer—that’s the inn’s busy season—but that will have to be enough. She’s about to start her senior year of high school.”
“Auntie Zee needs to train me,” Calisa said.And Steve needs me. And Jack. And I promised Rin I’d spread his name…and…and…and…
“You aren’t dropping out of school,” Mom-Kate said firmly. “You’re finishing high school and then going to college. Asyouplanned. You aren’t sacrificing your future for someone who had no interest in you until you proved useful to her.”
Ouch.Also, of course she wasn’t going to drop out! But could she transfer to a local Vermont school? Or online school? Or…she didn’t know. She thought of Crystal and Maddy, and the idea of switching schools, not spending their senior year together, made her heart ache. As badly as she wanted to stay here, she didn’t want to leave home. Not yet. She was supposedto have one more year. She felt as if she were being ripped in two, bones split from flesh.
Auntie Zee agreed, “She has to finish school.” She waved the words away as if it was a nonissue, already resolved. “And I did not have ‘no interest’ in her or you. You left.”
“Because I couldn’t stand the disappointment in your eyes,” Mom-Kate said.
“Youleft.”
“You didn’t want me back,” Mom-Kate said. “If you did, you would have reached out. Invited us back. Apologized—”
“Apologized?! It wasn’t my fault you wanted what I couldn’t give you.”
Calisa felt any chance at a lovely family reunion with tea and cake shatter into pieces. The firebird seemed agitated, racing back and forth on its log, and Steve was digging his talons into her shoulder. She felt the same, like she wanted to dig her fingernails into the upholstery. She imagined the mirror in the lobby was enjoying this.Probably making bets with itself.“Mom-Kate. Auntie Zee. Please, could you…take a deep breath? For me? And for Future Calisa? I know that you’ve hurt each other. Disappointed each other. And that you have a lot to work through. But can we maybe not use me as a pawn to do that? I want to stay here, learn about”—she waved her hand to encompass the entire bed-and-breakfast—“all of this and all of what I am, but I also want to be home.”
Auntie Zee folded her wrinkled hands on her lap.
“Uh, Calisa?” Jack said.
She glanced at him. “What?”
He looked very uncomfortable to be speaking up during all of this family mess. She was amazed he hadn’t bolted already. “There’s a solution. Um, I think.”
“A very obvious solution,” Auntie Zee said tartly.
Calisa opened her mouth to ask what and then she shut it.“Oh.”
The portal. In her guest room. Which led to their kitchen in Brooklyn.
“Yes,oh,” Auntie Zee said. “Calisa will return home at the end of the summer, resume school, and then every afternoon—”
“After she’s finished her homework,” Mom-Elise put in.
“After she’s finished her homework but before teatime,” Auntie Zee said, “she comes through the portal to the bed-and-breakfast to train and to take care of her responsibilities here. She has a lot to learn if she’s going to eventually become innkeeper.”
Me, innkeeper!She remembered Rin calling her the next witch of the inn. That…would be amazing. This place could be her future.The perfect Future Calisa problem!If it was possible. If Mom-Kate and Mom-Elise agreed.
“She’s still going to college,” Mom-Kate said.
“And she should,” Auntie Zee said. “There are programs in hotel management, if she’s so inclined. I recommend she at least take business courses. We can establish a portal to her dorm room, though you may have to arrange for her to not have a roommate, but these are details that can be worked out, if you’re willing to allow it.”
Her moms were looking at one another.
Calisa felt as if her brain was whirling as much as it was when she’d first discovered this was a magical inn. She couldn’t pluck one coherent thought out of the tornado.
