“Give it the summer,” Calisa said. “We keep fixing this place up. Make it as nice as we can and see if we can make Auntie Zee change her mind.”
He nodded. “Sorry for, um, kind of falling apart.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. You’re allowed.” Their arms were still wrapped around one another, and Calisa didn’t want to step away. Her eyes drifted to his lips. He had kissable lips. She made herself step back.Not the time. He’s in pain.He needed a friend right now, not a complication or a distraction.
She felt cold without his arms around her. He glanced away, toward the window and the mountains, and she doubted he was thinking about her and her lips. He was most likely and understandably thinking about his father and the future.
“She’ll change her mind about the inn,” Calisa said as firmly as she could. “The same way she changed her mind about me.” She crossed to the cookbook. “Now, I think I found a chocolate cake I want to make after lunch, without the mirror glaze. Come tell me what you think.”
She was going to keep moving forward, even if Auntie Zee didn’t want to.
—
The inn was saturated with the scent of chocolate.
Calisa breathed it in as she opened the oven. The cake hadrisen, with a crack at the top that made it look like it was about to ooze molten chocolate. Wearing oven mitts, she pulled it out and tested it. Perfectly done.
As it cooled, she mixed the icing, dumping in enough cocoa to make it as rich as she liked. Since the raspberry jam had worked so nicely with the vanilla cake, she used the same jam again between the two layers, and then she spread the chocolate icing around the sides and smoothed it over the top. It came out far less lumpy than her first attempt.I’m learning.By the end of the summer, she’d be a master baker. Or at least reasonable.
But what would happenafterthe end of the summer?
Would enchanted tea with cake at the Faraway Inn continue, or would it all just stop—the inn shuttered, the garden left to be swallowed by the forest, and the portals permanently closed? What would happen to Jack? And to the guests like Melidor who needed a place to escape, away from all the expectations and stresses of life?
Auntie Zee seemed to think it was time.
What if I can’t change her mind?
Or what if it really was time?
It couldn’t be. When Auntie Zee got back from her supply run, Calisa would try to talk with her again. That wasn’t the end of the conversation. A grand reopening could revitalize both the inn and Auntie Zee.
Calisa carried the cake into the sitting room. As if it had sensed her coming in, the teapot began to rattle and then steam. She glanced out the window to see Jack spreadingMelidor’s mulch around the flower beds. She opened the window and called outside, “Cake’s ready!”
He waved back. “Awesome! Be there soon!” He turned toward the forest. “Hey, Melidor, do your friends like chocolate?”How does he do it?she wondered. How did he keep going while carrying all that loss and fear? He let himself feel it—she’d witnessed that—but then he just…kept moving forward. Kept living fully.That’s strength.Glancing toward Calisa, he smiled as bright as the sun. She felt her insides melt like icing on too-warm cake.
“Their favorite is aspen!” the dryad called. “Followed by birch, maple, and willow, though the large fellow over there is partial to oak.”
“So, not chocolate?” Jack confirmed.
“Not chocolate!”
From the doorway, Mulligan said, “I am partial to chocolate, my dear.” He came into the sitting room, keeping to the shadows as far away from the window as possible, and took a seat by the fireplace. “It was Zef’s favorite.”
He hasn’t given up on Zef,Calisa thought. He wore his despair on his voluminous sleeves—today he wore a billowy silk shirt and black wide-legged pants—but he still tried to break the spell. How did he keep trying failure after failure? She wished there were a way to transfer some of Jack’s and Mulligan’s resilience to Auntie Zee.
Kendra joined them shortly after, and Calisa cut slices of the cake for both of them, as well as a thick slice for Jack, for whenever he was done outside. She placed his slice on an end table and tucked a napkin under the edge of the plate.
Carrying her slice to the conch chair, Kendra sat, her back straight and her skirt dripping quietly on the carpet. Mulligan chose a winged armchair by the fireplace.
“I was hoping I could ask your opinion on something, if you don’t mind,” Calisa said to the two of them. Her eyes flicked to the lobby, but she didn’t see Auntie Zee, only the white cat strolling through toward the kitchen. “You’ve both been coming here for years. What did this place used to be like?”
Mulligan answered first. “Glorious, serene, vivacious. Ah, I do remember those days fondly. Every room full. Lively chatter over breakfast. Strolls through the garden and the surrounding hills. I have heard it claimed that the High King of the Goblins himself once chose to stay here in disguise, and that Auntie Zee simultaneously hosted the famed enchantress Isatre and her mortal enemy, the ruler of the Elind, without a single incident. They sipped juice at breakfast together and spoke of spring flowers, utterly unaware of who the other was.”
“That was a long time ago,” Kendra said, clipped.
“The glory days,” Mulligan agreed.
Calisa asked the more important question: “What do you think it would take to bring the inn’s old guests back?”
