“Please, let me do this for her,” Rin said. “For years, decades, lifetimes, Auntie Zee has been sending customers my way. She is responsible for a significant portion of my family’s wealth. It was that wealth that helped save my daughter’s life—when they said a miracle couldn’t happen, it paid the best doctors. Truly, I owe her my happiness: my purpose, my family. Did she tell you it was she who introduced me to my wife? My Veracitu. It was Auntie Zee who brought her to the market, to me. We’ve been married twenty-eight years now, and we’d never have had all those years together without Auntie Zee. In fact…so many people have stories about her. She doesn’t know the good she’s done, the lives she’s touched. Let me share this list. I know others feel the same as I do. She has done more than she knows, and she’s never allowed us to show our thanks.”
Calisa was silent. She was both surprised and unsurprised—she’d known the Faraway Inn was special and that others cared about it too. Here was proof. “Are you sure? It’s a long list. Auntie Zee gave us lercats….”
“It would be my greatest pleasure.”
“And the other vendors?” Calisa pressed. “They won’t want anything in return?”
“What we want,” Rin said, “is for the inn to continue.”
All right, then. She glanced at Jack.
“Auntie Zee…isn’t exactly good at accepting help,” Jack said. “She only barely agreed to let us move forward with the reopening, so I don’t know how we’ll get her to agree to accept all of this.”
That was a problem, but they were talking about a gift. You didn’t need permission to give a gift. “What if we just sneak everything in? Let it be a surprise.”
“She won’t be happy,” Jack warned her.
“Outwardly, she’ll grunt, but inwardly, she’ll be happy,” Calisa said. “Or she will be if she lets herself.” And the inn needed this—the kindness of others. It could give them the boost to change the reopening from a risk to a sure success. “It’s not a comment on her independence. It’s a thank-you.”
He thought about that for a moment and then nodded. “You’re right.”
She reveled in that. Not everyone would be able to say that so simply—to think about what she had said, take it seriously, and then change their mind. It made her want to kiss him right here and right now. Instead she said to Rin, “Can you be ready and by the portal at…What time is it here at our sunrise?”
“Your sunrise is our moonrise.”
“I’ll open the door on the other side at your moonrise,” Calisa said.
“Wait, what if Auntie Zee stops you?” Jack asked. “If she figures out—”
“That’s why I said ‘sneak.’ She can’t stop me if she doesn’t know.”
Smiling broadly, Rin wagged his finger at her. “I like you. You have style. You will make an excellent heir to Auntie Zee.”
Calisa laughed.Heir to Auntie Zee.She’d barely convinced her great-aunt to allow her to stay for the summer. It didn’t seem likely that Auntie Zee would want her to come back after all of this was over, despite her earlier apology.
Except that I did inherit her magic.
She sobered.
She hadn’t had time yet to think through what that could mean for her and for her future.I’m part witch.She’d proven it by opening portals, and Auntie Zee had said in no uncertain terms that she’d inherited her special ability.I’m a traveler cat?She didn’t feel particularly feline. Or witchy. But then again, she had worked magic. That much was indisputable. She’d have to think about what it all meant when she had a moment to breathe, after the grand reopening.
She left the list with Rin and tugged Jack with her, back toward the portal. Now that this was all set, there was plenty more work for them to do at the inn. “He loves Auntie Zee,” she told Jack. “I think she should be allowed to see that for herself.” Auntie Zee claimed she knew that guests needed her inn, but Calisa doubted that she reallyknewhow much her B&B mattered to people—how muchshemattered to people.
And how much the inn had come to matter to Calisa herself.
Hesitating, she leaned against Jack and said, “I don’t want to go back.”
“I know, but Auntie Zee needs us. And my dad—”
She cut him off. “I meanhome. My home. Brooklyn. After the summer ends…I don’t want this to end.”
“It’s not ending yet,” Jack said. “We’ve got the grand reopening to get through. Can we focus on that and not think about what comes after?”
And then he said the words she didn’t know she wanted him to say:
“I don’t want you to leave either.”
Hand in hand, they walked back to the portal. Steve rode on Calisa’s shoulder, and she thought he seemed noticeably heavier. She wondered how much he was going to grow, and then she wondered if she was going to be around to see it. And then she wondered if Steve was going to expect to go with her to Brooklyn, because that wasn’t going to work at all.
