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Margaret resisted the urge to roll her eyes. For anyone else, she wouldn’t have pulled back on the urge; in fact, she would have paired it with a stiff drink to wash away their nonsense. But Liza would always be the exception. Something about growing up together since you were five—and the fact that Liza would do anything for Margaret, and vice versa—kept Margaret’s mouth shut.
“You’re making a face,” Liza said with a huff. “Just because you hate the snow.”
“I don’t hate the snow,” Margaret said, which was true. “I just don’t enjoy being in the snow.”
Snow made everything damp and wilted, and made her already unruly curls turn from slightly frizzy to completely unmanageable. She hated how many layers she had to put on. Then there was the fact she had to shovel the snow leading up to the pub, and that wasn’t even mentioning the damage it tended to do to her ancient shingles. Which reminded Margaret—she needed to fix those soon.
“So convincing,” Liza teased, nudging her with her elbow and drawing a smile out of her. “Well, this year, you’re not barricading in here. I have a lot of ideas. I’m thinking an ugly-sweater party and cookie swap—but then, I’m getting ahead of myself. First step will be decorating, of course.”
She glanced behind her at the rest of the pub with an assessing look in her eye. One that, Margaret knew even before Liza opened her mouth, would not yield particularly positive results. After all, she and Liza had had this disagreement before. Every year, Liza badgered her about decorating—and every year, Margaret found excuses or explanations around it. But there was something about the glint in Liza’s green eyes that made Margaret think that, this year, Liza wouldn’t accept her excuses.
“I still can’t believe you didn’t even decorate for Halloween,” Liza said, clucking her tongue. “You have the perfect foundation.”
“Excuse me,” Margaret said, standing up and gesturing to the fireplace mantel where three pumpkins perched. “I did decorate!”
“Pathetic attempt and you know it,” Liza said. “I’ve already got a sketch of what I’m doing for the bookshop windows. You know, there’s rumors of a competition this year.”
Ah. That explained the push, then. Well, let Liza have the competition—something she clearly would win based on the elaborate design she had launched into explaining. And if anyone could pull such a thing off, it would be Liza with her exceptional spell work and her determination that only occasionally bordered on madness. Margaret would be perfectly content with her pub as it was. There was a coziness already, wasn’t there? Didn’t that count for something?
And besides . . . Margaret had her real reasons. Reasons she didn’t want to get into and, frankly, didn’t need to get into on November first of all days. She was about to tell Liza as much, when the door flew open to reveal Old Man Weatherby, a crochety wizard who ran the magical hardware shop down the road. He had tufts of white hair clinging to his freckled scalp, plus large, bulbous gray eyes that sparked behind glasses that he was perpetually pushing up. He had the kind of sunbaked, leathery skin that spoke to years spent outdoors, and there was a sharpness to him that reminded Margaret of a raven.
“Miss Margaret,” he huffed, the tone already accusatory—but then again, that was always Old Man Weatherby’s tone.
“Good morning, Mr. Weatherby,” Margaret said, offering him a smile and a respectful nod of her head.
“Nothing good about it,” he gruffed back. “Maybe for you two, lollygagging around over here, but for me—”
“We weren’t lollygagging, Mr. Weatherby,” Liza said, rolling her eyes. “We were talking—”
“As I said,” he continued, glaring at Liza as if “talking” was something that easily ranked among criminal offenses. “Miss Margaret, you’re going to need to come by the shop.”
Margaret set down her mug and stood up, dusting off her skirts. She’d learned a long time ago that Old Man Weatherby could never and would never ask for her help. He never phrased anything as a request; if anything, the way he pieced together a sentence sounded like a demand. She’d heard her mother complain about it back in the day, saying, “The old fart could do with some manners.”
But her grandmother had only smiled. “He is using his manners. They just sound a little different than ours.”
And so, Margaret knew that when the old man said, “You’re going to need to come by the shop,” what he was really saying was please come by and help me.
“Right,” Margaret said. “Will I need my gloves?”
Because there was one major reason for why Old Man Weatherby—or truly, anyone in the village—would call on Margaret, a reason that often required her faux-dragonhide gloves, naturally thick and spelled by Liza to be nearly impenetrable to most teeth and claws.
Old Man Weatherby shifted on his feet, glancing awkwardly out of the window. She took that as a yes and fetched the gloves from the bar, while Liza looked at the man with curious disdain.
“And what is it this time?” Liza asked, folding her hands over her chest. “Or will you be forcing Margaret to discover that when she opens the shop door?”
He grumbled something about Liza being a “know-it-all” but met Margaret’s eyes as she stepped over.
“A kurlop,” he said, making Liza hiss.
“A kurlop?” Liza nearly exploded. “Absolutely not. Are you trying to get Margaret killed?”
Margaret considered this. “A baby or an adult?”
The man shook his head. “How the hell should I know?”
Margaret arched an eyebrow at the same time Liza snapped, “How big is it?”
Mr. Weatherby held out his hands to indicate the size of an apple crate. Margaret bit back a curse. Young kurlops were smaller, yes, but they were also unwieldy and harder to reason with, as they often reacted out of fear. Still, it was nothing Margaret hadn’t handled before.
