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The short version: Clemmie’s hair worked.

The longer version: the glass teapot glowed bright, and there was a lot of squealing, and Theo and Posy got enormous hugs and extra cinnamon buns, and the undead rooster flapped excitedly from one pair of arms to the next, and Nicholas cried actual happy tears, and Matilda threw open the kitchen door and shouted down the garden at the top of her lungs, “FUCKING TAKE THAT , ALBERT GREY!”

“Well,” said Clemmie, a little too smug for someone who hadn’t actually done anything, “I always knew I’d end up saving the day.”

And in a quiet moment, Jasmine tucked her arm in Sera’s, Sera leaned her head on Jasmine’s shoulder, and her great-aunt said, “I will love you with or without your magic, Sera. You will always be enough for me just as you are.”

“I know,” Sera said softly.

Jasmine smiled. “Still, I’m happy for you.”

Sera smiled back. “I’m happy for you too.”

Winter arrived in earnest that night, the first snow settling gently over the inn.

Sera, who’d had enough excitement in the last twenty-four hours to last a lifetime, had retrieved her old list of ideas for the spell, determined to find her third and final ingredient, and had barely glanced at it before she’d promptly fallen asleep on the sofa.

She woke to Luke’s hand on her hair. “Hi.” He jerked his head at the window. “Come look.”

Sera was a tad grumpy about this at first, and was determined to remain tucked under one of Jasmine’s handmade blankets with nothing but her nose poking out of it, but then she blinked sleepily at the window and saw the snow, and her heart leapt.

Oh, give it a week and she’d be sick of scraping ice off her car and getting slush in her wellies, but for now, it was lovely.

That first snowfall was always dreamlike and storybook perfect: the sky gone silver day or night, the fluffy layer of sparkling white covering the hills and valleys, the frost dusting the trees and chimneys and roof tiles, the crystalline flakes clinging to the glass of the windows.

Here, at last, was the season of hot chocolate topped generously with whipped cream and mulled wine laced with cloves and satsuma slices.

The season of curling up on the sofa under the weighted electric blanket, with a piece of perfectly sugared shortbread in one hand and a cup of boozy coffee in the other, while the fairy lights twinkled soft and gold across the mantelpiece and along the curtain rods.

Some people simply weren’t winter people.

Sera, on the other hand, was the most winter person to ever winter.

No matter how tedious it was to keep the firewood topped up and keep casting the heat spells, no matter how annoying the inconsistent hot water and temperamental boiler, this was her time.

Give her a white, starlit winter’s night (and the pipe dream of a completed to-do list) and she’d happily hibernate until springtime.

Yawning, she wriggled out from under the blanket and followed Luke to the window. She caught her breath. “ Oh. ”

Out in the garden, Jasmine and Matilda were dancing.

They had their dressing gowns on over their nightwear, which Sera couldn’t help feeling was entirely inadequate protection from the cold, but they didn’t seem to care.

They had their arms around each other. Matilda was helping Jasmine stay on her feet, and they swayed gently to a song Sera couldn’t hear, their eyes closed and heads together.

Snow dusted the tops of their heads like spun sugar.

It was one of the most beautiful things Sera had ever seen.

Then Luke choked on a laugh. “Look.”

The undead rooster was in the snow too, just a few feet away from Jasmine and Matilda, kicking gentle flurries into the air. Copying their exact movements. Dancing.

“Roo-Roo’s always loved the snow,” she said, suddenly and ridiculously choked up. “That’s why I put that stupid sweater on him last year. He was always flailing around in it.”

Luke was quiet for a long time before saying, “You’ve built a beautiful world, Sera Swan.”

Had she? It hadn’t always felt that way, it was true, but Sera wondered if maybe it was beginning to.

She still longed for the stars and the sky, because they were a part of her and nothing would ever replace them, but there was, nevertheless, something rather lovely about the weird, wonderful, ordinary everydayness of living.

Flowers in teacups and the pages of books turning themselves and ghosts lingering at the edges, waiting, wanting something from her that she could never name.

The familiar, comforting routines of casting heat spells, hitting old pipes with a hammer to make them behave, tripping over the undead rooster, baking loaves of crusty bread, drinking sugary tea and boozy coffee.

And then Luke said, “I’m going to miss this,” and everything stilled.

Sera stepped away from the window, almost unconsciously putting some distance between them. “Miss this when? Because normally, when you talk about going back to Edinburgh, you use a different voice and you don’t say things like I’m going to miss this .”

He turned around to face her and said, in a perfectly, painstakingly level voice, “Verity called me a few days ago. She has a friend who’s moving to Edinburgh at the beginning of the year.

She works with young witches. Teaches the ones who chose not to go to school at the Guild but who need more help than just studying the books at home.

Verity says she’s nothing like the Guild instructors and governesses, and she’s willing to work with Posy, so it’s probably the best thing for her. ”

“I see.” It was all she could bring herself to say. Her chest hurt.

She’d known this was coming. Luke had said it again and again.

He’d been very clear that, sooner or later, he and Posy would go.

She’d always known their future was in Edinburgh, not here, and she had no right to feel blindsided just because they’d stayed for all these weeks and it was becoming impossible to imagine the inn without them and she’d made the mistake of forgetting that it was only temporary.

“You said Verity told you a few days ago. Why didn’t you say anything before?”

“We’ve done nothing but make plans for the winter masquerade for almost a week.

It didn’t seem like a good time to bring it up.

But…” He closed his eyes like he was in pain, then opened them again.

“I shouldn’t have done what I did in the library without telling you first. I wasn’t thinking.

I saw you and I stopped thinking. It wasn’t fair. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I wasn’t thinking either.” She tucked her arms around herself.

“The thing is, if I had been thinking, I probably wouldn’t have done it.

I wanted to. I still do. I just don’t think I can .

You’re leaving. Maybe not for a few weeks yet, but you are going.

And maybe if you were somebody else, I’d say okay, well, it doesn’t have to be a serious thing, let’s just fuck each other’s brains out until you have to go, but you’re you .

I don’t think I could not do serious with you. ”

Luke’s throat worked. “I’m not going to just walk away. I wouldn’t do that to Posy and Theo. I wouldn’t do that to any of us. We’ll visit. You’ll visit.”

“We will,” Sera agreed. “For a little while, anyway. And it might work for the kids and for Jasmine and for Matilda, but I don’t think either of us wants that to be the way we do this. If we were together, would you want to drive over three hours just to spend a day with me every now and then?”

“No,” Luke admitted. “No, if we were together, I don’t think I’d be able to stand not seeing you all the time, but I’d try to stand it. It couldn’t be worse than not being with you at all.”

Her resolve almost broke. She blinked back tears. “It wouldn’t work.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Luke, when you leave, you’ll leave . You’re already leaving.

You’ve had one foot out the door since the day you got here.

” Her voice wobbled. “I get it. I do. It’s what you do.

You always expect to leave, so you’re always waiting for it.

Ready for it. Even now, right this minute, you’re already halfway gone. ”

He stared at her, stricken. She hated that she’d put that look on his face, but she hadn’t said it to hurt him. She’d said it because it was true and she’d forgotten it.

She took a shaky breath, pulled herself together, and said, gently, “I hope this works out for Posy. You’re thinking about what’s best for her, and you should be, of course you should be, but maybe don’t forget to think about what’s right for you too.

If going back to Edinburgh is what’s right for both of you, if it’s what you really want, you should do it. ”

Then, before she could fall apart, before she could give in and be selfish and ask him to stay for her, before she could risk feeling the way it would feel when he refused, she walked away.